Trump mandates all federal agencies send email blaming Dems for potential gov’t shutdown

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As the federal government teeters on the brink of a shutdown, workers across many agencies received identical emails late Tuesday afternoon blaming Democrats for the possibility. 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. Here is the text of the message shared with me by numerous federal workers alarmed by its contents (emphasis mine):

The marching orders went out to agencies’ leadership via email at 1:30pm ET, a government source confirms. Then on a 3pm intra-agency call with around 300 participants, a member of OMB leadership reinforced the mandatory nature of the note and stressed that no modifications could be made to the message. 

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.​​​​”

In the past, federal workers could be reprimanded for something as simple as a political social media post. But if the past eight months have shown us anything, it’s that this administration feel unencumbered by the law.

“In my years here and several shutdowns, I’ve never seen anything remotely partisan in the lead up to a shutdown,” one federal worker told The Handbasket. “This is abhorrent. 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.”

Another federal worker said: “What is the point? We are career civil servants. Just tell us how to do our jobs.”

Also on Tuesday the 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.”

Late last week a White House official told Politico about Trump’s reaction to Democrats’ demands in a potential funding bill: “He read all the shit they’re asking for, and he said, ‘on second thought, go fuck yourself.’” The official also said “we’re going to extract maximum pain,” and that Democrats “will pay a huge price for this.”

That campaign of pain has now gone into overdrive with mere hours left for Congress to reach an agreement that avoids the shutdown. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon that, despite the fact that Republicans control both houses, “The Democrats want to shut it down, so when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.” 

But despite Trump and the Republicans’ incoherent attempts at obfuscation, federal workers aren’t so easily fooled. “We’re not dumb,” one told me, “and it’s pretty old the way they treat us as though we can’t see what’s up.”