Federal agencies blame Democrats for the shutdown. CA departments fault Trump
Open the homepage for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and you’ll be greeted with a partisan message about the ongoing federal government shutdown.
“The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government,” a pop-up reads. Similar messages have appeared on other federal agencies’ websites since the government shutdown began Wednesday after Congress failed to pass a budget bill.
Now, three days into the federal government showdown, California departments are also using their homepages to cast blame.
“The federal government has shut down due to the failures of the President and Congress to continue government funding,” an announcement atop the California Department of Public Health website reads.
These messages, from both state departments and federal agencies, don’t appear to be a Hatch Act violation, said Dan Schnur, the former chairperson of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission. But they are a “depressing reminder” of the weaponization of governmental agencies, which are supposed to be providing nonpartisan services, he said.
“The fact that they have to wade through Democratic and Republican talking points just to get the information they need may be legal, but it’s extraordinarily inappropriate,” Schnur said.
Public shouldn’t be subjected to this, ethicist says
There’s no shortage of opinions about who is to blame for the government shutdown, Schnur said, but the public should be able to log onto a government website to access reliable information without reading those political messages. Both California and the federal government are pushing those messages, he said.
The California Department of Social Services’ homepage prominently featured a message that said President Donald Trump and Congress were at fault for not funding the government, which could impact benefits that millions of Californians receive if the shutdown continues. The announcements don’t blame Republican or Democratic members of Congress specifically.
DSS warns visitors that no new federal funding will be allocated to programs such as food stamps and financial assistance for low-income Californians until Congress passes a continuing resolution.
“We are able to fund benefits for the month of October; however, a prolonged shutdown could put CDSS programs at risk,” the statement reads.
The website updates were made to inform the public about the impact of the government shutdown on department programs, spokespeople for DSS and CDPH said in statements.
Both DSS and CDPH referred the public to federal websites for more information about the shutdown, but those departments warned the public of “highly partisan political messaging” coming from federal government sources.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, said the Newsom administration directed agencies to “share factual information about the government shutdown and how it could affect them,” but did not indicate which departments were expected to post messages about it.
“The federal government is shut down because the President and Congress failed to pass a budget,” Gallegos said in a statement. “That shutdown puts funding for key programs at risk, including healthcare and food benefits that millions of Californians rely on.”
Shutdown clocks are ticking but not in sync
Newsom’s official website features a big, red stopwatch counting the seconds since “Trump has shut down the federal government.” A very similar clock ticks up at the top of the White House’s homepage, blaming Democrats for the budget stalemate. (The two timekeepers are five minutes off.)
The partisan messaging is a source of anger for federal employees, many of whom are furloughed, working without pay and are facing the threat of layoffs, which Trump has said he will do while the government is shut down.
Mark Smith, president of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1, which represents Veteran Affairs employees in California, said he and his colleagues were disconcerted by the intensely partisan nature of communications sent to employees internally and those issued to the media by a VA official.
Smith called the messaging blaming Democrats for the shutdown “a total violation of norms.”
