Overview

Since the earliest days of Donald Trump’s Presidency, we have attempted to catalog all of the harmful actions committed by his administration. Furthermore, by categorizing these actions by policy areas and scoring their relative impact, we have attempted to understand how the Administration operates and measure where it’s done the most damage.

Doing this, we’ve found that the Administration has tended to do its greatest harm in its attempts to undermine the ACA, its extreme efforts to obstruct the investigation into Russian interference of the 2016 election, and its draconian crackdown on immigration. Overall, the Administration has been typically ineffective in achieving major policy goals, and policy making tends to be unfocused due largely to it being driven at the Departmental level.

However the Administration has still able to do significant harm through its executive powers, obstruction, and mismanagement. Furthermore, when Trump and the Republicans do coordinate their efforts, such as with the recent Tax Bill, they still retain the ability to inflict significant damage on people’s well-being.

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 list itemize. 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 in some ways involved the phrase “c’mon, what has he done that’s that bad”. Likewise, it was hoped that the length of the omnibus would convey to observers a self-evident illustration of just what a disaster the Trump administration has been for the country.

One year into the administration the omnibus has expanded to include more than 620 unique actions touching on virtually ever aspect of American life listed unbroken across 33 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 stretch to the point where it’s impossible for one to fully process, there’s a danger that it may fall victim to the same problem that it was intended originally intended to address. To that end, we wanted to go one step further and provide an overall analysis of all the actions recorded within the omnibus to put everything into context. 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 added into the omnibus their source and date are recorded.

Once actions are compiled into the Omnibus they’re categorized into appropriate policy areas. First they’re sorted based on what they impact, namely civil liberties and human rights, physical and material well-being, the proper functioning of political institutions, and national security. They are then sorted into 1 of 12 policy categories, such as immigration, healthcare and social spending, environmental policy and so forth. They’re then sorted further into 1 of 30 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.

Results

With all the items in the omnibus categorized and scored, we can now begin to review all the worst things the Trump administration has done in the past year and identify notable trends and patterns.

Overall Scores

The Top 10 Worst Initiatives of the Trump Administration

While each and every action of the Trump Administration has its own unique consequences, most fit within a broader set of initiatives or patterns of behavior. To this end, we’ve track how these initiatives have unfolded throughout the year, and using their combined impact scores attempt to determine which have been the most damaging. It was determined that the top 10 worst initiatives of the Trump administration are as follows:

The effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act which, among other things, included signing an executive ordering allowing junk insurance plans, ending subsidies enabling low income people to purchase insurance, ending outreach aimed at signing people up for health insurance, and repealing the individual mandate through tax bill, which threatens to slowly unravel the Affordable Care Act. Collectively these actions have already increased the number of uninsured by more than 3 million and driven up premiums for everyone

Actions: 1, 24, 53, 79, 80, 135, 185, 200, 215, 240, 242, 250, 347, 359, 383, 384, 414, 433, 454, 473, 475, 576, 618

Combined Impact Score: 2421.5

The effort to obstruct the investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election, which has included various attempts to shut down the investigation, firing FBI director James Comey, threatening to set off a constitutional crisis by claiming the right to pardon anyone found guilty in the investigation, including himself, and lying to investigators. These obstruction efforts have already resulted in multiple arrests of former high ranking officials within the administration, including Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort

Actions: 77, 98, 156, 167, 230, 254, 278, 291, 292, 354, 368, 427, 502, 546, 547, 551

Combined Impact Score: 1727

The effort to impose draconian immigration and deportation policies, which included the repeated attempts to implement the Muslim ban despite numerous court injunctions, sharp reductions in the number of refugees the US accepts, a massive deportation drive that has arrested hundreds of people on average each week and committed numerous human rights abuses in the process, and the evictions of 262,000 Salvadorans and 59,000 Haitians living in the United States, among other things

Actions: 21, 22, 68, 90, 93, 95, 99, 124, 235, 296, 311, 336, 442, 477, 508, 532, 599, 604, 606

Combined Impact Score: 1401

The effort to pass the Republican’s tax bill which, among other things, permanently slashes corporate tax rates and estate taxes, raises taxes on the middle class in the long term, and severely undermined the budget. The bill was among the most consequential changes to the tax code in the last 30 years and will most drive future efforts to gut social programs

