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Fact check: Which administration started the traditional government shutdown due to administration policy changes
Executive Summary
The historical record shows the modern practice of pausing agency operations over funding lapses — what many call the “traditional” government shutdown — traces to a 1980 legal opinion under the Carter administration that prompted the first formal agency closure, notably of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti’s interpretation of funding law [1]. More recently, commentators and reporting attribute a change in how administrations wield shutdowns — particularly the Trump administration’s stated willingness to use shutdowns to force policy changes, layoffs, and regulatory shifts — representing a tactical evolution rather than a new legal origin [2] [3].
1. A Legal Turning Point: How a 1980 Opinion Created the Shutdown Playbook
The first clear instance of an agency shutdown as a consequence of funding gaps occurred in 1980 after Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued an opinion that unambiguous interpretation of appropriations law required agencies to stop nonessential activities without appropriated funds, which led to the FTC closure on May 1, 1980; this legal framework is widely cited as the origin point for the modern administrative shutdown mechanism [1]. That legal opinion institutionalized the practice of differentiating essential from nonessential operations during funding lapses, making temporary closures a legally grounded response rather than solely a political maneuver, and subsequent administrations adapted to that rule, which has shaped decades of funding standoffs [1].
2. From Procedure to Politics: How Shutdowns Became a Leverage Tool
While the legal basis dates to 1980, reporting from recent years shows shutdowns increasingly serve as leverage in partisan and policy fights, with administrations and Congress using funding gaps to push substantive policy aims or budget changes rather than simply letting process lapses close agencies [4] [5]. Analysts and press coverage note an uptick in tactical use, where threats to keep government closed or to impose operational changes during a shutdown are deployed to extract concessions, indicating a shift from purely administrative consequence to intentional political strategy [4] [6].
3. The Trump Era: A Shift Toward Using Shutdowns to Enact Policy Changes
Multiple contemporaneous reports document that during the Trump administration there was an explicit willingness to use shutdowns to pursue policy goals, including proposals for significant layoffs, regulatory rollbacks, and reallocation of resources — actions that mark a departure from the “routine inconvenience” model toward active use of a shutdown as policy leverage [3] [7]. Coverage from late 2025 describes planning inside the White House for mass firings and agency-specific cuts, portraying an aggressive posture where a shutdown is not merely a lapse but a tool for structural change within the federal workforce and program priorities [7].
4. Competing Narratives: Routine Recurrence Versus Strategic Innovation
Scholarly and journalistic sources present two complementary narratives: shutdowns are both recurring procedural outcomes rooted in legal interpretation and evolving political instruments used strategically in high-stakes budget fights [5] [2]. Some coverage emphasizes continuity — a legal mechanism used repeatedly — while other accounts emphasize discontinuity, arguing particular administrations have transformed shutdowns into opportunistic pressure points, especially when those administrations signal willingness to tolerate prolonged closures for policy gains [5] [2].
5. Evidence Across Time: Comparing Dates and Documentary Record
The 1980 Civiletti opinion is the anchoring date for the modern shutdown practice, and decades of subsequent reporting and analysis track how administrations handled funding gaps through 2018, the 2018–2019 extended 35-day shutdown, and more recent 2025-era shutdowns where policy-driven tactics were more salient [1] [2] [8]. Chronologically, the pattern shows legal origin in 1980, episodic use over decades, and an apparent escalation in tactical use by the Trump-era and post-2018 episodes, with contemporaneous reporting from 2025 documenting operational plans tied to policy aims and workforce reductions [1] [3].
6. What Sources Agree On — And Where They Diverge
Across sources, there is consensus that the legal basis for agency closures during funding gaps begins with the Civiletti opinion in 1980 and that shutdowns have become a recurring feature of U.S. governance; divergence arises over characterizing the degree to which any single administration “started” the tradition versus transformed its use into an instrument of policy change [1] [5] [6]. Some sources frame later administrations, notably the Trump administration, as innovating tactically by planning mass layoffs and using shutdowns to force policy outcomes, whereas others treat those actions as an escalation of an existing political tool rather than a new origin [3] [2].
7. Bottom Line for the Claim: Origin Versus Tactical Change
The claim that a specific administration “started the traditional government shutdown due to administration policy changes” conflates two separate facts: the legal origin of modern shutdowns is traceable to the Carter administration via the 1980 Civiletti opinion, while the tactical use of shutdowns to pursue policy aims and workforce changes is strongly associated with later administrations, including the Trump administration in reporting from 2018 and 2025 [1] [7]. Therefore, the origin is 1980 under Carter; the strategic repurposing to pursue policy changes is a more recent development attributed in reporting to Trump-era tactics, as documented in contemporaneous 2025 coverage [1] [3] [2].