The watchdog group Public Citizen this week filed a pair of complaints urging regulators and broadcasters to pull President Donald Trump's unlawful taxpayer-funded campaign advertisements off the air and demanding a federal investigation into them. In recent weeks, amid mounting speculation that Republicans could lose their congressional…
Page F2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 29 September 2026
Homeland Security spends taxpayer money promoting Trump the week his own candidate scrubs 'Pro-Trump' from a slogan.
As it ran on the front
On September 23rd, Charlie Hatcher, the Tennessee Republican who beat a Trump-endorsed incumbent in the August primary and then accepted Trump's endorsement himself, quietly removed the words 'Pro-Trump' from his own campaign slogan.
By Friday the same commercial had spread to Newsmax and CBS. The outrage had by then acquired its own vocabulary — self-aggrandizing, propaganda — and its own open question: whether spending public money on a spot built to promote one man violates the federal law written to prevent exactly that.…
…(cont) This week the sourcing caught up to the outrage. Sources familiar with the matter told ABC News what the ad's own disclaimer had already implied: the money came from the Department of Homeland Security, not from any campaign account. No dollar figure for the buy has been made public. The thirty-second running time is on the record only because a reporter happened to be watching Fox News on a Wednesday night — it is not an amount anyone at Homeland Security has itemized, and Public Citizen's complaint does not put a number on it either.
That complaint landed Tuesday, filed with the FCC, the FTC, and the broadcasters that carried the spot, naming at least three ads meeting the same description and asking regulators to pull them and investigate. The White House's term for the ads is public service announcement. The Nation's word, in a column the same day, was brazen, with a prediction attached: that the ads 'seem likely to backfire.'
Backfire, in this ledger, arrived early. Hatcher's adjustment came before the outrage over the ad had spread past a single network, before Public Citizen's complaint, before ABC News confirmed whose account paid for any of it. Homeland Security spent to keep the Trump name on the air. A House candidate in the president's own party spent to take it off his own slogan. Same asset, two accounts, opposite entries, in the same week. Reconcile it however you like, hon — the balance still runs against the guy who found out both of these were paid for with his taxes.
“They tell you there's no room in the budget for whatever you actually need, but there was money at Homeland Security for a Trump highlight reel set to a love song. Same department, same fiscal year, one line item buys him national airtime and nobody can put a number on what it cost. That's not a policy failure, that's a receipt with your name still on it.”
“It's clearly labeled a public service announcement, the American people have a right to know their government is standing up to — wait, the ad actually says 'communism'? That's the president's own words, I don't write his scripts. And Hatcher dropping 'Pro-Trump' from his slogan, that's not distancing, that's local messaging discipline, works for the district, has nothing to do with — with anything national.”
The receipts
Outrage mounted Friday over a taxpayer-funded television advertisement glorifying President Donald Trump, with critics describing the 30-second spot as self-aggrandizing propaganda and questioning whether the administration violated federal law restricting the use of public money for partisan communications. The ad—which aired this week…
Chris Lehmann But as brazen and authoritarian as the provenance of these ad spots are, they seem likely to backfire. The post Trump Is Using Your Taxpayer Money to Pay for Illegal Election Propaganda appeared first on The Nation .
The Trump administration used funds from Homeland Security to air TV ads featuring President Donald Trump in recent days, according to sources familiar with the matter.
· White House Airs 'Illegal' Trump Propaganda Ad ‘Paid For By the US Government’ from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· GOP hopeful removes ‘Pro-Trump’ mention from campaign slogan in deep-red seat from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.