Actions: 206, 524, 527, 548, 575, 617

Combined Impact Score: 1342.5

The overall mismanagement of the day to day operations of the Federal Government, including the freezing hiring in ways that have left agencies horribly understaffed, packing regulatory agencies with lobbyists with a direct incentive to abuse them for their own gain, placing blanket mandates on the rule making that makes the process unnecessarily burdensome, and antagonizing the civil service through a campaign against leakers and purging critics ()

Actions: 4, 13, 32, 34, 36, 84, 88, 112, 117, 122, 127, 133, 136, 169, 187, 188, 189, 192, 244, 245, 251, 275, 320, 324, 327, 335, 345, 388, 422, 430, 435, 438, 470, 513, 569, 592, 602

Combined Impact Score: 1280

The effort to undermine government initiatives to combat climate change, which includes the withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate change, nixing emissions standards, undermining various committees aimed at incorporating environmental considerations into government policies, and censoring government scientists

Actions: 134, 166, 213, 226, 247, 265, 281, 301, 350, 396, 397, 403, 466, 490, 499, 506, 566, 603

Combined Impact Score: 1065.5

The effort to undermine the CFPB, Dodd-Frank, and other financial regulations created in the aftermath of the great recession, most notably by ending the fiduciary rule which protects retirees from seeing their retirement funds used to make risky investments, ending efforts to crack down on predatory lending, and illegally installing and then paralyzing the CFPB

Actions: 3, 48, 145, 284, 313, 381, 395, 493, 536, 540, 544

Combined Impact Score: 980.75

The various instances scandals that have emerged regarding the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to manipulate the 2016 election. These include not only the meetings between Donald Trump Jr. and Kremlin backed lawyers and actions which undermined the Obama administration’s foreign policy, all of which we illegal, but also included the various shady business dealings many Trump administration officials carried out, and continue to carry out, in connection with Russian oligarchs

Actions: 69, 114, 129, 179, 211, 258, 333, 353, 361, 511, 528, 552, 593

Combined Impact Score: 705

The effort to pack the courts with conservative judges, most notably with the appointment Niel Gorsuch to the Supreme Court after a year-long effort by Republicans to block Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, eventually using the nuclear option, barring filibusters on Supreme Court nominations, to do so. This also includes instances where Niel Gorsuch has provided the deciding vote on bad rulings

Actions: 186, 306, 307, 465

Combined Impact Score: 686

The effort of Trump and the Republicans to slash roughly $5 Trillion in funding to social programs through as part of the Trump administration’s budget, which is still pending passage of a final budget but which has enabled, among other thing, the Tax Bill

Actions: 252, 449, 496

Combined Impact Score: 455

Overall Impact

Looking over the last year as a whole, it appears that the administration’s bad policies have mainly been consequential to people’s material and physical through economic policy, healthcare and social spending, and environmental regulations. Policies which harm civil liberties were also significant, being driven largely by Trump’s harsh immigration policies. The administration has also severely damaged US government institutions, largely due to the various scandals which have unfolded since Trump took office as well as general mismanagement of the civil service and the regulatory system.

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 touch on everything from Immigration to government hiring. At the same time 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 of their being enacted.

The pace of bad policies slowed in the following months, as the Administration ran out of quick victories and the time frame to use the CRA passed. Throughout the spring and summer the stream of bad policies carried on at a slower, but overall steady pace. At that time, attempts to achieve major legislative successes were mostly frustrated, most notably with the multiple failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The administration was still able to use its considerable executive powers to enact policies. These moves were largely limited to relatively minor alterations to administrative practices and regulations, however there were still numerous major policy changes such as the withdrawal from Paris Climate Accord and the abolition of the fiduciary rule.

At the same time, many of the actions that the Administration ordered in its first month gradually moved towards fruition as they moved through the rule making process. However, as with many of the administration’s legislative efforts many of these orders ultimately came to nothing. Likewise, numerous scandals continued to come to light, mostly involving the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 election and subsequent attempts to obstruct investigations into the matter, but also involving conflicts of interest and misuse of government funds.

While the rate of harmful actions coming from the administration has tended to remain lower than the early days of the administration, there are occasional spikes in activity. Notably, there was a spike in mid-Summer driven by a confluence of regulatory changes, the attempt to repeal the ACA, and developments in the Russia scandal. More recently, there was a spike at the end of 2017 reflecting the successful efforts by congressional Republicans to pass their tax bill.

Policy Areas

Over the course of the year, different policy areas have occasionally seen periods of high activity. During the first few months of the administration, there was particular focus on immigration policy due to the administration’s early attempts to implement the travel ban and its initiation of a mass deportation drive. In subsequent months the Administration’s focus shifted from immigration, though it does still frequently enact major changes to the way it implements immigration policy.

