POLITICAL SOLUTIONS WITHOUT POLITICAL BIAS

Who Got Hurt: The Harm Ledger (Living Document)

Documented harm from Trump administration policies, at home and abroad. Compiled by Purple Political Breakdown. Updated September 8, 2026.

Start here

The corruption page asks who benefited. This page asks who paid.

It covers six kinds of harm: people killed or endangered by immigration enforcement inside the United States; people who lost food assistance, health coverage, or purchasing power; people hurt by public health retreat; people abroad who lost aid; people abroad killed by American force without congressional authorization; and the damage to alliances that made the United States safer and to the global standing that China is now inheriting.

The standard is the same as the corruption page. A claim appears only with a source. When the administration has a real answer, it is printed. When a number is a model rather than a count, the page says so.

How to read the labels

  • COURT: a judge or jury made a formal finding.
  • RECORD: it is in official data, a filing, a signed order, or sworn testimony.
  • REPORTED: credible news organizations or established research institutions reported it; no court has ruled.
  • DISPUTED: the facts, the causation, or the law are unsettled.
  • MODELED: a projection or estimate from a stated method, not a count of bodies or dollars. This label is unique to this page and it matters most in the foreign aid section.

The ledger at a glance

  • 4 United States citizens killed by federal immigration agents since March 2025, two of them in Minneapolis in a single month. At least 8 people killed in immigration enforcement shootings through February 2026. [RECORD]
  • 52 deaths in ICE custody in the first 500 days of the term, the highest annual toll since ICE was created in 2003. [RECORD]
  • 43 percent of people arrested by ICE in January 2026 had no criminal conviction and no pending charge. [RECORD]
  • 4 million fewer people receiving SNAP between July 2025 and April 2026. [RECORD]
  • 7.8 million more uninsured by 2034 from the Medicaid provisions of the 2025 budget law, per the Congressional Budget Office. [RECORD]
  • 96 percent of tariff costs borne by Americans, per a January 2026 study of 25 million shipment records. About $1,100 per household per year. [REPORTED]
  • 3.4 percent inflation in July 2026, with gasoline up 24.6 percent over the year and a three-year high of 4.2 percent in May. [RECORD]
  • 2,295 measles cases by July 21, 2026, already more than all of 2025; the United States is expected to lose measles elimination status. [RECORD]
  • 14 million additional deaths by 2030 projected from the dismantling of USAID, per a peer-reviewed Lancet study; a Boston University tracker estimated roughly 750,000 deaths by January 2026. [MODELED]
  • 227 or more people killed in boat strikes; 1,701 documented civilian deaths in Iran including 175 at a school; 18 United States service members killed in the Iran war. [RECORD]
  • 23 percent median confidence in Trump across 36 countries; Canada's view of the United States as a reliable partner fell from 83 percent to 35 percent since 2022. [RECORD]
  • China is now viewed more favorably than the United States in most of 36 countries surveyed, the first time in about 20 years. [RECORD]

PART 1. IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT INSIDE THE UNITED STATES

1.1 People killed by federal agents

  • RECORD Renee Nicole Good, 37, a United States citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer in her car in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. The Homeland Security secretary called it "an act of domestic terrorism" by Good. ABC News video analysis showed her wheels were turned away from the agent just over a second before three shots were fired in under 700 milliseconds.
  • RECORD Alex Pretti, 37, a United States citizen, ICU nurse, and lawful permit holder, was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026 after stepping between agents and a woman on the ground. Video shows he was pepper-sprayed, tackled, and then shot, with additional rounds fired while he was down. The secretary called him a domestic terrorist. Police, state officials, and Republicans including Senator Murkowski disputed that.
  • REPORTED As of February 24, 2026, running counts recorded 8 people killed in immigration enforcement shootings and at least 19 wounded since the term began. The dead include Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, a citizen killed in South Padre Island, Texas in March 2025; Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, a cook and father of two killed during a Chicago-area traffic stop in September 2025; Isaias Sanchez Barboza, 31, killed by Border Patrol in Texas in December 2025; and Keith Porter Jr., 43, a citizen killed by an off-duty ICE officer in Los Angeles on December 31, 2025. RE-VERIFY the current count; the last tally I could confirm is February 2026.
  • RECORD As of April 2026, no charges had been filed in either Minneapolis killing. Federal authorities seized Good's car and held it unexamined in an FBI warehouse, withheld officer personnel files, and physically blocked state investigators from the Pretti scene. Minnesota and Hennepin County sued in March 2026; a federal judge ordered evidence produced within three weeks on April 10. RE-VERIFY.
  • RECORD The White House deputy chief of staff told ICE agents on national television that they have "federal immunity." PolitiFact rated the claim Mostly False: agents have protections for lawful official acts but are not immune from prosecution for breaking the law.

