The White House is broadcasting television advertisements featuring Donald Trump — produced internally and funded by US Customs and Border Protection — that critics argue are functionally indistinguishable from partisan campaign commercials. One ad is literally a re-run of a 2024 Trump campaign spot, its only modification the replacement of "paid for by Trump campaign" with "paid for by the US government." Public Citizen, the advocacy organization, has formally asked the FCC and FTC to block the ads. The legal architecture here is revealing. Federal law prohibits using appropriated public funds for government propaganda, self-aggrandizement, or partisan political advertising. Separately, broadcast stations cannot reject ads from legally qualified political candidates. Trump is not a candidate for any office. This means broadcasters are not legally compelled to air the spots — and the ads are not shielded by candidate-access rules. Public Citizen argues the ads fail every test for a legitimate public service announcement: they reference no specific government program, inform the public of nothing actionable, and exist solely to burnish Trump's image ahead of midterms Republicans are widely expected to lose. The funding trail deepens the problem. The Wall Street Journal reported the ads were financed through CBP, part of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS advertising is already under scrutiny: a $200 million ad campaign earlier this year was used to boost then-Secretary Kristi Noem's profile, a move Noem testified Trump had personally approved. That testimony reportedly led to her firing — not for running the ads, but for attributing them to Trump. By Sunday evening, the three ads had aired more than 90 times on Fox, Newsmax, MSNow, CBS, and during Saturday Night Live, Fox News Sunday, and multiple college and NFL football games. Public Citizen estimates the cost at over $1 million so far. An administration official told Axios that "this is just the beginning" and that Trump is personally selecting which ads to broadcast, with more in production. The White House defense rests on historical precedent: a web page comparing the spots to wartime public service announcements by Woodrow Wilson and FDR, as well as more recent PSAs under Bush, Obama, and Biden. The comparison is structurally dishonest. Wartime mobilization announcements and public health PSAs serve identifiable government functions. An ad featuring black-and-white footage of Trump walking while he pledges to "throw off the sick political class" and "rout the fake news media" serves one function: image-building for a political figure whose party faces an election. The regulatory response will define the precedent. If the FCC and FTC decline to act, the principle is established: any sitting president can redirect agency budgets to produce and broadcast what are effectively campaign advertisements, provided they avoid the technical label of "candidate." The absence of a call to vote is the thinnest of legal shields — the ads aired during primetime sports and entertainment programming, timed to the midterm campaign, with content indistinguishable from partisan spots. The structural question is not whether these ads are effective politics — they may or may not be. It is whether the executive branch can convert agency appropriations into a permanent campaign-messaging apparatus, accountable to no one, with taxpayers as involuntary funders. The answer to that question will matter long after November.
