A watchdog group filed a complaint this week against the Trump administration for putting banners on federal websites blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. 

Public Citizen accused the Small Business Administration and Department of Housing and Urban Development of being in “blatant violation” of the Hatch Act, which limits “electioneering” and certain other political activities of federal employees while at work to ensure the nonpartisan nature of federal programs.

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None of the messages posted on SBA, HUD, and other government websites directly referenced elections. 

However, Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s government affairs lobbyist, argued in comments to Axios that “to place the sole blame on the Democrats because they don’t want to cut Medicaid and healthcare for Americans is electioneering.”

House Oversight Committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA) on Thursday raised similar concerns that the Trump administration is illegally using public-facing federal resources to promote a partisan agenda in a letter to acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer, urging him to investigate the matter.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner dismissed concerns on Wednesday evening that such messages posted on government websites violate government ethics standards. He said he was “not worried at all” that his agency might be in violation of the Hatch Act during an interview on NewsNation’s Cuomo.

“This is not about propaganda … this is just about letting the American people know what’s going on,” Turner said. “To me, the Democrats and the far Left are using this as a distraction to really deflect from what’s really important here, and that’s how it’s been irresponsible actions on [Capitol] Hill, and people are being impacted greatly by this government shutdown.… That’s what we really need to be talking about.” 

HUD’s homepage initially displayed a banner that read: “The radical left is going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands.” 

An updated message on the website as of Thursday afternoon said, “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need.” 

The SBA website had an extensive message reiterating similar claims: “Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. Every day that Senate Democrats continue to oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding.”

The government shut down on Wednesday after Republicans and Democrats failed to come to an agreement on a budget bill to keep it open. 

Republicans wanted to enact a “clean” government funding continuing resolution to keep a shutdown from happening. The mechanism would sustain levels of federal spending already approved by Congress and keep the government open in the short term. 

Democrats wanted to attach to the budget measure a provision extending former President Barack Obama-era government subsidies for healthcare, sparking backlash from the GOP. The two parties failed to negotiate an agreement over whether to include the provision addressing the Affordable Care Act in the stopgap spending bill, leading to the eventual closure of the government this week. 

Democrats blamed the Republicans, saying they forced the closure by refusing to attach the extension of “emergency” Obamacare premium tax credits to the CR. They claimed millions of Americans’ healthcare would expire or be weakened if President Donald Trump, House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) refused to include the Obamacare extensions.

Republicans pointed the finger at the other side, with Thune accusing Democrats of rampant hypocrisy. Democrats backed continuing resolutions similar to the Republican-backed one they now oppose 13 times when they were in the majority, the Senate Majority Leader said Tuesday. He has expressed willingness to negotiate extending the Obamacare tax credits in a separate package after Congress passes the CR. 

The debate over who was responsible for the shutdown quickly spilled out onto the websites of multiple federal agencies.

The Department of Justice’s website has a banner claiming Democrats “shut down the government.” The Department of Agriculture’s front page says, “due to the radical left Democrat shutdown, the government website would not be updated,” resembling another pop-up on the State Department’s site. Other federal agencies bearing such allegations include the Treasury Department, while the Department of Veterans Affairs included partisan messaging in a newsletter sent to veterans.

Public Citizen, a left-leaning organization, is not the only government ethics group raising concerns about the Trump administration’s actions. 

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Watchdog group Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday to urge an investigation into HUD.

“The purpose of HUD’s website is to help Americans find affordable housing and protect their rights. It is not a campaign website or a tool to advance a political party’s agenda,” Virginia Canter, the group’s ethics and anticorruption chief counsel and director, said. “The Trump administration, however, turned a government agency website into a partisan billboard. It’s an abuse of power, a waste of taxpayer money, and appears to be a flat-out violation of the law.”