Trump uses government shutdown to threaten firings and punishment

In short, they’ll get paid for the missed work time they spent at home during the shutdown, although there may be a caveat based on a couple of things.

Once a government funding deal is reached, Congress used to pass a measure agreeing to pay workers retroactively, whether they had been on the job or furloughed during the shutdown.

After the 2018-2019 shutdown – the longest in U.S. history – Congress passed a permanent measure which mandated back pay for federal workers once funding has been restored.

What we don’t know for this shutdown is if the mass layoffs the administration has warned about will go into effect, and how those might be handled. Labor unions have already challenged that potential situation in court.

If you’ve been in Washington long enough, you’ve most likely argued both sides of a shutdown. Both parties have used the threat of shutdowns to force a policy outcome and both sides have decried the other for doing the same. Nobody likes a shutdown, but each side insists the American people are on their side — whether their side is supporting a shutdown or not.

“Everybody just makes the mistake of believing in the righteousness of their positions, and it blinds them to the reality of shutdowns,” said Brendan Buck, who served as a top aide to House Speakers John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “It’s a political messaging exercise framed as a negotiating tactic, but there’s very little evidence that it really serves a policymaking purpose. It is more just a platform to talk about what’s important to you.”

▶ Read more about how both parties have used shutdown threats

Hi Ryan, all good things to be wondering about.

Let’s take a look at the possibilities:

Shutdowns of the federal government usually don’t leave much economic damage. But the one that started Wednesday looks riskier, not least because Trump is threatening to use the standoff to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs and the state of the economy is already precarious.

For now, financial markets are shrugging off the impasse as just the latest failure of Republicans and Democrats to agree on a budget and keep the government running.

Let’s take a look at a range of possible economic effects:

• A couple of days: Financial markets may experience some fluctuation, but that likely won’t be significant if funding is restored before too long. Workers will get paid back, and ideally there’s not much of an economic lag.
• Longer term: Federal workers get furloughed and the federal government delays some spending during a shutdown. But when the funding comes back, workers go back to their jobs and collect back pay, and the government belatedly spends the money it had withheld. It’s pretty much a wash.
• Very long term: If there are significant disruptions to sectors like air travel due to shutdown-related circumstances — like the security screeners and air traffic controllers who called out sick during the 2018-2019 shutdown — that can mean more trouble for industries. But even in that 35-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that just 0.02% was shaved off 2019 U.S. gross domestic product, the nation’s output of goods and services.

Also: Trump has threatened to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs during this shutdown, so if that happens, and new tranches of people are immediately out of work, that can upset an already precarious economy. We just don’t know yet if those layoffs will happen.

When the government shut down in 2018, a nonprofit interceded to fund a bare-bones crew to keep one of Mississippi’s most visited cultural attractions operating. Now the group is committed to doing that for Vicksburg National Military Park once again.

The hilly Civil War battlefield where soldiers fought for control of the Mississippi River in 1863 reopened Thursday thanks to a commitment from the Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park and Campaign to pay $2,000 a day to keep it open during the current shutdown.

“For us it is primarily and first and foremost an issue of protection of the park,” executive director Bess Averett said of the site, home to more than 18,000 graves of veterans from six wars and a few former park employees. “During shutdowns or times when the park is not staffed, it’s really vulnerable to vandalism and relic hunters.”

The National Park Service’s contingency plan allows parks to enter into agreements with states, Native American tribes, local governments or other groups willing to donate to keep the sites open.

▶ Read more about National Parks and the shutdown

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People demonstrate above Interstate 40 in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, against the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

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Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection walk along West Wacker Drive in the Loop, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

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Joe Calhoun, who marched with the Memphis Sanitation Strike as an 18-year-old, joins community activists in Memphis, Tenn., Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, joins in a march against the deployment of National Guard troops to Memphis. (AP Photo/Nikki Boertman)

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Jeannie Fanning waves an American flag while demonstrating above Interstate 40 in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, against the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

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The sidewalk by the ICE facility was mostly empty by around 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, in Portland, Ore., after President Donald Trump’s earlier announcement that he will send troops to Portland, with only a handful of demonstrators remaining after a daytime crowd marched to the building and eventually left. (Samantha Swindler/The Oregonian via AP)

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People protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, in Portland, Oregon, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

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Armed federal agents patrolled downtown Chicago on Sunday as President Donald Trump sent 200 National Guard troops to Portland, a move opposed by Oregon’s governor and challenged in court.

