Department of Justice (DOJ) Issues Rare Apology to Judge For Continuing Trump’s Propaganda Ads

Oct 14, 2026 02:45 PM EDT, Wed

On taxpayer-funded midterm ads, Trump administration issues rare apology

With the election commercials finally paused, the focus shifts to the need for reimbursements.

By Steve Benen

Oct. 13, 2026, 3:27 PM EDT

Donald Trump began last week with an unexpected announcement: Going forward, the president said, he would stop using taxpayer money to finance the White House’s propagandistic campaign ads. Going forward, he said, his well-funded super PAC would start paying for the commercials.

It seemed as if Trump didn’t have much choice: The ad campaign had generated bipartisan criticism, and polls showed overwhelming public opposition to the misappropriation of public funds.

Except the president’s vow proved meaningless, and evidence quickly emerged that the Republican administration was still using public funds for the midterm propaganda days after Trump had publicly committed to stop. This sparked a pair of lawsuits from the Democratic National Committee and a coalition of groups, including the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon, responding to the coalition’s case, soon granted a temporary restraining order and directed the administration to cancel any remaining television commercials that had been paid for with taxpayer money.

Except that didn’t work out, either: Though the White House faced a deadline of late Sunday afternoon, publicly financed campaign ads continued into Monday morning.

Was the White House deliberately ignoring a court order? Evidently not. Hours after the problem was exposed, Trump’s Justice Department did something it rarely does: It apologized, not to the public, but to the federal judge.

In a court filing, a Justice Department attorney expressed contrition and cited the Columbus Day holiday as a reason for the procedural confusion. The filing added:

Defendants understand that they are enjoined from using, disbursing, or transferring funds appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security to develop, create, disseminate, place, distribute, publish, or air the challenged advertisements; Defendants understand that they shall cancel or cause to be cancelled any slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements.

At least for now, it would appear the administration understands it cannot use taxpayer money for Trump’s campaign ads.

That said, there’s still the matter of the millions in public funds the White House has already spent, and whether Americans might expect to be reimbursed for Team Trump’s recent abuses.

For his part, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on “Face the Nation” over the weekend and suggested to CBS News’ Margaret Brennan that taxpayers would never get their money back.

“Any time we can do a public service announcement and brag about America, I’m all about it,” the Oklahoma Republican said, despite the obvious fact that the campaign ads weren’t PSAs — one of the ads literally recycled one of Trump’s campaign ads from two years ago — and the fact that the commercials bragged about Trump, not the U.S.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Related Posts

Navigation Within