The Trump administration’s levying of political attacks on Democrats through federal agency websites and the out-of-office email messages of furloughed workers challenges the foundation of a nonpartisan civil service, a move that could deepen distrust in the government, according to experts and federal employees.
The deluge of messages blaming the “radical left” and Senate Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown that were shared across official channels serves as one of the most significant hits yet to the longstanding wall between federal workers and politics while they are on the job, historians said.
The messages immediately drew concerns that they may violate the Hatch Act, a Depression-era law intended to ensure that the federal work force operates free of political influence or coercion. Federal employees can engage in politics, but not while working.
“We have had lots of shutdowns,” said Don Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service, but “never before have top officials tried to use their employees as human shields in the partisan battle.”
The political messages put federal employees in an untenable position, said Kevin Owen, a lawyer with Gilbert Employment Law, who has been representing fired federal workers this year.
“What is going on right now is running counter to the trainings that some of these employees have had for 15, 20 years,” Mr. Owen said. “It’s bedrock principles of the civil service.”
Many current and former federal workers expressed shock at the administration’s decision to push employees into the partisan fray by having political language in the outgoing email messages of workers at the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Veterans Affairs.
“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations,” one version of an outgoing message said.
On Friday evening, the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest labor union for federal workers, sued the Education Department over the practice, calling it “a blatant violation of federal employees’ First Amendment rights.”
The administration’s distribution of the email messages “makes a mockery of statutory prohibitions like the Hatch Act,” according to the lawsuit.
The White House referred requests for comment to the Education Department, which did not respond. An earlier automated email response from the White House press office read, “Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays.” The message continued, “As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.”
The administration’s pushing of partisan messages in the shutdown comes after President Trump has repeatedly sought to challenge the reach of the Hatch Act.
During his first administration, the president dismissed allegations that several of his top advisers had violated the law. And earlier this year, Trump officials at the Office of Special Counsel, the agency charged with enforcing the act, weakened it by allowing federal workers to wear campaign paraphernalia to support the current president. The office also changed the process for reviewing potential violations, removing an independent board that previously considered claims.
At the same time, the administration has inserted new questions into federal job applications that some liken to pledging allegiance to Mr. Trump and his policies. And Mr. Trump himself has accused his own bureaucracy of partisanship, threatening this week to use the shutdown to make cuts to unspecified “Democrat agencies.”
The injection of raw politics into a realm that is supposed to be walled off from such speech flies against longstanding efforts to protect federal workers from being seen as partisan players, historians said.
Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939 in response to fears at the time that an administration “would overstep boundaries and use government workers to support certain candidates during elections,” said Margaret Rung, a history professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
Long before that, the federal government established rules for a professional, nonpartisan civil service in response to the spoils system of the Ulysses S. Grant administration in the late 19th century, said Eric Yellin, a professor at the University of Richmond and a civil service historian.
Congress decided the government should focus on hiring people who were qualified to do the work, rather than politically well connected, Mr. Yellin said. That was supported by business leaders, who were increasingly relying on the federal government to address complex issues like copyright infringement, and welcomed having a stable, qualified work force that did not turn over every four years.
“Civil servants serve all Americans, regardless of political affiliation,” Mr. Yellin said. “If you call the government, regardless of your political beliefs, the members of the government are supposed to serve you.”
Critics have noted that the enforcement of the Hatch Act has been uneven. But its mere existence has shaped the behavior of federal workers, many said.
In the five years that he worked as a federal scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Marty Kardos said, he and his colleagues got constant reminders about following the act.
That federal workers would deliver partisan messages is inconceivable, he said. (His former agency has so far not appeared to include politically charged language on its website or in out of office emails.)
“I don’t know a single federal official or federal scientist who would be comfortable doing that. It’s not our job,” said Mr. Kardos, 49, who resigned in late April as a biologist at the N.O.A.A.’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “We always interpreted our work as serving the country.”
Some worry that the partisan communications could affect how the public perceives the federal bureaucracy.
Eugene Manning, a 48-year-old Iraq war veteran, said he was startled by the message he got from the Veterans Affairs Department on the first day of the shutdown about what benefits and services would be available during the lapse in funding.
“President Trump opposes a lapse in appropriations,” the email said, adding that the House passed a resolution extending funding in the short term. “Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this continuing resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”
Mr. Manning, who has been interacting with Veteran Affairs since he left the Army in 2007, said the partisan tone of the message was a striking departure from the past.
“It‘s just sort of really out of whack with every other communication that I’ve ever gotten from the V.A.,” he said. The V.A., he said, should not be a place for just Democrats or just Republicans.