The White House and more than half a dozen government agencies on Friday joined a social media platform popular with liberals and promptly shared posts declaring Democrats were to blame for the ongoing government shutdown.
The posts on Bluesky, a social network whose format is similar to that of X, continued a pattern of partisan attacks from the executive branch after Congress failed to reach an agreement on federal funding and the government shut down on Oct. 1.
The administration has repeatedly thrust normally nonpartisan agencies into the funding fight, including by posting politically loaded language on agency websites, even though the federal bureaucracy is ordinarily expected to stay out of the fray during political disagreements.
In a Bluesky post on Friday, the Transportation Department blamed what it called the “Schumer-Jeffries Shutdown,” referring to the Democratic minority leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, for forcing air traffic controllers, who are required to work through the shutdown, to go without pay. The post was shared alongside a cartoon image of the men in sombreros.
For its part, the Health and Human Services Department repeated a falsehood shared by Republicans: that Democrats had shut down the government because Republicans would not agree to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants. And the Homeland Security Department’s account posted a taunting message asking people to report “criminal illegal aliens” to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and included a phone number.
Most of the messages were reposted by the White House on its own account, which said in its inaugural post, “We thought you might’ve missed some of our greatest hits.”
It added, “Can’t wait to spend more quality time together!”
The politically charged messages seemed to be aimed at Bluesky’s many vocal left-wing users. The site, launched in 2023 as an alternative to X, saw a surge in popularity last year from users fleeing Elon Musk’s platform, which he had molded into a friendlier online space for right-wing politics.
Replies to the posts on Bluesky appeared mostly critical of the Trump administration. The top reply to a White House post blaming Democrats for the shutdown said, “Guys. No one believes you on here.”
Trump administration officials, who are using the shutdown to punish the president’s political foes, have already flooded their preferred platforms, including X and Truth Social, with posts taunting and trolling Democrats. (Mr. Trump is the largest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social.)
The White House, which had more than 6,000 followers on Saturday afternoon, continued to post on Bluesky, which has nearly 40 million users. It is a much smaller platform than X, which Mr. Musk has said has around 600 million monthly active users.
Experts in employment law have previously cautioned that the politically divisive language shared by government agencies appeared to violate the Hatch Act, a law devised to ensure that the federal work force operates free of political influence or coercion.
Since the shutdown, major departments, including the Treasury, Health, State and Agriculture Departments, have placed large banners on their websites and posted on other social media platforms echoing Republican talking points in blaming the shutdown on Democrats and the “radical left.”
Earlier this month, Trump administration officials also directed employees to include a partisan message in their out-of-office email replies blaming Democratic senators for the shutdown.
Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.
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