Executive Summary

Since the Trump Administration began last January, we have endeavored to undertake a project to compile of every action the Trump administration is responsible for which has been deemed to have a negative impact on the public’s rights and liberties, material well-being, institutions, and security. By categorizing each action undertaken by the administration, and then scoring them on their relative scope, legal formality, and permanence of each action, we have been able to estimate the overall negative impact the administration and identify notable trends.

Through this analysis, two notable patterns have emerged. First, the administration has generally been unsuccessful in achieving the major policy objectives it has set for itself. Despite this, the administration has still had a significant and fairly consistent negative impact by way of executive fiat, reversing Obama era policies, altering the way policies are implemented, generally mismanaging the government, and carrying out numerous corrupt activities. Second, the Administration has been hit on nearly every major policy area to a significant degree, and tends to switch its focus from one policy area to the other frequently. This has caused the administration to alienate large swathes of the public and galvanized broad opposition. However, the inconsistency of the Administration also presents challenges to the opposition, as it denies it a clear issue to mobilize around comparable to Obamacare or the Iraq War. This highlights the dangers of opposing the Trump administration in a strictly reactive way, and illustrates the need for an appealing counter argument.

Introduction

During the 2016 election, an obvious issue arose surrounding Donald Trump and his brand of politics. While the candidate was obviously controversial and offensive to a large swath of the electorate, the sheer volume of controversies surrounding Trump’s candidacy, which broke nearly daily, made it for the average voter to lose track of them all and sift through them in any practical way. It was easy for the electorate to become desensitized to Trump’s politics, and tune out his actions as being simply white noise whether they were frivolous or highly relevant.

To rectify this issue, we endeavored to compile all the horrible actions of the Trump Administration into a single itemized omnibus. Beyond simple record keeping, the omnibus was intended to serve as a reference point for opponents of the administration to pull information from in political arguments. Likewise, it was hoped that the length of the omnibus would convey to observers a self-evident illustration of just how bad the Administration was. Six months into the administration the omnibus, which is available here, has expanded to include 346 items listed unbroken across 20 pages. We believe that this makes the omnibus successful in its original intent of conveying the sheer breadth of ways the Trump Administration is terrible.

However, as the omnibus continues to expand to a point where it’s no longer easy to navigate or process as a whole, falling victim to the same problem that it was intended to address. To that end, we intended from a very early date to begin feeding the omnibus into a system that would facilitate easy navigation for the user by allowing them to filter items by significance, time, subject area, and numerous other dimensions. To that end, we began building out the omnibus into a spreadsheet, which is available here, adding the relevant dimensions, filters, tables, and so forth.

We also wanted to go one step further and begin analyzing the items on the omnibus to identify relevant trends, which could then be analyzed to provide relevant insights. To that end, we have put together this report.

Overview Of The Report

This report is structured into three broad parts. The first part deals with the methods used in our analysis. In this part we outline the methods used to collect the items on the omnibus, and then how we categorized and scored them. In the second part, we present overall trends in the Administration’s actions, both over time and by policy area, then try to dig deeper to analyze what these trends indicate in terms of the Administration’s effectiveness and strategy. Finally, we draw on our findings to present insights, and consider their potential consequences.

Readers can feel free to read the report in any order they’d like. Readers who aren’t particularly interested in the methods used in our analysis can simply skip to the results, if they feel so inclined.

Side Note: Acknowledging Our Political Goals

We don’t deny that the omnibus and this report, their intended audience, and their intended ends, i.e. convincing everyone the Trump Administration is bad and should be thrown out, are overtly political. Of course it is. Likewise, we acknowledge that the assumptions on which the omnibus and this report are based predominantly appeal to left wing sensibilities. That’s not a problem, in and of itself, and for the most part I don’t believe the primary audience of this report will see it as such. But it’s understood that this may be a turnoff to more neutral observers.

Still, I’d like to emphasize that the report should have value that are not undermined by its ideological bent. Ideologies and biases are necessary frameworks for understanding the world, rather than the sort of corrupting, distorting image they’re often portrayed as. By default, everyone has biases, we’re just acknowledging ours to be honest. Ideologies can mislead people, of course, but this primarily happens when they allow their beliefs to become ungrounded. To that end, we’d stress that it’s more important to be honest and retain a firm footing in relatively uncontroversial empirical data and methodological rigor rather than try to totally scrub any personal ideology out of the analysis, which is impossible and strips out important qualitative context. We hope that it’s apparent that we try to do this.

A helpful analogy would be to think of our assessment as being like a prosecutor in a court case. We want our argument to be based on sound evidence and universally appealing reasoning. However, we’ll also be visceral if it helps strengthen our case by illustrating why we draw the conclusions we do. In any event, we’re not going to make the other side’s case for them in a shallow attempt to appear impartial.

