Trump Hit With Lawsuit for Using Taxpayer Money to Air Propaganda

The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration Wednesday, alleging that recent TV advertisements espousing the president’s political agenda were funded by taxpayers and thus violated U.S. propaganda law.

The 31-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses Donald Trump of personally directing the advertisements. The DNC has asked the court to intervene in the scheme to stop the ads and the flow of public funds that has buoyed their creation and proliferation.

More than $12 million in government funds have been spent on the pro-Trump ads since September, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. The Department of Homeland Security had previously set aside $20 million for the dubious expenditure, the Associated Press reported late last month.

The administration ultimately created four adverts to glorify Trump, framing the MAGA leader as a centerpiece of American resistance. One 30-second commercial, set to JMSN’s track “Love Me,” framed Trump as the bastion of American strength and resistance against foreign foes.

The refrain, “love me,” was played repeatedly while images of Trump flashed across the screen, and text appeared reiterating Trump’s claim that “America will never be a communist country.”

“He is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country that he’s lost,” UFC President Dana White can be heard saying towards the end of the clip.

All four ads were accompanied by an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” One appeared to use footage from a 2024 spot for Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump practically confessed to the arrangement on Monday, relenting to public backlash via a Truth Social post in which he said he would no longer use taxpayer money on the adverts.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” Trump wrote. “This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

He did not, however, mention if he would use his coffers to reimburse the American people.

Speaking with reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump insisted that “the ads were really good” and a “promotion for the country” rather than a promotion of himself.

Vice President JD Vance also defended the commercials, claiming on Monday that the messaging was “not partisan.”

“We’re trying to tell a story about how great the United States of America is,” Vance said.

The DNC, however, disagreed. In their complaint, the political committee argued that the “political propaganda ads” were an attempt to resuscitate Trump’s “historically low approval ratings and avoid widespread Republican defeats in the 2026 midterm election.”

The ads, according to the group, followed a broader pattern of behavior in which Trump has repeatedly attempted to center himself in the midterm cycle, effectively turning Election Day 2026 into another referendum on his popularity.

In recent months, Trump has attempted to bribe Americans with a $5,000 handout (if Republicans win), made himself the center of an unprecedented two-day Republican midterm convention, and repeatedly instructed voters to act as if he’s on the ballot.

Yet all of those things have only proved to hurt Republican odds, as resentment grows against Trump due to the dragging Iran war and the rising cost of living.

This story has been updated.

Election officials in Florida have extended the state’s new voter registration protections to Donald Trump—even though he doesn’t qualify for them.

The Palm Beach County Office of the Supervisor of Elections confirmed to the Tampa Bay Times Wednesday that it had wiped Trump’s personal info from public facing voter registration records. In doing so, it made private data relating to Trump’s home and mailing addresses, his birth date, his party affiliation, and email address—data available on voting Americans in nearly every state. The change will make it more difficult to ascertain when Trump votes by mail versus in person.

Trump had asked the agency to remove his information earlier this year, but the office told the Tampa Bay Times that it did not review whether the request was actually legitimate. As it turns out, it was not.

A public records law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in June 2025, allows certain public officials to remove their personal information from the public facing state system. That includes members of Congress as well as a smattering of specific elected positions, such as the governor, lieutenant governor, chief financial officer, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, state representative, state senator, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, school superintendent, school board member, mayor, city commissioner, and county commissioner, according to the text of the law.

Notably, the list does not include the president.

Local lawmakers couldn’t help Trump make his request legitimate even if they wanted to: State representatives won’t meet again until March, waylaying the chance to introduce an amendment that could retroactively and specifically include him.

Trump’s request came by way of a notarized document, in which he claimed he was eligible as a state public officer. The form was notarized by Chamberlain Harris, a 26-year-old White House aide whom Trump promoted last year to deputy director of Oval Office operations and subsequently appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, overseeing Kennedy Center construction (or demolition) projects. Harris was also one of three women in the Trump administration to receive a $45,000 bonus from the president as a “cash gift for the holidays” last year.

President Trump claimed that he can do whatever he wants to his political enemies

“I could’ve done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could’ve done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could’ve done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday after being asked whether he believes Democrats will try to impeach him if they win back the House and Senate. “I thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect. Then I found out that they impeached me. Twice. And … I can do whatever I want, if I want. They’ve done some very bad things.”

“He’s telling you exactly how he sees his power. Now apply that to an election he’s desperate to control,” Democracy Docket wrote on X.

This is just the latest in a long list of vindictive threats the president has made towards his political enemies, from former FBI Director James Comey to Senator Adam Schiff. He accused Obama of treason this past May. But this recent admission is his most brazen to date, particularly given that it comes right before an extremely consequential midterm election that will also usher in his lame duck period.

President Trump had trouble fighting to stay awake Wednesday while surrounded by members of his administration and the press in the Oval Office.

While his “Trump Accounts” for American children were receiving praise from venture capitalist Brad Gerstner, the president struggled to keep his head from drooping, waking up when he was told “thank you.”

Trump later perked up when a reporter asked him if had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding a plague outbreak in Siberia, and the president happily pointed out that Wednesday is Putin’s birthday.

“I have a call set up. Today is his birthday. Today is Vladimir Putin’s birthday, I’m sure you’re gonna celebrate it. Are you gonna celebrate his birthday? No, I have a call set up,” Trump smirked, his voice sounding hoarse.

The octogenarian Trump has fallen asleep in public dozens of times during his second term as president. Only last week, he fell asleep after announcing a new steel plant in Iowa, and his moments of senility keep adding up. Despite all of that, he remembered Putin’s birthday and thought it was important to mention. Is Trump’s planned phone call really about the plague, or will he congratulate the Russian dictator on many happy returns? Judging by Trump’s mental and physical condition, as well as his past deference to Russia, it could very well be either.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a hypernationalistic speech at the Acropolis in Athens Wednesday in which he lauded the supposed superiority of Western civilization while stoking more fears about immigration.

“The heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so,” Rubio waxed. “We take the West’s conception of these things—heroism, honor, duty—we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here—and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. The civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.

“Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world,” Rubio continued. “Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness. The word nationalism became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments, we condemned our own history, and in too many places we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process we opened our borders, and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay. And with every passing year, we seem to outsource more of our sovereignty.”

Rubio went on to warn against immigration, amplifying the xenophobia that is a central tenet of both the MAGA movement and the larger international far-right.

“We have built a model of that with our partners here in Greece. In our defense partnerships, in energy and technology, in our shared ambition to secure Europe’s borders from the threats of mass migration,” he said.

Those on the far-right, including Elon Musk, praised the speech—while others pointed to it as a possible sign of Rubio’s long-suspected intentions to run for president in 2028. Either way, the incendiary address reaffirmed the aesthetic importance of ancient Greece to right-wingers.

“This is the classical understanding of politics—and of statecraft—that the Trump administration hopes to reclaim. Reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization,” Rubio continued. “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.”