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On Politics

Tue Sep 29 2026

Zachary Schermele | Congressional Correspondent

@zachschermele

Hello, readers. Welcome back to On Politics. Zach Schermele here, USA TODAY's congressional correspondent. It's Tuesday, and we're finding out more about where exactly the taxpayer money came from to support a round of much-scrutinized TV ads from the White House. More on that later...

A basketball blunder

This morning, Senate Republicans once again dragged former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to the Hill. The goal: pepper him with questions about his prosecutions of President Trump related to alleged 2020 election interference and mishandling of classified documents. To be clear, there was a lot of that. But there was also a standout moment that definitely gave a political boost to Democrats, who insisted the hearing was unserious.

What happened: Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, asked Smith if he'd attended a professional basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024. The GOP lawmaker, who labeled Smith a "dirtbag," then suggested he could have met with Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, about her separate election interference case against Trump. While he hadn't been to an Atlanta Hawks game, Smith said he did remember going to a University of Maryland basketball game around that time, when then-college breakout star Caitlin Clark was playing in her senior year for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes.

"People should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag, and not get the teams wrong," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota.

Sens. Eric Schmitt and John Kennedy are pictured at the Jack Smith Senate hearing on Sept. 29, 2026.

Evan Vucci, REUTERS

Big picture: The apparent mix-up wasn't a great look for Schmitt, a former college athlete, who played a key role in getting the Senate to pass a major overhaul of college athletics last night. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Daily photo gallery: Supreme Court to consider Boulder wildfire climate change lawsuit. See photos

Congress: TV ad money came from CBP

Those taxpayer-funded Trump ads on TV that everyone's talking about? Apparently, they were put in place with money from Customs and Border Protection, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The ads were funded via One Big, Beautiful Bill Act money, the bipartisan pair atop the Senate Appropriations Committee said in separate remarks today (though the Budget Committee is the one with oversight of those reconciliation funds).

Why does it matter? Well, Senate Republicans already weren't exactly thrilled about the Trump administration using Americans' money to support campaign-style ads. ("I like the message," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said yesterday, "but it shouldn't be paid for with taxpayer dollars.") So this adds a whole new twist to the ongoing saga over Congress' spending authority.

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SCOTUS greenlights third-country deportations

Today, for the third time, the Supreme Court backed the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants to countries other than their own without giving them the chance to show they could be persecuted or tortured there. As our Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe reports, the court paused a federal judge’s decision saying that the administration’s policy – a key tool in President Trump’s deportation crackdown − is unlawful. Read more from Maureen here.

That's all from me for today, folks. Questions? Comments? Tips? Reach me, as always, at zschermele@usatoday.com or on Signal @zachschermele.02.