Trump Administration Stomps All Over The Hatch Act With Shutdown Website Banners And Away Messages

Legal Issues

from the lock-them-up dept

The Hatch Act of 1939 is a beautiful piece of legislation. It disallows all kinds of things, like bribing voters with jobs to vote a certain way, as well as limiting any campaign activity by federal workers. Another thing it does is to prohibit partisan political activity in the course of a staff member’s federal employment duties. An IRS agent, for instance, can’t tell someone going through an audit that their taxes are so high because “the Democrat or Republican party sucks and they hate you.” The idea is that we want federal employees carrying out their duties in a non-partisan manner.

Well, Donald Trump’s administration just took a big old dump on the Hatch Act. As you’ll know, the federal government is currently in a shutdown due to Congress collectively being unable to pass a funding bill to keep it open. As is typical, both parties have rushed to play the blame game and label the shutdown as the other party’s responsibility. It’s dumb, because they are both responsible to one degree or another, but c’est l’amerique. Well, the administration has apparently been telling its various departments, and in some cases forcing it upon them, to alter web banners and out of office messages to specifically blame Democrats for the shutdown.

We’ll start with the away messages.

But some departments have pressed their employees to change these “out of office” notices to explicitly blame Democrats for the shutdown. At the Department of Education, things have apparently gone even further, with numerous employees complaining on social media that their out-of-office messages were changed, without their consent, to this:

Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.

CNN talked to one Department of Education employee who “said they went into their email system twice over the last 24 hours to change the automatic message to a generic one, but it was reverted back to the message blaming Democrats.”

That right there? That’s a Hatch Act violation. Plain as day, we don’t have to argue about it, there’s no nuance to consider. It’s just a Hatch Act violation foisted upon federal workers that are already being furloughed because the man-child currently running our government wanted it done.

And this isn’t just the DoE. HHS and the SBA, and I’m certain many others as well, also have these away messages that include partisan criticism of one party at the demand of the other. And bullshit explanations like this are completely invalid.

When asked about its suggested out-of-office message blaming Democrats, the Department of Health and Human Services told CNN that yes, it had suggested this—but added that this was okay because the partisan message was accurate.

“Employees were instructed to use out-of-office messages that reflect the truth: Democrats have shut the government down,” the agency said.

Pure, frontier gibberish. I can’t stress this enough: this isn’t complicated. This is an open and shut violation of the Hatch Act.

As is what the administration splashed all over government agency websites, as well.

Department websites have also gotten in on the partisan action. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s site now loads with a large floating box atop the page, which reads, “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” When you close the box, you see atop the main page itself an eye-searingly red banner that says… the same thing. Thanks, I think we got it!

Over at the Small Business Administration, a banner atop the main page really makes sure to drive the partisanship home by blaming Democrats twice and praising Trump once:

Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. Every day that Senate Democrats continue to oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding…

As soon as the shutdown is over, we are prepared to immediately return to the record-breaking services we were providing under the leadership of the Trump Administration.

Somewhat hilariously, a similar banner is shown over at the site that specifically instructs DOJ employees to adhere to the Hatch Act as it applies to them.

That’s the sort of thing that would make even Orwell blush. And, ultimately, this shit isn’t funny. The Hatch Act exists for a reason and the erosion of it isn’t to be sneezed at. If this administration can get away with violating the portion of the law that prohibits partisan preaching from the workplace, why not the part about bribing voters? Republican kind of tried to do something like that already, if you’ll recall. Or how about the part about campaigning for a specific party or candidate while on the job? What will prevent the administration from making it a work requirement for every federal worker to vocally support one party in the midterms?

It’s going to be really important to see who, and how, those in the other branches of our government demand accountability for this flagrant violation of law.

Filed Under: congress, continuing resolution, doj, donald trump, government shutdown, hatch act, out of office, politicization