IRS and Social Security promote Trump accounts with election a week away
The email uses President Donald Trump’s name 11 times, mostly as part of the program’s name. It was not immediately clear how widespread the messages are.
A week before the midterm elections, the IRS emailed Americans to urge them to sign up their children for the new investment accounts named after President Donald Trump.
The email uses Trump’s name 11 times, mostly as part of the program’s name. It was not immediately clear how widespread the messages are.
“Claim your child’s Trump Account today!” the agency’s email said in its subject line Monday. The message, under an IRS banner, credits “President Donald J. Trump’s landmark Working Families Tax Cuts law” with creating the accounts. That’s the name Republicans have adopted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax and spending law Trump signed in 2025.
A Washington Post reporter received the email Monday from a mass-email service the IRS uses for its public alerts.
It’s the second pitch of its kind from a federal agency in less than a week. The Social Security Administration emailed people last week to promote the accounts, according to news reports. That message said “nearly 70 million Trump Accounts are open for all American children” and called the accounts “one of the most significant investments in the next generation of Americans.”
Trump accounts have been open for contributions since July 4, but the Trump administration has recently redoubled efforts to enroll Americans into the program.
The emails out this week land as Republicans are touting their record on the campaign trail to try to keep control of the House and the Senate. Republicans are reaching for last year’s tax-cut law, which also created the Trump accounts, in campaign advertising as they face strong headwinds in the midterm campaign.
IRS did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Social Security Administration would not say how many people received the emails or whether they were timed for the elections.
“We are proud to provide parents with the information they need to activate their child’s Trump Account and take advantage of this transformational wealth building opportunity,” Barton Mackey, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, said in a statement.
Both agencies are run by Frank Bisignano. The Senate confirmed him as Social Security commissioner last year. Months later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named him chief executive of the IRS, a newly created job that Bisignano took without Senate confirmation. In July, the Treasury Department also tapped him to lead the next phase of the Trump accounts program.
Bisignano has drawn fire for emails before. In July, Democratic senators led by Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) accused the Social Security Administration of “bombarding Americans with blatantly partisan emails.”
“This was an unusual communication that served no legitimate purpose: rather than receiving necessary information about benefits or a critical communication from the SSA, recipients received a partisan, politicized message — containing multiple misleading statements — that heaped praise on President Trump,” the senators wrote of the July emails.
Trump has made the accounts a regular part of his pitch. At a July rally in Georgia, he called them perhaps the “most consequential” piece of the law.
Last year’s tax law created the accounts for every child under 18 with a Social Security number. The Treasury Department has opened nearly 70 million of them, including more than 60 million through automatic enrollment this month. Children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, are eligible for a $1,000 one-time deposit in their accounts, which parents also must elect to receive.
“Your child’s Trump Account may already have money invested in it through contributions from donors,” this week’s email said. “However, you must claim your child’s account to manage investments and receive contributions from family, friends, and employers.”
As of Oct. 7, about $1.3 billion in $1,000 deposits had been made, according to the White House.
