The federal government’s partial shutdown enters its second month this week, and there is no end in sight. It does not matter that the American public largely wants the government to reopen, or that the shutdown inflicts a growing economic and environmental toll on the nation. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who have majority control of the government, are in no hurry to reopen it.

And why should they be? The shutdown’s ostensible purpose is to secure funding for Trump’s wall. But crippling the government advances other goals as well. Conservatives often rail against the “administrative state,” their term of derision for federal agencies and the “bureaucrats” who staff them. What more effective way to deplete the state’s strength and efficacy than by forcing scores of experienced and talented civil servants into either poverty or other jobs?

Conservatives are hardly subtle about this. Earlier this month, an unnamed “senior Trump official” published an op-ed in The Daily Caller celebrating the suffering that he and his colleagues had inflicted on federal workers. “Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown,” the anonymous author wrote. “I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.” Trump himself retweeted his son’s approval of the article.

The shutdown highlights a fundamental asymmetry in American governance today. It’s a familiar trope for political observers to blame both sides in Washington for gridlock. In reality, congressional dysfunction and government shutdowns typically hinder progressives’ policy goals, which generally require passing new legislation, while furthering conservative ones. So the increasing paralysis of Washington has redounded to the benefit of the Republicans.

After the 2010 midterms, when the Democratic Party lost its unified control of government, President Barack Obama sought to circumvent this problem through his executive authority. His administration used regulatory action to advance progressive goals on protecting LGBT rights, raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers, combating climate change, and more. He also tested the limits of the presidency’s power by temporarily shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and making illegal recess appointments to executive-branch posts that require Senate confirmation.