Overview

In our effort to track the consequences of the Trump Administration we conduct regular analyses of the its policies once every three months. In our most recent analysis, we’ve found that the last three months, between April 20th and July 19th, 2018, may have been among the most consequential since Trump took office. It saw particularly notable developments in the areas of immigration, trade, labor protections and foreign policy. Additionally, the last three months have shown an administration that appears to be more focused and which diverging from Republican orthodoxy as its increasingly driven by the policy priorities of the Trump White House and insurgent Republicans, who ideologically tend to skew more towards parochial nationalism.

Introduction

During the 2016 election, an 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 easy for the average voter to lose track of them all and difficult for them sift through it all in any meaningful way. This made it easy for the electorate to become desensitized to Trump’s antics, and tune out his actions as so much white noise, even if what he was doing was highly consequential.

To rectify this, we endeavored to compile all the horrible actions of the Trump Administration into a single comprehensive list. This list, the Trump Omnibus, was intended to serve as a reference for opponents of the Trump administration in political debates, particularly in arguments which involved the phrase “c’mon, what has he done that’s that bad”. Likewise, it was hoped that the length of the omnibus would be a self-evident illustration of just what a disaster the Trump administration has been for the country to observers.

One and a half years into the administration the omnibus has expanded to include more than 891 unique actions taken by the administration, touching on virtually ever aspect of American life in an unbroken list stretching across 63 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 items listed on the omnibus continue to pile it, it quickly reached a point where it’s impossible for a casual observer to fully process it all, and there was a danger that the project would fall victim to the same problem that it was intended originally intended to address.

To address this we wanted to go one step further and provide regular analyses of all the actions recorded within the omnibus to put everything into perspective. This would also enable us to identify relevant trends or interesting patterns in terms of how the Administration operates. To that end, we’ve produced this report.

How The Omnibus and This Report Was Prepared

The actions recorded in the Trump Omnibus are compiled on an ongoing basis throughout the year. The Omnibus uses a variety of sources, including the mainstream media outlets, press releases from federal agencies, and reputable NGOs such as the ACLU. When actions are added into the omnibus their sources and dates are recorded.

Once actions have been recorded, into they’re categorized into appropriate policy areas. First they’re sorted based on what they impact. Namely, are the actions abridgements of civil liberties and human rights, do they harm people in terms of their physical and material well-being, do they undermine the proper functioning of political institutions, or do they in some way compromise US foreign policy and national security. They are then sorted into 1 of 13 policy categories, such as immigration, healthcare and social spending, environmental policy and so forth. They’re then sorted into 1 of 30 refined subcategories.

Finally, the actions are scored relative to their impact. First actions are scored on a scale of 1-10 based on the scale/scope of their impact, their legal formality, and their permanence. Next actions are rated on a 1-4 based on how much of an “active” change they represent, as in whether an action is a wholly new action, or it represents rolling back a policy of the Obama administration or simply represents a failure act. Finally these scores are combined into a composite impact score.

A more complete description of the methodology used in this report can be viewed here.

Before we get into the report, we need to make a few brief housecleaning notes. Since the last Omnibus report 3 months ago we have changed the categorization scheme somewhat. Mostly this was due to the categories either not being clearly differentiated from other policy areas, or there were too few items that clearly fit into that category (usually these two issues were related). The most significant difference is that the items formerly listed into the category of crony capitalism have been folded into the categories of labor and consumer protections, abuses of power and the new category of taxes. A new policy category for trade has also been created in part to reflect the issue’s heightened prominence.

Overall Results

The 2nd quarter of 2018 was one of the most consequential of Trump’s presidency so far. Among the highlights of the quarter, Trump effectively killed the Iran nuclear deal, implemented a zero tolerance immigration policy leading to mass family separations, escalated a trade war with China, and passed the biggest rollback of Dodd Frank since its inception, among other things. Also, thanks to the appointment of Niel Gorsuch last year, the Supreme Court also gutted public sector unions in Janus vs. AFSCME and anti-trust regulations in Ohio vs. American Express. As in previous quarters, these measures were implemented largely through Trump’s executive powers in one way or another. The only major exception was the roll back of Dodd Frank, which was largely driven by Congressional Republicans and depressingly bi-partisan.

Policy Area and Focus

As in most previous quarter’s, the administration’s harmful policies continued to be felt primarily in economic terms. However, in contrast to the previous quarters this focus on economic policies was relatively low. This was not because the administration has been less active on the economic front, but rather because it’s been doing significantly more damage in the realm of issues affecting civil liberties, human rights and social issues.

Below is a table of the Trump administration’s estimated impact by policy areas. A full size version of the table can be seen here.