The administration's case: agents face organized obstruction and, in the Pretti case, an armed man. Both shootings are under investigation and no finding of wrongdoing has been made. Federal supremacy over state prosecution of federal officers acting within their duties is long-settled law.

1.2 Deaths in detention

  • RECORD Human Rights Watch documented 52 deaths in ICE custody between January 20, 2025 and June 4, 2026: 39 in the 2025 calendar period and 13 more in the first five months of 2026. That is the highest annual toll since ICE was established in 2003, and a death rate nearly four times that of the prior administration.
  • RECORD The detained population rose from about 40,000 in January 2025 to more than 71,000 at its January 2026 peak. As of April 2026, fewer than 18,000 of more than 60,000 detainees had a prior United States criminal conviction, and about 24,000 had neither a conviction nor a pending charge.
  • REPORTED The report documents deaths from treatable conditions, suicides, overcrowding, and failures to disclose deaths on time.

The administration's case: detention has expanded because enforcement has expanded, deaths per capita in a larger population must be read against that base, and ICE reports every in-custody death publicly as required.

1.3 Who is actually being arrested

  • RECORD The share of ICE arrests with no criminal conviction and no pending charge rose from 21.9 percent in the first three months of the term to 40.5 percent by mid-October 2025 and nearly 43 percent in January 2026, per Deportation Data Project records obtained through FOIA. The share with a conviction fell from 36.5 percent to about 29 percent.
  • RECORD The number of detainees with no criminal record rose from 869 in December 2024 to 25,193 in January 2026.
  • RECORD ICE arrest quotas of 3,000 per day and a one million annual deportation goal were set in 2025, and limits on collateral arrests of non-targets were reversed.

The administration's case: everyone in the country unlawfully is subject to arrest, sanctuary jurisdictions force agents into neighborhoods rather than jails, and criminal aliens remain the priority even as total arrests rise.

1.4 Due process

  • COURT More than 280 Venezuelan men were sent to El Salvador's CECOT prison under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March 2025, after a judge ordered the planes turned around. Many had no criminal record. In December 2025 the judge ruled their rights were violated and the government did not contest the due process finding. Human Rights Watch documented families unable to locate the men.
  • RECORD Third-country removals to Uganda, Rwanda, Eswatini, and South Sudan proceeded on as little as six hours' notice without affirmative screening for fear of persecution.
  • REPORTED United States citizens have been detained in enforcement operations, some for days.
  • COURT The birthright citizenship order, which would have affected roughly 250,000 children born each year, was struck down 6 to 3 on June 30, 2026 after losing in every court that heard it.
  • RECORD In January 2026 the federal government froze $129 million in SNAP and child nutrition funds and $185 million in Medicaid and social services funding to Minnesota, citing a fraud case already being prosecuted, in the same weeks as the Minneapolis enforcement surge.

The administration's case: Tren de Aragua is a designated terrorist organization; migrants who express fear receive screening within 24 hours; the Minnesota fraud was real and enormous. Cross-reference the corruption page, Part B5.

PART 2. THE SAFETY NET AND THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET

2.1 Food assistance

  • RECORD More than 4 million people left SNAP between July 2025 and April 2026, from 42 million to 37 million monthly recipients, an 11 percent drop. The 2025 budget law extended 80-hour monthly work requirements to veterans, homeless people, young adults aging out of foster care, parents of teenagers, and adults 55 to 64, and eliminated federal food aid for refugees, asylees, and trafficking victims.
  • RECORD The Congressional Budget Office projects the work requirement alone will cut participation by 2.4 million people a month over the decade. States began paying 75 percent of administrative costs in October 2025 and face benefit-cost penalties for error rates from October 2027.

