US President Donald Trump takes questions during the announcement of a Minnesota company's plan to build a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, at the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 28, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
A watchdog coalition accused the Trump White House of finding a sneaky workaround to keep its promotional blitz going after a judge intervened.
In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a coalition led by Common Cause asked U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon to expand her order halting the administration's taxpayer-funded TV ads so it also covers White House websites, YouTube and social media. The plaintiffs are represented by the legal group Democracy Forward, and journalist Scott MacFarlane flagged the filing in a Saturday post on X.
Rochon first blocked the ads on Oct. 11, ordering the Trump administration to cancel remaining airtime bought with $20 million that the White House budget office steered to Customs and Border Protection. She later extended the freeze after the spots aired hundreds of times past her deadline and new ones surfaced on the White House YouTube channel.
The latest filing against the ads, which came late Friday, argues that the Trump administration simply shifted tactics. While the original ads closed with the line "Paid for by the U.S. Government," the plaintiffs said officials dropped the tagline but left the spots up on government websites and social media, even though public employees created them.
The coalition said the White House went further the day after Rochon's order, posting new ads to its official YouTube page, including one that promises $5,000 to every adult citizen if Democrats lose the midterms, plus another on its official Instagram account.
According to the filing, MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC, then began airing "virtually the same new ads" nationally with a tagline crediting the PAC, which the plaintiffs called misleading because taxpayers covered the production costs.
"Defendants created (or, in their words, 'compiled') advertisements fawning over President Trump and attacking his ideological opponents," the filing states. It accuses the administration of draining most of its ad budget before the court could rule and then turning the fight into "a game of Whac-A-Mole," churning out "purely partisan propaganda" on the public's dime.
The White House has defended the spots as public service announcements in line with what earlier administrations aired, ABC News reported. Trump said he would shift the cost to political money, though a White House official said there were no immediate plans to repay the government for ads already run, CBS News reported.
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