messaging

Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, talks about the mixed messaging coming from the White House over the Gaza ceasefire.

Oct. 2 (UPI) — Rep. Robert Garcia wants the Office of Special Counsel to investigate the Trump administration for alleged Hatch Act violations arising from government shutdown messaging.

Garcia, D-Calif., is the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and on Thursday in a letter to Acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration has illegally used government resources to promote false and partisan political messaging.

He said the Trump administration posted false and partisan political messages on at least one federal agency website on Sept. 30 and in emails to federal employees.

“The Hatch Act imposes clear restrictions on the political activity of federal executive branch employees and does not allow activity ‘directed toward the success or failure of a political party, partisan political group or candidate for partisan political office,'” Garcia wrote.

He asked Greer to immediately open an investigation into what he says is “clear misconduct” and a “blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars for political purposes.”

Garcia cited the Department of Housing and Urban Development website’s homepage blaming the “radical left” for causing “massive pain on the American people” on Sept. 30.

He also accused HUD Secretary Scott Turner of violating the Hatch Act by saying, “It is a shame that far-left Democrats are holding our government hostage” in a social media post.

Other agencies have circulated emails to employees that claim the government shutdown is “Democrat-imposed” and blame “radical liberals in Congress” of causing the shutdown that halts critical services for Americans, Garcia said.

The non-profit organization Public Citizen on Wednesday also filed complaints against HUD and the Small Business Administration regarding political messaging, Politico reported.

The Trump administration’s messaging has raised concerns of possible ethics violations.

Ethics experts, though, told Politico the controversial messaging might not violate the Hatch Act but might violate the Anti-Lobbying Act.

A White House spokeswoman on Thursday denied that the Trump administration has violated any federal laws.

“It’s an objective fact that Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Hill.

“The Trump administration is simply sharing the truth with the American people,” she added.

An unnamed White House official also said the Biden administration and Obama administration had targeted Republicans in messaging.

In a message shared with UPI on Thursday, the White House did not directly address Garcia’s Hatch Act violation claim but accused Senate Democrats of wanting to “inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their radical $1.5 trillion demands” approved in an alternative continuing resolution to keep the federal government open.

House Democrats submitted the alternative continuing resolution, which would have funded the federal government through Oct. 31 and would provide “free health insurance for illegal immigrants and others who do not qualify for taxpayer-funded health insurance programs,” according to the White House.

The House Dems’ continuing resolution also would expand premium tax credits and others enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic via Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans that would pay for transgender surgeries and other gender-related therapies and treatments, the White House message said.

India and Pakistan went to war in May this year. The military clashes have ceased, but the narrative battle continues.

In this series, a first of its kind on Al Jazeera, journalist Sreenivasan Jain interviews leading voices from both sides of the border and examines what India’s new normal – which Pakistan calls a new “abnormal” – means for both countries.

In this episode, Jain speaks with Hina Rabbani Khar, a former Pakistani minister and a key face of Pakistan’s public diplomacy. Jain asks Khar whether Islamabad has been able to successfully convince the world that India acted like a rogue state, or has its messaging fallen short?

You can also watch Jain’s interview with Indian politician Milind Deora here:

Science and technology ministry accuses messaging app of not cooperating in combating alleged crimes committed by users in Vietnam.

Vietnam has ordered the country’s telecommunication service providers to block the messaging app Telegram for not cooperating in combating alleged crimes committed by users of the platform, in a move that Telegram said was surprising.

A report on the government’s news portal on Friday said Vietnam’s telecommunications department at the Ministry of Science and Technology sent letters to internet service providers warning that there were “signs of law violation” on Telegram.

The ministry said internet service providers should “deploy solutions and measures to prevent Telegram’s activities in Vietnam”.

The letter dated May 21 ordered the providers to take measures against Telegram and report back to the ministry by June 2.

Almost 70 percent of 9,600 channels on Telegram in Vietnam contain “poisonous and bad information”, the government said in its report on the app, quoting police. Groups and associations on Telegram, involving tens of thousands of people, had disseminated “antistate documents” and were involved in “reactionary activities”, the government added.

The government also claimed that some groups on Telegram also used the app to sell users’ data, and were involved in drug trafficking or had “terrorist” links.

Vietnam’s hardline administration generally moves swiftly to stamp out dissent and arrest critics, especially those who find an audience on social media.

New rules came into force in Vietnam last year that required platforms such as Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities, in what critics described as the latest attack on freedom of expression in the communist-ruled country.

In a statement to the Reuters news agency, a representative of Telegram said the company was “surprised” by the Vietnamese government’s move.

“We have responded to legal requests from Vietnam on time. The deadline for the response is May 27, and we are processing the request,” the Telegram representative said.

An official at Vietnam’s Science and Technology Ministry told the Reuters news agency that the decision followed Telegram’s failure to share user data with the government as part of criminal investigations.

Telegram was still available in Vietnam as of Friday.

According to the Data Report website, there were 79.8 million individuals using the internet in Vietnam at the start of 2025, and according to the data extraction company SOAX, there were 11.8 million Telegram users.

With close to one billion users worldwide, Telegram has been involved in controversies across the world related to security and data breach concerns.

Telegram’s Russian-born founder and chief executive, Pavel Durov, was detained at a Paris airport and later charged with several counts of failing to curb extremist and “terrorist” content on the app. He reportedly remains in France and is unable to leave without authorisation from authorities.