The Department of Housing and Urban Development took an unexpected dive into increasingly fraught government funding negotiations Tuesday morning, warning on its website that the “radical left” would hurt the country in a looming federal shutdown .

“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,” read a bright red banner and identically worded pop-up on HUD’s landing page. “The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”

The message spurred immediate criticism from federal employees and experts in government ethics and the Hatch Act, which bars most civil service employees in the executive branch of the federal government from engagi

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