By Avery Lotz

Copyright axios

Driving the news: Visitors to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s page were met with a pop-up Tuesday that read, “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.”

On Wednesday, post-shutdown, it read: “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.”

The White House website, as of Wednesday morning, was streaming a live loop of Democrats criticizing shutdowns as ominous music played in the background. On another page, a “shutdown clock” ticks above the words, “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government.”

A banner across the top of the Justice Department’s site reads, “Democrats have shut down the government.” Other government sites carried less targeted messages: The National Labor Relations Board said it was “currently closed,” and the State Department said it would have “limited” website updates, both citing “a lapse” in appropriate funds.And an email that was sent out broadly to several agencies across the federal workforce blamed Senate Democrats for “blocking” the House-passed continuing resolution “due to unrelated policy demands,” multiple outlets reported on Wednesday.

Friction point: Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, alleged the HUD message was a “blatant violation” of the Hatch Act, which is meant to ensure federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion.

HUD did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

Zoom out: On the airwaves and via social media feeds, Republicans echoed the sentiments shared via official government channels, with Vice President JD Vance blaming the “far-left faction” of Senate Democrats for the lapse on “CBS Mornings” Wednesday.

“There are critical services that the Democrats have taken hostage because they have a policy disagreement that they are open to work with us on, but they shouldn’t be shutting the government down,” he said.On Fox Business, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the shutdown could “provide an opportunity” to further “downsize” the government, adding with a smile, “in a way Chuck Schumer has now handed the keys to the kingdom to the executive branch.”

The other side: Democrats have also been quick to point fingers at the “Republican Shutdown,” as minority leaders Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) are calling it.

Democrats have centered their attacks around the expiration of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced tax credits at the end of the year. Renewing those credits were a key demand from Democrats during negotiations to prevent a shutdown.If the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire at year’s end, premium payments for subsidized enrollees are set to more than double, according to a KFF analysis.”Democrats are fighting to protect your healthcare,” said Jeffries in a Wednesday post. “Donald Trump and Republicans have shut down the government because they want to take your healthcare away.”

State of play: The risks of the shutdown are far more than just the loss of political points.

Around 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed daily, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate, and the Trump administration has threatened to use the shutdown to conduct mass firings — a twist unions have sued to stop.

Go deeper: How the government shutdown could disrupt daily life