Trump Team Sends Outrageous Shutdown Email to Federal Employees

Ethics be damned, the Trump administration is blatantly pinning the government shutdown on Democrats.

An email issued to federal workers Tuesday left little room for doubt about how the executive branch wanted to frame the congressional failure.

“President [Donald] Trump opposes a government shutdown, and strongly supports the enactment of H.R. 5371, which is a clean Continuing Resolution to fund the government through November 21,” the email, which was obtained by HuffPost, stated. “Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”

The email was received by employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration, reported HuffPost. Leaders of those same agencies sent out the email.

That kind of language is in violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, according to ethics experts. It could also violate the Hatch Act, which is designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

But it hasn’t been the only instance in which the Trump administration has ignored long-standing presidential principles in order for Donald Trump to get his way.

The official White House website featured similar messages Wednesday. A banner atop the page reads: “Democrats have shut down the government,” followed by a timer tracking the amount of time it’s been since both parties failed to reach an agreement to continue funding the country.

Above that, an animated banner reads, “Democrat Shutdown: Democrats in Their Own Words.” That banner links out to another White House page titled “Live News” that features a running feed of edited comments from top Democratic lawmakers about the continuing resolution. (To be clear, the feed is not live, and it does not feature news.)

The Department of Housing and Urban Development showed a similar banner on its web page Tuesday, attacking the “radical left” for refusing a funding plan that would advance Trump’s agenda.

“The Radical Left are 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,” the notice read. “The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”

Donald Sherman, the executive director and chief counsel of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told HuffPost Tuesday that it was “hard to imagine a worse message from a government agency” than the one delivered by HUD.

“But this is certainly consistent with an administration that makes enemies lists,” Sherman told the outlet.

Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened that he would weaponize a government shutdown against Democrats by having his White House budget director, Russell Vought, slash “things they like.”

The shutdown came overnight, and on Wednesday morning, Vought announced plans to freeze funds appropriated toward infrastructure projects in the state represented by the two top-ranking congressional Democrats.

On X, Vought said that “roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold,” specifically naming the Hudson Tunnel project and Second Avenue subway.

The Hudson Tunnel project is a plan to construct new and improved rail tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey, expanding service along the country’s busiest rail route. The Second Avenue subway is planned to connect a station in East Harlem, in an area that has been a “subway desert” for more than 85 years, to one in Lower Manhattan.

Vought said the funds are being withheld to ensure they are not being used for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes, though he did not immediately elaborate on the purported relationship between the two key transit infrastructure projects and the right-wing bugbear that is DEI.

It’s difficult to interpret Vought’s choice as anything but an attempt to punish Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both of New York, who are the minority leaders in the House and Senate, respectively.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz—who is currently leading the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. assets—told former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2015 that they had to “embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” Now, as Oracle moves to take control of TikTok’s algorithm, Catz and Oracle chief technology officer (and avowed Zionist) Larry Ellison will seek to do just that. 

Catz’s message, first reported on by Responsible Statecraft and obtained in a hack of Barak’s email, was titled “I’d like your input.” 

“We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college,” Catz wrote. “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way they can consume it.” 

Catz, who was still head of Oracle at the time, also mentioned that her sister, Saritz Catz, was a “longtime Hollywood writer-producer” as well as a “prominent pro-Israel activist and AIPAC national leader.” She added that her sister was working on a reality show, Women of the IDF, meant to “humanize the IDF in the eyes of the American public.” 

The Israeli American CEO of one of the country’s most powerful companies was asking Israel’s former prime minister for advice on how to better spread pro-Israel propaganda back in 2015. Now she’ll control the algorithm that many conservatives and liberals alike believe is responsible for helping shatter Israel’s (tailored) image among the vast majority of young Americans, who have woken up to the reality of  Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. 

This report comes just days after current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly admitted that TikTok was the most important arena to push pro-Israel propaganda in. 

“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield.… The most important purchase going on right now is … TikTok. Number one. And I hope it goes through because it can be consequential. And the other one? X. We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. We should talk to him. Now, if we can get those two things, we get a lot.… We have to fight the fight, to give direction to the Jewish people and give direction to our non-Jewish friends.”

While sources say that Catz will be “nowhere near the algorithm of TikTok,” her past actions and emails paint a very clear agenda. 

Qatar now has NATO-level security protections, thanks to the Trump administration.

In an executive order signed Monday, Donald Trump pledged that the tiny, energy-rich, non-NATO ally would receive the same level of protection from the United States as some of America’s most powerful allies.

The order specifies, “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.” It further reads that, in the event of such an attack, the U.S. will undertake “diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” measures to defend both America and Qatar.

The strengthened alliance comes weeks after Trump effectively permitted an Israeli strike on the Middle Eastern nation. America’s failure to take action to stop Israel’s attack left those in the Qatari capital with a sense of shock and betrayal, according to CNN, especially after Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani had agreed to act as a mediator to end the war between Israel and Gaza. He later referred to Israel’s attack as “state terror,” and said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had broken “every international law” and must be “brought to justice.”

The Qatari leader’s directive followed a stateside visit by Netanyahu Monday and a Trump-organized call to Qatar, in which Netanyahu “expressed his deep regret” for killing six people in the attack, according to the White House.

Qatar and the U.S. are strategic allies: The Biden administration deemed Qatar to be a major non-NATO ally in 2022. But the Gulf nation’s attempts to sidle up to Washington became more brazen after Trump returned to office.

Just months ago, Qatar solidified a deal with the Trump Organization to build a Trump-branded golf course and a beachside project as part of a $5.5 billion development project. The tiny nation also bestowed a wildly controversial superluxury jumbo jet to Trump, all in an apparent attempt to shore up its relationship with America’s notoriously flighty leader.

The Supreme Court will allow Lisa Cook to remain on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite President Donald Trump’s attempt to oust her.

In a brief one-page order Wednesday, the court said Cook could keep her position pending oral arguments early next year, denying Trump’s application to stay an appeals court decision keeping Cook in place.

“The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is deferred pending oral argument in January 2026,” the order stated.

Trump attempted to fire Cook in August over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte—who’s made similar accusations against a number of the president’s enemies. But the move was initially blocked by a federal judge, who said the claim had nothing to do with Cook’s actual job.

Last month, an appeals court said that Cook was likely to succeed in her statutory claim that she’d been fired without “cause,” as well as her procedural claim that she did not receive her due process prior to her removal. But federal attorney John Sauer argued that she was not entitled to due process, and that Trump has sweeping discretion to fire whomever he wanted as long as he claimed it was related to their job.

This latest Supreme Court decision is a notably different outcome from similar challenges to Trump’s firings. Last month, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The conservative justices also had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to reexamine the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing his New Deal policies. Depending on how the court rules, Trump could be granted sweeping discretion to fire members of independent agencies, like Cook, and Justice Clarence Thomas has already hinted that past precedents may be turned on their heads.

Last week, an amicus brief was filed arguing that removing Cook would “threaten [the] independence and erode public confidence in the Fed,” stressing the historical importance of the agency’s freedom from political considerations. The brief was signed by every living former Federal Reserve chair, and several other economic policy experts that spanned political boundaries.

This story has been updated.