Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) attempt to pass a bill blocking the $810 million “pocket rescission” the Trump White House sent over to Congress last week failed Wednesday evening.
House and Senate Democratic appropriators are unleashing on the Trump administration and confirming reports that the Trump White House moved taxpayer money out of Customs and Border Patrol to fund midterms advertisements running on major broadcast airwaves that promote President Trump.
While the White House is trying to describe the ads as “public service announcements” similar to what previous administrations have run about COVID-19 or Obamacare, at least one of the ads appears to be a literal rerun from Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Congress’ top Democratic appropriators demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and threatened investigations Tuesday as more details of the egregious shuffling of taxpayer dollars surfaced. The move appears to be, at best, a major violation of the Hatch Act (a 1930s-era federal law that places limits on the political activities of federal executive branch employees — and a law that Trump officials ignored throughout his first term in the White House).
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration used congressionally appropriated federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the recent spate of pro-Trump ads that have appeared on Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS — some of which even aired during at least two NFL games on Sunday. Specifically, the money was moved from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. Both the WSJ and CNN have reported that Trump personally pushed for the ads and was involved in their creation.
While the White House refers to the ads as PSAs — “These public-service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House told the WSJ — each has run with the alarming disclaimer: “paid for by the U.S. government.”
The ads all have the brand of Trumpian flair that landed former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in hot water. One features Trump talking while images of Mount Rushmore flash on the screen: “the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history,” Trump says. Another is eerily similar to an ad that Trump’s campaign aired in 2024. Per the Associated Press:
The latest of the ads, a spot first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”
A third includes a bunch of photos of Trump at various White House events. “America will never be a communist country,” he declares. It’s in line with one of the only talking points he and other Republicans have been able to come up with to campaign on this fall, as they fear-monger about a communist takeover of America because a handful of Democratic socialist candidates won primaries in New York City, Michigan and Colorado.
A few Republicans have mildly criticized the White House over what appears to be a blatant misuse of taxpayer funds.
“It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters earlier this week.
Democrats are, however, aggressively sounding the alarm about the matter, arguing it is not just the usual Trump corruption but likely “illegal propaganda.” Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), the top Dem appropriators in the Senate, wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin today, saying the $20 million that was shifted to pay for the ads used taxpayer dollars allocated for CBP from Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year. They said the money was intended for “for commemorative events relating to border security.” They demanded the ads be taken off air and sent Mullin a list of questions about the arrangement.
Top appropriators in Congress responded yesterday to White House OMB Director Russ Vought’s latest attempt to install political appointees as the final arbiters of congressionally appropriated grant money for scientific research.
“Republicans need to join us to put a stop to any effort by this administration to politicize what groundbreaking new treatments and cures we decide as a country to invest in,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democratic appropriator, said.
“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the Republican chair of the appropriations committee, said.
The most recent scheme, as I wrote yesterday, involves an executive order — which is, reportedly, currently being drafted, to give political appointees control over spending on research by the National Institutes of Health. Vought, per the Washington Post, contends that NIH’s work remains too “woke.” Trump and Vought are both also annoyed, per Politico and the New York Times, that funding continues to flow from the agency to Harvard.
TPM’s interest in this story isn’t only about the fact that a politicization of NIH grants would be an authoritarian disaster — though it would be. It’s also that it is the latest chapter in a theme that has defined the Trump administration: expanding executive branch power, and marginalizing Congress — a campaign by Trump and his advisors to which the Republican-controlled legislature has largely acquiesced.
While Democrats denounced Vought’s power grab, the senator who really matters here is Collins, the top Republican on the appropriations committee. Collins, of course, is fighting for reelection in Maine, and her statement was relatively strong.
“Any attempt to politicize grantmaking at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or any other agency, by another means — whether an Executive Order or guidance — is contrary to congressional intent,” she said.
“The Continuing Resolution — which passed the Senate, House, and was signed into law on September 2 – blocks OMB’s proposed rule or any substantially similar one,” she also noted.
Words, however, are cheap. As I wrote yesterday, the continuing resolution to fund the government, passed earlier this month, blocks the Trump administration from installing Trump’s political appointees to oversee research, but only does so until after the midterms. Republicans, Murray said last month, rejected a permanent block on the White House injecting itself into grantmaking.
This question will surface again after the midterms — and, likely, sooner, if this executive order sees the light of day, posing a direct challenge to Collins. We’ll see then if she, and Congress more generally, are willing to reassert their power of the purse in a lasting way.
The Supreme Court has already twice weighed in on a fight that has been playing out in recent weeks in Missouri, after the state’s secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, chose the route of chaos by effectively ignoring a petition by voters to choose which map the state votes under. At issue are two maps — a 2022 one and a deeply gerrymandered one the state legislature passed in 2025 at Trump’s urging.
It’s Sen. John Cornyn, who continues to create some drama — now by headlining a fundraiser in Dallas that will raise money for Republican Senate candidates in Maine, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Minnesota. But not Texas, the state where Cornyn and his co-headliner, George W. Bush, are from, and where the fundraiser is being held. The Senate candidate there is Ken Paxton who — of course — beat Cornyn in the primary.
Just as the Trump administration is trying to quiet the Iran war down before the midterms, Iran, per an MS NOW report, is trying to do the opposite: ramp it up, and drive oil prices as high as possible.
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