The administration's case: the agriculture secretary attributes the decline to people leaving who "shouldn't have been" on the program and to a better economy. The counter from analysts: unemployment was flat and food prices were rising, so the decline is not falling need.

2.2 Health coverage

  • RECORD The Congressional Budget Office estimated the Medicaid provisions of the 2025 budget law will leave 7.8 million more people uninsured by 2034 and cut federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion over ten years. Combined with the law's marketplace changes and the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, CBO's total is about 16 million more uninsured.
  • REPORTED Medicaid enrollment fell by nearly 5 million in the year through mid-2026 as 80-hour monthly work documentation, limits on state financing, and closed enrollment pathways took effect. Benchmark marketplace premiums rose nearly 26 percent year over year.
  • REPORTED Hospitals began announcing service cuts in early 2026 citing the law's Medicaid reductions. RE-VERIFY specific closures before naming any.

The administration's case: the law targets able-bodied adults without dependents and does not cut benefits for the disabled, children, or the elderly; the rural hospital fund offsets part of the effect; enrollment had been inflated by pandemic-era rules. The promise "we're not cutting Medicaid" is addressed on the promises page.

2.3 Tariffs, prices, and jobs

  • REPORTED A January 2026 Kiel Institute study of more than 25 million shipment records found Americans bore 96 percent of the cost of the tariffs and foreign exporters 4 percent. When tariffs on Indian and Brazilian goods rose sharply in August 2025, volumes fell up to 24 percent but the exporters' unit prices did not move.
  • REPORTED The Yale Budget Lab put the average statutory tariff rate at 11.0 percent in August 2026, heading to 11.8 percent, with a consumer price effect of about 0.7 percent and an average household cost of roughly $1,100 a year.
  • COURT The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 on February 20, 2026 that the emergency-powers tariffs were unlawful from the start. About $166 billion collected from more than 330,000 importers is owed back. Refunds go to importers, not to the consumers who paid the higher prices. The administration replaced the tariffs within days under Section 122, then under Section 301 in July, now covering about 99 percent of imports.
  • RECORD Consumer prices rose 3.4 percent in the year to July 2026, with energy up 14.7 percent and gasoline up 24.6 percent. May 2026 inflation hit 4.2 percent, a three-year high, with energy driving more than 60 percent of the increase. Core inflation excluding food and energy was 2.5 percent.
  • RECORD Manufacturing employment fell by about 62,000 since the inauguration despite reshoring being the stated goal. Economic growth slowed to a 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 2026.
  • RECORD The federal workforce shrank by about 271,000 jobs between September 2024 and January 2026. Black women lost 95,371 federal jobs in 2025, about a third of the total. Black unemployment reached 7.5 percent against 4.4 percent nationally. (A figure circulating online claiming 200,000 of the lost jobs were held by Black women is arithmetically implausible and is not used here.)

The administration's case: tariffs produced trade agreements and revenue; core inflation is near target and the energy spike reflects Iranian attacks on tankers, not United States policy; the federal workforce was bloated and the cuts were made without regard to race. On energy, the counter is that the war driving the spike was a choice made without congressional authorization.

PART 3. PUBLIC HEALTH

  • RECORD The United States recorded 2,295 confirmed measles cases by July 21, 2026, surpassing the 2,289 cases in all of 2025, itself the highest count since elimination was declared in 2000. Independent analysts say the country is likely to lose elimination status when the review occurs. RE-VERIFY case count and review date.
  • DISPUTED Public health experts attribute part of the resurgence to falling vaccination coverage and to federal vaccine policy turmoil. This page records the case counts as fact and the causal link to federal policy as contested until documented.
  • REPORTED The United States stepped back from international health coordination frameworks even as those mechanisms contained a 2026 hantavirus outbreak aboard an expedition cruise. RE-VERIFY the specific withdrawals before naming them.

The administration's case: measles outbreaks began in under-vaccinated communities that predate this administration; international health bodies performed poorly during COVID; bilateral arrangements can replace multilateral ones.

