In bold, blue letters across a manila-colored background, the pop-up alert on the website of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) does not mince words:

The U.S. government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EST on Oct. 1 — first thing Wednesday morning — if Washington lawmakers fail to pass a stopgap funding measure before midnight. A shutdown would bring some but not all government operations to a halt.

HUD is not supposed to have a dog in the fight, though. The website alert has also raised ethical questions regarding a potential violation of the Hatch Act.

Passed in 1939, the Hatch Act restricts civilian executive branch employees of the federal government from participating in partisan political activity in their official capacity. An amendment to the Hatch Act in 1993 allows most federal employees to engage in some types of political activities in a personal capacity, but that does not extend to official federal websites.

“The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation,” according to the website of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency. The OSC has exclusive authority to investigate allegations of political activity prohibited by the Hatch Act.

A HUD spokesperson responded to Scotsman Guide’s request for comment with the following statement: “The Far Left is barreling our country toward a shut down, which will hurt all Americans. At HUD, we are working to keep critical services online and support our most vulnerable. Why is the media more focused on a banner than reporting on the impact of a shutdown on the American people?”

HUD officials also pushed back on concerns of a potential Hatch Act violation, saying the message was carefully worded to avoid naming a specific party or politician, and claiming it instead focused on an ideology.

The OSC’s Hatch Act division did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democracy Forward, a legal services and public policy nonprofit, wrote on X that “there are laws in place to keep federal agencies nonpartisan. This is not just unAmerican – it’s unlawful. That’s why we’ve launched an investigation.”

The HUD website message was posted on the same day that the roughly 154,000 federal workers who opted into the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program are scheduled to fall off federal payrolls.

Closing the initial pop-up alert on HUD’s website, one is confronted with a second political warning:

Not all U.S. government websites featured this message on Wednesday morning. A quick visit to the homepages of the Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Treasury, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation and Department of Health and Human Services revealed homepages lacking the same political messaging.

As a government shutdown nears, a main sticking point between Democrats and Republicans are expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, among other health care policy priorities. Democrats demand that the subsidies be extended in exchange for votes on a stopgap funding bill Republicans passed in Congress but awaits Senate approval. Republican lawmakers say Democrats are leveraging the shutdown to rush through extensions.

Each side believes the other will bear the brunt of public blame if a shutdown does occur. Congress’ stopgap bill would fund the government through Nov. 21. Federal employees are typically furloughed during shutdowns, and they receive back pay after Congress votes to fund the government.

As it concerns housing and housing finance markets, the impact of a government shutdown may be felt in various ways. Chen Zhao, chief economist at Redfin, says the immediate impact of a shutdown may be minimal, but it worsens the longer the shutdown drags on.

Zhao assesses that roughly 40% of the federal civilian workforce — approximately 900,000 people — would be furloughed in a shutdown. The last government shutdown was at the end of 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term.

This time around, however, the Trump administration has alerted federal agencies to prepare for large-scale reductions in force if government funding lapses tonight. The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo obtained by Politico that instructs agencies to make reduction-in-force plans for programs whose funding lapses and are not consistent with the Trump administration priorities.

Government mortgage activity supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Housing Administration, an insurance program administered by HUD, tend to feel the impact of shutdowns more immediately than conforming markets served by government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as furloughs at the VA and HUD slow the processing of government mortgage applications.

A shutdown would also delay applications for home purchases in flood-prone housing markets. Funding for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) — a government-backed flood insurance program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the largest issuer of flood insurance policies nationwide — expires Oct. 1. If allowed to lapse, new NFIP policies will not be written and existing policies will not be renewed.

Cuts to government statistical agencies could also inject broader volatility into financial markets. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has already confirmed it will not release the September Employment Situation report on Friday if the government shuts down.