Overview

The late summer and early fall of 2018 were dominated by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which is perhaps the most significant act of the Trump administration to date. Otherwise the last three months have seen a reversion to the mean for the Trump administration. There have been relatively few major new policies implement, however this has been balanced out by considerable fallout from those initiated in previous quarters, such as the family separation policy, the escalating trade war with China and the end of the Iran nuclear deal. Generally the administration’s policies in the 3rd quarter aligned more closely to Trump’s personal political priorities, focusing on trade and immigration, the continuing the trend begun earlier this year.

Introduction

During the 2016 election, an issue arose surrounding Donald Trump and his brand of politics. While the candidate was obviously offensive to a large swath of the electorate, the sheer volume of controversies surrounding Trump made it easy for the average voter to lose track. Over time this desensitized voters to Trump’s antics, even though many of his actions were still 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 in political debates, particularly those which involved the phrase “c’mon, what has he done that’s that bad”. Likewise, it was hoped that the sheer length of the omnibus would be a self-evident illustration of just what a disaster the Trump administration has been.

One and a half years into the administration the omnibus has expanded to include more than 1050 unique actions taken by the administration, touching on virtually ever aspect of American life in an unbroken list stretching across 52 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 continued to pile up, it quickly reached a point where it became impossible for a casual observer to fully process it all, and there was a danger that the project would fall victim to the very issue that it was intended to address.

To fix this we decided to go one step further and provide regular overviews of all the actions recorded within the omnibus to put everything into perspective. This would also enable us to identify relevant trends in the way 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 national security and foreign policy. 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. A link to an excel version of the Omnibus, complete with categories and impact scores, can be seen here.

Overall Results

After a number of major developments earlier in the summer, the last three months for the Trump administration have been a bit of a reversion to the norm. This is not to say that the period hasn’t been highly consequential. On the contrary, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court may end up being the single most important thing the Trump administration ever does. The developments in the Russian probe, including Paul Manafort’s conviction and Michael Cohen’s plea deal, may turn out to be a major turning point in the investigation. And of course, we are still dealing with the fallout from Trump’s zero-tolerance border policy, the escalating trade war with China and others and the unraveling of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

But on the other hand the last 3 months have not seen the passage of any major legislation. Few major policies have been initiated. There haven’t been any major court rulings on the level of Janus vs. AFSCME. Aside from the battle over Brett Kavanaugh, there weren’t that many major developments.

Nor were there as many small scale developments either. The pace at which the Trump’s subordinates have issued changes to government policies has been somewhat slower. As we’ve mentioned in the past, such administrative actions have been among the most important avenues through which the administration achieves its goals, so this does make a difference.

Policy Area and Focus

The third quarter of the 2018 saw most the Trump administration’s impact spread relatively evenly across issues that affect Civil Liberties, Economic Well Being and Government Institutions. Below is a table of the Trump administration’s estimated impact by policy areas for each quarter. A full size version of the table can be seen here.

The area with the biggest uptick in activity were actions that affect Government Institutions. This is partially due to the fact that the Russian probe began to show some results as Michael Cohen took a plea deal, Paul Manafort was convicted of numerous crimes. All this continues to fuel speculation that Trump may attempt to shut the investigation down, setting off a major crisis in the process, but so far nothing has happened.

But mainly it was due to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and action which may have serious consequences for the political landscape for decades to come. Much of the framing of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination has focused on the issues of social privilege and the MeToo movement, with Kavanaugh as a powerful man unrepentant and unaccountable for his misconduct. This is understandable given that Kavanaugh will be the deciding vote on many contentious social issues, and people are wary of putting the fate of Roe v. Wade of an attempted rapist. None-the-less we treat his confirmation as being primarily an institutional issue. The whole episode proved that Trump and Republicans are entirely willing to ignore forgo due diligence, undermine an FBI investigation into potential misconduct and ram through a judicial nomination if it serves their interests.

And these issues aren’t limited to the allegations of sexual assault. Kavanaugh has apparently perjured himself multiple times over the past decade. Arguably his entire judicial career has obviously been propelled forward by his loyalty to the right than any particular legal acumen, and his appointment politicizes the court in a way it never has been before. All in all, Kavanaugh’s appointment has seriously undermined the legitimacy of both the Supreme Court and the Senate.

Foreign policy has also an area which has seen a number of notable developments. This is largely due to numerous consequences from Trump’s decision to end the Iran Nuclear deal over the summer. For one thing, the actual work of unraveling the deal has been carried out over the last few months as sanctions have been imposed on Iran. But scrapping the deal has also had the unintended consequence of isolating the US diplomatically. The International Court of Justice ordered the US to lift its sanctions against Iran, which in turn led the US to rebuke ICJ. Compounding this, the Administration’s harsh turn against Palestine put it at loggerheads with much of the international community, culminating in the US leaving the Vienna diplomatic convention.

