Trump ups the pain, partisanship in taking shutdown politics to new levels

[Thiệu Ngô]

President Donald Trump’s boundary-pushing second administration is on full display in his approach to the shutdown.

By Zac Anderson

In the hours leading up to the government shutdown, the Department of Housing and Urban Development blared a message on its website declaring “the radical left are going to shut down the government.”

After the shutdown began, more agencies posted similar messages, and the White House website began featuring a clock counting the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds that “Democrats have shut down the government.”

President Donald Trump threatened mass layoffs, warning the cuts could be “irreversible," saying his administration would target "Democrat things” and is looking to cut "Democrat Agencies."

The president even skewered House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ approach to the shutdown by sharing a controversial deepfake video of him wearing a sombrero hat with mariachi music playing, which the New York Democrat blasted as “racist.”

Trump’s boundary-pushing second administration is on full display in his approach to the shutdown.

Large swaths of the federal government began grinding to a halt on Oct. 1 after funding ran out overnight and Congress failed to act.

It’s the fourth shutdown during Trump’s time as president, and he is signaling it could be much more disruptive than those during his first administration − or the ones in previous administrations. At the same time, he is marshaling the power of the federal government to blame Democrats for the fallout and take steps to punish them.

Shutdowns are inherently political, and every president who has gone through one has engaged in a version of shutdown politics, criticizing the other side and trying to gain leverage. Trump is threatening to go further than past administrations, though, raising the stakes and the partisan posture of federal agencies, said Elaine Kamarck, founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management at The Brookings Institution.

“The government itself has never taken sides in these things,” said Kamarck, who saw a shutdown up close when she worked in former President Bill Clinton’s administration. “This is totally new, this is totally unprecedented.”

Trump’s second term has been marked by an aggressive agenda that has tested the limits of executive power. A big part of that has been his push to overhaul the federal government, an effort initially led by the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk.

DOGE’s moves were among the most consequential aspects of the early part of Trump’s second term. They included mass layoffs of federal workers and the shuttering of whole agencies.

Now the government shutdown could dramatically boost such efforts, with Trump threatening to target programs he views as left-leaning.

"A lot of good can come down from shutdowns," Trump said Sept. 30. "We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want. They’d be Democrat things.”

Trump’s big shutdown plans

Trump and his allies are signaling that the impacts of this shutdown could be significant and long-lasting, describing it as an opportunity to slash government.

The White House Office of Management and Budget said in a recent email that workers whose activities are “not consistent with the President’s priorities” are a target for layoffs.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox Business on Oct. 1 that he has spoken with Trump about using the shutdown to cut the federal government.

“The president and I have talked about this at great length,” Johnson said, adding a shutdown can "provide an opportunity to downsize the scope and the scale of government, which is something that we’ve all always wanted to do.”

Trump said his administration would be “laying off a lot of people.”

"They're going to be Democrats," he added.

John Graham, an Indiana University professor who helped run the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, questioned whether a shutdown can achieve the Trump administration’s goals.

“I don’t see the temporary shutdown as helpful in reducing the size of government,” Graham said, adding that it won't happen until Congress passes budget bills with spending reductions.
Shutdown continues Trump’s aggressive approach

Whether Trump and his team follow through remains to be seen, and the shutdown could end at any minute. Yet the posturing around the government funding showdown again shows how Trump is pushing the limits in his second administration.

“Trump has gone into his second term all guns blazing,” Kamarck said.

That has played out in everything from his mass deportation push to sending the military into American cities and urging the attorney general to prosecute his adversaries.

Dismantling federal agencies has long been a goal of many conservatives, who describe the federal bureaucracy as bloated and unaccountable.

Agencies such as the Department of Education – which Trump has cut significantly – and the Environmental Protection Agency have been conservative targets for years.

Russell Vought, Trump's Office of Management and Budget director and one of the key architects of Trump’s effort to cut government, said in a speech this year that the administration had “embarked on deconstructing this administrative state.”

