Five civil servants working at the Department of Education told NBC News that their out-of-office messages had been altered with political language blaming Democrats for the government shutdown.

The new message read: “Thank you for contacting me. On September 10, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse of appropriations, I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume,” NBC reported Thursday.

It may sound old-fashioned, but typically, civil servants don’t make political comments like that—at least ones who follow the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in certain political activities in their official capacities.

One Department of Education employee, speaking anonymously, said that they restored their out-of-office message to the original neutral version, only to have the partisan language added back. 

“None of us consented to this. And it’s written in the first-person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not,” the person told NBC News. “I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal. I think it violates the Hatch Act.”

Another employee anonymously told NBC News that they’d used the standard out-of-office message that the agency had disseminated to them earlier this week. Even that was changed. “They went in and manipulated my out-of-office reply. I guess they’re now making us all guilty of violating the Hatch Act,” the person said. 

A third employee told NBC News that they weren’t surprised by the apparent violation of the Hatch Act, or concerned that they might face repercussions for political speech they hadn’t actually made. “Nobody follows the law anymore, so why does it matter? It seems like laws are dotted lines now, not solid lines. It seems there’s no one to hold this administration accountable to laws,” they said. 

“Clearly, this wasn’t done by me, it was done while I was in a furlough status, I think I’d be able to argue that point,” the employee added. 

The Trump administration issued multiple rounds of emails via executive agency heads this week containing ideological messaging to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Hatch Act and the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch. Workers at the Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration received near-identical notes claiming that the Democrats had thwarted the Republicans’ continuing resolution due to “unrelated policy concerns.” In reality, Democrats had  been fighting to ensure health care subsidies. 

As desperate as Donald Trump has been to blame Democrats for the shutdown, it doesn’t seem that Americans are buying it. A recent poll found that roughly 47 percent of respondents blamed Republicans, while 30 percent said that Democrats were primarily responsible. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they were not sure who was primarily responsible for the shutdown.

A massive immigration raid at an apartment in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago tormented residents in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Some 300 federal agents, per NewsNation, raided the building, arresting 37 people, with the Department of Homeland Security alleging that “some of the targeted subjects are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators.”

Agents rappelled in from helicopters, broke down doors, used flash bangs, tore tenants from their units, and detained several people—including numerous U.S. citizens—for hours before leaving the building ravaged, according to multiple reports.

Pertissue Fisher, who lives in the building, told ABC7 Chicago that ICE agents forced everyone out and only asked questions later. Fisher said she was handcuffed and questioned before being released at around 3 a.m. The officers, she noted, “just treated us like we were nothing,” and, “It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face.”

Another ABC7 interviewee ducked upon hearing flash bangs detonate, and was then distressed by the sight of children detained. “They was bringing the kids down too, had them zip-tied to each other,” she said. “That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*** them kids.’”

A witness of the same name told the Chicago Sun-Times it was “heartbreaking” to see “kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers.”

Witness Darrell Ballard recalled seeing the agents use a “big, 15-inch chain saw” to cut down a fence. “We’re under siege,” he said. “We’re being invaded by our own military.”

Resident Rodrick Johnson told Block Club Chicago that he heard “people dropping on the roof” before his door was kicked in by agents and he was packed into a van for what seemed like hours, without being told why he was detained.

“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Johnson told the Sun-Times. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”

Agents also reportedly left tenants’ doors flung open. Resident Dan Jones, the Sun-Times reports, returned to his apartment “to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor.”

The following day, reports described the building’s hallways as strewn with “toys, shoes and food,” with doors “blown off their hinges” and “holes left in walls.” In one room, per Block Club Chicago, zip ties sat on the floor beside blood stains and baby shoes.

Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander-at-large, told NewsNation, which embedded with the federal agents for the operation, that it went “very smoothly.”

Donald Trump’s political associates don’t want immigrants to feel safe at........

© New Republic