DNC and Common Cause sue Trump administration over taxpayer-funded ad campaign

The Democratic National Committee and a coalition led by the watchdog group Common Cause filed separate federal lawsuits on Wednesday accusing the Trump administration of illegally spending taxpayer money on television advertisements that promote the president weeks before the November midterm elections. Both suits argue the spending violates a federal appropriations restriction that bars agencies from using public funds for "publicity or propaganda," and both ask courts to declare the ad campaign unlawful, halt any further spending on it and force the administration to try to recover money already spent.

The DNC filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, naming President Trump, the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget as defendants. The case, assigned to Judge Loren L. AliKhan, was docketed as an Administrative Procedure Act challenge, and PBS NewsHour reported that summonses went out to the defendants within a day of filing. Common Cause, working with the legal group Democracy Forward alongside a Democratic state legislative candidate and two SEIU affiliates, filed a parallel suit the same day in the Southern District of New York, naming DHS, OMB and senior administration officials as defendants.

The numbers

According to both complaints, the Office of Management and Budget increased a Customs and Border Protection funding line originally set aside for commemorative events, such as memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, by $20 million. The day after that transfer, DHS signed a $20 million contract for the ad campaign. The money was drawn from a roughly $175 million package Congress had approved for DHS immigration-enforcement activities.

By Wednesday morning, the three ads had aired nearly 14,000 times and generated an estimated 1.39 billion impressions, at a cost of about $12.6 million, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact, a figure cited in the Common Cause complaint itself. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over six days and concluding Monday found that 86 percent of Americans said it was inappropriate to use taxpayer money for election-season ads featuring the president or his Cabinet, including roughly four in five self-identified Republicans.

How we got here

The ads began airing in September. One features a choir singing over footage of Trump declaring the country will "never be a communist nation." A second shows Mount Rushmore while Trump touts a new "golden age of America." A third, shot in black and white, shows Trump walking toward the camera and warning of a "final battle" against the "deep state" and other perceived adversaries; critics have noted it is nearly identical to a spot his campaign ran in 2024, with the disclaimer changed to "Paid for by the U.S. Government."

The restriction both lawsuits invoke is not new. Since 1951, Congress has attached a rider to annual appropriations bills barring agencies from spending public money on "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress." The Government Accountability Office, Congress's auditing arm, has applied that rule for decades, ruling in a series of decisions — including a 2023 opinion involving the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — that agency communications cross the line when they are purely partisan, self-promotional or "covert," meaning they obscure their government origin or amount to advocacy for a particular viewpoint. The GAO has also found in past cases that spending on prohibited propaganda independently violates the Antideficiency Act, which bars agencies from obligating funds Congress never appropriated for that purpose.

Congressional Democrats had pressed the issue before either lawsuit was filed. Last month, Reps. Jamie Raskin and George Whitesides asked the GAO and the Office of Special Counsel to determine whether the spending was illegal, and Sens. Patty Murray and Chris Murphy wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin questioning the use of enforcement funds for the ads. The advocacy group Public Citizen separately asked the same two watchdog agencies to investigate who produced the spots and how much they cost. Those requests remain pending; neither agency has issued findings.

Who is affected, and what people are saying

The DNC's complaint frames the dispute in explicitly electoral terms, arguing the spending deprived Democrats of "a fair electoral process by adding public funds to the resources available to support Republican candidates" in races that will decide control of Congress on November 3. Common Cause's suit casts a wider net, arguing that if a sitting administration can redirect enforcement funds to campaign-style messaging, any future president of either party could do the same with other agencies' budgets. The performer whose song appears in one ad has sent the administration a cease-and-desist letter demanding it stop airing the spot, according to reporting on the broader dispute.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said Trump "is misusing millions of taxpayer dollars to fund pure propaganda ads" in what he called a bid to shore up Republican chances in November. Common Cause said in its filing that the spots "are not public-service announcements" but "personal publicity and political propaganda through and through."

"American taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for the president's politics."

That line came from Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, the legal organization representing Common Cause and its co-plaintiffs in the New York case.

The criticism has not been limited to Democrats. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the ads resembled something Hungarian leader Viktor Orban would produce, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that even where he agreed with an ad's message, it "shouldn't be paid for with taxpayer dollars." The White House has defended the campaign as nonpartisan public messaging; officials have called the spots "educational and unapologetically patriotic." Trump himself described the ads on social media as "a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A." and said earlier this week that future spots would be funded by his political operation rather than taxpayers — while declining to say whether the roughly $12 million already spent would be reimbursed. "We'll decide," he told reporters.

What happens next

Both cases are in their earliest stages. Summonses in the D.C. case were issued electronically to all defendants, the U.S. Attorney and the Attorney General on Thursday, and no hearing date has been set in either court. Because the suits were filed in different circuits under the Administrative Procedure Act, litigation could move on separate tracks, raising the possibility of conflicting rulings that eventually draw appellate review. In the meantime, the administration's own statements suggest the ad campaign's funding source, if not its message, may already be changing: officials have said no additional taxpayer money will be spent on the spots going forward, even as the legal fight over the money already spent, and over who should have to pay it back, continues in two courthouses at once.