President Donald Trump is stepping up his efforts to use taxpayer money and resources to help Republicans win the 2026 midterm elections.
And it’s not subtle at all.
At last month’s midterm Republican convention, he pushed the envelope by promising every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 if Republicans held both the House and Senate. It was already astonishing: offering money to voters for a specific outcome. But since then, Trump has only pushed the envelope.
Over the past 10 days, he has released more than a dozen government-funded ads intended to promote himself and his supposed accomplishments.
The road to the 2026 midterm elections begins now
Last week, Trump held two separate White House events in which he made exaggerated promises on major economic projects in key states holding crucial Senate elections.
Also last week, the administration sent $500 checks to nearly 1 million Obamacare beneficiaries.
By Friday, the administration had apparently found even more money to send: $90 to about 20 million seniors to help them pay their Medicare Part B premiums.
And in recent days, Trump has revived his $5,000 speech on social media and highlighted it at rallies in Alabama and Oklahoma.
Each of these examples would be controversial in itself. But the combination and details make the intention unmistakable:
-
The $5,000 checks he promised are explicitly part of a quid pro quo in which he is trying to coerce voters into giving him the outcome he wants. And even some on the right called it a “bribe.”
-
Despite the administration’s claims that the ads are public service announcements and are “very clearly not campaign ads,” they bear virtually no resemblance to past public service announcements. And at least one of them is literally a campaign ad released by Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Some Republicans have also criticized that, with outgoing Sen. John Cornyn of Texas saying it’s “not even a specific question” that the ads are inappropriate.
-
The two economic projects announced by Trump – in Alaska and Iowa – quickly proved to be much weaker than his speech suggested.
-
Trump has now sent or launched direct payments to Americans in three different ways, all just weeks before the election.
-
Trump’s $500 checks to Obamacare recipients came with a politicized letter from him promoting his administration’s anti-fraud efforts and attacking the Biden administration, which the letter said “overcharged you.”
-
The stated purposes behind the $500 and $90 payments are highly suspect. Experts dispute that Obamacare policyholders were wrongly overcharged. And the $90 for seniors comes from the $2.2 billion Medicare Enhancement Fund, which the Congressional Budget Office says is supposed to be used “to improve Medicare’s hospital and medical insurance programs.”
In other words, Trump is exploiting whatever direct benefits he can get from his official job to motivate himself and Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
And if that seems uncharitable, it’s worth remembering what Trump himself said on the matter.
He repeatedly accused the Biden administration of trying to buy votes even when the proximity of the election was not as clear and the money was appropriated by Congress.
In 2023, he accused Biden of buying votes by using funds allocated by Congress to complete infrastructure projects.
“He’s saying everywhere, ‘We’ll build a bridge. We’ll build anything you want,’ you know — trying to buy votes,” Trump said in December 2023.
And in 2023 and 2024, Trump described Biden’s efforts to cancel student debt through executive action as a similar effort. He even called him “corrupt.”
“We have a corrupt president. We have a corrupt president, very corrupt,” Trump said in June 2023. “But it was a way of trying to buy votes. That’s all.”
The question then is: will Trump’s efforts help his cause?
There are reasons to doubt this.
The ads have real money behind them, judging by the fact that there are so many of them and they air during expensive times like NFL games. But they could apparently backfire by putting a president Americans overwhelmingly dislike at the forefront of the campaign.
The $90 and $500 payouts are real money. But the first amount is a small sum, and the second will only go to about one in 200 eligible voters.
And Americans seem skeptical that they will ever receive the $5,000 checks. A CNN poll last month showed that 77 percent of respondents said it was “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that they would get the promised money if Republicans held both the House and Senate.
And those who believed it were mostly those who approved of Trump; only 11% of his critics thought it was even “somewhat likely.”
(Indeed, Americans are right to be skeptical. The trillion-dollar-plus cost of these payments would balloon the deficit and risk driving up inflation. It’s also pretty obvious that Congress would have to approve them, and even if Republicans are united on the payments — which they are not — it would take Democratic votes to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.)
And it appears voters might judge Trump negatively even for making that promise. The CNN poll showed that 64% to 36% of Americans said it was not a “worthwhile” use of federal money, while a Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that registered voters said between 66% and 18% that it was “inappropriate” for Trump to make such a promise.
However, even if a small percentage of voters feel constrained by Trump’s handouts or his promises of big projects in Alaska and Iowa, it could be of marginal importance.
But whatever the political impact, one major consequence is that Trump blurs the line between official business and party politics.
Gn usa