Memphis, Tennessee, is also preparing for the expected arrival this of additional federal authorities, including immigration and drug enforcement agents.

The EPA was already reeling from massive staff cuts and dramatic shifts in priority and policy. The government shutdown raises new questions about how it can carry out its founding mission of protecting America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding.

In Trump’s second term, it has leaned hard into an agenda of deregulation and facilitating the president’s boosting of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to meet what he has called an energy emergency.

Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official under President Bill Clinton, said it’s natural to worry that a shutdown will lead “the worst polluters” to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.

“Nobody will be holding polluters accountable” while the EPA is shut down, said Symons, now a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network.

▶ Read more about the EPA and the shutdown

Hey Eamon, let’s unpack this one.

You’re right to single Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky out here.

A fiscal hawk and balanced-budget proponent, he’s the only Republican who sided with Democrats to vote down a GOP bill to keep funding the government, which he said would “continue the Biden spending levels” he argued are too high.

Paul also joined his fellow Republicans on an earlier vote on Democrats’ government funding proposal, which included the extension or restoration of health benefits they had been seeking. Asked about his votes, Paul has said that both measures “are going in the wrong direction” in terms of adding to the deficit.

Paul, a fiscal hawk who opposes adding to the U.S. debt, in January proposed gradual spending cuts he said would incentivize Congress to pass appropriations measures on time, ideally averting a shutdown. That bill was referred to a committee, but no other action has been taken.

The president and first lady Melania Trump are dining Thursday night with JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice president lives.

It’s a rare outing out in Washington for the president for dinner.

U.S. stocks edged up to more records as technology stocks kept rising and as Wall Street kept ignoring the government shutdown.

The S&P 500 added 0.1% to its all-time high set the day before, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 79 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.4%. Both also hit records.

Thursdays on Wall Street typically have investors reacting to the latest weekly tally of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits. But D.C.’s shutdown meant this week’s report on jobless claims has been delayed. An even more consequential report, Friday’s monthly tally of jobs created and destroyed across the economy, will likely also not arrive on schedule.

So far the U.S. stock market has looked past such data delays. Shutdowns have tended not to hurt the economy or stock market much, and the thinking is that this one could be similar, even if Trump has threatened large-scale firings.

A growing number of Americans’ routine interactions with the federal government this week have been met with messaging that is far more partisan than the straightforward alerts that typically grace agency websites during shutdowns. Some traditionally apolitical agencies are using their official channels to spread a coordinated political message: It’s the Democrats’ fault.

The rhetoric, popping up in bright-red webpage banners, email autoreplies and social media posts, lays blame on the political party that is out of power in Washington when both sides are refusing to accommodate the other.

Democrats, who have minorities in both the Senate and House, have demanded that a set of expiring health insurance tax credits be extended before they sign on to any deal. Republicans, who need several Democratic votes in the Senate, said those negotiations should wait until after the funding measure passes.

▶ Read more about partisan messaging from federal agencies

Hi Christian, thanks for this question.

Long and short, National Guard soldiers won’t be paid on time during the shutdown, just like the thousands of other employees deemed “essential.”

All active-duty members of the military — including deployed guard troops — have to stay on the job, but they won’t get paid until after funding is restored.

In years past, Congress has passed a stopgap measure preventing this pause in military pay. Days before government funding lapsed in 2013, lawmakers approved the Pay Our Military Act, which kept military paychecks going during the shutdown.

Before this shutdown happened, a similar bill was introduced, but it wasn’t voted on before lawmakers adjourned and the shutdown went into effect.

