The White House has defended three taxpayer-funded advertisements featuring President Donald Trump by comparing them to ads that were paid for by past presidential administrations. But some legal experts have said the Trump White House commercials are political messages intended to influence the 2026 midterms and may violate U.S. laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds for propaganda.
Congressional Leadership Fund, the highest-spending super PAC seeking to sway House races in the upcoming midterms, has been flooding TV airwaves around the country with ads attacking Democrats running in close races. But we found that some of those ads are misleading.
Has someone “been a lobbyist” if the person was registered as such but never had any clients? What if that registration was later retroactively deactivated? Those are the questions in a dispute in the Ohio Senate race.
As a candidate, Donald Trump issued a “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.” He has kept some of those promises, broken a few, and many are still a work in progress.
An ad attacking the Democrats’ nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania claims she “gave millions in grants to her husband’s company” while working for the state, and that the couple “pocketed thousands.” That twists the facts.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory got his facts wrong when he criticized a gay rights group that is lobbying to repeal a controversial bill he signed to limit transgender bathroom use.
Newt Gingrich complained that in one early burst at the first Florida debate, Mitt Romney said “at least four things that are false” about him. Now Gingrich has specified which claims he was talking about, and we’ve checked the evidence he promised he would — and did — post on his website.
We conclude that two were not false; one was (mostly); and one is a matter of interpretation. In all cases, the claims are in need of further explanation and context.
It would be understandable if Arizona voters watching Sen. John McCain’s new ad came away thinking J.D. Hayworth is one of those chauffeur-driven, jet-setting Washington lobbyists. Understandable, but wrong.
The ad started to air June 8 in advance of the Aug. 24 GOP Senate primary. We can’t quibble with the words spoken by the narrator, who states that Hayworth was a "registered lobbyist" and "was paid thousands by a Florida corporation to lobby the very committee he used to serve on."
A section of our story "Obama’s State of the Union Address" was inadvertently dropped when we posted the article Thursday. It shows that Obama spoke a little too sweepingly when he claimed that lobbyists have been cut out of policymaking jobs in his administration. We’ve added the section to the piece, and we include it below:
K St. to the White House: Road Almost Closed
Obama touted his efforts to change Washington’s ways.
Obama: [W]e’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.
Q: Are lobbyists justified in a democracy?
A: The Constitution guarantees the right to petition government.