Eric Flores, the Republican nominee for Texas’s 34th Congressional District, sent voters a brief text invoking Donald Trump’s promised cash payout. “Attachment: $5,000 Check … Pres. Trump just authorized it,” the message says before directing recipients to a supposed approval portal.

The link does not deliver access to a payment. Instead, it sends recipients to a donation website benefiting Flores, turning Trump’s unsupported promise into a fundraising lure.

Who operates the website is unclear. One section says Eric Flores for Congress paid for it, while another names WinRed, the Republican National Committee’s fundraising platform, and says it is “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

Money contributed through the page will not necessarily go toward electing Flores in November. The website says donations will first be used to retire debt from his 2026 primary campaign.

Federal Election Commission records show Flores loaned his campaign more than half a million dollars during the primary contest to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez. Flores is running in a tossup district made more favorable to him through Texas gerrymandering.

“All contributions given via this page will be first designated to 2026 Primary Debt retirement as allowable,” the website says. “Any funds that cannot be applied to debt will be applied to 2026 General funds.”

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling allowed federal candidates to raise unlimited sums after an election to repay personal campaign loans. Previously, candidates could raise only amounts above $250,000 within 20 days of that election.

The Texas primary occurred March 3, more than six months ago. As of June 30, Flores’s campaign had not listed any funds as having been repaid.

Candidates may charge high interest rates on personal campaign loans and make money through the arrangement. Federal Election Commission records do not yet indicate whether Flores is charging interest on his loan.

Flores previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas and is an Army veteran and multimillionaire. His campaign materials say he “is guided by his Christian faith and an unwavering commitment to his neighbors,” but he did not respond to a request for comment or explain how the text was not deceptive.

Voters received the message one day after Republicans held a poorly attended rally in Dallas that they called a “convention,” although no Republican National Committee business occurred there. Trump used the gathering to promote his cash pledge.

Trump said every adult American citizen would receive a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans retained control of the House and Senate after the midterms. The promised spending would total approximately $1.2 trillion, but no plan exists to distribute the money.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed the money would not come from taxes or increase the deficit. He suggested it could possibly come from the Trump Platinum Card, which does not yet exist, or from stock investments.

ABC reporter Rachel Scott asked Trump why he needed to pay people to vote if his economic policies were succeeding. Trump lurched forward and growled, “Not you. Not you!” before adding, “Your network … you’re the worst.”

Some Republicans have backed away from Trump’s proposal because of its fiscal cost or because they want to prevent allegedly “undeserving” citizens from receiving the money. Scammers, meanwhile, quickly flooded the internet with false promises of cash, and Flores is the first political candidate known to the Prospect to use the pledge as a fundraising switch.

Republicans are also pouring money into Texas elections, including contests in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley. Republican super PACs had spent $660,791 in aggregate in TX-34 as of last weekend, while Flores had $2.9 million and Gonzalez had $3.8 million, according to federal records.

Trump carried TX-34 by a margin of 55 to 45 in 2024, but the Cook Political Report now considers the district a tossup. Gonzalez, who says Republican spending shows the party is losing ground, responded to Flores’s text bluntly: “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my time in Washington.”