Federal employees at several agencies were surprised to learn that their email accounts were automatically responding to messages with out-of-office replies that blamed Democratic members of Congress for the government shutdown.
Earlier this week, the White House budget office sent out email templates to furloughed workers, encouraging their out-of-office reply messages to blame “Democrat Senators” for a lapse in funding that resulted in their unpaid leave.
“Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume,” the template said.
But workers who did not update their automatic out-of-office replies discovered that their accounts were manipulated to include a partisan shot at Democratic officials while they were locked out of work, as members of Congress try to break through an impasse over a continuing resolution to keep the government running.
“They changed our out-of-office message… [They] did it after everyone left,” one Department of Education employee told ABC News. “[I’m] so pissed … We as career government employees need to be neutral when carrying out our jobs. This is such bull****.”
Another worker told NBC News that they had changed the partisan language, only for the message to revert back.
“None of us consented to this,” the person told the outlet. “And it’s written in the first person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal.”
A spokesperson for the Education Department told NBC News that the email “reminds those who reach out to Department of Education employees that we cannot respond because Senate Democrats are refusing to vote for a clean CR and fund the government. Where’s the lie?”
At the Department of Health and Human Services, human resources leadership told employees that creating an out-of-office message blaming Democrats was “required” for those who wouldn’t be working during the shutdown, according to HuffPost.
The messages follow a wave of partisan attacks on government websites explicitly blaming Democratic officials and the “radical left” for the federal shutdown.
That language is on banners and pop-up messages on the websites of the Department of Justice, State Department, the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration, among others.
Watchdog groups say the statements are in apparent defiance of ethics laws that prohibit political attacks and campaigning from inside federal facilities — which Donald Trump and administration officials have continued to do since entering office without facing any consequences.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is urging acting special counsel Jamieson Greer to investigate the White House for its messaging on the government shutdown.
Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has filed at least nine complaints alleging Hatch Act violations.
Democratic members of Congress have accused Trump and Republicans of blatantly lying about Democratic opposition to a GOP-led government funding plan, particularly around claims that Democrats are pushing for healthcare benefits for undocumented immigrants, who cannot legally access federal healthcare programs.
Democratic officials have also rejected Republican attempts to blame them for mass layoffs and furloughs of federal employees, arguing that the administration is using the shutdown crisis as a pretext to slash budgets and fire workers.
In response to The Independent’s questions about the legality of partisan messaging on government websites, a White House official pointed to multiple examples in which officials from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations “repeatedly assigned partisan blame on Republicans in official fact sheets, press releases and statements,” the official said.
