What this is: A clean record of Trump-era actions that raise costs, cut services, and weaken protections—organized so nothing gets lost in the noise.
What it's for: To guide you in creating effective anti-Trump, anti-Republican content of all types.
How to use it: Lead with specific harms to people where they live; then layer in the self-dealing to show motive. Voters already assume corruption—pair it with what it cost them.
Click here for more notes on how to use this research
They don't teach you how to use opposition research in high school. But it's simple, and here are the basics:
¶ What are these reports, and why do they look like this?
- The goal of these reports is to organize thousands of data points into simple narrative arguments.
- Narratives are the highest level of research, but in reports like this, they're split into sub-narratives, which themselves are backed up by a multitude of data points.
- Winning a campaign is often related to winning an argument; and winning an argument has a lot to do with having the information at hand to make your case persuasively and in a way that connects with the audience.
- These narratives are sorted into two main categories (delineated by the orange headings below). How he's hurt you, and how he's helped himself.
¶ Facts are just a framework
- People are rarely persuaded by simply having facts thrown at them.
- Factual reports can be a starting point for winning the argument.
- Truly persuasive content includes much more than facts -- an emotionally resonant message, powerful messengers, an environment without judgment against the audience being persuaded.
¶ So should I just dump the entire report into my communications?
- No! Making a persuasive argument has much more to do with tailoring for your specific audience as it does with overwhelming the opposing argument in a wave of facts.
- Having a lot of data points can make you confident in making big claims -- but you don't need to include them all when you make the claim.
¶ So how should I use this information?
- No matter what format you're communicating in, you need to think of your audience first.
- What are your audience's needs, what are they interested in, what do they care about, why do they care?
- Your job is to find the information in these reports that will speak to your audience, and use it creatively and persuasively.
- Mixing and matching from various narratives isn't just good, it's the ideal way to create content.
¶ Example content
- Many of these reports contain example videos. They are just that, examples. They're meant to give a gist of the kind of media we had in mind when creating these reports. They are for inspiration only -- but we trust you can do better.
¶ Final note:
- Polling and voter research consistently finds that information about how Trump and Republicans help themselves is less persuasive to swing voters than information about how they've hurt the audience. But the two together -- information about how Trump and his allies have hurt the audience while helping themselves -- is even more persuasive than either type of content alone. Your job is to find the right balance of mixing and matching.
¶ Trump And His Allies Have Harmed Your Community
¶ Health Care
War On Health Care Since 2025, new rules and “One Big Beautiful Bill” provisions add costs, paperwork, and shrink ACA/Medicaid coverage.
War On Cancer Research Deep proposed NIH/NCI cuts, freezes, and policy changes slow discovery and clinical trials.
Limiting Family Access To Vital Medicines Vaccine policy upheaval, reproductive-health restrictions, and tariffs raise barriers and costs.
¶ Kitchen-Table Costs
Made Life Unaffordable For Everyday People Tariffs, raids, weaker consumer protections, and energy rollbacks push prices higher.
Rewarded Big Donors With Higher Energy Bills Killed credits and projects that cut bills; pushed costlier power and appliances.
Blowing Up The Debt And Deficit Multi-trillion-dollar deficits and policies that shift costs onto households.
Trump’s Tariffs Are A Grocery Tax On Americans A universal import tariff and add-ons that flow straight into food prices.
¶ Work & Wages
The Administration Kept Wages Down Scrapped contractor wage floor, ditched noncompete ban, and kneecapped labor enforcement.- 📉 The Jobs Market Fell Apart Under Trump Hiring cooled, unemployment ticked up, and policy shocks (tariffs, immigration cuts, freeze/shutdown) undercut worker leverage and pay growth.
Tariffs & Uncertainty Hurt the Main Street Economy Sweeping 2025 tariffs raised prices, spiked business uncertainty, triggered retaliation, disrupted supply chains, slowed growth and hiring—and hit lower-income households hardest.
¶ Education
War On K-12 Schools Move to shut down ED, freeze funds, politicize Title IX, and steer public money to private vouchers.
War On College Education Cut Pell/Work-Study, reshape loans to cost more, and impose politicized campus mandates.
Gutted Special Education Oversight Shutdown-era layoffs slashed OSEP/OCR staff, canceled special-ed grants, pushed to move IDEA to HHS, and advanced plans to dismantle ED—putting services for millions of students with disabilities at risk.
