Insisting that federal workers make false public statements is a sign of insecurity that your “policy” “ideas” are toxic. More importantly, as Marisa Kabas reports for her Substack The Handbasket, forcing nonpartisan employees to lie about why the government has shutdown likely violates the Hatch Act. (Emphasis mine, and also note: Marisa’s piece was written before the shutdown occurred.)
Workers across many agencies received identical emails late Tuesday afternoon blaming Democrats for the possibility [of a shutdown]. The Handbasket was the first to learn that the message was mandated by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) via an intra-agency email to leadership and reinforced on a subsequent call. And there was one clear stipulation: Absolutely no modifications to the language. At the time of publication, I was able to confirm at least 16 federal agencies had received the OMB email ahead of the midnight funding deadline, including the Departments of State, Health and Human Services, and Interior.
[snip]
During any other period of recent American history, this email would have been deemed a flagrant violation of the Hatch Act. The law was passed, according to the US Office of Special Counsel website, ‘to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.’
Some agencies actually went a step further and proudly joined Trump’s scheme to transfer blame, Kabas adds.
Department of Housing and Urban Development displayed a banner message on its official website with language similar to the email. It reads, ‘The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.’
As it turns out, public servants are a lot smarter than Donald Trump gives them credit for. “This is abhorrent,” one federal employee told Kabas. “As federal workers we take our duty to the public very seriously. This email is a vile slap in the face. Shutting down needed public services to score political points and scare public employees.”
OMB head Russ Vought and Trump have been an active duo of late, collaborating on a “pocket rescission” maneuver that itself greatly contributed to the government shutdown (and also likely violates federal law by circumventing congress).
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Lies in graphic form (with a blood-red background reminiscent of “The Shining”) are still lies.
No surprise, frankly, that head of HUD Scott Tuner would agree to post such abject garbage. Mr. Turner has been a bit of a scandal garden sprinkler since his installation, most recently embroiled in a kerfuffle where he reportedly used taxpayer dollars to fund a “self-serving” and “lavish” new headquarters. The needless largess is evocative of Donny’s last “secretary of wasteful spending” HUD chief, Ben Carson. See Ja’han Jones’ MSNBC story below if you’d like to stroll down memory lane.
I reached out to my own source who previously worked in Obama–Biden era green-building program development for HUD, asking for comment about the red banner. Here’s what I got back:
“Millions of people and thousands of organizations, states and cities depend upon federal agencies to run their programs and services,” my source told me. “A shutdown helps nobody. As Donald John Trump said in 2011 and 2013, shutdowns ‘start at the top’ and reflect a ‘president’s (lack of) leadership.’
“Agency resources including the landing page of a website cannot be used for partisan purposes (Hatch Act), and, in the case of a shutdown, millions of people will be impacted while looking for information,” they continued. “This is a highly unprecedented, overtly partisan, misrepresentation exactly at a time when people need clear, calm, concise guidance on shutdown impacts and next steps. They will use this to further cut programs and staff, and to blur the reductions in services and programs people are already feeling as a result of BBB and ‘DOGE’ cuts.”
My source, who is never shy when it comes to fascist takeovers, concluded: “Trump is in the Epstein files: release everything now, unredacted! And f**k those partisan mother-f**king f**king f**kers.”