Native American communities that have long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

Hegseth announced last week in a video on social media that the soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians call part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights.

In 1890 an estimated 250 men, women and children were killed by soldiers on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, many as they fled the violence and well after orders to cease fire. Some estimates put the number of dead at over 300, more than half women and children.

In a social media post Thursday, Hegseth referred to the events at Wounded Knee as a “battle,” but most historians disagree.

“Hegseth’s proclamation on this reflects the way that this administration thinks of history — as something that one person can somehow determine through a magical proclamation,” said Philip Deloria, a Harvard history professor and member of the Dakota Nation.

▶ Read more about the massacre and Hegseth

Federal civilian employment varies widely across the country. Predictably, the highest concentration of federal workers are in the congressional districts surrounding Washington, D.C. In at least one county in Virginia, nearly 20% of the population are employed by the federal government.

But the impact of the shutdown on federal workers is not limited to areas around the capital. Approximately 8% of the population in Huntsville, Alabama, in the northernmost part of the state, are federal employees. Alaska, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington all have districts with comparable concentrations.

The DOJ dismissed the top national security prosecutor amid criticism from a conservative commentator over his work during the Biden administration, further roiling the prominent U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia after the ousting of other senior attorneys in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Ben’Ary, who was chief of the office’s national security section, was fired Wednesday just hours after writer and activist Julie Kelly shared online that he was previously senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco during the Biden administration, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Kelly’s post speculated that Ben’Ary may have been part of the “internal resistance” in the office to the recently charged case against FBI Director James Comey. But Ben’Ary played no role in the Comey case, one of the people said.

▶ Read more about the firings

On Thursday morning, as thousands of federal employees stayed home and faced potential layoffs because of the government shutdown, Trump got right to work on social media.

He started by sharing praise from supporters. Then he falsely claimed that “DEMOCRATS WANT TO GIVE YOUR HEALTHCARE MONEY TO ILLEGAL ALIENS.” And then he announced that he would meet with his top budget adviser to figure out where to make permanent cuts to federal programs that “are a political SCAM.”

All that was before 8 a.m., just one flurry in a blizzard of online commentary from the president. Like so many other times when he’s faced complex crises with no easy solutions, Trump seems determined to post his way through it.

The stream of invective and trolling has been remarkable even for a 79-year-old president who is as chronically online as any member of Gen Z. His style is mirrored by the rest of his administration, which so far seems more interested in mocking and pummeling Democrats than negotiating with them.

▶ Read more about the president’s online presence here

Hi John, this is a great question – so let’s dig right into it.

Some federal employees are paid on time during a shutdown, but not many. The president and members of Congress still get timely paychecks, since that’s set out in the U.S. Constitution. Workers whose duties are funded through sources other than congressional appropriations, like postal revenue or application fees, also get paid on time.

It’s up to each federal agency to designate which of its employees are “essential” or “excepted,” both of which mean the same thing in this case. They keep working during a shutdown, typically without getting paid until government funding is back in place.

Some examples of “essential” employees are military personnel, security screeners at airports and law enforcement officers. There can be a wide range, from positions deemed critical for public safety to those authorized by law to continue even without new funding.

Other programs that rely on mandatory spending – like Social Security and Medicare – generally continue, meaning payments still go out, and health care providers can be reimbursed for seeing covered patients.

But employees deemed by their agencies to be “non-essential” or “non-excepted” don’t stay on the job or get paid during a shutdown. Some of that work is considered to be in a more long-range category, like researchers working on future projects, or staffers who support training, grant programs or non-emergency inspections.

“Donald Trump enacted massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors, for the wealthy, the well off and the well-connected. All to subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. And this was done permanently?,” Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, said to reporters on the steps of the Capitol.

“And now, they want the American people — not us Democrats — the American people to accept anything less than a permanent extension of tax credits that make their healthcare affordable?”

Jeffries said that a permanent extension of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies was House Democrats’ negotiating stance. Some Senate Democrats have floated a temporary annual extension of the subsidies in shutdown talks.

