Shutdowns began as a way to enforce federal law. Now Trump is using it to take more power
October 25, 2025
The government shutdown is quickly becoming a way for President Donald Trump to exercise new command over the government. Yet it wasn’t always this way. Shutdowns started as an attempt to tighten Washington’s observance of federal law. The modern phenomena of the U.S. government closing down services was set in motion in 1980 by a series of legal opinions from then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. In the current shutdown, Trump has used the funding lapse to punish Democrats, lay off thousands of federal workers and reconfigure the federal budget for his priorities.