At 9:35 am on Wednesday, the first morning of the US government shutdown, employees at the Small Business Administration (SBA) received a template from human resources for their suggested “out-of-office” email. They were advised to blame the Democrats.
“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 email goes on to say that once the shutdown is over, “we are prepared to immediately return to the record-breaking services we are providing under the leadership of the Trump Administration.”
“My jaw dropped when I read it,” says an SBA employee who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the press. The employee says they worried that if someone actually used the email template, it “would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act.”
The Hatch Act is a law that sets limits on the kinds of political activities government employees can engage in and protects “federal employees from political coercion in the workplace.” Violating the Hatch Act could result in a government worker losing their job.
“It feels like coerced speech where the government is forcing employees to spread its propaganda in communicating with the public,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.
SBA did not respond to a request for comment (and none of its press team members appear to have used the suggested out-of-office reply template).
Employees at other government agencies received more standard out-of-office directives. At the US Department of Agriculture, the out-of-office template states that employees are “on furlough without access to email, due to the lapse in federal government funding” and refers readers to USA.gov for further information.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, employees were instructed to set an out-of-office message that reads, “The federal government’s spending authority expired at 11:59 on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, therefore, most HUD programs have been temporarily interrupted, and most HUD employees have been told they cannot work…We regret any inconvenience the government lapse of appropriations may cause.”
On the agency’s website however, a pop-up window announces, “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need.” The same language appears on a red banner at the top of the website, as well as in a pop-up with the same banner in the agency’s internal system for employees, hud@work.
“You can’t click anything without these annoying pop-ups. Every single click to get to a time card or HRConnect,” says a HUD employee who asked to remain anonymous because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press. “It’s fucking nuts.”
HUD did not respond to a request for comment.
The website for the Department of Justice (DOJ) also includes a banner stating, “Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated.”
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
In the lead up to the shutdown, employees across government received emails from agency leaders containing similar sentiments to those in the SBA email. An email from HUD’s deputy secretary Andrew Hughes on the evening of September 30 included the subject line, “Far Left Gov Shutdown Imminent” and included instructions for HUD employees during the shutdown. An email received by employees at the Department of the Interior (DOI), with a signature from Secretary Doug Burgum, read, “President Trump opposes a government shutdown, and strongly supports the enactment of HR 5371, which is a clean Continuing Resolution to fund the government through November 21, and already passed the US House of Representatives. Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the US Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”
A nearly identical email was sent out to employees at the Small Business Administration (SBA) from the email associated with the Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO).
“The tone of the language is very antagonistic and partisan in a way we don’t expect from formal messaging from agency leaders,” says Moynihan. “If you had a federal employee who emailed their colleagues blaming president Trump for the shut down, they’d be pursued for a Hatch Act violation and probably fired in the meantime.”
In a memo posted on X that appeared to be sent to the heads of executive departments and agencies, Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), alleged that the government was shutting down due to “insane policy demands” from Democrats.
Leah Feiger contributed reporting.
