Ranking Members Morelle, Padilla Demand Accountability for White House Misusing Taxpayer Funds to Lobby Congress for Anti-Voter SAVE Act
Morelle and Padilla urge GAO to address the White House’s apparently illegal website dedicated to pressuring Americans to lobby their Senators to pass voter suppression bill.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Joe Morelle (N.Y.-25), Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration, and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, urged the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the apparent illegality of the White House’s use of taxpayer funds to create an official website dedicated to explicitly urging Americans to lobby their Senators in support of the SAVE America Act, an extreme voter suppression bill. With the Senate set to consider the anti-voter bill following its narrow, party-line passage in the House of Representatives, Padilla and Morelle asked GAO to determine whether the White House’s direct taxpayer-funded call on citizens to influence lawmakers violates the Anti-Lobbying Act and other laws, which generally prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to support lobbying campaigns urging citizens to contact Members of Congress regarding pending legislation.
“This webpage appears to be a prima facie violation of restrictions on the use of appropriations for explicit appeals to the public to contact Members of Congress to support pending legislation. In this case, this apparently illegal appeal is in favor of a bill that is designed to stoke fears of voter fraud centered on a myth of pervasive voting by noncitizens, could disenfranchise millions of Americans, and would fundamentally alter election administration activities by nationalizing voter list maintenance and forcing the use of a flawed DHS database,” wrote the lawmakers.
The public standalone webpage on the White House’s official website, states, in all caps, “ACT NOW,” and, after misleading the public with incorrect statements on the bill’s purpose and impact, the webpage concludes with an explicit call to lobby Senators, reading: “URGE YOUR SENATOR TO PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.” Directly below, the webpage includes a data visualization tool to steer Americans toward their Senators’ contact information. While federal officials may communicate with Congress and the public, GAO has found in previous appeals that specifically urging members of the public to contact Members of Congress in support of pending legislation violates the Anti-Lobbying Act’s prohibition on the misuse of taxpayer funds.
Republicans’ latest attempt to pass an updated version of the anti-voter SAVE Act threatens to disenfranchise millions of eligible American citizens in an election year by creating even more burdensome documentation requirements, among other voter suppression provisions. Despite investigations repeatedly showing that voter fraud is extremely rare, Republicans’ SAVE America Act would make voting significantly harder for tens of millions of married women and rural, low-income, and minority voters, including disenfranchising up to 21 million citizens who can’t readily access their passports and birth certificates. The SAVE America Act would also fuel attacks against hardworking election officials and illegally require all 50 states to hand over their unredacted voter rolls with sensitive personally identifiable information to the Trump Administration.
The Ranking Members urged GAO to consider the anti-voter actions and rhetoric from the White House leading up to their taxpayer-funded push for Americans to lobby their Senators on the SAVE America Act. Last week, President Trump said that if “Republicans” pass the SAVE America Act, “[w]e’ll never lose a race” for 50 years. Trump has also issued an illegal anti-voter executive order attempting to enforce many of the same voting requirements and restrictions, much of which has already been blocked by federal courts. At the same time, some Republican Senators are making public calls to decimate the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act.
Additionally, Trump has called on Republicans “take over the voting” and “nationalize” elections, while threatening to use other illegal executive orders to restrict mail-in voting and enact other anti-democratic actions. Trump has argued that the SAVE America Act would allow him to ban mail-in voting, which is a proven safe and secure voting method that approximately 30% of Americans utilize.
“It is clear that the White House’s legislative push is driven by the hope of partisan gain by changing election administration policy and that they are acting without regard to the law in their attempt to rewrite voting rules prior to the 2026 midterm elections,” continued the lawmakers.
Full text of the letter is available here.
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