PART 4. PEOPLE ABROAD WHO LOST AID

  • RECORD The administration froze foreign assistance on January 20, 2025, fired or furloughed the large majority of USAID staff, closed its headquarters, and absorbed what remained into the State Department. USAID's budget had been roughly $40 billion a year.
  • MODELED A peer-reviewed study in The Lancet (July 2025) estimated that USAID programs had prevented about 91 million deaths over two decades and projected that the cuts, if sustained, would cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including about 4.5 million children under five.
  • MODELED Boston University's Impact Counter, a mathematical model run by infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols, estimated roughly 750,000 deaths attributable to the cuts by January 2026, more than 500,000 of them children. Nichols notes the work is not peer-reviewed and that many of the systems that would count actual deaths no longer exist.
  • RECORD PEPFAR's own data through September 2025 showed more than 20 million people on HIV treatment across 50 countries, a slight decline from the prior year. That is the first year in the program's history in which fewer people were on treatment than the year before. About 24 percent of frontline health workers lost support. New HIV diagnoses fell 13 percent at undisrupted clinics and nearly 30 percent where services were interrupted, meaning infections are going unfound, not disappearing.
  • RECORD The America First Global Health Strategy states its aim as cutting overall spending 30 percent while preserving frontline HIV care.

The administration's case: the State Department says "the numbers are very, very good," that PEPFAR treatment continued for 20 million people, and that prevention drugs for pregnant women more than doubled. Foreign aid had waste, some programs were ideological, and no law requires the United States to fund other countries' health systems. The honest response: the projections are models and should be labeled as such, which this page does, and the PEPFAR treatment decline is the government's own number.

PART 5. PEOPLE ABROAD KILLED BY AMERICAN FORCE

  • RECORD Sixty-eight strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September 2025 killed at least 227 people as of August 26, 2026. No physical evidence of trafficking has been presented for the vessels. A follow-up strike killed two survivors in the water. Republican-led Armed Services committees opened investigations. The administration pardoned a former Honduran president convicted of trafficking cocaine during the same campaign.
  • RECORD The January 3, 2026 raid that captured Nicolas Maduro left about 100 dead by Venezuelan accounts, including security personnel and 32 Cubans. A Senate war powers resolution failed by one vote on January 14.
  • RECORD In the Iran war that began with United States and Israeli strikes on February 28, 2026, a rights group documented 1,701 civilian deaths in Iran, including at least 175 killed in a United States strike on a school. Up to 3.2 million people were displaced. Eighteen United States service members were killed and roughly 482 wounded through late July. Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz produced a global energy shock; that shock is the energy line in the July inflation report above. A June 14 interim agreement paused hostilities; both sides have traded strikes since, most recently in late August and on September 1. RE-VERIFY casualty and status figures; they move weekly.
  • RECORD Christmas Day 2025 strikes on claimed ISIS camps in Sokoto State, Nigeria, justified as a response to persecution of Christians, hit a predominantly Muslim area with no ISIS history and wounded five civilians.
  • RECORD None of these operations was authorized by Congress. The June 2025 Iran notification cited no statute at all.

The administration's case: cartels are armed non-state combatants; Maduro was an indicted trafficker; Iran was attacking shipping in a strait carrying a fifth of the world's oil; a Noriega-style capture has legal precedent; and presidents of both parties have used force without prior authorization. Each of these is a real argument. None of them is a vote in Congress.

PART 6. ALLIES

  • RECORD Pew's 2026 survey of 36 countries (fielded February to May) found a median 23 percent confidence in Trump, 37 percent favorable views of the United States against 57 percent unfavorable, and declines in 15 of 24 countries with year-over-year data. His Iran policy drew 74 percent median disapproval. Approval of his tariffs was 8 percent in Germany, 11 percent in Mexico, 14 percent in South Korea, 15 percent in Japan, and 17 percent in Canada.
  • RECORD The share of Canadians calling the United States a reliable partner fell from 83 percent in 2022 to 35 percent in 2026. In Sweden it fell from 83 percent to 31 percent.
  • RECORD Canadian travel to the United States fell 25.4 percent in 2025, and Canadians spent about C$3.3 billion less in the United States than the year before.
  • RECORD On August 22, 2026 the United States imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods after trade talks collapsed; Canada matched them dollar for dollar effective September 8. Trump then threatened 100 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods over a Canada-China agreement in which Ottawa dropped tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for Chinese market access for Canadian farm goods. RE-VERIFY today's status.
  • RECORD In January 2026 he threatened 25 percent tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland over Greenland and refused to rule out force. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and France sent troops to Greenland. Greenland saw the largest protest in its history. He withdrew the threats at Davos on January 21 and reasserted the claim at the July 2026 NATO summit in Ankara.
  • REPORTED He announced the withdrawal of about 5,000 troops from Germany and, within weeks, a deployment of about 5,000 to Poland, with no stated strategic rationale. The European Union launched a 150 billion euro defense financing program to reduce dependence on the United States.
  • RECORD The United States paused military aid to Ukraine in March 2025 and has since acted as mediator rather than supplier. A May 2026 ceasefire collapsed within days. Russia occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine.