Methodology

Compiling The Omnibus

As a first step in our process, we have attempted to compile a comprehensive list of every action the administration has enacted since the beginning of the administration which have been deemed to have a negative impact in some way. These include actions taken by the Trump Administration and the people with it ranging from controversial statements to major policy changes. We try to include everything, even if we feel something isn’t exceptionally important, simply because we want to be as comprehensive as possible. We include major actions by the Republican congress, with the reasoning being that the Administration is enabling them and vice versa. Similarly, bad decision made by the Supreme Court which hinged on a vote by Neil Gorsuch are also included, since ultimately Trump is responsible for place Gorsuch onto the court in the first place.

Each of these actions must have at least one or more credible source that they are linked to. To this end, we’ve regularly scoured news sites and government webpages. We also frequently search sites critical of the Trump Administration, such as anti-Trump sub-reddits, as these would naturally be places that would volunteer such news stories. Naturally, it is necessary to be discerning when we do this, and we discount items that seem too speculative, or represent what is, at best, a very niche view. With few exceptions, we tend to require that a story be covered in the mainstream media, such as the New York Times, or sites like Vox which have some acknowledged level of bias but which is tempered with something of a wonky ethos that tends to stop them from tipping in to unsubstantiated polemics. We try to avoid a source that would be obviously biased, such as the web page of a public advocacy, but sometimes we’ll accept such sites if they link their posts to hard regulations.

Once the actions are collected and itemized, they’re entered into a list, along with their source and the timestamp on the source.

Categorizing Actions

As have divided the items on the list into four broad categories. These categories correspond not only to the general policy area they relate to, but also the way in which their impact manifests:

Civil Liberties and Human Rights – Issues relating to topics concerned with individual and collective rights, with the main consequences experienced primarily as an abridgement of rights

Economic and Physical Well Being – Issues relating to the material circumstances of the world we live in, and the functioning of the economic system, with the main consequences experienced as a degradation of conditions, material loss, or inequality

Institutions – Issues related the legal frameworks, organizational structures, and practices underlying a properly functioning of and fair government, with the main consequence experienced as dysfunction

National Security and Foreign Policy – Issues related to the standing and security of the United States, with the main consequences experienced as a deterioration of national security or global standing

Below these, the items are broken into twelve sub-categories relating to the general policy areas they relate to.

Civil Liberties and Human Rights

Civil Rights – Issues related to the rights of US citizens, such as equal rights, enfranchisement and access issues and gender equality and reproductive rights

Human Rights – Issues related to more broad human rights, US citizen or otherwise, typically under international initiatives

Law Enforcement – Issues related to the enforcement of laws, criminal and non-criminal, and the functioning of the criminal justice system, including draconian tough on crime measures, and moves that undermine gun control and attempts to combat right wing extremism

Immigration – Issues related to non-citizens, and new citizens residing in the United States through enforcement and deportation actions and visas and special programs

Economic and Physical Well Being

Environment – Issues related to the natural environment, including conservation and animal protections, energy and climate change, and green infrastructure

Crony Capitalism – Issues related to rigging the economic system to redistribute income upwards at the expense of the little guy and fair play. This includes undermining the system of embedded capitalism by showing preferential treatment to corporations and allowing them to shirk their responsibilities, or tax cuts and other moves that exacerbate inequality

Healthcare and Social Spending – Issues related to providing economic assistance and services to people, including healthcare, education and student loans, and other social spending

Labor, Consumer, and Market Protections – Issues related to laws and practices aimed at protecting people from exploitation, enhancing economic empowerment, and offsetting market failures, including labor, finance, consumer protections, and trade

Institutions

Abuses of Power – Issues related to flagrant misuse of government power for personal empowerment/enrichment, including conflicts of interest and legal and ethical Issues

Civil Service and Regulations – Issues related to the day to day operations of the government, including the staffing and practices relating to the civil service, the process of issuing regulations, and transparency

Politics – Issues related to political norms and practices, including political norms and campaigning, the media, and issues of straight forward antagonism

National Security and Foreign Policy

National Security and Foreign Policy – With subcategories of national security which relate to more domestic threats and foreign policy which deals with overall diplomacy

Overall, there are four broad categories, twelve mid level categories, and thirty sub categories. An illustration of how the categorization system is arranged is provided below.

