Trump Tells DHS to Spend Millions on Political Ads Thanking Him for Closing the Border

While Elon Musk and DOGE cut funding and staff for vital government programs at random, the Trump administration has found a few places where it definitely wants to spend more money: on pro-Trump political ads. Some $200 million of it.

Rolling Stone reports:

The Department of Homeland Security has budgeted up to $200 million to run anti-immigrant ads in the United States and overseas that repeatedly thank President Donald Trump for leading an immigration crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Friday night that these ads were Trump’s idea, and during the administration’s transition to power, the president asked her to star in ads thanking him “for closing the border.” …

The ad campaign amounts to an extremely expensive taxpayer-funded propaganda blitz to scare off migrants and to flatter Trump on television.

Government spending is supposed to serve a public purpose, advancing the interests of the United States, not politicians. By law and custom, public officials are supposed to separate their official duties from electioneering. Donald Trump has a long history of crossing that line.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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