Jeffries said House Democrats were open to “common sense” and “bipartisan” negotiations to fund the government but questioned whether the president, vice president and congressional Republicans “are behaving like individuals who actually want to reopen the government.”

Federal health officials have approved another generic version of the abortion pill, prompting outrage from abortion opponents.

Anti-abortion groups quickly criticized the move on Thursday, calling it a “stain” on the administration of President Donald Trump. The groups have been pushing for a safety review of mifepristone.

The FDA first approved the drug as safe and effective in 2000.
The new version of the pill is from tiny drugmaker Evita Solutions. It’s not the first generic version. The FDA first approved a generic in 2019.

▶ Read more about generic abortion pill

Hey G, this question has prompted a fierce conversation and ultimately might be up to the courts to decide.

Before the shutdown went into effect, a group of labor unions filed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration violated the law by threatening to perform a mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown.

The Office of Management and Budget said late last month that agencies should consider layoffs for shutdown programs whose funding is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week that layoffs were “imminent.”

There are federal statutes that lay out how reductions in force – or “RIFs” – are supposed to be carried out, including giving employees a 60-day notice, and some Democrats including newly elected Rep. James Walkinshaw of Virginia have called any plans for mass firings an “illegal power grab.”

The State Department says the flotilla of humanitarian aid and activists intercepted by Israel as it was heading to Gaza is a “deliberate and unnecessary provocation” that could distract from the Trump administration’s latest effort to secure a peace deal between Israel and Hamas.

In brief comments sent to reporters on Thursday, the department said it was committed to assisting any U.S. citizens who may have been participating in the flotilla and been detained by Israel but offered no details other than to say it was “monitoring the situation.”

However, it also cast aspersions on the concept of the flotilla, vessels of which were stormed by Israeli authorities Wednesday in the Mediterranean.

“The flotilla is a deliberate and unnecessary provocation,” it said. “We are currently focused on realizing President Trump’s plan to end the war, which has been universally welcomed as a historic opportunity for a lasting peace.”

The president said in an interview taped Wednesday with One America News that “there could be firings and that’s their fault,” but said there could be other impacts from the shutdown.

“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” Trump said in a clip from the interview, which was released ahead of the full interview set to air Thursday night.

Trump said he didn’t want the shutdown but people are suggesting he did because, he said, “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”

Hey Eli, thanks for asking.

Laying out which government duties must continue even if Congress hasn’t appropriated funding, the Antideficiency Act is the whole reason that agencies have “essential” and “nonessential” workers at all. Since the act mandates what work must go on, the people tasked with doing that work are obligated to show up.

If they don’t, they could be disciplined, suspended or terminated. They could also create massive disruptions.

During a 35-day shutdown that stretched from 2018 into 2019, thousands of flights were delayed when unpaid air traffic controllers and airport security screeners called out sick, creating lengthy lines, grounding government workers and contractors and costing airlines tens of millions in lost revenue.

The State Department says it will increase staffing at certain U.S. embassies and consulates to accommodate an expected major jump in visa applications from soccer fans wanting to attend World Cup matches in the United States next year.

The department said Thursday that it will send hundreds of additional consular officers to “designated countries” to handle the demand for visa interviews. The number of additional staffers and the countries where they will be deployed have yet to be determined because the 48-team field for the 2026 World Cup hasn’t yet been finalized.

Tickets for the tournament hosted by U.S., Canada and Mexico next year went on sale Wednesday amid concerns over the Trump administration’s crackdown on both migration and temporary visas that offer permission to enter the United States.

“When you look at the number of individuals that have been laid off already, prior to the shutdown, the overwhelming majority of them are Black federal workers,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat.

Meeks, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus’s political arm, said the group is launching a campaign to counter Republican messages blaming Democrats for the shutdown. The campaign will include on the ground events in targeted districts, as well as engagement with local news, influencers and civic leaders across the country.

“Whether it’s churches or barbershops, we’re going to be looking to get the message out to and where the people are, in the streets,” said Meeks.

