The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit against United States President Donald Trump over television s that were publicly funded and allegedly used to promote his political policies. Ken Martin, who heads the Democratic Party’s leadership body, suggested in a statement on Wednesday that the ads were designed to bolster Republican odds in the upcoming November 3 midterm elections. “Donald Trump is misusing millions of taxpayer dollars to fund pure propaganda ads in a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November,” Martin said. Later that day, Common Cause, a democracy watchdog group, filed a second lawsuit over the same set of ads. It argued that the ads were “overtly political” and therefore ran afoul of laws that bar public funds from being used for political propaganda. “These ads are not public-service announcements,” Common Cause said in its lawsuit, citing a justification Trump has offered for the television spots. “They are personal publicity and political propaganda through and through.” Both lawsuits argue that, to create the ad campaign, Trump directed the White House to repurpose $20m in funds that Congress allocated for commemorative activities related to border security, including for those killed in the line of duty.
That manoeuvre, they argue, violates the separation of powers established in the US Constitution. “The founders made clear more than 200 years ago that the executive can spend money only according to Congress’s direction,” Common Cause’s lawsuit said. The two lawsuits also point to a provision Congress includes in its appropriations bills barring the use of taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes”. Both complaints seek to have the ads declared illegal, and the expenditures stopped. They also call for steps to be taken to recover any money already spent on the ads.
The Democrats’ lawsuit was filed in Washington, DC, while the Common Cause complaint will be heard in the Southern District of New York. Trump has faced mounting criticism over the ads, which began airing in September. So far, the advertising campaign has cost more than $12m to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. The $20m Trump tapped for the ads comes from a $175m package Congress assigned to the Department of Homeland Security as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Critics have pointed out that one of the ads appears nearly identical to a television spot Trump used in his 2024 re-election campaign. Three ads have aired so far. In one, a choir sings “love me” over a montage of Trump as he declares the US will “never be a communist country”. Another uses images of Mount Rushmore as Trump heralds a new “golden age of America”.
The third is darker: Trump walks towards the camera in black and white, warning of a “final battle” against the “deep state” and other perceived enemies. On Wednesday, the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos released a poll showing the ads are highly unpopular. Some 86 percent of the Americans surveyed, including four out of five Republicans, said it was inappropriate for Trump to have used public money for them. Trump has defended the ads as “promotion for the country”, and he has argued they were similar to public outreach campaigns put out by previous administrations.
But after a bipartisan backlash, Trump said on Monday that taxpayer funds would no longer be used for future ads. He did not, however, commit to paying back the money already spent on the existing ads. Members of Trump’s Republican Party have been among those speaking out against the ad campaign. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said the s resembled something former Hungarian leader Viktor Orban would put out.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, meanwhile, indicated he agreed with the message in one of the s, but he emphasised that “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars”.
