House Appropriations Committee Democrats are accusing the White House of bankrolling President Trump’s political messaging with Customs and Border Protection funds, just weeks before the November elections. The charge, leveled Tuesday by ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Homeland Security Subcommittee ranking member Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), centers on a 30-second commercial that aired during NFL broadcasts and carried a U.S. government-paid disclaimer.
The ad features Trump walking through a hallway as he declares, “This is the final battle,” and promises to “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists.” In the spot, Trump also says, “Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America,” and “America will never be a communist country.” CNN reported the taxpayer-funded advertisement ran Sunday during two professional football games.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Tuesday that the administration financed the ads using federal funds from CBP. That revelation prompted the Democratic appropriators to blast the White House for what they call a brazen misuse of taxpayer dollars.
“After gutting $1 trillion from Medicaid, stripping health care coverage from millions of Americans, giving the very richest Americans and large corporations massive tax breaks, adding more than $4 trillion to the deficit, and more than quadrupling funding for mass deportations, it turns out the Trump administration used Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill to pay for President Trump’s political ads,” DeLauro and Cuellar said in a joint statement.
They added: “When Democrats reclaim control of Congress next year, the House Appropriations Committee will work to uncover and reverse misuses of taxpayer money like this and hold those who abused their power accountable.”
The two Democrats also pointed to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who they say shifted $20 million “in resources to the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose” earlier this month. The White House has defended the commercials. A spokesperson told The Hill that the “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 dispute comes as Democrats are aggressively positioning themselves for the midterms, with recent polls showing they are poised to flip the Senate and GOP donors growing anxious about Trump’s drag on the ticket. Meanwhile, the administration’s broader spending priorities have drawn scrutiny, including a lobbying surge driven by Trump’s tariffs and industrial policy, as K Street cashes in on the chaos, according to a recent report on record lobbying spending.
Democrats argue that the ad campaign is a clear violation of the separation between official government communications and political activity. They say the use of CBP funds—an agency tasked with border security—for what amounts to campaign advertising is an abuse of power that demands congressional oversight. The appropriators have not yet said whether they will seek a formal investigation or demand documents, but their statement signals that the fight over federal spending and election-year tactics will intensify in the coming weeks.
The White House has not responded to the specific allegation about CBP funding, but its defense of the ads as public service announcements suggests it will resist Democratic efforts to characterize them as political. With control of Congress hanging in the balance, the controversy is likely to become another flashpoint in the battle over government resources and electoral influence.
