Trump News: IRS, Social Security Push Trump Accounts

The Internal Revenue Service sent an email to Americans on Monday urging them to claim investment accounts for their children named after President Donald Trump, the second time in less than a week that a federal agency has promoted the program with the midterm elections 2026 only days away. The trump news arrives as Republicans lean heavily on last year’s tax-cut law in their campaign to keep control of the House and the Senate, and as the trump administration steps up its efforts to get families to sign up for the accounts.

The message carried an IRS banner and a subject line pressing recipients to claim a child’s Trump account right away. It mentioned the president’s name eleven times, mostly inside the program’s own name, and it credited the creation of the accounts to what the email called “President Donald J. Trump’s landmark Working Families Tax Cuts law.” That is the name Republican officials have adopted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax-and-spending law the president signed in 2025. The email landed one week before the midterm elections on November 3, with early voting already under way across much of the country.

How widely the IRS message was distributed was not immediately clear. A reporter received it through a bulk-email service the IRS uses to send out public alerts, and the agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An official communication from the nation’s tax collector, carrying the president’s name repeatedly, arriving in inboxes in the final days of a campaign.

What the IRS Email Told Americans

The IRS email was direct in its purpose: get parents to claim the accounts that have been opened for their children and start using them. According to the message, donor contributions may already have funded investments in a child’s account, and parents need to claim the account before they can direct how that money is invested or accept contributions from relatives, friends, and employers.

That framing sets the email apart from the routine notices the agency sends. Americans are accustomed to hearing from the IRS about tax filings, refunds, and compliance deadlines, not about enrolling their children in an investment program. The email’s repeated references to the president, and its description of the accounts as the product of the president’s “landmark” law, tied the program directly to his legislative record. The accounts began accepting contributions on July 4 of this year, and the IRS email moves the promotion from the president’s rallies and Republican campaign advertisements into the inboxes of ordinary taxpayers through an official government channel.

Social Security’s Message Came First

The Social Security Administration’s message came first, arriving last week and setting the pattern the IRS email followed. That message told recipients that nearly 70 million Trump accounts were open for all American children, and it described the accounts as among the most significant investments in the country’s next generation. It referred to the president’s surname ten times.

A Social Security Administration spokesperson, Barton Mackey, said the agency was proud to give parents the information they needed to activate the accounts and benefit from what he described as a transformational opportunity to build wealth. The agency declined, however, to disclose how many people received the emails or whether the messages were scheduled around the elections.

The agency has also begun reaching new parents through a different channel. When parents request a Social Security card for a newborn through the Enumeration at Birth program, which is part of the birth registration process, they now also receive an insert about Trump Accounts with straightforward instructions on how to claim an account for their child, along with information about contributions that can be made to the accounts.

How Trump Accounts Work

The accounts were created by last year’s tax law for every child younger than eighteen who has a Social Security number. The Treasury Department has opened nearly 70 million of them. Automatic enrollment this month accounted for more than 60 million accounts, after the Treasury Department said on October 1 that it had completed its initial automatic enrollment, with accounts ready to claim for more than 60 million additional eligible children. The Social Security Administration said that nearly 70 million children had Trump Accounts by October 20, and that contributions had been made to 26 million accounts. White House news put the figure at about $1.3 billion deposited through the $1,000 payments as of October 7.

The best-known feature of the program is the one-time $1,000 deposit. Children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, who are United States citizens with valid Social Security numbers qualify for the payment, but their families must elect to receive it. That election is made separately, by filing Form 4547 and selecting the pilot-program contribution option, through the program’s app, the Trump Accounts website, or an IRS Individual Online Account.

An account that is opened automatically still needs to be claimed and activated before a parent or guardian can manage it, choose investments, or receive money from anyone other than the government. The accounts are a new type of individual retirement account for eligible children, created under the tax law, and beyond the federal deposit they can receive contributions from parents, relatives, friends, and employers — which is why the IRS email stressed that claiming an account is the step that unlocks outside contributions.

One Man Runs Both Agencies

One figure connects the two agencies behind the emails. Frank Bisignano leads both the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, a concentration of authority that is unusual in the federal government. The Senate confirmed Bisignano as Social Security commissioner last year. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent then appointed him chief executive of the IRS months later, and Bisignano assumed the newly created position without Senate confirmation. The Treasury Department also selected Bisignano in July to direct the next phase of the Trump accounts program.

