Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s old congressional campaign still owes creditors more than $326,000 — and they have little chance of collecting, according to a NOTUS report citing a new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing.

The debts of the campaign, from 2022, are largely from supporters who donated more than federal law permits. The total of those excessive contributions amounts to more than $210,000. NOTUS reports that federal law requires campaigns to not spend those funds, but Leavitt’s campaign currently has no cash on hand.

Leavitt, a congressional candidate from New Hampshire, lost her 2022 race to Democrat Chris Pappas. Her campaign has made no progress in raising funds to retire those debts, NOTUS notes, according to her committee’s filing.

Many political campaigns carry debt — sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — for years after the election, NOTUS reported. “But the Leavitt campaign debt is different, since a significant portion requires refunds for contributions that exceeded the legal limit by hundreds or thousands of dollars.”

While an FEC complaint was filed in 2022, there’s been no update.

The FEC “has been unable to take enforcement action of any sort since May 1, 2025, when the campaign finance regulator entered a de facto shutdown after losing the minimum number of commissioners to perform such high level duties.” Trump has nominated two new commissioners, but they are awaiting Senate confirmation, and no hearing has been announced.

The New Hampshire Bulletin last year reported that “campaigns are required to repay donors anything over the limit, which at the time was $2,900 per election, within 60 days, per FEC regulations. Leavitt’s campaign appears to not have done that based on this disclosure.”

Last year, OpenSecrets reported that by law, “federal political candidates are not personally liable for their committees’ campaign debt,” and her campaign’s “options for making creditors whole are limited.”

Candidates like Leavitt could “personally contribute money to their campaign committee, which in turn may pay people and companies owed money. But federal records indicate that this is rare.”

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One of President Donald Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends,” is pulling up stakes after just days of promoting his Great American State Fair, a 16-day event to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.

According to The Daily Beast, the conservative morning TV show “is back in the studio” after two days, which “it spent talking up over live shots of empty grass.”

The Fox News cameras “kept beaming out the bare lawns and thin crowds” that undercut Trump’s “boasts that the event was ‘packed.'”

On Monday, The Independent reported that Trump’s “MAGA-themed event has been beset by problems,” and was a “ghost town.”

On Truth Social, Trump asked, “Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?”

Wednesday morning, the “Fox & Friends” studio was packed with “an audience of first responders, veterans, and their families” as the hosts returned to the indoor set, The Daily Beast noted.

“We’ve been away for 48 hours. They’ve been waiting for us to return. We appreciate it,” co-host Brian Kilmeade declared.

Trump had claimed that 45,000 people turned out for his kickoff speech, but Fox News’ cameras “blew apart the president’s boasts.”

As did photographs from Reuters, The Daily Beast reported, with them “showing nowhere near the numbers the president had touted.”

“The network’s live shots from the Mall repeatedly framed wide stretches of empty grass behind its anchors, The Daily Beast added. “On other mornings, the walkways and booths behind the set sat all but empty. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, turned up on the show Monday to gush about the fair with a bare lawn.”

On Tuesday, USA Today opinion columnist Rex Huppke wrote, “I love President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. I love its emptiness. It’s expensive food. Its ability to confound Trump-friendly media outlets that keep pretending it’s going great.”

“I love seeing Fox News broadcasting from the fair, its hosts claiming the place is filled with excited patriots while the scenes behind them show a vast expanse of untrod-upon grass with an occasional few humans milling along the fringes.”

Huppke said it was “like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock.”

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Arkansas voters haven’t elected a Democratic governor in over a decade. Same with its two U.S. senators. And with all four of its U.S. representatives. Donald Trump won the state in the 2024 presidential election with nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the vote — even more than he took in 2020. For more than a decade, Republicans have controlled both chambers in the state legislature — now with a veto-proof supermajority. And as of the 2024 election, more than eight out of 10 Arkansans live in solid Republican counties.

So perhaps it’s surprising to see an anti-Trump letter to the editor in one of the state’s top newspapers.

“Is that patriotism?” asks Doug Barber in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state’s paper of record.

“I recently read an article that stated Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats or independents. I question that assertion,” Barber argues.

“How can someone claim they are patriotic when they support a president who regularly ignores the U.S. Constitution?” he asks. “For example, in 2021, Donald Trump did everything in his power to prevent the duly elected president from taking office.”

“Under the Trump administration, freedom of the press and freedom of speech is only as long as you aren’t too critical of the president (CBS News is an example),” Barber continues. “How about the separation of powers? Trump tried to appoint his Cabinet without the approval of Congress. He threatens judges who decide against him with impeachment. He regularly uses executive orders to bypass Congress and impose his will.”

Barber scorches Trump’s pardons of January 6 rioters.

“And let’s not forget how he treats protesters,” he posits. “If you violently protest for Trump, you get pardoned and possibly get financially rewarded (if Trump gets his way). If you protest against the president, you get harsh sentences (see Minnesota) or perhaps even killed.”

“If supporting this kind of president is what it takes to be patriotic,” Barber concludes, “count me out.”

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