Sen. Adam Schiff said he uncovered two more federal contracts paying for giant banners of Trump's face on government buildings: $39,000 on behalf of the Department of the Interior and $114,020 on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration, a combined $153,000 to a Maryland firm, Grafik Industries, Ltd. A Trump banner went up in front of the Interior Department in June, and the FAA contract runs through 2027.
Schiff's objection is statutory, not aesthetic. Congress has long barred spending appropriated funds on propaganda and self-aggrandizement. “The Trump administration is spending hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to glorify and pay tribute to a sitting U.S. President and his political agenda,” he said. “Not only is this a terrible waste of Americans' hard-earned money, it is clearly against the law... an eight-story high Donald Trump head certainly qualifies as propaganda.”
The banners join the capital's growing Trump iconography: the arch, the ballroom, the renamed airport, the gold coin, and the reflecting pool. What Schiff's contracts add is the paper trail, showing the imagery is procured with public money through federal agencies, with work booked into 2027 (see To Build His 250-Foot Arch, Trump's Interior Department Argues a 1910 Law Capping Washington's Buildings Never Applied to Federal Ones and Palm Beach's Airport Becomes 'President Donald J. Trump International,' Trading Its PBI Code for DJT in a $5.5 Million Rebrand).
The biggest single tab came from the Justice Department. Records obtained by Politico through a Freedom of Information Act request showed the DOJ spent nearly $1 million on the banners of Trump's face hung on its headquarters: a base contract of $892,192.07, plus another $54,768 added through a supplemental agreement. Two of the banners went up on the Pennsylvania Avenue-facing corners of the building, showing Trump's official portrait above the words “MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN.” That the nation's chief law-enforcement agency spent nearly seven figures to hang the president's face on its own building is the clearest single illustration of the propaganda concern Schiff raised.
Update (September 25, 2026): the White House did not respond directly to questions about the contracts' legality, the Independent reported. Spokesman Davis Ingle: “It's a complete disgrace that Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff is willing to trash the United States of America during its semiquincentennial celebration simply because he hates President Trump.”
Related entries: Trump Hangs a Giant Banner of His Face on the Department of Justice Building, the Agency Meant to Be Independent of the President, Giant Banners with Trump's Face on Federal Buildings.