There are naturally some issues with which categories any given item should fit in, or what the specific difference is between different categories. For example, Crony Capitalism and Abuses of Power tend to have a lot of overlap. One can rig the economic system out of an ideological commitment, or they may do it just to advantage themselves and their clients. Generally, the closer you get to Trump individual, the more likely an action is to be viewed as an Abuse of Power, but there’s not really a clear line (the rule of thumb is “if it’s in Trump’s cabinet or family, it’s an Abuse of Power”). Still, for the most part the categories are broad enough that these sorts of ambiguities aren’t an issue.

Measuring Impact

Challenges

Measuring the relative impact of the different actions of the Trump administration is a daunting task, for numerous reasons. First, because doing a truly thorough and rigorous estimation would require a large commitment in time and effort to estimate. Ideally, every item on the list would go through some form or another of impact analysis to determine things like the forecasted monetary cost of a policy, how many people would be affected, etc. I’ll be up front in saying that I don’t have nearly the capacity for that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d like to think I’m pretty smart and hard working, but of course I’m not. There’s an entire industry of think tanks, universities, and government agencies dedicated to doing this, and not even they get everything. So realistic, I, a guy with a laptop doing this in his limited spare time, would be hopelessly out of my depth to attempt that. I can, of course, pull the analyses put together by said think tanks, universities, government agencies, etc. and use them to inform how I weight things, but that’s a luxury, not something I can realistically expect in all cases.

Second, as I noted above, the way policies impact people are fundamentally different across categories. There is some overlap; of course, rigging the economic system in a way that exacerbates inequality will also reflect a loss of institutional functionality, on some level, draconian tough on crime measures can have an economic cost along with a loss of rights, and so forth. But on some level this is comparing apples and oranges. It’s not impossible, but it’s not straightforward.

The impact involved in the category of “Economic and Physical Well Being” could typically be expressed in monetary terms. This isn’t to say all the costs are experienced as strictly an economic loss, repealing the Medicaid expansion will cost lives as much as money, but you could figure “expected years lost” or some other measure which you could convert into monetary terms if you just want an overall apples to apples measure of impact (platitudes of “you can’t put a cost on X aside”, economists do just that all the time). But items in the category “Civil Liberties and Human Rights” are basically going to be measured in things like political disenfranchisement, denial of basic human rights, and so forth. This kind of impact is clear enough, there are ways the loss of ones rights materially affects a person, and you can reasonably say when one abridgement of a person’s rights is worse than another. But rights are an abstract concept; they’re not “quantifiable” so to speak. And things get even more abstract when you’re talking about the institutions. The degradation of the legal framework and informal practices which are necessary for a functioning (and desirable) government and civil society is obviously a cost, but there’s no metric for it.

Third, half of any discussion of costs is subjective. Even in the relatively straightforward realm of economic impacts, you have to take into account things that are going to lead different people to different conclusions. To give an example, global warming will have a severe economic impact, but that impact will mostly be experienced decades down the line, so any meaningful economic model to measure that impact in any meaningful way. You need to include some sort of discount rate. How high should that discount rate be? That’s essentially a matter of opinion. And how do you prioritize economic costs against rights against national security against the proper functioning of the government/society? Opinions will differ. Ideally, we might have some sort of open democratic way of evaluating the relative importance of different items, but for the time being I have to play that by ear.

This isn’t to say the whole undertaking is hopeless. There are concrete things tie the impact scores of different policies to, and there are filters were can use to weight their relative importance to different groups of people. Indeed, considering the various prisms people view issues through is important in understanding how to appeal to people. But there’s no perfectly objective and omniscient perspective you can view policy through.

Additionally, there are also some issues of double counting. If you look through the omnibus, you’ll notice that some items get referenced multiple times. For example, an Obama era policy might be frozen, and then a few months later it may be repealed. Citing these instances separately can be worthwhile. They can help track the progress of a policy, and you’ll notice that the list has gotten “smarter” as it progresses, making references to previous items. Likewise, some items, like the harsh immigration measures enacted in the early days of the administration, have been continuously impacting people ever since, and therefore should be referenced multiple times.

Measurements

In order to try to ground my impact scores, I started by giving them ordinal scores, from 1 to 10, based on three dimensions.

Scale/Scope of Impact – Basically, how many people are impacted and to what degree. Generally, a score of 1-2 means nobody is really affected, except indirectly in some vague way. A score of 3-4 indicates hundreds could be severely affected, thousands would be moderately affected, and/or millions may be potentially affected in some vague indirect way. A score of 5-6 indicates thousands would be severely impacted, millions could be moderately affected, and/or tens of millions could be potentially affected in some vague indirect way. A score of 7-9 Indicates tens of millions or more would be severely affected or hundreds of millions or billions would be moderately affected. A score of 10 means all of humanity could be severely affected.