That overlapping leadership means the same official oversees the agency that mails benefits information to tens of millions of Americans and the agency that collects their taxes, and he is also the official charged with rolling out the program both agencies are now promoting. Critics see a problem in that arrangement: the official responsible for the program’s success is also the official deciding how aggressively government agencies promote it in the run-up to an election.

Midterm Elections 2026: Why the Timing Has Drawn Criticism

The criticism of the emails is not new. In July, democratic party news reported that senators led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin wrote to the Social Security Administration with a specific concern. The agency, they wrote, had sent “unsolicited” messages to Social Security recipients pushing misleading statements about the president. “You are misusing official resources to heap praise on him,” the letter said, adding that the administration appeared to be “bombarding Americans with blatantly partisan emails” touting the president.

Outside experts have raised a similar concern about the substance of the messages. Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security Administration official who has studied the agency’s communications, said the agency has a responsibility to provide nonpartisan information to the public, but that the message framed the money as a “$1,000 gift to a Trump account from the U.S. Treasury Department.” That framing, she said, is misleading: the money is not a gift from the president or from his administration, but a government program passed by Congress and funded through taxpayer dollars.

Romig also pointed to the audience. The wide distribution of the message, to people well beyond the new parents whose children are eligible for the $1,000, is particularly concerning two weeks before a consequential election, she said. That is the heart of the timing argument: the messages are not going only to the families who can use them, but to a broad audience of voters, in the final days of a campaign. Republican party news this cycle has the party promoting the law in campaign advertisements, and the president himself described the accounts at a July rally in Georgia as perhaps the law’s most consequential provision.

The Rules for Federal Agency Messages

Federal law sets limits on how government agencies communicate with the public, and the emails arrive against a backdrop of active debate in us politics about those limits. The Hatch Act bars federal employees from using their official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election, and it bars them from engaging in political activity while on duty or in the federal workplace.

Whether a government message crosses that line depends on its purpose, its content, and its timing. Messages that clearly explain a statute, describe how to enroll in a program, or provide guidance about public benefits tend to be treated as legitimate government communication. Messages that polish an official’s image, mimic campaign rhetoric, or attack political opponents are viewed differently, and the closer a message lands to an election, the more likely it is to be read as political.

The Office of Special Counsel, the agency that enforces the Hatch Act, issued an assessment on September 25 of this year that illustrates how unsettled the area is. The office had received more than 1,000 complaints alleging that employees at 37 federal agencies and the White House violated the Hatch Act with partisan communications about the lapse in federal appropriations in late 2025. The office concluded that an ambiguity in its own earlier guidance meant agencies had a reasonable basis for believing their communications complied with the law. No adjudication exists for the Trump Accounts emails themselves, and no complaint about them has been reported as resolved.

A Bumpy Rollout Behind the Promotion

Behind the promotional push, the program’s rollout has been more complicated than the emails suggest. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants wrote to the IRS and the Treasury Department on October 16 to say that employers are unlikely to be ready to implement Trump account contribution programs this year, because the proposed regulations are too burdensome to administer.

The accountants’ group asked the Treasury and the IRS to extend the implementation timeline, to allow 2026 contributions to be made through 2027, and to consider a centralized system for account verification and contribution processing. It said few employers had set up programs yet, having waited for regulatory guidance. That gap between the promotion and the plumbing matters for families: the emails urge parents to claim accounts and accept contributions from employers, but the systems employers need to make those contributions are, by the accountants’ account, not yet ready.

What Happens Next

The midterm elections 2026 take place on November 3, one week after the IRS email, and the question of whether the two agencies send further messages before then is now an open one. Neither agency has said whether more promotional emails are planned, and the Social Security Administration has not said whether it scheduled its messages around the elections. The IRS has not commented at all.

For families, the more immediate question is practical. The accounts are open, the $1,000 is available for children born from 2025 through 2028, and the election to receive it must be made through the program’s app, the Trump Accounts website, or an IRS online account, with the child’s details matching Social Security records. The enrollment push will continue after the election regardless of its outcome, because the program is established in law and the accounts are already open.

Source: The Washington Post