Vought added that the goal is to “move quickly” and “be aggressive.”

Vought helped write Project 2025, a plan put out by the conservative Heritage Foundation that laid out a policy framework for Trump’s second term. Now he's helping to quarterback Trump’s response to the shutdown.
Federal employees respond

Federal employees are bracing for what comes next. Unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit Sept. 30, arguing the layoff threat is illegal.

The American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley called it “not only illegal – it’s immoral and unconscionable.”

“Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service – more than a third are military veterans – and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling,” Kelley said in a statement after filing the lawsuit. The American Federation of Government Employees is the largest union representing federal employees.

Not only is Trump threatening a more painful shutdown, but he's upping the level of partisanship.
Partisan government websites, ‘racist’ videos

After HUD used its website to blame the "radical left" for the shutdown, the Agriculture and Treasury departments did the same on their websites

The State and Department of Justice websites also now have messages blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

Emails sent by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration and the Department of the Interior on Sept. 30, before the shutdown, that were reviewed by USA TODAY declare that Trump “opposes a government shutdown” but Democrats are “blocking” a government funding bill.

The 1939 Hatch Act limits the political activities of federal employees. Although not always strictly enforced, Democrats have pointed to the law to criticize the Trump administration for using official government channels to blast a highly partisan message.

"How can this not be a violation of the Hatch Act in some way?" Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said in discussing the websites on CNN.

Trump has proven willing to have such issues play out in the courts, Kamarck said. By the time courts weigh in, "Trump will be on to something else," she added.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said "the Trump Administration is simply sharing the truth with the American people.”

HUD Secretary Scott Turner told NewsNation on Oct. 1 that he's not "at all" worried about the legality of the shutdown messaging on his agency's website.

"I’ve heard all the cries and the outcry and people saying this is propaganda, that it’s a violation of the Hatch Act," Turner said, calling the criticism an effort by "Democrats and the far left" to distract from their "irresponsible actions."

Vice President JD Vance dismissed the idea that Trump is targeting Democrats in the shutdown during a surprise appearance at the White House press briefing on Oct. 1.

“We’re not targeting federal agencies based on politics,” he said.

Federal funding for blue states is the cross hairs, though, and Trump posted on social media Oct. 2 that he's meeting with Vought "to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut."

Vought posted on social media Oct. 1 that $18 billion in infrastructure money for New York City was “put on hold.” He followed up by saying $8 billion in funds to “fuel the left’s climate agenda” was being canceled in 16 states, all of which Trump lost in 2024.

"We're less than a day into this shutdown, and Trump & Vought are illegally punishing Democrat-led states," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said on social media, criticizing the "mafioso tactics."

Some Republicans have expressed concerns about the administration's approach to the shutdown.

“We, as Republicans, have never had so much moral high ground on a government funding bill in our lives. … I just don’t see why we would squander it, which I think is the risk of being aggressive with executive power in this moment," Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-North Dakota, told Semafor.

Asked if the administration was trying to pressure Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer by withholding funding from New York, his home state and also the home of Jeffries, Vance said he’s sure Vought is “heartbroken about the fact that he’s unable to give certain things to certain constituencies.”

“But when the Democrats shut down the government, we have to actually do a little triage,” Vance added.

Vance also addressed a controversial video Trump shared on social media that features Schumer and Jeffries. The apparently artificial intelligence-created deepfake video shows Jeffries with a Mexican sombrero hat, a mustache and mariachi music playing in the background.

"There's no way to sugarcoat it, nobody likes Democrats anymore,” Schumer's fake voice says, adding: "Not even Black people wanna vote for us anymore, even Latinos hate us.”

Jeffries called the video racist. Vance said Trump was just having fun. The White House leaned into the video, playing it on a loop in the press briefing room on Oct. 1.

"I think it's funny, the president's joking," Vance said, adding: "I'll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now. I make this solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop."

The shutdown was less than a day old, with no end in sight.