Formality – Generally speaking, the more formal a policy is, the more relevant it is. If an administration makes a law to enact policy, that’s a bigger deal than if the administration chooses to implement policies in different ways. Laws impose more restrictions, set precedents that inform future behavior they leave a lasting impact on institutions, etc. This measure is meant to capture that. A score of 1-2 reflects a totally informal practice. A score of 3-4 means enacting a different way of interpreting or implementing laws without necessarily changing them. A score of 5-6 means an executive order or new regulation issued by an agency. A score of 7-8 would indicate laws passed, 9 would indicate a major law passed, and 10 would be equivalent to a full constitutional amendment.

Permanence – How hard it would be to reverse a policy. This can mean politically, such as how hard it would be to repeal a law or a court decision. Or it can mean what’s materially possible. For example, if a new policy destroys a delicate eco system simply changing the law back won’t undo the damage. A score of 1 indicates that something’s completely ephemeral. 2-3 indicates they could be reverse more or less at will, provided sufficient public pressure is applied. 4-5 might indicate a more concerted push in terms of campaigning, legal challenges, etc. 6-7 would indicate that a Democratic congress/administration would likely be needed to change them, but could do so with relatively little effort. A score of 8-9 would indicate massive policy initiatives would need to be undertaken, and 10 would indicate something is effectively irreversible.

Additionally, it’s generally accepted by most people that the significance of an action is typically dependent on how much a person takes an active part in it. Failing to prevent a bad thing is not as bad as causing a bad thing, and ending something positive is not seen as being as bad as starting something negative. We shouldn’t get too involved in all the various hypotheticals* that people have made to illustrate the issue, but it’s still worth adding this additional dimension:

Active/Passive – Generally speaking, most people tend to view the morality of actions on the basis of how actively on participates in them, and while this can lead to a number of absurd hypotheticals* it’s a good standard to apply. A score of 1 indicates that the Trump administration isn’t really doing anything (maybe they’re just incompetently sending mixed messages), a score of 2 is indicating that Trump is failing to act when he should be or perhaps is only proposing doing something, a score of 3 indicates the Trump administration is reversing a good policy enacted by Obama or others, and a score of 4 means that this is something the Trump administration is actively imposing on the world.

Once these scores are assigned, they are used to calculate a score for overall impact. The scores for scope, formality, and permanence and multiplied together, then weighted the active/passive score. The active/passive score is multiplied by 0.25, such that a totally active policy would see it’s full impact realized and an unintentional gaffe would see 75% of it’s value discounted. The resulting value would be the overall impact of an action.

For good measure, once the scores are assigned to an action, the scores are then arranged from least to greatest. We then go down the list, comparing each item with the score of it’s immediately adjacent items. If it seems like one action has been given a score higher than another we intuitively believe should actually be ranked higher, we adjust the underlying scores until the overall impact scores seem appropriate. We went through the list a few times, and once we’ve determined that no items seem to be out of order take the scores as more or less sufficient.

Admittedly this score is far from perfect. As much as We’ve tried to ground the score in some tangible dimension, and take steps to try to keep all the scores in perspective, it’s still inevitably a subjective score based largely on personal intuition. For this reason, we’d caution against taking the scores as an exact measurement of significance, but rather as a general representation of relative significance, and the best that can be done given the circumstances.

The scores are accessible online, and we were encourage observers to tinker with the metric themselves. Democratized systems of review incorporating a broad variety of perspectives can be powerful tools for finding the “true” value of something.

Results

With all the items in the omnibus categorized and scored, we can now begin to assess general patterns in all the terrible things the Trump Administration has done so for.

Overall Scores

Rankings

Overall, it was determined that the top 10 worst actions committed by the administration are as follows:

Appointed Niel Gorsuch, a candidate more conservative than Antonine Scalia, to the Supreme Court after almost a year long effort to block Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, eventually using the nuclear option, barring filibusters on Supreme Court nominations, to do so Withdrew from the Paris accord on climate change It was revealed that during the Election, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who had promised “damaging information” against Hillary Clinton which he knew was connected to Russian intelligence gathered to help elect his father, very likely breaking the law and making plain Trump’s willingness to participate in foreign meddling in US elections and very likely broke the law to do so Fired James Comey under suspicious circumstances, possibly in retaliation for his role in escalating the Russian probe, and then attempted to pass blame onto Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, then admitted he fired Comey over the Russian probe and threatened him with implied tapings of their meetings Halved the total number of refugees allowed into the country from 110,000 to 50,000, blocked refugees from Syria indefinitely, suspended refugees from all countries for 120 days, and suspended new visas to individuals coming from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen for 30 days Broke numerous campaign promises on healthcare by introducing and promoting the American Health Care Act (AHCA) which, among other things, slashes $880 billion from Medicaid and substantially reduces coverage Provided the tie breaking vote to defund family planning clinics Initiated an expansive new 5 year plan to increase offshore drilling Came under investigation for obstruction of justice The budget makes substantial cuts to social programs, including education, health insurance for children, and UN peacekeeping operations, to name a few programs

