Government agencies are blaming the shutdown on Democrats. Ethics experts say it could be against the law.

Agencies across the federal government are explicitly blaming Democrats for the government shutdown—from banners on top of public websites to suggested out-of-office messages for federal employees—in an unusually overt show of partisan messaging that some ethics experts say may violate federal law. The deluge of statements bashing Democrats began hours before the shutdown with a single red pop-up posted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website. “The radical left are going to shut down the government,” the page read. The shutdown would “inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands,” the website stated. “The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.” Soon, handfuls of other agencies had already followed suit—alerting Americans that the government had officially shut down—and that President Donald Trump’s political rivals were responsible. Government ethics experts are sounding the alarm on the flood of finger-pointing, saying the explicit blaming of Democrats violates laws prohibiting partisan messaging or political lobbying within federal agencies.