In a capital city where political combat is the native tongue, the ongoing government shutdown has escalated from a policy dispute to something far more raw: an overt weaponization of the federal government itself.
The White House, having incited the crisis by refusing to negotiate with congressional Democrats, is now exploiting the resulting paralysis to wage a partisan war from within the very agencies it has shuttered, testing the boundaries of law and the patience of the republic.
President Donald Trump has redoubled his threats to permanently slash what he calls “Democrat Agencies,” framing the shutdown not as a failure of governance but as an “unprecedented opportunity” to remake the bureaucracy.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker said, “I urge my Republican colleagues in Congress to negotiate a bipartisan solution that works for this country.”
“It’s wrong that the President and Members of Congress get paid during a government shutdown when our military and public servants don’t,” said Senator Andy Kim. “I will be refusing my own pay if we end up in a shutdown. Government leaders shouldn’t be playing with other people’s chips.”
During his first days as a U.S. House member, Kim requested his first paycheck from Congress be withheld due to a government shutdown in 2019.
The shutdown has temporarily furloughed around 750,000 federal workers and completely shuttered several agencies, including the Department of Education, the Commerce Department, the Labor Department and the State Department.
National parks will largely remain open, though visitor centers, parking lots and museums will be closed. Programs that are not funded by annual appropriations laws such as Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service will continue, as will work necessary to national security and defense.
Trump promises meetings with his budget director to determine which agencies to cut, “most of which are a political SCAM,” while the White House telegraphs that such job cuts could number in the thousands.
This strategy, aimed at maximizing political pain, has been accompanied by a barrage of crude, A.I.-generated videos falsifying statements from Democratic leaders, which allies like Vice President JD Vance have dismissed as “funny” and Speaker Mike Johnson called a joke.
But the consequences are anything but humorous.
The administration has frozen billions of dollars in approved funds, with the Energy Department terminating more than $7.5 billion in awards, the vast majority for projects in states with Democratic governors and senators.
The targeted nature of these cuts reveals a political strategy, not a fiscal one.
Meanwhile, a more insidious breach is unfolding across the digital front. Official government websites, from the Department of Justice to the Department of Veterans Affairs, have been transformed into partisan billboards.
They display messages blaming the “Radical Left” for the shutdown, a possible violation of the Hatch Act, which is designed to insulate the civil service from political campaigns.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a full-page pop-up greets citizens seeking housing assistance with the same partisan accusation.
This has prompted formal complaints from watchdog groups.
The Democracy Defenders Fund has urged an investigation, arguing that using appropriated funds for such plainly partisan messaging is “an abuse of power, a waste of taxpayer money, and appears to be a flat-out violation of the law.”
Behind the rhetoric, the human toll mounts. Pay has been suspended for roughly 2 million federal workers, with 750,000 furloughed and others, like troops and air traffic controllers, required to work without pay.
Yet, senior government officials are privately warning that the administration’s planned mass firings during the shutdown could themselves violate appropriations law, as severance payments may constitute new, unauthorized expenses.
The spectacle is a stark departure from any precedent. Past shutdowns were standoffs; this one is being treated as an offensive.
The levers of government are not merely frozen; they are being deliberately turned against one segment of the political spectrum. Corruption fuels authoritarianism, transforming public institutions into tools for personal gain and consolidating power in the hands of a privileged few.
As the Statue of Liberty’s torch threatens to go dark and national parks begin to see piles of trash, a more profound shadow is being cast—not by a lack of funding, but by the brazen use of public power for a private political war.
The question is no longer just when the government will reopen, but what will be left of its integrity when it does.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, on September 30, 2025, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenging the Trump administration’s threats of a mass firing of federal employees during the government shutdown.
The lawsuit asserts that the Office of Management and Budget, through its Director Russ Vought, violated the law by making threats to engage in the mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown.
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