And here are the top 5 worst actions by general policy area:

Economic and Environmental Policy

Withdrew from the Paris accord on climate change Broke numerous campaign promises on healthcare by introducing and promoting the American Health Care Act (AHCA) which, among other things, slashes $880 billion from Medicaid and substantially reduces coverage Initiated an expansive new 5 year plan to increase offshore drilling The budget makes substantial cuts to social programs, including education, health insurance for children, and UN peacekeeping operations, to name a few programs Unveiled a tax plan which, among other things slashes the Corporate income tax rate dramatically and eliminates the estate tax

Civil Rights and Social Issues

Halved the total number of refugees allowed into the country from 110,000 to 50,000, blocked refugees from Syria indefinitely, suspended refugees from all countries for 120 days, and suspended new visas to individuals coming from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen for 30 days Provided the tie breaking vote to defund family planning clinics Issued tough on crime executive orders that reverse course on police reform with the excuse of confronting a non-existent crime wave Launched a mass deportation drive that has put countless immigrants who have built their lives in the US in the crosshairs. It’s estimated that 700 were arrested in the first week of the drive. “Prioritized” the deportation of nearly all undocumented immigrants everywhere, potentially for offenses as minor as traffic violations, setting the stage for mass deportations

Institutional Issues

Appointed Niel Gorsuch, a candidate more conservative than Antonine Scalia, to the Supreme Court after almost a year long effort to block Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, eventually using the nuclear option, barring filibusters on Supreme Court nominations, to do so It was revealed that during the Election, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who had promised “damaging information” against Hillary Clinton which he knew was connected to Russian intelligence gathered to help elect his father, very likely breaking the law and making plain Trump’s willingness to participate in foreign meddling in US elections and very likely broke the law to do so Fired James Comey under suspicious circumstances, possibly in retaliation for his role in escalating the Russian probe, and then attempted to pass blame onto Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, then admitted he fired Comey over the Russian probe and threatened him with implied tapings of their meetings Came under investigation for obstruction of justice Overall, was determined to be the least transparent administration in decades

Foreign Policy and National Security

Laid the groundwork for a humanitarian crisis in Yemen Possibly violated the Constitution when he ordered a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Also warned Russia, and by extension Syria, in advance of the strike. Reportedly has generally created turmoil at the National Security Council Removed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the National Security Council and added his top political adviser, Steve Bannon Leaked classified information to the Russians, which is not only a breach of national security, but has also led US allies cautious about sharing classified information with the US.Trump leak

Overall Impact

Looking over the six months as a whole, bad policies by the Administration have mainly had consequences to the material welfare of the public through Economic and Environmental Policy. The impact on rights and freedoms via Civil and Human Rights issues has also been significant, primarily due to immigration, while damage to institutions has also been significant due large, though not exclusively to the Administration’s many scandals.

Trends over Time

Pace

The early days of the Trump Administration saw a burst of harmful policies, as Trump issued a flurry of executive orders, while Trump and Congress both moved to halt implementation of Obama era policies. Congress, in particular, made extensive use of the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overrule regulations within 60 legislative days after being enacted. The pace of bad policies slowed in the following months, as the Administration ran out of quick victories and the administration became involved in scandals and failed to effectively coordinate support. More recently there’s been a slight uptick in the pace of bad policies as the administration moves from merely halting Obama era regulations to the more involved task of repealing them entirely.

Policy Areas

In the early days of the Trump Administration, there was a significant focus on issues affecting civil liberties and human rights, most notably immigration, with a large component affecting economic issues and the environment. However, as time went on the administration’s focus shifted to issues effecting economic and physical well-being. This largely conforms to the general narrative of the Trump Administration, wherein the early days were dominated by the drama surrounding the travel ban and efforts to undo Obama era regulations, before alternately, to major policy initiatives on healthcare, the budget, and climate change later in the spring and early summer. This should not be surprising, as the travel ban and regulations issued by the executive branch are areas where the Administration had significant freedom to act unilaterally, while healthcare laws and the budget requires legislation that is larger and more complex.

