Outside the Beltway

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Approach to Domestic Institutions

The Trump administration treats personally disfavored American institutions the way past administrations treated foreign adversaries. His goal is political submission.

Michael Bailey · Monday, April 21, 2025 · 9 comments

From Textbook Model to the Administrative State

According to the classic textbook civics model, Congress makes the law, the president enforces it, and the courts interpret both the Constitution’s requirements and outer limits. A president’s formal powers go beyond merely executing the law, but whatever legitimate powers he exercises derive solely from the Constitution or from laws duly enacted by Congress. Implicit in this model is the assumption that each branch must act in good faith to uphold the Constitution’s integrity.

From the beginning, the civics model was under constant strain, and today it operates only partially, at most. Our modern democracy and administrative state are at once less and more than their original blueprint. Today’s political reality resembles a city that has expanded far beyond its original town center: echoes of the founding plan remain, and the original plan shaped subsequent developments, but both the structure and functions of government have changed—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, often in response to circumstances unforeseen by the Founders.

The executive branch under the modern administrative state routinely issues regulations tantamount to law. Since the early 1970s, regulations have arguably become the most common—and divisive—method by which the federal government advances its policy agenda. As many Americans are acutely aware—and some acutely resent—regulations are often directed at private actors. Issued under congressional authorization and pursuant to specific laws, regulations are a necessary component of the administrative state. Essentially, they are a reflection of modernity’s dependence on expertise.

Beyond regulations, presidents also employ executive orders (formerly known more commonly as proclamations)—which are not to be confused with regulations. Regulations are issued pursuant to law (with varying degrees of guidance) and specify binding rules on private citizens. They give flesh to law. Executive orders, in contrast, are directed at the president’s executive machinery and are meant to provide guidance to federal agencies. They are not intended to impose new penalties or criminalize conduct not provided for by law.

Despite their limits, executive orders or proclamations can have profound effects—directly or indirectly—on private citizens. At extreme ends of the ethical spectrum, consider Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 Japanese-American Internment Order. Less extreme but still significant, President Truman desegregated the military by executive order, and President Kennedy prohibited racial discrimination in federally funded housing. More recently, presidents have designated national monuments and dictated their use, often with successive presidents issuing orders at ideological cross-purposes.

In short, profoundly impactful executive action is hardly new.

Shakedowns

What is new—or at least dangerously amplified—is Donald Trump’s routine use of executive authority (whether issued formally as executive orders or by rhetorical threat) as a blunt instrument of political coercion against his perceived foes. He does not merely enforce laws or apply policy to broad categories of relevant actors. He targets institutions—public and private—that he deems disloyal to him personally, using the power of the federal government to compel submission, enforce ideological conformity, or punish resistance.

The case of Columbia University illustrates this dynamic clearly. After clashes with the administration over its handling of campus protests and curriculum, Columbia faced the loss of $400 million in federal grants. The university complied with the administration’s sweeping demands, including the imposition of federally approved external oversight of its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies programs. Fortunately, the federal Trump administration met Columbia’s capitulation with goodwill and restored its canceled funding.

I’m joking, of course.

Despite Columbia’s pathetic capitulation, federal funding has not been restored as of this writing. Columbia’s obeisance has yet to earn them their sought-after reprieve. The administration’s message: groveling is necessary but insufficient.

Harvard University, witnessing Columbia’s bathetic ordeal from the front row, has chosen a different path. Confronting an administration angry at its perceived lack of ideological diversity, its DEI programming, its historic use of racial and gender considerations in hiring, and its liberal faculty’s role in college governance, Harvard initially engaged in quiet negotiations with the administration. According to The New York Times, Harvard was informed that it would receive a letter detailing the administration’s demands—and it did.

They were blindsided—not by the letter’s arrival (though it was apparently sent by mistake), but by its contents. The demands are arguably unprecedented in scope and intrusiveness for federal interference with a private institution of higher education. Reportedly, they extend to hiring practices, admissions policies, DEI programs, student clubs and disciplines, and even mandates to ensure “viewpoint diversity” in academic departments.

According to The New York Times:

Steven Pinker, a prominent Harvard psychologist and president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said on Monday that it was “truly Orwellian and self-contradictory to have the government force viewpoint diversity on the university.” He said it would also lead to absurdities.

“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.

