The two broad things I see are that academia has for years been claimed to be an extreme-left wing indoctrination complex, increasingly broadly targeted as thin

The two broad things I see are that academia has for years been claimed to be an extreme-left wing indoctrination complex, increasingly broadly targeted as things like climate change denial became Republican loyalty tests, and medicine became a special focus as anti-vaccination became a core belief. This works as a political ad telling people that they’re really hurting their enemies. The other big goal is probably financial: they really want to give rich people tax cuts, and there’s no way to do that without cutting social programs like Medicaid which even their voters want left untouched. They appear to be continuing to claim that there is so much waste and fraud that they’ll be able to pay for it by cutting that, and hoping that people will be distracted until it’s too late. Based on the 2017 version, I’m expecting some kind of time-delay where the tax cuts kick in immediately but cuts aren’t forced until after some very “optimistic” growth predictions fail to materialize.