The Administration’s deleterious effects on institutions have remained largely stable over time. The Russia scandal has periodically burst to the surface, as new revelations of apparent collusion and cover-ups spring to the surface; however the scandal has not developed into a major issue that predominates everything, at least not yet. The day to day political scandals that tend to dominate the headlines, wherein Trump antagonizes the media or says something reckless, are a very small part of the whole picture so far, mainly because they have very little substantial impact. Of course, these things do accumulate, and they can gradually erode political norms over time, but this would be a gradual process. There areas where Trump has significantly undermined the political process, most notably by appointing Neil Gorsuch as well as a series of low key actions, such as ending the Johnson Amendment and efforts to make it easier to sue the media, which will have considerable long term impact. At the same time, there’s been a steady corrosion of the day to day functions of government, as the Administration has left the civil service directionless, understaffed, burdened by restrictions, and subject to a climate of paranoia.

National security and foreign policy issues have been largely similar to political ones. There have been several instances where the administration has antagonized America’s allies and engaged in an incoherent diplomacy. These will gradually degrade America’s geopolitical position over time. However, the impact has been relatively minor so far simple because there have been few major foreign policy initiatives to speak of.

The Russian Scandal

Over time the issue has escalated in importance. In the early days of the administration, the scandal largely involved the Trump Administration downplaying and failing to properly account for its suspicious contacts with Russia. However, more recently, more bold and, likely impeachable attempts to undermine the investigation and new revelations directly tying Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to Russian meddling in the election have escalated things to a point where it may lead to a scandal that will either consume the administration or bring it down completely.

This is reflected in the data, with events relating to the unfolding Russian scandal taking up a larger portion of the overall impact of the Administration. In the early days of the administration, the Russia scandal accounted for around 5% of the awful things surrounding the administration, and that has increased to above 10% in the last few months, with an all-time high in the Trump Administration’s 18% (i.e. after firing James Comey). If we use Google Searches for the term “Trump Russia” as a proxy for public interest, then it seems that sustained public interest in the scandal is fairly high compared to other issues. It’s also attracted more public attention than the Clinton Email scandal ever did, so it seems reasonable to assume the scandal is somewhere beyond being a niche partisan issue that the broader public rolls it’s eyes at.

On the other hand, there’s reason to be skeptical that the scandal is gaining momentum. The scandal has unfolded in spurts, with shocking developments ever few weeks with quiet in between. As Nate Silver Fivethirtyeight has noted in early May, this pattern has made it difficult for the story to gain momentum in the public discourse. Silver was overstating the case; the issue is far more prominent than it was during the election. But the basic point was basically sound and there’s little reason to think this has changed. Public interest does indeed spike after each new revelations causing a spike in the level of public interest which dissipates very quickly, with no apparent upward trend over time.

There’s some evidence that the Russian scandal has bogged down the administration, as peaks in the Russian scandal tend to coincide with relatively slow periods of other policy making. So if the scandal did expand to massive proportions it may indeed grind the administration to a halt. But on the other hand, the link between the Russian scandal and the pace of other policy making is not exceptionally strong, and may simply be a coincidence. And this makes sense. Even if the scandal did “consume” the White House, the broader administration of appointees carrying out the day to day affairs of government and issuing regulations would largely be unaffected.

Deep Insights

Now that we have considered the general trends and impact of the Administration’s corrosive policies, we can dig a little deeper into the numbers to gain insights on how the administration operates, both in terms of how it goes about affecting policy change, and how it appears to carry out its strategy

Effectiveness

Overall, the Administration has not been very effective at achieving major policy victories through legislative action. While a number of ambitious proposals have been proposed in the early months of the Trump Presidency, so far the administration and the Republican congress have been failed to achieve any major legislative victories, with the possible exception of confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme. The areas where the administration, and the Republican Congress, has been most effective in achieving turning policy changes into law came simply through halting or reversing Obama era regulations, particularly in the first few days of the administration when congress could use the Congressional Review Act to throw out Obama era regulations. There are areas where the administration has been able to take active steps to implement major initiatives through executive fiat, such as the travel ban, but most of the active policy initiatives of the Administration are a matter of executive fiat and informal implementation which could, in theory, be easily reversed.

This is all evident when one breaks down the policies into different categories. There are only eight instances of active policy that have both a significant scope and a high degree of legal formality, and of those only were legislation. Additionally, two of those are associated with the Russian scandal more are more notable more as reckless unilateral actions which violate important laws and would have a profound impact if unaddressed, rather than a successful effort to change the law. Collectively, these represent only 10% of the Administration’s overall impact. Overall, actions that have been rated as an active shift in policy, rather than a mere proposal or reversal of existing policy, have a lower average score in terms of scale/scope, formality, and permanence, meaning they’re relatively modest, don’t affect substantial changes to the law, and could be easily reversed.