It’s worth noting the irony that these demands are issued by a president whose party has long claimed to oppose federal interference in private affairs. The same president who has called for the abolition of the Department of Education to return control to the states here eagerly commandeers the internal decision-making of a private university.

Harvard has rejected the letter’s demands outright. In response, the administration criticized Harvard for not continuing negotiations. More to our point, it also imposed a policy of retribution: it has not only frozen $2.2 billion in federal grants, but also threatened to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and floated the idea of restricting foreign student entry.

Recall: Harvard has not been found guilty of violating any law or civil rights requirements.

The administration has called for Harvard to return to the bargaining table, suggesting reconciliation is possible—if Harvard accepts the president’s demands and apologizes for fostering an atmosphere of antisemitism. But this is not traditional domestic political bargaining aimed at finding mutual agreement. This is a classic shakedown.

Hey Harvard, if you want the federal government’s “investment,” get on the Trump bus.

It’s unclear how this can appear to any fair-minded observer as ordinary democratic governance informed by the rule of law. Presidents do, of course, have latitude in their methods of applying the law, and it’s inherent in executive action to make discretionary decisions. But they do not have discretion to apply the law unfairly or in a manner inconsistent with constitutional principles.

In the Trump administration, we see the federal government effectively punishing a private institution not because it has been found guilty of a legal violation, but because it refuses to comply with unprecedented, extralegal demands that reach deep into its internal affairs.

This is a classic shakedown.

Governance vis-à-vis Vendetta

Harvard is but part of a larger pattern of presidential abuse. The president’s political opponents are targeted, threatened, presumed guilty without trial, and required to apologize and make other concessions. We witness this pattern in higher education—but also in Trump’s treatment of select law firms he despises for political reasons. He has gone as far as accusing these firms of posing national security threats.

This pattern—ultimatum, sanction, extraction of favors, and demands of loyalty—is not wholly unprecedented. But we have traditionally seen it used in foreign policy against hostile regimes, not in domestic governance. It is a dreadful model for resolving domestic disputes within a democracy, which should build coalitions among diverse interests—not rule through intimidation.

Instead, the Trump administration treats personally disfavored American institutions the way past administrations treated foreign adversaries. His goal is political submission.

Trump’s approach to governance does more than deviate from a textbook model of democratic accountability—it undermines the very norms of constitutional governance.

Consider: the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing bills of attainder—laws that punish individuals or groups without trial. The Framers recognized the danger of targeted reprisals. The rule of law requires government to act through pre-established procedures applied fairly to all.

Though the prohibition against bills of attainder (Article I, Section 9) binds Congress specifically, its spirit applies to the whole government. Presidents must exercise discretion, but not capriciously or vindictively. When the executive branch issues threats to compel ideological conformity or institutional obedience—beyond what the law requires—it violates the rule of law just as surely as if Congress had passed a bill of attainder.

The Trump administration’s treatment of Harvard—and of law firms representing politically inconvenient clients—blurs the line between governing and vengeance.

Trump’s defenders argue that his actions fulfill campaign promises. But campaign promises are often broad and only take on legal force when enacted into law. Campaign rhetoric cannot justify bullying as a domestic policy tool. Governance by intimidation is not a legitimate path for a constitutional republic.

Ironically, many of the president’s supporters have long criticized federal agencies like the IRS for opacity, caprice, and coercive enforcement—and not without reason. Yet they now tolerate, even applaud, Trump’s use of the same tactics on a larger scale and for openly political aims.

At stake is more than Harvard’s grant money. The beauty—and essence—of the rule of law is that it constrains the powerful as much as the governed. When a president treats domestic institutions as foreign adversaries—resorting to pressure campaigns, public shaming, and coercive bargaining—he undermines the framework of constitutional democracy.

Harvard is not a hostile foreign government. It may be a flawed institution, but it is also a vital part of our history, an engine of American scholarship, and a celebrated component of civil society. Of course, its history and merits do not shield it from legitimate criticism or legal accountability. But there are lawful ways to pursue punishment, and there are democratically acceptable ways to challenge harmful policies.

Shakedowns and showdowns are not that approach.

Regrettably, that is precisely what we find in the Trump administration. His ideology is not exactly conservative, libertarian, populist, or fascist. Above all, it is an ideology of retribution and vengeance—a politics of vendetta.