Federal employees are being forced to blame Democrats for the shutdown

Furloughed civil servants had their out-of-office email replies changed without their knowledge or consent to claim that Democratic senators are the reason they aren't getting paid. That's not true.

Ideal autumn weather has finally descended upon New York, to the delight of my humidity-hating dog, and that concludes one of only two positive things I have to say about this week. The second is that 150,000 ICE officers are not receiving paychecks right now due to the government shutdown.

They’re still being required to work, though, which means that when you see masked thugs flinging bereft women to the ground, hospitalizing journalists on purpose, zip-tieing children, sadistically separating newlyweds at the woman’s final green card interview, and repelling into and ransacking Chicago apartments, they’re doing it for the love of the game.

To recap: The federal government officially shut down yesterday, Oct. 1, because Senate Republicans refused to grant any concessions to Democrats to keep things running, despite needing a handful of Democrats’ votes to get to a 60-vote majority. Dems were basically asking for an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act funds, a repeal of Trump’s deeply unpopular Medicaid cuts, and assurances that Trump won’t illegally withhold the money that Congress appropriates to various programs this time, as he keeps on doing. These were extremely reasonable requests that would frankly benefit Red State folks more than Blue State, but nevertheless, Republicans eagerly disappeared from the negotiating table.

Let the record show that House Democrats showed up to the vote to stop the government shutdown, while Republicans did not:

The Trump administration very much wanted this shutdown to happen—not only because it gives Trump the authority to further gut the federal workforce in Congress’ absence, but because they banked on being able to blame the whole thing on Democrats to their own political gain. To that end, Trump immediately claimed on social media that Dems held government funding hostage over health care for trans people and immigrants, his preferred bogeymen. And as part of that messaging push, the administration forced all furloughed civil servants to blame Democrats in their out-of-office email replies.

Per WIRED, the Trump administration changed these OOO emails without employees’ knowledge or consent (emphasis mine):

Originally, the suggested language given to [Department of Education] employees read, “Thank you for your email. There is a temporary shutdown of the US government due to a lapse in appropriations. I will respond to your message as soon as possible after the temporary shutdown ends. Please visit Ed.gov for the latest information on the Department’s operational status.” Many employees set this neutral language as their OOO status.

The new, changed message reads:

“Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed HR 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of HR 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.”

Several government workers reportedly tried to change their OOO emails back to the original language, only to find the email quickly changed back.

This move is not only unprecedented but flagrantly illegal, as several elected Dems have pointed out today. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) has asked the Office of the Special Counsel to “investigate the Trump Administration’s apparent violations of the Hatch Act, and illegal use of government resources to promote a false, partisan Republican political agenda.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called it “bureaucratic identity theft”:

Unfortunately for Trump, this particular grift doesn’t appear to be working on American voters. A Washington Post poll conducted yesterday found that 47% of U.S. adults blame Trump and Republicans in Congress for the shutdown, while just 30% blame Democrats. Independent voters, specifically, blamed Trump/Republicans over Dems for the shutdown by a gaping margin of 50% to 22%. The WaPo, you’ll recall, is now a fascist-owned newspaper with an explicitly right-leaning agenda—certainly not trying to spin things in favor of Chuck Schumer.

Nevertheless, Republicans are pulling a “sorry you made me do this” straight out of the abuser’s playbook in the first two days of this shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) fake-lamented today that Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, really regrets to have to make the horrible cuts that he’s making:

This is such a bald-faced lie that it’s almost comical, considering that Vought has been caught on tape multiple times saying that he fantasizes about putting civil servants “in trauma” by indiscriminately firing them. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has even said on cable news that Vought has been dreaming about the opportunity to destroy the government “since puberty,” which is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard about a human boy.

Now, if there’s any part of you that’s still thinking, maybe the government could afford to be downsized to save taxpayer money, I offer you this: The Trump administration is currently gifting $20 billion to prop up President Javier Milei’s failed anarcho-capitalist regime in Argentina—to the great financial benefit of one of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s billionaire friends. And Trump is now withholding roughly the same amount—$18 billion—from New York in infrastructure funds, plus $187 million in counterterrorism funds, because he’s mad about Zohran Mamdani leading the race for mayor. (The administration claims it’s revoking money for the Hudson Tunnel Project and Second Ave Subway over “unconstitutional DEI principles,” but I’m not even going to entertain that this has something to do with Black people using public transportation.) This is not an “America First” administration; this is a “reward my friends and punish my enemies” regime that is literally waging war on Democratic American cities. And none of your taxpayer dollars are being saved.

The upside here, if there is one, is that Americans are not really being fooled anymore by Trump’s attempts to spin any of his moves as anything but destructive and detrimental to regular people. He is an unequivocally unpopular autocrat descending into obvious dementia. The worst thing our citizenry can do at this point is buy into the idea that this country is cooked, that this is over—it’s very much not over. Trump does not have a mandate. He only has as much power as our people and institutions are willing to give him.