Judge Orders Trump Administration To Pull Taxpayer-Funded Ads Praising President

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to stop using taxpayer-funded ads that portray President Donald Trump favorably right before the midterms. 

According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed by the watchdog group “Common Cause; Robert Hunter, a Democratic candidate for a seat in the Alabama state House, and a labor union in New York and its political action committee.”

The suit was one of many filed—including one by the Democratic National Committee—to get the government-funded ads that show the president in the most favorable light ever off the air. 

“Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on the merits, will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, the balance of the equities tips in their favor, and an injunction serves the public interest,” U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon of the Southern District of New York wrote, NBC News reports. 

In a court filing Saturday, the administration claimed the Department of Homeland Security used a vendor to place ad buys through Sunday and told the vendor not to purchase ads after Sunday. 

The Judge ordered the Trump administration “cancel or cause to be cancelled” any ads, including those scheduled to run Sunday night, off the air. 

The judge also added that the administration was no longer allowed to use funds allocated for the DHS to “develop, create, disseminate, place, distribute, publish, or air the challenged advertisements.”

Trump said last week that MAGA Inc. would help fund the ads going forward.

“We are pleased the court acted swiftly to prevent more taxpayer dollars from being used for such blatantly unlawful political propaganda,” the plaintiffs said in a statement to NBC News. “There is no legal justification — and no precedent — for the president to use the machinery of the government and funds set aside by Congress for other uses to influence electoral outcomes that further his own agenda.”

Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said that despite the ruling and the fact that the Trump administration knows better, “our fight continues.”

“We won’t stop until this administration is held fully accountable, and no president from any party can waste and abuse taxpayer funds for propaganda ever again,” Solomón said.

The ads were so egregious that one was nearly identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad that had critics in an uproar because, at the very end, it noted that the U.S. Government paid for it. 

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