Related to this, the last quarter has seen the Trump administration aggressively scale back efforts on human rights, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, quarreling with the International Criminal Court over its attempts to prosecute war criminals and slashing the number of refugees the US will admit to historic lows. Immigration also continues to be a major issue, as people continue to suffer the consequences of ICE’s family separation policy. And, as mentioned, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh was a major symbolic blow to women’s rights.

But as usual, the consequences of the Trump administration were largely economic, though not quite to the same degree as it has been in the past. Trump continued to escalate his trade war, which is wrecking havoc through various industries and is estimated to be costing the US economy billions of dollars every month. His tax cuts passed last year continue to exacerbated inequality and will make it more difficult for the government to respond to a recession in the future. The administration still continues to cut social programs and healthcare spending, and as of this writing Trump and Republicans appear poised to further cut Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs to offset the deficits their tax cuts created.

Rankings

Below is a list of policy areas ranked by impact for the 3rd quarter of 2018. A full sized image may be found here.

Not surprisingly the Trump administration made its most significant impact in terms of legal and ethical abuses, thanks in large part to developments in the Russian probe and the revelation that Trump had participated in his parent’s tax evasion schemes for decades. This was followed by the impact on political norms, due mainly to the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh and its various consequences.

National Security and Foreign Policy were ranked fourth as a result of the fallout from the end of the Iran Nuclear Deal, followed by Energy and Climate Change due to numerous regulatory changes. Immigration enforcement and deportations were ranked sixth, down from their number one position in the previous quarter, but still high due to the deportation drive and its numerous abuses. Taxes were ranked sixth as the consequence of the tax cut passed last year begin to be realized, while trade comes in next as the trade war escalated. Gender Issues ranked just after that, due in large part to the cultural ramifications of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment.

Focus

The last three months of the Trump administration have been notably unfocused. In fact, as we figure these things, it’s been the most scattershot of any quarter dating back to the earliest days of Trump’s presidency. This may be a little surprising, since Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings dominated the news for more than a solid month. And in the era of Trump, anything dominating the news for more than one cycle is highly unusual. But again, this largely has to do with the fact that there weren’t too many major initiatives being implemented outside the confirmation process.

Uniqueness

The second year of the Trump administration has seen a notable divergence from conventional Republican orthodoxy, and this trend has continued into the 3rd quarter. As in the first year, a steady stream of corruption and scandals unique to Trump and his functionaries continue to come out, most notably culminating with the conviction of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen’s decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump has also continued to engage in his unique brand of politics centered on bully and bigotry, which came to particular prominence in the aftermath of Christine Ford’s testimony.

But this trend has mainly been driven by the administration’s pivot towards issues that Trump had campaigned on in the 2016 election. The Trump administration continued to press its policies zero tolerance border detentions and family separations. At the same time, it has continued to escalate its trade war in China and the rest of the world, which by some estimates is costing the US $1.4bn a month and is set to cost the global economy about $200 billion by 2020.

For the most part Republicans haven’t balked at any of this. In fact, the Republican party has come into closer alignment with Trumpism. The vast majority of Trump’s favored candidates won their primaries, including figures like Corey Stewart who might have been previously considered unacceptable.

None of this should be taken to mean that the Republican establishment isn’t still getting a lot of things they want out of the Trump administration. The appointment of Brett Kavanaugh realized decades of efforts of Republicans to tip the Supreme Court. And whatever Trump’s actions on trade may rub free market conservatives the wrong way, he’s still fairly consistent with Republican orthodoxy on deregulation and taxes.

Brett Kavanaugh

The appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court marked a major turning point both for the Trump administration and American politics in general. His confirmation fulfills a decades long campaign by movement conservatives to pack the courts with a majority of conservative judges to overturn socially liberal legal rulings and block progressive policy. Moreover, the confirmation process itself was highly damaging. The multiple accusations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh touched off a major cultural battle over whether we as a society will hold powerful men accountable for their misbehavior, with the confirmation indicating we will not. Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans abused their power at every turn to ensure Kavanaugh got through, withholding records, hobbling an FBI investigation and ignoring numerous instances of perjury.

