With no deal in sight to avoid a government shutdown, several agencies are sending nearly identical emails to their employees, telling them President Donald Trump is not to blame for a lapse in funding.
The email, broadly distributed across the federal workforce on Tuesday afternoon, states “President Trump opposes a government shutdown,” and “strongly supports” enactment of a House-passed continuing resolution that would keep agencies funded through Nov. 21.
“Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this continuing resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands,” the email states. “If Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean continuing resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse.”
Federal News Network has obtained copies of the email from the Office of Personnel Management, the Interior Department, the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Social Security Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration.
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The Office of Management and Budget told agencies last week to plan on additional reductions-in-force across programs that are on hold during a shutdown, that don’t have alternative sources of funding and are “not consistent with the president’s priorities.”
Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday afternoon that he’s in favor of shutdown-related RIFs to the federal workforce, and that “when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.”
“We’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected,” Trump said. “They’re going to be Democrats.”
“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” he added. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.”
In most cases, federal employees received the email as an unsigned statement from their agencies. But a copy of the email sent to OPM employees was signed by the agency’s director, Scott Kupor.
It’s not entirely clear if the email was sent governmentwide, or whether the Trump administration directed agencies to send the notice. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The email states that agencies have contingency plans in place for “executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats.” Few of those contingency plans, however, are publicly available online.
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OMB no longer keeps a centralized list of agency shutdown plans on its website. In a recent update, it wrote that “agency contingency plans for a lapse in appropriations are hosted solely on each agency’s website.” Federal News Network has a list of publicly available agency contingency plans available here.
A mass email assigning blame to congressional Democrats is an unusual step for agencies to take ahead of a funding lapse, and marks an escalation in rhetoric.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development posted a notice on its website Tuesday morning, warning that 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 Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people,” the message on HUD’s website states.
Pete Kasperowicz, press secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement that “radical liberals in Congress are trying to shut down the government to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, ‘transgender’ for everybody and men competing in women’s sports.”
“If they succeed, they will stop critical veterans care and assistance programs,” Kasperowicz said.
The vast majority of VA programs continue uninterrupted during a government shutdown. About 97% of VA employees would continue to work during a shutdown, because most VA programs receive advanced funding. VA health care is not impacted, VA benefits will continue to be processed and delivered, and burials at VA national cemeteries are not impacted by a shutdown.
During a shutdown, however, the VA will temporarily stop providing some of its services. The department would no longer offer career counseling or transition assistance, its GI Bill hotline will be offline and VA regional benefits offices will close. The VA will not maintain the grounds at its national cemeteries, and public affairs and outreach efforts will cease.
Federal News Network’s Drew Friedman contributed reporting
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