In contrast to the chaos of Trump’s first term, Moynihan wrote, the current administration has shown an exceptional ability to coordinate its drive to subordinate private-sector targets:

I cannot think of any prior presidential administration that has invested so much preparation and political capital on asserting control of institutions they perceive as hostile, often using extralegal means to do so.

If you look at the assault on higher education, for example, it involves coordinated action by the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, the Department of State (which oversees visas for foreign students), the National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation (which houses the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Aging), the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture and the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. They had to work together to ensure a consistent response. Such coordinated efforts across agencies are normally difficult to organize; it reflects shared ideological goals, and a White House prioritization of those goals. Seemingly every part of the government was on board. That is deeply unusual.