Taken one by one, these were the major events of the confirmation process:

896. At a time when former Trump campaign staffers and administration officials are under investigations which the administration is actively attempting to undermine, nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who expressed the opinion that the unanimous Supreme Court decision to make Nixon turn over the white house tapes in Watergate investigation was wrongly decided

Impact Score: 180

967. Withheld 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records

Impact Score: 40

994. After it was revealed that his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, had sexually harassed a classmate and lied under oath, continued to rush his nomination forward and sought to discredit his accuser

Impact Score: 252

1010. After attempting to dismiss Christine Ford’s account of Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted sexual assault as political theater, Lindsay Graham threatened to falsify accusations of assault against Democratic nominees

Impact Score: 2

1013. Limited the scope of the FBI investigation into Brett Kavanaugh by blocking it from investigating additional allegations from his high school days

Impact Score: 125

1016. Mocked Christine Ford’s account of being sexually assaulted at a rally

Impact Score: 2

1024. Ignoring numerous accusations of sexual assault and perjury, confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, seriously delegitimizing the institution

Impact Score: 448

Collectively all the events involved in the confirmation process had an impact score of 1049, just over 10% of the total for the four months over which it took place. The confirmation itself represented the most significant action of the Trump administration so far. Yet the total consequences of Brett Kavanaughs confirmation are still far from realized, and we will surely see a stream of awful decisions to come out of the Supreme Court over the coming decades.

The Many Faces of the Trump Administration

By looking at the actions of the Trump Administration one by one, a number distinct interpretations of what the Trump administration is begins to emerge.

There’s Trump the oligarch, a scion of wealth of wealth and privilege engaged corrupt chicanery almost since birth. This Trump failed upwards through a rigged economic system until he himself was in charge of it. He then proceeded to rig it even further in his favor, not just ignoring conflicts of interest but actively profiting off them. All the while he’s been demolishing protections for workers and consumers so that he can suck every little bit of economic vitality out of them.

There’s Trump the privileged asshole who’s never had to work for anything and has never had suffer any consequences. He see’s everything as a means of stroking his ego or punching down at people who annoy him. He’s the type of person who’d run for president out of sheer vanity, brag endlessly about it and then joke about someone getting raped.

There’s Trump the tyrannical boss who has spent his tenure arbitrarily stripping the civil servants who work for him of their benefits and job security, all the while subjecting them to increasingly paranoid and invasive crackdowns against leaks.

There’s Trump the petty autocrat, constantly striving to crush any opposition to his leadership. Inside his administration he bullies and punishes potential dissenters. Outside his administration he pushes for harsh reprisals through heavy handed law enforcement techniques, or he uses the mechanisms of government to squeeze people into submission.

There’s Trump the final degeneration of movement conservatism, pushing deregulation to new heights and packing the courts with social conservatives eager to erase more than 50 years of social progress.

There’s Trump the alt right icon who spouts conspiracy theories about George Soros, who peppers his speech with racial slurs, who goes out of his way to complain about how SJWs are making it hard to be white man and urges his supporters to punch protestors in the face.

There’s Trump the face of insidious creeping fascism who throws immigrant children into cages, rouses his supporters to beat people up in the street and is trying to making protesting effectively illegal.

There’s Trump the hyper-nationalist neoconservative who refuses to engage in any sort of multilateralism, ignores human rights, pulls out of diplomatic conventions and is constantly threatening to start wars with Iran or North Korea. This Trump demands that all relationships with foreign country, in trade or diplomacy, be predicated on unquestioned American dominance even if it means starting pointless conflicts or alienating allies.

There’s Trump the impulsive moron who will often sabotage the policies of his own allies, violate the law and compromise the location of naval fleets by way of 5am tweets. This Trump can’t commit to a foreign policy because his gnat like attention span makes it impossible. People seriously think he might be in the early stages of senility, and should be removed simply because he’s mentally incompetent to act as President. Even his closest advisers consider a “fucking moron,” and will snatch documents off his desk because he can’t be trusted with them. He’s treated with such contempt by some of his staff that when he tries to fire them, they’ll will just ignore his attempts to fire them because they know he’ll just forget about it.

There’s Trump the dupe who doesn’t just ignore the awful things people around him do, but actively supports them. This Trump is willing to take the side of Russians interfering US elections or Saudis murdering American journalists, or act as a patsy to corrupt businessmen actively rigging the system in their favor. He’s either too dumb to recognize their misbehavior, or he’s complicit in it.

There’s Trump the manifestation of blind rapacious capitalism. This Trump dismantles essential economic safeguards and is even ready to risk an existential threat to human existence by undermining every attempt to confront climate change because it hurts the coal industry’s bottom line.

And you could really keep going on and on with this, listing off dozens of ways Trump represents everything wrong in American politics today. He really does have a talent for being all things terrible to all people. And the thing is that all these interpretations are valid. Like looking at a flaming pile of dog shit through an exquisitely cut diamond, we are merely seeing different perspectives of what is in fact one horrible reality we’re all being forced to live through.

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.