However in and of themselves, the combination of informal policies, policy reversals, and executive actions have still had a significant impact. Active policies at the level of implementation and executive fiat account for roughly 40% of the administration’s overall impact. Policies to reverse Obama era policies represent another 30%. Similarly, while many of the more ambitious policy proposals have not been implemented as of yet, they can still have a significant disruptive impact. For example, the uncertainty about whether or not Republicans will repeal the American Care Act has made many uncertain as made insurance companies unwilling to enter certain markets, thereby impacting people’s healthcare regardless of whether or not the ACA is actually repealed. For this reason, we estimate the impact of proposed major policy changes as being about 4%, even though they haven’t been formally enacted.

Strategy and Focus

In terms of strategy, the administration has been highly unfocused. The administration has focused on more topics than others, but they haven’t concentrated their efforts and have instead hit more or less every policy area, almost at random.

This can be demonstrated several ways. The first would be to look at the distribution across policy areas. If you lay something out from greatest to least and then fit a curve to it, you’ll typically be able to get an idea of the amount of systematic concentration in place. If there are a lot factors leading to concentration, then the slope will be very steep on left hand side and then taper off and become nearly flat as you go on. Where there’s very little concentration/coordination going on, the curve will slope downward gradually. To give some real world examples of this, a coordinated campaign will have a small portion of attacks with very high fatalities, an industry where there are a lot of economies to scale will have two or three companies who predominate, and a highly disciplined and coordinated administration would score huge victories that far outstrip everything else in one topic area that it prioritizes.

If we wanted to be very thorough and summarize this into a single index value, we’d actually fit the curve of an exponential function to the distribution and estimate the value of the exponent. The higher the value of the exponent, the greater the concentration. Conversely, if the value is close to or less than 1, that implies the distribution is more or less random.

Looking at the impact of the Administration’s policies, we find that the distribution is a pretty flat slope. The absolute value of the exponent is only 0.65 when speaking about the distribution across policy areas, and only about 1 when speaking about specific policy areas. Overall, it implies very little coordination. is also very low, and indicates the Administration is more or less hitting almost every policy area almost at random.

We can also demonstrate this by figuring a concentration index. If we take the percentage of the impact in each type of issue, square them, and add them up, we can figure an index value for concentration, with a 1 implying absolute concentration and 0 imply no concentration at all. Doing this for broad topic areas, we find that the administration has a concentration of only about 0.1, implying a very low level of concentration. If we break things down to the level of specific issues, that index value goes even lower to around 0.05. We can also conclude that, generally speaking, the area doesn’t speaking, the administration doesn’t focus broadly across one favored topic, which would be the case if the mid level index was much higher than the low level index value. Nor does it seem the administration the focuses on specific topics within policy areas, which would be the case if the mid level index value and low level index value were almost the same. Once again, these numbers implies the administration is highly unfocused.

Public Reaction

If we gauge public reaction to the Trump Administration’s policies using Google Searches as a proxy and compare it to the items on the omnibus, we see a general pattern. Public interest in a given topic tends to spike after major new developments. For example, we can see that public interest in healthcare spikes in March when Republican efforts to repeal healthcare were in full swing, and again in early May when those efforts were renewed.

Interest in environmental issues spiked after Trump pulled out from the Paris Accords.

Interest in immigration spiked after the travel ban.

However, as with the Russian scandal, public interest tends to dissipate very quickly. There is no general upward trend, nor is there a sustained plateau. Likewise, not all significant developments have a corresponding spike in public interest. Low key moves and obscure regulatory changes largely don’t attract public interest, even if they have significant ramifications. For example, interest in healthcare did not increase in late May, when the Trump administration implemented a number of regulatory changes that will significantly undermine healthcare for millions of people. While the withdrawal from the Paris accord caused significant public attention, the repeal of numerous environmental standards or plans to significantly expand offshore drilling a few weeks later did not generate similar widespread public interest.

Analysis

Taking all these observations together, we can make numerous general observations about the Trump Administration.

Observation 1: The Administration Has Been Ineffective At Enacting Major Policies, But Has Still Had A Significant Impact Through A High Volume Of Piece Meal Actions

Despite holding virtually all the levers of power, the Trump Administration and Republicans have failed to pass any major legislation, and while the Republican’s efforts to repeal the American Care Act and dramatically reshape healthcare are dangerously close to passing, it still seems unlike that the Administration will achieve a major policy victory any time soon. This, we can assume, is likely due to the inability of the Administration to properly work the mechanisms of government, its failure to wield influence effectively, it’s penchant for crafting obviously flawed policies, and its tendency to maneuver itself into nigh on unwinnable political battles.

