During the October 2025 shutdown, federal agency homepages, including the Justice Department and HUD, carried banners blaming the “Radical Left Democrat shutdown,” using official taxpayer-funded sites for partisan messaging the Hatch Act bars. A Republican who served as George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer called it the most extreme partisan use of federal agencies he had seen. <span class='caveat'>Formal enforcement stalled because the office that handles it had been furloughed.</span>
SourcesThe partisan banners, GovExec · A Republican ethics lawyer, Spectrum