The administration's case: allies are finally spending on their own defense, which every president since Eisenhower asked for; Canada and Europe run trade surpluses with the United States; Greenland matters for Arctic security; and the polls measure popularity, not results. The counter: allies who plan around American unreliability do not come back when the polls do.

PART 7. WHAT CHINA GAINED

  • RECORD Pew's July 2026 release found China viewed more favorably than the United States in most of the 36 countries surveyed, the first time in about two decades. Median confidence in Xi Jinping now exceeds confidence in Trump by 10 points across the 20 countries tracked annually. In Canada, favorable views of China rose from 14 percent in 2023 to 44 percent while views of the United States fell from 57 percent to 33 percent. The United States still leads in India, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and a handful of others.
  • REPORTED The Council on Foreign Relations' reading of the data: the shift is "driven more by an American decline in soft power than by a Chinese surge."
  • REPORTED China assumed funding for a formerly United States-funded demining program in Cambodia, pledged $50 billion in loans and investment to Africa, and was positioned to replace USAID funding in countries including Nepal and Colombia. Analysts at Devex and Brookings caution that China has not filled most of the humanitarian gap in Asia; the gain is diplomatic more than dollar-for-dollar.
  • RECORD Voice of America was largely silenced in 2025; Chinese state media publicly celebrated. Congress later restored funding for Radio Free Asia, which resumed China broadcasts.
  • RECORD The chip export regime was tightened toward China and loosened toward the UAE within months, and Nvidia and AMD were licensed to sell certain AI chips to China in exchange for a 15 percent revenue share. Cross-reference the corruption page, A2 and A7.
  • RECORD Canada, the United States' closest trading partner, signed a market-access agreement with China in August 2026 while under American tariff threat.

The administration's case: the May 2026 Beijing summit produced a trade truce and Chinese pressure on Iran; China's soft power gains in the Global South predate 2025; favorability polls do not measure hard power; and the United States remains the preferred partner in the Indo-Pacific democracies that matter most for deterrence. The counter is Canada: when the closest ally on earth hedges toward Beijing, the cause is not Chinese charm.

THE OTHER SIDE, TAKEN SERIOUSLY

  • The mandate. He campaigned on mass deportation, tariffs, cutting foreign aid, and confronting Iran, and won the popular vote. Voters chose the policies whose costs this page counts.
  • Models are not counts. The largest number on this page, 14 million, is a projection. It is labeled as one. Anyone citing it should say "projected."
  • The energy shock has two authors. Iran closed the strait. The war that produced the closure was an American and Israeli choice. Both sentences are true.
  • Some harm has an offsetting benefit the page must name. Border crossings fell sharply. The Gaza ceasefire was widely credited to this administration. Allies are spending more on defense. A ledger of harm that omits the ledger of results is a grievance list.
  • Correlation. SNAP rolls, Medicaid rolls, manufacturing employment, and measles cases all have more than one cause. Where the government's own agency or the Congressional Budget Office attributes the change to the policy, the page says so; where it does not, the page says "reported."

Method and sources

Government data first: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Congressional Budget Office, ICE detention statistics, PEPFAR program data, Federal Register, court opinions. Then established research institutions, named in each entry: Pew Research Center, Human Rights Watch, the Deportation Data Project (UC Berkeley and UCLA), Yale Budget Lab, Kiel Institute, Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center, Council on Foreign Relations, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Then wire and major-outlet reporting, named in each entry. Every figure carries the date it was true. Corrections at purplepoliticalbreakdown.com/contact.