President Donald Trump has declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are unlawful combatants and says the United States is now in a “non-international armed conflict,” according to a Trump administration memo obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

A U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly said the Congress was notified about the designation by Pentagon officials on Wednesday.

The move comes after the U.S. military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.

▶ Read more about drug cartels

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says that the Senate will come back on Friday to vote once again on reopening the government.

“If that fails, then we’ll give them the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back and we’ll go again on Monday,” the South Dakota Republican said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that he is “glad” that rank-and-file Democratic and Republican senators are talking about a potential compromise that could lead to the government reopening, but he sounded a note of skepticism about some of the ideas under discussion.

Some senators have been discussing legislation that would fund the government for a few weeks while they also negotiate extending Affordable Care Act tax credits.

“I’m hoping that perhaps that leads somewhere, but it all starts with what I’ve said before — reopening government,” the South Dakota Republican said.

He also expressed skepticism about any funding that would last shorter than the seven weeks put forward by Republicans and any extension to the ACA credits without significant reforms to address what he called “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Hi Carly, they do, in part because of how their pay structure is set out in the U.S. Constitution. According to Article I, Section, “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.” Some members of Congress from both parties have said publicly that they will turn down their paychecks until federal funding is fully restored for everyone.

Other federal employees, meanwhile, are covered under a different law, which says agencies’ funding — including employee pay — is dependent on measures approved by Congress. So if those measures haven’t been approved, like the shutdown that is happening now, those workers don’t get paid.

In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.

The Trump administration made “apparent violations of the Hatch Act, and illegal use of government resources to promote a false, partisan Republican political agenda,” wrote Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, in a letter to the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel.

“Messages shared by multiple Trump Administration agencies in the last few days attempt to place blame for the current government shutdown on congressional Democrats and the Democratic Party,” Garcia’s letter reads, citing social media posts from department secretaries and messages on the websites of federal agencies.

Garcia requested that the Special Counsel’s office, which is headed by an acting official and Trump appointee, “immediately investigate these likely violations of federal law,” which prohibits government agencies and officials from engaging in partisan electoral politics.

Garcia said that any probe would inform future House Democratic investigations into “any and all cases in which federal power or resources are weaponized for political reasons.”

In a joint response, the Hispanic Federation, the Latino Victory Foundation, League of United American Citizens, Mi Familia Vota, UnidosUs and Voto Latino said the AI videos and memes are distracting the public from the issue at hand and perpetuating Latino stereotypes.

“Targeting the Latino community is not only irresponsible — it is reprehensible and beneath the office of the presidency,” the joint statement said. “The troubling use of AI to amplify hateful stereotypes is not only reckless, but it serves as an act of disinformation designed to further stigmatize Latinos when the tensions facing the community driven by policy and rhetoric are at an all-time high.”

The president was expected to host a gathering Thursday afternoon. However, it’s been postponed because of the government shutdown, according to a White House official who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly on the matter.

“The sombreros will continue until the government reopens,” White House Deputy Communications Kaelan Dorr said in a post on X sharing a video of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries that was previously shared during a White House press briefing Wednesday.

What started with a video of Jeffries wearing a sombrero with mariachi music in the background as he delivers a fabricated rant has turned into a trolling campaign led by Republicans.

On Wednesday evening, the official GOP X account and Sen. Ted Cruz’s personal account shared various versions of the sombrero meme.

Cruz’s post depicts various images of Democrats in sombreros and mustaches while playing an altered version of the 1990’s Latino hit “Macarena.”

In his post, Cruz said, “The 44 senate Democrats who voted for Schumer’s Shutdown should know that the Sombrero posting will continue until they re-open our government. Hey Macarena.”

The Trump administration is cancelling $7.6 billion in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states — all of which voted for Democrat Kamala Harris for president.

The cuts were announced by Russell Vought, the White House budget director, who said in a social media post that “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

The cuts come as the Trump administration threatens major spending cuts and firings in its escalating fight with congressional Democrats over the government shutdown.