On the other hand, as the year there was a relatively greater focus on issues like Healthcare and taxes. This is in many ways not surprising, as the President tends to retain more discretionary power in the realm of immigration enforcement while major changes to social spending and fiscal policy require congressional support. So it’s natural that the Administration’s efforts on Healthcare and the tax code would take more time to fruition.

However, aside from these two instances it’s difficult to say the administration has specifically focused on any one policy area at a given time. This is in large party because the administration has enacted most of its policies through administrative policies. So rather than reflecting a clearly defined agenda coming down from the White House, policy making has largely been driven from the departmental level, presumably on the basis of their own internal considerations.

Meanwhile, the administration appears to be steadily driving government institutions into the ground. Since taking office the administration’s failure to properly staff government agencies and their penchant for issuing sweeping and unworkable mandates on the civil service, such as the hiring freeze and the rule that every new regulation must be accompanied by the elimination of two old ones, has been slowly sapping government institutions of their effectiveness and adding undue burdens. Likewise, a steady string of scandals, conflicts of interest, and instances of cronyism have generally made the administration one of the least ethical in history.

Finally, there is foreign policy. At this stage the Trump administration has not focused on foreign policy concerns. Most new developments on this front tend to represent one off actions rather than a concerted campaign on the administration’s part. None-the-less, the Trump administration has fairly quickly alienated its allies, antagonized its rivals so as to escalate relatively banal events, and maintained an incoherent foreign policy devoid of any clear end game. All this has undermined the United States’ position in the world.

The Russian Scandal

While new revelations in the Russian scandal continue to come out sporadically, over time the scandal has unfolded at more or less a steady pace since the Spring. By most standards, the scandal has been progressing at a fairly rapid pace, and has already resulted in numerous resignations and more than a few arrests. Meanwhile, the Administration’s attempts to shut down the investigation have developed into a bigger scandal than the possible collusion that initiated the whole affair. The Trump administration has already practiced obstruction of justice on a level that had been enough to bring down Nixon.

It’s also gone further than that, periodically threatening to set off a constitutional crisis by signaling an intent to fire Robert Mueller or pardon anyone in the President’s inner circle found guilty. So far the administration has not acted on these impulses, but by any measure the Russian scandal is still a major affair that may yet bring down the administration.

But on the other hand, people banking on the Russian scandal to bring down the administration should consider two things. First, the scandal has apparently not seen sustained or mounting public interest over time. In fact, it’s easy to imagine the public has become numb to the stream of new revelations in the scandal that never seem to produce definitive results.

Second, the scandal has not compromised the administration’s ability to enact harmful policies elsewhere. When new developments in the Russia scandal emerge the administration does not seem to get bogged down in damage control, but more or less continues to plug along at more or less the same rate it otherwise would.

Of course this is all somewhat moot from a perspective of criminal justice, none of this would matter if the Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were arrested tomorrow and Trump was brought up for impeachment. However, those who wish to oppose the administration would do well not to put all their hopes into the Russian scandal.

Deeper Insights

Effectiveness

The first months of the Trump administration was typified by a lack of major legislative successes. Numerous ambitious policies were attempted, notably the repeal the Affordable Care Act, however with the notable exception of the appointment of Niel Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, these attempts were all more or less unsuccessful. Instead the Administration relied on enacting policies through a series of Executive Orders, rule making, appointments and other administrative actions, largely reversing policies of the Obama administration rather than initiating new ones.

This is reflected in the data by the fact that for the first three quarters of the Trump Administration, the administration’s impact was concentrated in actions with a Formality Score in the range of 4-5, which is associated with administrative actions, while most of the actions scoring higher represented either substantial ethical/legal breaches, major policies initiatives which were not carried through to much effect at the time, or major commitments like the Paris Climate accord where Trump is relatively free to act unilaterally. Similarly, for the first three quarters of the administration, a substantial part of the Administration’s impact came through actions with an Active Score of 3, meaning they were simply reversing Obama era policies.

The situation has partially changed somewhat in the last few months with the passage of the Republican’s tax bill and a more concerted effort to undermine the ACA. As a result, there has been a concomitant rise in the portion of Trump’s impact coming through actions with a high Formality Score in the 4th quarter. Similarly, the relative share of actions with an Active Score of 3 has declined.

