By Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump is escalating his multi-front assault on what supporters see as an elite establishment, using raw presidential power to bend the government, law, media, public health, foreign policy, education and even the arts to his will.

Trump left no doubt in last year’s campaign that he’d use executive authority to seek retribution against his political enemies. But his attempt to transform America’s politics and culture is far broader than a personal revenge trip.

He’s targeting Ivy League universities; using executive authority against top law firms; eviscerating the bureaucracy; rejecting 80 years of elite orthodoxy about American global leadership; and using tariffs to shatter the global trading system that Make America Great Again proponents regard as the self-enriching treachery of global elites.

In one recent example, the White House forced Columbia University to restrict demonstrations, review its Middle East curriculum, ban masks in protests and stiffen law enforcement. Other top educational institutions now feel vulnerable to possible attempts to impose Trump dogma. The strategy may widen the political opening created by conservative pressure on top colleges over anti-Israel protests amid the war in Gaza.

And late last week, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek sanctions against lawyers and law firms who engage in what he regards as “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” The memo was released after he canceled punishment against one top white-collar firm after the White House said it agreed to do $40 million in pro bono legal services to support administration initiatives and promised to drop diversity, equity and inclusion. The firm — Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — disputes the administration’s characterization of the agreement, but the deal caused a backlash among many Washington lawyers.

Trump’s broad strategy pulsates with the anti-establishment energy that animated his rowdy campaign rallies, and is part of a deeper attempt to destroy what critics see as a liberal in-crowd that dominates Washington governance and global power in the West with what many conservatives see as more authentic American values. This aspiration lies behind the president’s gutting of the Department of Education, which has long been viewed by Republicans as a tool of Democratic-backed teachers’ unions and a lever for more inclusive gender, race and inclusion policies that many conservatives oppose.

Trump’s choice of education secretary, Linda McMahon — who lacks background in the field but made a fortune promoting theatrical, choreographed bouts of professional wrestling — is itself a rebuke to the education establishment. McMahon explained her mission to downgrade her department to CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday on “State of the Union”: “The Department of Education does not educate one child. It does not establish any curriculum in any states. It doesn’t hire teachers. It doesn’t establish programs,” she said, vowing to send federal funds directly to states.

McMahon’s appointment springs from the same elite-bashing sentiments that led Trump to name Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump is trying to change America’s culture as well as its politics

Trump’s politics has long been hostile to intellectualism. And a president who was mocked by the establishment for years is now using his second administration to settle scores.

But his attempt to bring universities, the media and the medical establishment into line is raising fears for academic and press freedom and the sanctity of science in public health. And his ambitions go further — he’s even taken control of the Kennedy Center in Washington, put Fox News anchors on its board and promised to replace high culture with more mainstream programming.

This is all consistent with a president who draws most support from outside America’s cities and wealthy middle-class suburbs; and who believes he has a mandate for transformation after winning all seven swing states and the popular vote in 2024. It also speaks to the revolution he led in the Republican Party, which has shed its establishment past and now channels working-class constituencies that used to be Democratic.

But the administration’s latest actions also have dark parallels to the tactics of strongman leaders whose assaults on academia, the media, the law, and business led to the shriveling of basic freedoms, democracy and the proliferation of oligarchical corruption — for instance in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a hero of the MAGA movement.

Trump’s ultra-nationalist instincts and admiration for dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin — a rebuke to generations of US establishment foreign policy directed against Kremlin expansionism — is calling into doubt the international system built by national security elites after World War II and the system of alliances with democracies that are the foundation of US global power.

And his administration’s insistence that what it regards as an elite liberal corps of district court judges don’t have the right to interpret the Constitution in a way that constrains the power of an all-powerful president is now encroaching on the rule of law in America, even if the White House is yet to challenge the Supreme Court — perhaps in the belief that its conservative majority will validate some of the president’s own worldview.

How the MAGA project believes leftist elites compromise American greatness

Trump sketched out his approach in multiple policy areas in his searing inaugural address, which was a statement of intent to ensure his second term will impose the kind of fundamental change that his first failed to enshrine and of the belief that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”

In Trump’s eyes, that greatness has been compromised by leftist elite policies that shattered domestic manufacturing, suppressed freedom with public health mandates, inflicted radical liberal values in education, allowed unchecked migration, caused weakness abroad and allowed America’s friends to exploit its generosity. “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” Trump said after he was sworn in.

His program mirrors the goals of Project 2025, the playbook for conservative presidential leadership that Trump disowned during his campaign but that now helps explain the policy decisions of his administration. “The next conservative president must possess the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday American over the desires of the ruling elite,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts wrote in the foreword of the document. “Their outrage cannot be prevented; it must simply be ignored, and it can be.”

The synergy between Trump’s desire to punish sources of power that he believes have wronged him and the wider administration attempt to neutralize any attempt to neutralize constraints drove his showdown with big law firms Paul, Weiss. The president signed an executive order that suspended security clearances for the firm’s attorneys — a move that could have hampered its capacity to do act in cases that intersect with the federal government. The order was consistent with the president’s attempt to end what he calls the “weaponization” of justice — by targeting lawyers or firms that previously took part in prosecutions against him.

In a letter to Paul, Weiss employees, the firm’s chairman Brad Karp explained his decision to deal with the president, warning that the executive order could have “easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients.”

But the company’s decision provoked wider worries that the president will use his power to threaten law firms with ruin if they act on behalf of his opponents.

Administration claims liberal judges are illegitimate

Trump’s attempts to bring legal elites in private firms to heel mirror his assault on another establishment the president is trying to disempower — the federal judiciary. This is highlighted by his attacks on a US federal judge who sought to halt deportations of alleged gang members that the White House carried out under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Judge James Boasberg is trying to find out whether the administration flouted his orders to halt the deportations last weekend. His efforts have sparked the extraordinary spectacle of an attorney general directly attacking his legitimacy.

“This is an out-of-control judge, a federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy. And he cannot do it,” Bondi said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” which is presented by Maria Bartiromo — one of the Fox anchors Trump elevated to the board of the Kennedy Center. “They’re not immigrants. They’re illegal aliens who are committing the most violent crimes you can imagine on Americans, murder, rapes,” Bondi said of Venezuelans deported to a draconian El Salvador prison run by dictator Nayib Bukele, which has raised human rights concerns.

The administration’s use of a national security argument as justification for the deportations, which Trump claims are part of a Venezuelan invasion, may be designed to chill the judge’s attempts to gain clarity. While Bondi said those deported were criminals, the administration has so far not provided any case-by-case details on those involved. CNN has so far been unable to establish that any of the migrants belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the administration said was the reason for the deportations.

Trump’s aides keep arguing that Boasberg is a liberal judge. But he was first appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and then promoted by President Barack Obama. He has a long reputation as a nonpartisan judge. The claims that only Trump-appointed judges are fit to rule on Trump administration policies threaten to destroy the foundation of the legal system.

The deportations are one of the most prominent examples of the administration’s habit to applying vast executive power in an apparent attempt to outrun the capacity of the courts or its political opponents to impose constraints in real time.

But the ambition of leaving existing sources of elite power in Washington in tatters runs through all of the administration’s goals — from the seizure of control of the White House press pool from journalists to include pro-Trump outlets to trashing generations of US bipartisan policy with threats to annex Canada while officials repeatedly parrot Russian propaganda on Ukraine.

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