The energy cuts are likely to effect battery plants, major hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and carbon capture efforts, according to the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 81 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:38 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher and heading toward its own record.

Thursdays on Wall Street typically mean investors are reacting to the latest weekly tally of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits. But D.C.’s shutdown means this week’s report on jobless claims has been delayed. An even more consequential report, Friday’s monthly tally of jobs created and destroyed across the economy, will likely also not arrive on schedule.

That increases uncertainty when much on Wall Street is riding on investors’ hopes that the job market will slow by a precise amount: enough to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates, but not by so much that it leads to a recession.

▶ Read more about the financial markets

Hi Sarah,

The Office of Special Counsel is in charge of investigating alleged violations of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that restricts certain political activities by government employees.

It’s an independent federal agency dedicated to guarding the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions.

Trump fired the head of the agency earlier this year. Former special counsel Hampton Dellinger sued the administration to get his job back, but later dropped that legal battle.

In April, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was named acting head of the Office of Special Counsel.

His case has become a proxy for the partisan power struggle over immigration policy.

The Salvadoran national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he originally immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. An immigration judge in 2019 ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family.

When he was mistakenly deported there in March, his case became a rallying point for those who opposed President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

On Wednesday, an immigration judge denied an application to reopen his asylum case, however he has 30 days to appeal.

▶ Read more about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case

Hi DeAnna,

Good question, with a complicated answer. Experts disagree on whether the Democrat-blaming language on HUD’s website and various other government websites reaches the threshold of violating the 1939 Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and law professor at Washington University, argues it does.

“These agencies are using federal resources, taxpayer-funded websites, to engage in partisan political messaging,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “The Hatch Act prohibits federal officials from using official resources that way.”

Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, disagrees.

He told the AP he doesn’t think the messages violate the Hatch Act because they discuss the Democratic Party related to a policy difference rather than an election. The Hatch Act explicitly bars campaigning for candidates but is less explicit when it comes to other discussions of political parties.

Still, he said, the postings might violate other ethics laws and are “wildly inappropriate.”

HUD officials, for their part, pushed back on allegations of a Hatch Act violation. They noted their banner referring to the “Radical Left” did not refer to an election, and did not mention any party or politician by name.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has a bit of advice for his Democratic counterpart when President Trump posts doctored videos of him in a sombrero. “Just ignore it.”

Trump’s decision to post the videos of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has become a bit of a subplot in the government shutdown fight. Jeffries, a New York Democrat, has called the videos “racist” and challenged Trump to address him in person.

But Johnson’s advice shows how he’s balancing both his loyalty to Trump and the necessity of working with Jeffries to keep the House functioning. Johnson, a mild-mannered Louisiana Republican, has also consistently urged lawmakers to tone down their rhetoric when debates become heated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the government shutdown gives President Trump and his budget director vast power over the federal government.

The White House is preparing to unleash mass layoffs and funding cuts during the shutdown, and Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, agreed the president has the constitutional power to make those decisions. Blaming Democrats, he said “they have effectively turned off the legislative branch” and “handed it over to the president.”

Still, Johnson said Trump and the White House budget director Russ Vought take “no pleasure in this.”

Earlier this morning, Trump said he would meet with his top budget adviser, Russ Vought, to discuss funding cuts that could be made during the shutdown.

Asked on Fox News whether this was just a negotiating tactic, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “it’s very real.”

“The Democrats should know that they put the White House and the president in this position, and if they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government,” she said.

Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said that despite threatened layoffs because of the shutdown, federal agencies would not be targeted based on politics.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was speaking at the Capitol and urged Senate Democrats to reverse course and support a Republican bill to reopen government mostly at current spending levels.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, called a funding bill put forward by Democrats a “wild list of partisan priorities” and said it would reverse many of the actions Congress has taken since Republicans took majorities in the House and Senate this year.

While Democrats have put forward the alternative legislation, they are not seriously demanding that Congress pass it. Instead, they mostly want Republicans to negotiate a deal to extend tax credits for health plans offered under the Affordable Care Act.