Looking into the impact of Trump’s actions on specific policy areas, immigration has been the predominant focus of the administration in the last few months by a fairly wide margin. Following immigration the most significant developments came through the administration’s efforts to roll back labor, consumer and other economic protections. Third most significant were the ongoing legal and ethical abuses of power of the administration, which continue to break at a fairly regular pace. On the other hand, there was a notably drop off in focus on healthcare, though it’s worth noting that the long term impacts of the administration’s efforts to sabotage Obamacare continue to take a toll. Labor protections were one of the particular policy topics to see the biggest upticks in activity, driven mainly by Janus and multiple executive orders designed to undermine public sector unions. Overall, labor climbed the ranks from being the 16th most impact policy area in the 1st quarter to the 4th most impacted in the 2nd.

The administration appears to be pursuing its policies in a much more focused way than it has in the past. Calculating impact by policy area, the administrations actions in the realm of immigration, labor and consumer protections, abuses of power and trade collectively represented more than 70% of the administration’s negative impact. By that same token, the impact concentration index score we calculate has also steadily creeped up (a full description of how this is calculated is available on the methodology page).

Notable Developments

On the economic front, the administration continued to turn away from conventional Republican free market policies towards the sort of economic nationalism Trump ran on. Whereas the Trump administration had spent most of 2017 focusing on conventional Republican priorities like slashing taxes, cutting social programs and rolling back regulations, 2018 saw the administration ratchet up protectionist policies to the point that we’re now entrenched in a major trade war that would have seemed highly unlikely as little as 6 months ago.

This shift was mirrored in social policies, where the administration took a sharp turn back towards the hardline immigration policies that typified Trump’s earliest days in office. To be sure, the administration had never stopped focusing on immigration, but the last few months have been a particularly dark period, with the administration finally winning out in its efforts to implement its travel ban, tens of thousands of refugees seeing their residency status revoked and of course the zero tolerance policy that led to thousands of family separations at the border.

One trend that didn’t materialize was the Administration’s apparent shift towards a more conventionally hawkish foreign policy. Earlier in the year looked like the administration was moving in that direction when it took on John Bolton and seemed to be ramping up intervention in Syria, but sense then nothing has really come of it. The administration is still more active on the foreign policy than it was in the first year, and it did effectively kill the Iran nuclear deal, which is a big development. However, for the most part the administration’s policies aren’t the conventional Neo-conservatism we might expect from another Republican. Instead, the administration continues to bluster at allies and jumps back and forth between aggressive posturing and pandering with rivals. For the most part it looks like the administration just doesn’t have an overall foreign policy strategy.

Taken together the turn towards protectionism, the ramped up crackdown on immigration and the erratic foreign policy all seem to point to an administration which is breaking from the traditional orthodoxies of the Republican party and in favor of Trump’s own policy priorities. The last few months have seen a significant and sustained increase in actions that would be judged as unique to Trump’s politics, or at least the Tea Party insurgents who helped pave the way for him. And whereas in the past this type of divergence was largely based on Trump’s personal scandals, recently they’ve been driven predominantly by policy difference.

In other words, while in its first year the Trump administration largely acquiesced to the policy priorities of the Republican party, recently it’s been going its own way. This has created some rumblings that the much anticipated Republican revolt against Trump may be imminent, however, for the most part this hasn’t happened. Instead, the party has mostly gone along with it, and to some extent the party is being reshaped to match Trump.

There are many reasons for this. For one thing, the perceived likelihood that Trump will forced to resign is much lower, and his popularity among base Republicans is extremely high, so tactically speaking there just isn’t much room for a successful revolt. For another thing, Trump is arguably closer to the attitudes of the Republican base than the party on issues like trade and NATO, so having the party follow Trump’s lead on these issues may just be reflecting political reality.

In a lot of ways this may also explain why the administration’s actions seem to be more focused than in the past. Whereas in the past, it policy was largely driven by congress and rule making at the departmental level, now it seems to be much more driven directly from the White House, and hence is more focused on Trump’s particular priorities.

Niel Gorsuch in Retrospect

Perhaps the most significant development of the last quarter is one that is still unfolding: the replacement of Supreme Court Justice Robert Kennedy. This is has the potential to reshape the court for a generation and push back social and economic progress back decades. To get some idea just how much damage this can do, it’s worth taking a look at what happened the last time Trump appointed someone to the Supreme Court, the appointment of Niel Gorsuch.

In many ways, the appointment of Niel Gorsuch was not a big deal, as it simply maintained the court’s slight conservative balance. This is a large part of the reason why many were acquiescent to the appoint. However, the whole episode turned out to have serious consequences.

