Here\u2019s a question about the shutdown submitted by an Associated Press reader, Deanna: <\/p>\n
Have agencies violated the Hatch Act by using Democrat-blaming language online in discussing the shutdown?<\/p>\n
Experts disagree on whether the Democrat-blaming language on the website of HUD<\/a> and various other government agencies<\/a> reaches the threshold of violating the 1939 Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.<\/p>\n Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and law professor at Washington University, argues it does.<\/p>\n \u201cThese agencies are using federal resources, taxpayer-funded websites, to engage in partisan political messaging,\u201d she told The Associated Press in an interview. \u201cThe Hatch Act prohibits federal officials from using official resources that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, disagrees, telling AP the messages discuss the Democratic Party related to a policy difference rather than an election but still calling the postings \u201cwildly inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel calling for an investigation into the messages for \u201capparent violations of the Hatch Act.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Do you have a question for AP<\/a> about the government shutdown? You can submit it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s a question about the shutdown submitted by an Associated Press reader, Deanna: Have agencies violated the Hatch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,2724,3505,116363,1070,793,962,9292,44296,7046,3,111,8638,9293,21,19,22,20,25,24,800],"class_list":["post-202055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-associated-press","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-sherman","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-government-policy","tag-government-shutdown","tag-kathleen-clark","tag-language","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-government-shutdown","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}