The White House website has been updated to blame the government shutdown that began Wednesday on Democrats.
The official White House homepage was topped on Wednesday by a red, scrolling banner with the all-caps message “DEMOCRAT SHUTDOWN: DEMOCRATS’ [sic] IN THEIR OWN WORDS” along a countdown showing how long the shutdown has been going on. Users who clicked through were taken to a landing page with a livestreamed video of clips of Democratic lawmakers criticizing past shutdowns, integrating partisan messaging into its design.
With a news ticker, countdown clock, and clips of politicians speaking on Capitol Hill, this is web design inspired by one of President Donald Trump’s favorite pastimes: cable news. It’s just one way the Trump administration is hoping to shift blame about the shutdown away from Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and who a plurality of Americans think deserve the blame.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released Tuesday found 38% of respondents blame Republicans for a shutdown, 31% blame both parties, 27% blame Democrats, and 4% blame neither.
Federal blame game appears in several contexts
Some federal agencies are finding ways to blame Democrats for the shutdown through official channels, too. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website added a pop-up and landing page messaging that says “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need” while the State Department’s website says “Due to the Democrat-led shutdown, website updates will be limited until full operations resume.”
At the Small Business Administration (SBA), employees received language for a suggested out-of-office email that blamed Democrats, according to Wired.
“I am out of office for the foreseeable future because Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal spending bill (HR 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the US Small Business Administration 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 suggested email language read.
Potential legal implications of partisan messaging
Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush and a University of Minnesota professor of corporate law, says the White House website update isn’t a clear-cut violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activities of federal employees, “unless the official statement mentions candidates, elections or campaign slogans,” though he says it may violate rules about lobbying.
“I do think, however, this is probably part of a coordinated executive branch campaign to lobby Congress, and thus this in combination with the agency web pages and emails probably violates statutory restrictions on use of taxpayer money to lobby Congress,” Painter tells Fast Company.
Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel at the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said while it’s not a Hatch Act violation, “agency employees are legally bound to provide nonpartisan service to their constituents.”
“A government shutdown causes stress for the public regardless of political affiliation; it is wildly inappropriate for agency leadership to politicize the situation and blame political enemies,” Sherman said.
A civic institution meets cable news spin
Other government agencies have communicated the shutdown online without partisan messaging, like NASA, which has a banner that reads “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website.
The White House took a far less neutral stance—though the website displayed toned-down rhetoric by Wednesday afternoon. The news ticker swapped out its messaging blaming Democrats for the shutdown with an update to watch the White House press briefing, during which Vice President JD Vance made a surprise cameo and said he doesn’t think the shutdown will be long.
After the briefing, whitehouse.gov scrapped the news ticker. The countdown clock on the White House homepage reading “Democrats Have Shut Down The Government” above its top navigation, however, remains.