This summer, Attorney General Todd Blanche boasted about the drop in federal crime while stumping for the Republican candidate for New York governor at a rally headlined by President Trump.
In Michigan, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, personally endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate, arguing that Mr. Rogers would help advance his department’s work.
And in Alaska this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stood with the president at a rally in which he noted the role of Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, in securing a natural gas pipeline.
Such appearances have become commonplace as nearly all of Mr. Trump’s top deputies fanned out to promote Republican candidates facing difficult election odds. But they have alarmed government ethics experts who say administration officials are running afoul of the Hatch Act, an 87-year-old law that limits how executive branch employees can participate in political activity.
In the past few months, at least nine of 15 cabinet secretaries and several other senior Trump deputies have been formally accused of Hatch Act violations, such as using official government titles while engaging in campaign activities and using taxpayer funds to pay for political advertisements.
“We have not seen this level of violations in recent times,” said Kedric Payne, the head of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group that recently filed a Hatch Act complaint against several White House and homeland security officials over three taxpayer-funded commercials promoting Mr. Trump. Its affiliated litigation arm, Campaign Legal Center Action, is one of the groups that is also suing the Trump administration over the ad campaign.
“Officials should not be using their titles or taxpayer resources to be involved in political campaigns, yet the Trump administration continues to increase activity that goes against the letter and the spirit of this principle,” Mr. Payne said. “Now it seems as though the administration can flood the zone with potential Hatch Act violations and not suffer any consequences until after the election.”
Representatives for the White House and government agencies contend that the complaints are politically motivated to hurt Republicans and that officials’ activities comply with the law.
The Hatch Act was intended to be a buffer against partisan politics influencing government operations. While the president and the vice president are exempt, all other civil employees of the executive branch are subject to its restrictions. Over the years, both Republicans and Democrats have been accused and found guilty of breaching the Hatch Act.
But government watchdogs contend Trump officials have been lax about observing that firewall during the 2026 midterm elections.
At the Alaska rally, Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Lutnick and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, by their official titles. Using those titles violated the Hatch Act, Democracy Defenders Fund, a left-leaning advocacy nonprofit, and Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy group, charged in a recent complaint, pointing out that the law forbids campaigning in an official capacity.
They also accused Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, of violating the law by telling the same rally crowd how Mr. Sullivan would continue to advance the agency’s work, even though he began his remarks by saying he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Representatives for the Commerce Department and the F.C.C. did not respond to requests for comment. An Interior Department representative said Mr. Burgum spoke in a personal capacity, dismissing the complaint as baseless and politically motivated.
Democracy Defenders Fund has also accused Mr. Duffy of violating the Hatch Act by tying his personal endorsement of Mr. Rogers to the work of his department. And the Steady State, a group of former national security officials, has twice accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of doing the same while campaigning for candidates in Iowa and Kentucky. The group is challenging a decision by the Office of Special Counsel to close the Kentucky complaint without further action.
A representative for the Transportation Department said Mr. Duffy abides by all applicable ethics laws, rules and regulations. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said Mr. Hegseth’s appearances were “thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers” and did not violate the Hatch Act or any other statutes.
In the past, when senior government officials appeared to breach the Hatch Act, the Office of Special Counsel, established as an independent investigative agency, was more aggressive about condemning the conduct. During the Biden administration, when watchdog groups flagged that Marcia Fudge, the housing secretary, and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, had used their official pulpit to make political statements, the office swiftly condemned the infractions, prompting the officials to apologize.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the agency found that Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, had violated the Hatch Act on two separate occasions, after left-leaning watchdog groups flagged the incidents. The White House declined to discipline her. (In 2021, the office said Ms. Conway was one of 13 senior officials who had violated the Hatch Act during the 2020 campaign.)
But weeks into Mr. Trump’s second term, he fired the agency’s head. As the office lingered without a Senate-confirmed leader until this August, enforcement noticeably slowed. Last month, the agency issued a report declining to censure anyone over the more than 1,000 complaints filed during the fall 2025 government shutdown, accusing Trump administration officials of using official government platforms to blame Democrats for the standoff. Instead, it revised its Hatch Act guidance, finding that political messaging separate from a specific electoral contest was “unlikely” to constitute prohibited activity.
A spokeswoman for the Office of Special Counsel declined to comment.
Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the agency has issued a series of Hatch Act findings against lower and midlevel government employees. But experts fear that its comparative silence on senior officials’ conduct is eroding the foundational ethics law and incentivizing the administration to flout it in increasingly brazen ways.
Some of the most serious alleged violations focus on the Trump administration’s law enforcement agencies. This month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation took down a promotional video that included an attack on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, after multiple groups charged that it violated the Hatch Act. Democracy Defenders Fund has also accused Mr. Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and other officials of violating the Hatch Act through the recent raid on the residence of Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Michigan, mere weeks before the election.
Representatives for the F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Mr. Mullin said he complies with all ethics and conflict of interest rules. A representative for Mr. Blanche said that Justice Department ethics officials review and clear his appearances at political events, which are done in a personal capacity, and that the timing of the raid on Ms. Omar’s residence did not run afoul of department policy.
The trend, watchdog groups say, risks making the Hatch Act a relic if changes are not made.
“What we’re seeing is a glaring need for Hatch Act reform,” said Abigail Bellows, who leads anti-corruption efforts at Common Cause, a watchdog that filed dozens of complaints during the shutdown. “It is completely inadequate for the task at the moment, which is erecting the guardrails for a president who is trying to use the government resources and official acts as part of a partisan campaign.”
Such changes, however, would have to be made by Congress, and it is unlikely that a bipartisan coalition would rally around such an effort while Mr. Trump occupies the White House. In the meantime, ethics experts are closely watching the midterm results to determine whether the public is angered by politicians blurring the lines between official and political activity, or whether a new normal is taking over.
“People have been numbed to it,” Russell Riley, a professor of ethics at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said of the everyday activities that violate at least the spirit of the Hatch Act.
“It’s kind of quaint,” he added of the law, “but it’s important.”
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