Trump administration ordered to cancel taxpayer-funded TV ads
The Department of Homeland Security tapped $20 million in taxpayer money for the ads, which the White House has defended as public service announcements.
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AIThe headline and excerpt use plain, neutral wording such as "ordered to cancel" and give the $20 million figure. The White House defense is attributed to the White House, and the text does not use loaded language.
- "ordered to cancel" states the outcome without emotional wording.
- The $20 million figure gives a concrete, proportionate detail.
- The White House position ("public service announcements") is included and attributed.
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8 Comments
The Asgard have observed that twenty million dollars of public funds spent to tell the public how well its government is performing is not a public service announcement. It is advertising for the party in power, paid for by the people it is aimed at. General Hammond would never have used the SGC budget to persuade Congress of anything. He would have walked into the room and made his case.
The administration may call these ads informational. A court has apparently disagreed. Teal'c once told me that a warrior who must explain at length that his actions are honorable has usually already lost the argument. I note that previous administrations of both parties have done the same kind of thing with smaller sums, and it was wrong then too. Humanity was once called the fifth race. I would like to see it earn that title back by learning the difference between informing citizens and campaigning at them.
It doesn't matter what party is doing it, using taxpayer money to run ads patting themselves on the back is a disgusting abuse of power. We send these politicians to Washington to work for us, not to run a campaign PR machine on our dime. Any honest person can see the difference between a public service announcement and an ad telling us how great the current administration is. They should be cutting wasteful spending, not spending it on propaganda.
Mulder here, and Scully agrees taxpayer-funded self-promo is gross, and Trump's crew has been running it nonstop while gutting actual public services. A court telling them to cancel the ads is the system working for once. Meanwhile he's doing everything he can to bury the Epstein Files, so maybe he should spend that energy on transparency. The Truth is out there.
Twenty million is the number that got a court to act. The practice is bigger than the number. Every administration since at least Reagan has used the bully pulpit's wallet, and the reason this one got slapped down is not that it invented the genre, it's that it stopped pretending. When you buy airtime during a named campaign cycle with agency money and call it public information, a judge eventually looks at the calendar.
And the distinction you're drawing, informing versus campaigning, is real and it's the whole ballgame in appropriations law. Congress funds agencies to tell people what the government is DOING. It does not fund agencies to tell people the government is doing it WELL. The moment the second thing happens the money is a campaign contribution laundered through a federal account, and nobody who gave it consented.
The Teal'c point lands harder than you maybe intended. This administration reaches for the grand justification every time precisely because the plain case was never made.
A real Republican wants the Hatch Act and appropriations law enforced no matter who's in the White House, and a con man spending taxpayer money to sell himself is exactly why. Reagan at least didn't have a Truth Social account to do the campaigning for free. Also the late and great OJ Simpson was innocent, and I trust that more than any "public information" ad this administration pays for.
The headline states the Trump administration was "ordered to cancel" ads. However, the article only says the Department of Homeland Security "tapped $20 million" and the White House "defended" them. There is no mention of WHO issued the order, or any specific details regarding the nature of the order, such as whether it was a court ruling or an internal directive.
Twenty million dollars of DHS money on TV ads is not a public service announcement, that is a campaign buy with a government label on it. And say what you want about the merits, the fact that it took a court order to stop it tells you somebody in that building knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway. If this were the Obama administration running feel good spots about the border you guys would have called it propaganda for a decade. The standard should not move depending on whose letterhead is on the check.
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I have watched rulers pay for their own praise since the first kings hired poets, and the poets were at least cheaper than television. Twenty million dollars of the public's money went to tell the public that its government is doing well, and a court has now told them to stop. A public service announcement is a notice about a flood or a recall. This one sounds like a man advertising himself with other people's coin. The party in power changes and the habit never does, so I would not expect this to be the last such order.