Strategy and Focus

One of the most jarring aspects of Trump as a political phenomenon has been just how rapidly it seems to produce controversies. Every day seems to bring some new horrible thing for people to react to. This has been as much the case in the Trump Administration’s policy making as it is in their media profile. For the most part, the Administration has not focused its efforts on any particular policy area, but has hit on more or less every policy area seemingly at random. Again, this is likely due to the fact that most policy making by the Administration tends to be driven at the departmental level.

This can all be demonstrated by various metrics we can calculate by looking at the distribution of the Administration’s impact across policy areas. Using a Herfindahl Concentration index we find that on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being perfectly focused policy making, the Administration only scores about a 0.1073, indicating it’s highly unfocused. Similarly, calculating the exponent on the Power Law distribution of impact across policy areas also gives us a very low score for concentration, 0.74. This is scarcely better than random. It doesn’t appear that the administration is focused on particular subtopics within any given policy area either, nor is it focusing on a set of things that fit within a broader policy area.

However, the metrics also indicate that in the second half of its first year the Trump Administration did become relatively more focused in its policy making. This was primarily driven by the concerted efforts on the part of the Administration and Republicans in Congress to enact substantial policy change in the realms of healthcare and taxes.

Uniqueness

Since his election last year, there has been substantial disagreement over just how exceptional Trump is really is as a political phenomenon. Some tend to see Trump as an aberration from US political norms, while others emphasize that despite his superficial differences Trump is predominantly a continuation of traditional Republican policies which were always awful.

We have addressed this issue more fully a few months ago, and in that we largely came down in favor of the latter position, though noting that Trump does still represent a significant deterioration from the norm. While there have been several major developments in the intervening months our results remain largely unchanged. Most of the bad policies Trump has committed are things that any Republican would pursue. This is particularly the case in the realm of economic policy, where Trump’s anti-globalization rhetoric has largely taken a back seat to fairly typical Republican economic policies.

However, there are notable difference, particularly in terms of governing institutions, and it’s still the case that Trump is still probably worse in a lot of ways than a generic Republican would have been. While it’s true that previous Republican administrations, and perhaps the political elite in general, have engaged in various levels of corruption and mismanagement, it’s hard to conclude that Trump has been particularly bad in this regard. Though on the other hand, Trump may also be slightly better than a more typical Neo-Conservative President might have been because, simply put, he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a coherent foreign policy.

Immigration is a somewhat ambiguous point, as Trump’s hardline nativism and particularly harsh deportation policy represents a departure from the days of the Bush Administration. However, it’s also largely the case that Trump is more of an extension of pre-existing trends Republican base, notably the Tea Party, which had been pushing the Party in the direction for some time.

Public Reaction

In our 6 month summary report, we noted that the Trump Administration’s scattershot approach to policy has been something of a double edged sword for Trump’s opponents. On the one hand, this meant that Trump had galvanized opposition across a broad range of topics, enabling a broad coalition against him to form. But on the other hand, it also meant there wasn’t a clear issue for opposition to crystalize around, making it more difficult to leverage public backlash into a sustained campaign.

To demonstrate this, we looked at how the public reacted to various actions of the Trump administration using Google trends as proxy for public interest. Doing this showed that the various controversies of have largely failed to gain traction long term. Worse yet, many significant actions from the administration have gone without public reaction, particularly if they’re carried out through low key administrative procedures or sudden bursts of activity, which have been typically how the administration has operated.

By most indications, this dynamic remained largely in play in the second half of the year. As a recent analysis of Twitter conversations over the past year illustrated, Trump’s first year in office has been punctuated with dozens of separate controversies flaring into the public attention and then fading from view just as quickly. There isn’t a single issue that’s focused organized opposition to Trump in the same way that Obamacare acted as a focal point for Republican opposition in the summer and fall of 2009. This is somewhat discouraging, especially considering that the last few months has seen more sustained, and more successful, efforts to undermine the ACA and enact massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

But it would be inaccurate to say that this means that the Trump administration has been immune to public backlash. For one thing, Trump’s already tenuous support from the public at large has eroded substantially since his administration began last January, and public opposition to Trump and Republicans has increased substantially. Moreover, Trump has been alienating more or less everyone. With only a few odd exceptions here and there, Trump’s net approval rating decline by between 10%-30% across every gender, age cohort, economic class, geographic region, ethnic group, and issue.