First, the appointment of Niel Gorsuch was, in and of itself, a disaster. The year long refusal by Republicans to fill the seat, and then changing the rules of the Senate to avoid a filibuster, was not only a horribly cynical move that undermined any pretense of good faith governance, it was also horribly corrosive to long standing political institutions. The only silver lining in the whole affair is that it may have opened up the possibility of long term reform by destroying the notion that Supreme Court appointments are above partisanship.

Moreover, since his appointed, Gorsuch has been the key vote on a number of pivotal cases. Below is a list of cases where Gorsuch played a pivotal role:

Niel Gorsuch provided the deciding vote in a ruling that state prisoners cannot claim their lawyer was unconstitutionally ineffective in Federal Court in the case of Davila v. Davis ( Impact Score: 75)

75) Niel Gorsuch provided the deciding vote in a ruling that made it more difficult to file certain class actions in the case of California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities ( Impact Score: 75)

75) Niel Gorsuch provided the deciding vote in a ruling that immigrants can be detained indefinitely ( Impact Score: 168)

168) Neil Gorsuch provided the deciding vote in a ruling that said employers can force employees to sign class action waivers in arbitration agreements( Impact Score: 168)

168) Niel Gorsuch provided a deciding vote in a ruling that allowed “crisis pregnancy centers” that mislead and outright lie to pregnant women by overturning a basic consumer protection that requires clinics to notify patients if they’re medically licensed and let them know their healthcare options ( Impact Score: 90)

90) Neil Gorsuch provided a deciding vote ruling that Trump’s travel ban could be implemented, reasoning that the clearly discriminatory intent behind the ban voiced during the 2016 campaign was irrelevant ( Impact Score: 80)

80) Neil Gorsuch provided a deciding vote in a ruling that gutted public sector unions. Justice Elena Kegan noted that this ruling grossly abused the First Amendment, directly hurt millions of people, created legal confusion and overrode democratic governance ( Impact Score: 392)

392) Niel Gorsuch provided a deciding vote in a ruling that gutted antitrust laws in the case of Ohio vs. American Express (Impact Score: 210)

With Brett Kavanaugh set to shift the courts even further to the right, we can expect even more regressive rulings from the court in the near future. Some are even speculating that even long settled decisions, such as Roe v. Wade, may be overturned.

The Russian Investigation

Another late breaking development that is worthwhile to cover are the recent events surrounding the Russian investigation, which returned to prominence this week thanks to the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials on July 13th, and a press conference on July 16th in which Trump seemed to side with Russia against US intelligence agencies. We can consider the impact of these developments on three levels: first in terms of how they affect the scandal itself, then in terms of the public reaction to them, and finally in terms of their likely political impact.

On the level of the scandal/investigation itself, things are more or less unfolding at the same pace as they always have been. And according to Nate Silver, that’s a very a fast pace.

Insofar as they affect Trump directly, these recent developments are somewhat less significant. After all, while the arrests bring implications of collusion, they aren’t formally linked to the Trump administration. That said, the administration has done plenty of awful things in regards to the Russian investigation, claiming the right to interfere in the investigation, antagonizing Rob Rosenstein, lying to congress, pushing conspiracy theories about the FBI, and now apparently siding with Russia on the matter. As is usually the case, the administration’s efforts to clamp down on the investigation are probably doing more damage than the collusion itself likely ever could.

In terms of the public reaction, the recent press conference appears to have reversed the months long downward trend in public interest in the scandal. Using Google searches for the phrase “Trump Russia” as a proxy, interest in the scandal seems to have spiked to the highest levels we’ve seen since last Summer.

And it wasn’t just general interest in the scandal either. Searches for the phrase “Trump treason” also spiked up to mainstream levels, suggesting a strongly negative public reaction. At the same time, betting markets are putting the putting the likelihood that Trump completes his term at 71%, down sharply from 78% just a few days ago.

This is all still far from the crisis of confidence that Trump faced at points during his first year. However, this is still pretty relevant. In the last year Trump and Republicans actually appeared to be handling the scandal more or less effectively, throwing shade at the investigation while letting public fatigue set in. By all appearances all these efforts were reversed spectacularly in a few moments. All this reinforces the fact that public attitudes towards the case really can turn on a dime.

As for whether this will generate political consequences that still has yet to be seen. As has been noted, the Russian investigation has largely become a partisan issue, and new revelations generally don’t appear to shift the needle that much. That could theoretically change very quickly. We will still need to wait to see if the most recent developments in the Russian scandal shake confidence in Trump among Republicans or voters in general, but it’s probably a good bet that it hasn’t.

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.