Federal Agencies Are Violating the Hatch Act By Politicization of the Government Shutdown

Oct 3, 2025 04:50 PM EDT, Fri

The most egre​gious violation is the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which displays a Javascript alert blaming the “far-left Democrats” for the shutdown. It requires anyone viewing any HUD pages to click the [Okay] button to continue.

Trump’s partisan shutdown emails break the law, top Oversight Democrat says

Rep. Robert Garcia is asking for an Office of the Special Counsel investigation into the Trump administration’s shutdown guidance.

Oct. 2, 2025, 10:18 AM EDT

By Ali Vitali, Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA42), thinks the Trump administration is in “blatant violation of the law” for “misuse of taxpayer dollars for political purposes” over partisan agency guidance offered to government employees during the shutdown.

And Garcia wants the Office of the Special Counsel to investigate.

“I write regarding the Trump Administration’s apparent violations of the Hatch Act, and illegal use of government resources to promote a false, partisan Republican political agenda,” Garcia, who is the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to the Office of the Special Counsel that was first obtained by MSNBC.

Garcia goes on to deem these possible Hatch Act violations part of “a pattern of abuse and politicization of Executive Branch agencies.”

Garcia references [multiple agencies that have pushed public and private communications blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown — messages that potentially violate a law called the Hatch Act, which bars political speech and activity by federal officials in taxpayer-funded roles.

The letter, addressed to OSC acting head Jamieson Greer — who also serves as the U.S. trade representative — ties this latest inquiry to broader investigations into “attempts by the Administration to leverage federal power to advance partisan political ends, including recent efforts to censor prominent critics of President Trump.”

Garcia goes on to deem these possible Hatch Act violations part of “a pattern of abuse and politicization of Executive Branch agencies,” vowing to “investigate fully.”

He asks the OSC to immediately investigate “these likely violations of federal law,” and to provide a staff-level briefing “in which you provide detailed information on how you plan to address the Administration’s actions no later than October 16, 2025.”

Responding to the news on MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” on Thursday, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA4), said the agencies’ posts were “almost unquestionably illegal,” calling it “just the tip of the iceberg of a much deeper level of corruption and grift.”

Ethics experts have railed against violations of norms and laws throughout the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration, from accepting the gift of a Qatari jet to be the new Air Force One to the issuance of a Trump-themed crypto coin.

“Everyone was aghast at the airplane that the Qataris gave to the president,” Auchincloss said. “At least Americans knew who was giving the president a bribe. With the Trump coin, you don’t even know who’s buying the president … So the corruption here is endemic, it’s systemic.”

Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington. She is the author of “Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet.”

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