The Maga movement’s campaign to remake the US’s institutional and social fabric intensified this month, when the White House issued a handful of universities — now extended to the whole sector — with a “compact for academic excellence”.

The compact, which people associated with the initiative describe as open to feedback from the universities themselves, prescribes a range of reforms from the Maga wish list, on the penalty of losing federal funding. The demands range from the micromanaged — such as requiring single-sex toilets and a price cap on tuition for US students — to the ideological, including “merit-based” admissions with no consideration for historically oppressed groups.

The initiative adds to the pressure Donald Trump’s administration has already piled on US universities, notably Columbia and Harvard. As it so often does, the administration has latched on to real if minor shortcomings and used them as a fulcrum to advance its own goals. Indeed, Americans well beyond the Maga camp have harboured concerns that universities were too politically homogenous for their own good, let leftwing identity politics chill debate, and bungled their responsibilities in managing protests against Israel.