They are clearly scared shitless of Trump.

If you think DC politicians start out with good intentions, you haven't been paying attention.
No one ever gets elected by the major parties without being corrupted and controlled.
That's why they apparently despise Trump so much.

Really? I remember I think from the novel that he was extremely jealous of Dagny even as children.

"There is no gray area in-between evil and just a little bit evil."

I don't think that I claimed that there was. Of course we do have shades of gray for bad behavior. Murdering someone should and will be dealt with more harshly than driving 10mph over the speed limit (unless you live in Manhattan). I noted in another comment is that evil is defined by doing bad for the fun of it. So, again this is my personal opinion, bad is a subset of evil.
Evil, even under my definition, is just evil. Premeditated murder is evil. Driving too fast because you got distracted is bad, and punishable, but not evil so I'm not comparing levels of evil, merely evil to not evil. Even our American legal system requires mens rea, or criminal intent, to be guilty of a crime (unless you're of the wrong political party). In a nutshell, that's what I'm exploring here.

But putting all that aside (didn't mean to get off on a tangent there), that wasn't even the point of my original question. I'm not trying to build a ranking of most to least evil within the novel. I was not looking at more vs. less evil, I was trying to examine "bad results from intentional misdeeds" which is, as you say evil with no shades of gray, vs. "bad results because the person doesn't know what the heck they're doing." Certain characters, like Cuffy Meigs, Jim Taggart, Floyd Ferris, and Mr. Thompson I believe have malevolent intent from the start. Others like Stadler, I give some benefit of the doubt that he went in to SSI with good intentions, naively thinking that the people he was empowering were as well-meaning and by the time he discovered they weren't, it was too late. Mouch to me is an in-between case. I think he's like many real life politicians who get corrupted by the system and the power. By very early on in the novel, he certainly did let power go to his head, the way he was able to end Phoenix Durango with no compunction. And by the end of the novel, I think there's no question all of it was evil - willing to starve half the country from delayed wheat shipments rather than admit that their plans, whether evil by design or not, had failed. The evil was, at the very least, in not admitting a mistake and not changing course, no matter how they started out.

But bottom line, I was just philosophizing whether the damage caused by the antagonists was more from incompetence at what they're doing, or from pure malevolent intent. I think it varies by character and even then may change through the course of the book.

In my opinion, Jim Taggart starts out altruistic, but by the end, he is power-hungry and just evil. Mouch and Thompson seem to be power-hungry and evil from the start (or at least the start of the book). Hard to find anything good to say about Ferris or Cuffy.

An interesting study on "who is evil and why" from AR's perspective is to look at her listing of the people on the train that gets buried in the tunnel.

Pure evil. There is no gray area in-between evil and just a little bit evil.
The lack of morality and moral judgement does not excuse evil behaviors, no matter how seemingly minor, to mere stupidity or incompetence. Karma makes no distinction between just a wee bit bad and evil. Karma will always win in the end.

Fair but I wasn't trying to compare the looters to dependent children (at least not literally). What I meant by incompetence is incompetence in governing, economic policy, business, that type of thing. Oh they're very smart people in general. So you could get a person with altruistic intent who goes into public service in a genuine desire to do good, then one of two things happens - he either gets corrupted by the position or by government itself, or his true selfish nature comes out, and then there are people who are so incompetent at governing but have to keep covering their mistakes with bigger and bigger mistakes until it gets out of control. That's where I'd place someone like Dr. Stadtler. By the time he realized the monster he created (probably before the opening of the story) it was too late, he had to keep going along with it.

Hmmm yeah forgot about Cuffy. Such a minor character in the movie, but yes. And Floyd Ferris.

IMHO, the best of the looters are not incompetent as they are very good at the looting they do. When they loot deliberately to the harm of their victims they are being malevolent and evil. Legitimate dependents such as children and those truly needing assistance (categories we all have experienced or may experience) are not looters.

Cuffy Meigs is pure evil as well.

My guess would be it depends. People like Jim Taggart and Mr. Thompson are probably genuinely evil. Someone like Dr. Stadler probably went into the SSI with good intentions and was aghast at what he created but couldn't put the genie back in. Mouch is a tougher call. I think he's the prototype US politician today. Maybe went in with good intentions but got corrupted by Washington then his inner selfishness took over. What do you think? My general personal definition of evil is someone who knows what they're doing is wrong, and have malintention. They do wrong for the sake of doing wrong. By that definition, I would actually place Jim Taggart as the worst of the bunch.