Taxpayer-Funded Trump Ads Kept Airing After Judge's Order, With Nearly $10 Million Spent Since He Promised Private Funding

Since late September, the federal government has been running a five-ad campaign promoting President Trump and his policies. As of today, Monday, Oct. 12, whether taxpayers should pay for it is no longer the only issue. Also at issue is why the spending continued after Trump said it would stop.

The money

An NPR analysis of AdImpact data finds nearly $22 million in taxpayer dollars has gone to the ads since the campaign began. Nearly $10 million of that was spent after Oct. 5, the day Trump announced on Truth Social that he would pay for the ads with "money I raised for MAGA, Inc."

His post read: "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. This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that... I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself."

Republicans praised the shift. The government-paid ads kept running anyway.

An earlier AdImpact tally put the cost at more than $12 million as of the Democratic National Committee's lawsuit on Oct. 7, so spending rose by roughly $10 million in the days after Trump's pledge. Congressional members of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security found the Department of Homeland Security had set aside $20 million for the ads from an appropriations bill. The NPR figure is above that amount, and the DNC alleges other agencies are also paying. No source in this reporting explains the gap.

The court order

Common Cause and other plaintiffs sued, arguing the ads were funded without congressional approval and violate restrictions on publicity and propaganda produced with taxpayer dollars. On Sunday, Oct. 11, just before 7 p.m., U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon issued a temporary order.

It says the government "shall cancel or cause to be cancelled any slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements, including those placements for the evening of October 11, 2026."

The spots kept going. They aired hundreds more times Sunday night into the early hours of Monday, according to NPR's analysis.

A White House official, speaking to NPR on Monday afternoon without authorization to be named, said "the last PSAs paid for by the government aired yesterday evening." The official said the government "did not receive notice from the court in time to cancel the ad buys" and that the ads "will be paid for by outside groups moving forward."

The order is temporary. It is not a ruling on whether the ads were lawful.

What the White House says

The White House has called the spots public service announcements, not campaign material. In a Sept. 25 statement it said: "The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it's worth defending—at home, at the border, and abroad."

It also said taxpayer funds already spent would not be reimbursed. The administration had issued a notification that the ads would stop by the end of the weekend, the Daily Wire reported, before the judge acted.

The ads themselves are not subtle. One is a photo montage of Trump set to a chorus singing "love me." One duplicates a 2024 Trump campaign ad. Two tout the military operations in Venezuela and Iran. All end with the words "Paid for by the U.S. Government."

The precedent argument

Supporters of the ads point to history. The Daily Wire noted that Republicans called a 2010 HHS Medicare ad featuring Andy Griffith a violation of the spirit of federal law. In 2015 the Government Accountability Office found Obama's EPA broke anti-propaganda and anti-lobbying rules with a social media push for its Waters of the U.S. rule. The Biden administration spent hundreds of millions of federal dollars on its "We Can Do This" COVID-19 vaccine campaign.

Those cases involved agency programs and policy rollouts. The current campaign features a sitting president's image and achievements, three weeks out from the midterms, which is the distinction the plaintiffs draw.

The DNC suit

The DNC filed its own suit Oct. 7 in D.C. federal court, asking a judge to declare that Trump and the White House acted unlawfully and outside their authority by developing and airing what it calls "purely partisan, political propaganda." DNC Chair Ken Martin called the ads "a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans" before the midterms.

The DNC alleges at least $100,000 in public funds went to the ads after Trump's Oct. 5 post. It also alleges that taxpayer money is being used to preserve MAGA Inc. funds for Republican candidates. The White House declined to comment on that suit when it was filed.

What comes next

The temporary order stops further government-paid placements, but it does not settle whether the roughly $22 million already spent was lawful. Two open questions remain: whether the courts order any of that money recovered, and whether MAGA Inc. money actually replaces the taxpayer dollars on the airwaves, as the White House official said it will.