As for Trump’s more formal political opposition, while there isn’t a single clearly defined issue for them to coalesce around, there’s certainly no shortage of things for them to focus their energies on. There are indications that a lot of things are sticking in the public conscience. Topics such as Single-Payer Health Care, sexual harassment, institutional racism, Democratic Socialism, deportation, and various other left wing policy concerns have seen a real and sustained increase of attention over the last year. On the whole, the left is a good deal more politically engaged, at least if conversations online are any indication.

Moreover, this opposition is already starting to have substantial impact. Activists are also scoring significant policy victories, getting the Democratic Party to take a hard line in saving DACA and support a push for Single Payer Healthcare, among other things. Membership in left wing political groups has mushroomed in the last year and record breaking numbers of people are running for office.

All this is already materializing into a tide of left wing candidates winning elections at all levels, a trend that will likely only become more pronounced as we move into the midterms.

Analysis

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

Despite its lack of major policy successes, the Trump Administration has still done serious damage

Trump and the Republicans came out of the 2016 election with control of virtually all the levers of power in the Federal Government. Yet despite this, they have been surprisingly unsuccessful in terms of achieving major policy goals. As stated, there are few substantial legislative victories achieved by Trump and the Republicans, and those “laws” the administration can point to are legislation passed under the CRA which simply reversed regulations.

The reason for this is partially the result of the thin majority Republicans hold in the Senate, but it’s also largely the result of the Administration’s general inability to mount the coordinated effort needed to pass such legislation. In fact, when Congressional Republicans have been able to coordinate their efforts to pass major legislation, which is often difficult given the Party’s internal divisions, Trump has often had a penchant for sabotaging their efforts due to his own truculent style.

Yet in many ways this doesn’t matter. Despite their dearth of major legislation, the Trump Administration has still been able to inflict considerable harm. Despite the failure to formally repeal the ACA, the Trump administration has already caused an estimated 3 million people to lose their insurance. Despite failing to pass a law to restrict legal immigration, the Trump administration has still put the wheels in motion to deport hundreds of thousands of people and drastically reduce the number of refugees the US takes in. He’s still able to cause international incidences and order drone strikes with caprice. He’s still able to undermine decades of work on climate control. And the list goes on and on.

There are many reasons for this. First, of course, is the considerable power the Trump administration has through executive powers. Even if he can’t enact major legislation, Trump can still enact dozens of minor administrative actions, executive orders and so forth that add up to substantial policy changes.

Second is the fact that Trump occupies such a position that simple refusing to go along with something. This is the case with things like the Paris Climate Accord, where all Trump essential had to do was refuse to carry forward the commitments made under the Obama administration. Punting on DACA to congress and then essentially killing any chance of compromise would be another example.

And then, of course, there’s the rampant mismanagement and horribly unethical activities that cross the line into the illegal. All of this has a substantial impact.

There’s still little stopping the Administration and Congressional Republicans from achieving major policy goals, and when they do the results are far worse

One of the few major exception to the Administration’s general failure to achieve major legislative victories is, of course, the horrendous tax bill that passed last month. And this is a big exception. In fact, the bill has been called the most consequential change to the tax code in more than 30 years for good reason. It drastically slashes corporate tax rates, the estate tax, and loopholes for businesses to abuse while simultaneously raising them on the middle class in the long term. And in order to pass the bill, they bent congressional rules to the breaking point and, for some reason, even went out of their way to make sure the bill opened up ANWR to drilling.

All this demonstrates that there’s very little that’s actually holding the Trump and Republicans from achieving their policy goals. Despite occasionally harsh criticisms from Republicans like Jeff Flake and others, there hasn’t actually been the sort of defections from Republicans that would permanently block them. Ostensibly this is because, however many Republicans feel about Trump personally or his politics, most still recognize that his goals are their goals, or at the very least opposing the current President and head of party would likely be more trouble than it’s worth.

For their part, it’s often suggested that Republican leaders still see Trump as someone they can mostly get to go along with their plans, despite his unpredictable behavior. And with people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan leading the Congressional Republicans, two people who do have more going for them in terms of being able to form coherent policy and parliamentary maneuvering, there’s a lot of damage Trump and the Republicans can do.

All this is to say that the main impediment to the Trump administration achieving major policy victories is its own incompetence, and we’re always at risk that Trump and Republicans can always get their act together. Internal rebellions among Republicans haven’t stopped him, neither has becoming bogged down in various controversies. The only sure fire way to prevent this is to vote Republicans of their majorities in the House and/or Senate.

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.