¶ Veterans
- 🎖️ Veterans Cuts Hiring freezes, downsizing, privatization push, and service restrictions strain VA care.
¶ Retirement
Weakened Social Security Tax changes cut trust-fund revenue and moved up depletion; staffing cuts, service rollbacks, and a paper-check phaseout added access hurdles; shutdown/layoffs and new data/payment risks further undermined benefits.
Rolled Back Medicare Access Telehealth and Hospital-at-Home lapsed Oct 1; anti-obesity drug coverage was blocked; MA plans got bigger payments despite overpayments; PAYGO-triggered cuts loom; weaker oversight and shutdown/budget moves strained operations.- Hurting Americans’ Ability To Retire—or Stay Retired Weaker saver protections, rising costs, and program cuts hit seniors’ security.
¶ Housing & Homeowners
War On Homeowners Tariffs, labor crackdowns, and reversed efficiency standards raise building and utility costs.
¶ Farmers & Rural
Wild Policy Experiments Are Putting Farmers Out Of Business Tariffs and retaliation crush exports; raids and rollbacks raise costs and risks.
Tearing Apart Rural Health Care Cuts, freezes, and policy shifts hollow out care access across rural communities.
¶ Disasters & Preparedness
Making American Families More Vulnerable To Disasters Rolled back flood standards, froze resilience funds, and gutted forecasting capacity.
¶ Energy & Environment
Our Water And Air Are Dirtier Because Of Giveaways To Polluters Vehicle, power-plant, PFAS, and coal-ash rollbacks increase pollution and health risks.
¶ Democracy, Ethics & Rights
War On American Values And Freedom Centralized power, expanded policing and immigration crackdowns, and narrowed civil rights.
¶ Trump And Insiders Used Their Power To Benefit Themselves
¶ Focused on their own wealth and lifestyle
Trump Enjoyed Lavish Perks & Resort Travel A $200M new White House ballroom and frequent weekends at Trump resorts drove large public security and travel costs tied to Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.
Cabinet Perks On The Public Dime DHS set the tone: rent-free waterfront housing for the secretary, $170–200M Gulfstreams with luxury upgrades, frequent VIP jet use with minimal reimbursement—even comfort complaints—signaling elite perks over mission needs.
Got Richer On Crypto While In Office The $TRUMP coin and World Liberty Financial sent huge fees and token-sale money to Trump-linked companies; Trump’s own filing shows $57M in crypto income and large token holdings while he promoted the projects.
¶ Trump's Family Cashed In On His Presidency
Sons’ Ventures Boomed While He Was President Eric and Don Jr. launched crypto/mining firms that surged on friendly policies, foreign deals, and billion-dollar stakes—while family control structures let them keep cashing in.
Foreign Cash Flowed To Trump Businesses While He Set Policy PIF-backed LIV events paid his resorts, new Gulf licensing deals expanded, foreign money poured into Trump-linked crypto, and White House meetings overlapped with those payers—blurring the line between U.S. policy and private profit.
¶ Bailed Out Buddies
Shielded Corrupt Politicians In 2025, Trump pardoned/commuted multiple officials convicted of corruption and fraud, used DOJ to drop a high-profile corruption case, fired the pardon chief and installed a loyalist to speed approvals, and even urged a Netanyahu pardon.
Trump Bailed Out Foreign Buddies While US Farmers Suffered Treasury tapped the ESF and U.S. IMF clout to backstop Argentina—$20B swap and direct peso buys—using public funds to prop a politically aligned government.
¶ Made life easier for the wealthiest
- 📈 Locked In Tax Cuts For the Wealthy July 4 law made key 2017 cuts permanent—kept the 37% top rate, made the pass-through (199A) break permanent, and raised the estate-tax exemption to $15M—delivering most benefits to high-income households while many lower-income families see little or may lose ground.
¶ Protected Pedophiles
Shielding Epstein Files & Epstein Allies Since 2025, DOJ stage-managed a heavily redacted “Phase 1,” flagged Trump mentions, sought only narrow unsealing, and boosted Maxwell’s pro-Trump statements as her conditions eased—while Trump sued media and downplayed long-documented ties.
¶ Culture of corruption
- Washington Is A Cesspool Of Corruption Purged watchdogs, politicized DOJ, weakened ethics, and chilled whistleblowing.