The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history, with no end in sight, is quickly becoming a way for President Donald Trump to exercise new command over the government.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it all started with an attempt to tighten Washington’s observance of federal law.

The modern phenomena of the U.S. government closing down services began in 1980 with a series of legal opinions from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who was serving under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Civiletti reached into the Antideficiency Act of 1870 to argue that the law was “plain and unambiguous” in restricting the government from spending money once authority from Congress expires.

In this shutdown, however, the Republican president has used the funding lapse to punish Democrats, tried to lay off thousands of federal workers and seized on the vacuum left by Congress to reconfigure the federal budget for his priorities.

“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump posted on his social media platform at the outset of the shutdown.