Of course, the fact that the only thing preventing massive harm to the rights and material welfare of the average American and irreversible corruption of the socio-economic system and government institutions is the administration’s own incompetence should be little comfort. If the Administration eventually did get its act together and pass even a portion of the major policy initiatives it has proposed, the results would be disastrous. Likewise, the Administration has still been able to do significant harm through these informal actions. Executive powers allow Trump considerable freedom to alter existing policies and determine how others are implemented. Even beyond this, Trump has caused considerable damage simply by being recklessness, corruption, mismanaging the day to day business of government, stacking the federal bureaucracy with corrupt incompetent ideologues, degrading political norms, or simply failing to act. Even if the administration became consumed by the Russia scandal, or perhaps some other scandal, this would still largely be the case.

There’s also the disturbing possibility that the Administration will respond its failure to operate within the system by simply breaking the system. Republicans in Congress have already done a good deal of this, most notably in the case of Neil Gorsuch, and they have demonstrated their willingness to hold the Administration accountable when it seriously misbehaves. And breaking the system by going outside of proper procedures is something the administration has done pretty frequently. Even beyond the much publicized conflict of interest cases and the violation of election laws, he does this fairly frequently. For example, the administration is already being sued by 17 states for preempting public debate when crafting his new policy on student loans. His initial travel ban was drafted by congressional staffers, and part of the reason it was thrown out was because of executive overreach. As noted in the section on trends above, actions like this have mostly been a steady, corrosive influence on governing institutions, rather than something that seems to be happening more and more frequently. However, such practices could metastasize rapidly if not checked.

Observation 2: The Administrations Has Hit Nearly Every Policy Area To A Significant Degree And Tends To Jump Around From Issue To Issue Rapidly

As noted, the Administration has tended to shift its focus frequently, and has hit on a wide variety of issues over its relatively short existence. Indeed, we can go one step further and say that the Administration’s approach seems almost random.

There are two likely explanations for why this is. The first is that this is due to the same lack of direction that has made the Administration generally ineffective at achieving major policy victories. The administration isn’t focused because it can’t focus, and there’s little in the way of strategic plans. The second would be that the Trump Administration, as a representative of an aggressive form of movement conservative with a broad ideological set of objectives. In this view, Trump and his underlings don’t prioritize particular issues because they all work towards achieving the same conservative view of society.

Some may wonder which of these two explanations is more likely. It’s not an idle consideration, since they imply different strategies for opposition. If Trump administration is primarily incompetent, then it stands to reason they can be confounded through tactical actions. If the Trump Administration is acting on the basis of a broad right wing ideology, then it makes sense to counter it with a similarly broad left wing ideology. I could probably dig through the evidence to find support for one explanation or the other, but I think it’s somewhat of a false choice, since the former explanation refers to means while the later refers to ends. It’s probably a mix of both explanations, and there’s no reason the opposition to the Trump administration can’t employ tactical guerrilla actions to frustrate the administration’s efforts while also engaging in broad movement building.

Generally speaking, the breadth and inconsistency with which the Trump Administration has been pursuing policy change presents both opportunities and challenges to anyone hoping to resist it. On the one hand, the fact that every issue the left cares about has been touched on, typically to similar extents, means that he’s galvanizing a broad range of groups. There’s no divide and conquer, and at any given time, someone has some reason to push back on something. And if there were ever a time to build the left into a cohesive movement based around shared ideology and an appealing message for social change, now would be the time to do it.

But at the same time, this also has a number of potential risks. If the left simply opposes Trump reactively, that means that, to some degree, they’re inheriting the same lack of coordination. And unlike the Administration, grassroots opposition does not have the benefit of being a permanent organization funded by tax payer money. As the administration jumps around from one topic to another, it’s difficult for the individual components of the opposition to remain mobilized, as it may be months before Trump pursues any significant action on a given topic. When the Trump Administration does return to a topic, it may act quickly or in a low key way, thereby bypassing a public backlash. This is what happened to some degree with healthcare, and to some degree has happened on more or less every significant policy area. There’s no single touchstone issue or framework that unites and mobilizes the opposition to the Trump Administration in the same way as Obamacare crystalized opposition to the Obama Administration and the Iraq War (and then the financial crisis) crystalized opposition to the Bush Administration.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there is no conclusion at this time, and there can be no conclusion until the Trump Administration is ended, preferably in massive electoral defeat, and the last remnants of its toxic legacy are undone and those it has harmed are made whole. For now, we will continue to maintain and analyze the omnibus; periodically releasing progress reports, in the hopes that doing so will help galvanize public opposition and aid in the task of long term movement building.