I have multiple outlets in my room where the top plug on the outlet is controlled by a light switch. My objective is simply to make it so that these top plugs are always hot, regardless of the position of the light switch.
After turning off the breaker, testing the outlet, and opening the outlet, the job appeared pretty simple: I have the expected ground wire near the bottom and two white wires connected to the left side of the outlet under screws (and connected together by an unbroken brass/copper tab), and on the right side there was a red wire connected to the top screw and a black wire connected to the bottom screw (but the brass/copper tab on this side has been intentionally broken, presumably to allow them to operate independently of each other). Since the top plug is connected to the red wire, and the top plug is the one that's controlled by the light switch, my instinct was that the red wire was my culprit. Therefore, my goal was to remove the red wire and have only black wires going to the right side: https://imgur.com/a/F5cZfeZ
To confirm this hypothesis, I opened up an adjacent full-hot outlet. As I suspected, no red wires were attached, only two white, two black, and the ground (green). https://imgur.com/a/1ayrXRW
The electrician seemed to make things easy for me. There were two caps, one red and one black. The red had three wires terminating in the cap, one of which was very short (it was this short wire that was connected to the outlet). I just removed this short wire, and left the other two wound together and in the cap. https://imgur.com/a/g4tBEdj
Similarly, there were three black wires terminating in the cap, one of which was very short (again, the short wire was the one connected to the outlet). I removed the short wire and the cap completely, and just took both of the other two wires and attached them to both of the (newly available) screws. https://imgur.com/a/jpBEDVQ
After completing the wiring, I turned the breaker back on. Nothing alarming occurred (and the breaker didn't trip or anything), but now all of the half-hot outlets in my room are completely non-functional. In fact, the light/fan that were also controlled by other switches in the room is also not working. The other outlets and lights in the room are working normally.
My only guess is that I need to get an unbroken brass/copper tab to replace the broken one on the outlet. This is my guess because the adjacent full-hot outlet had an unbroken one, which I saw when I opened it up as a reference. I was very careful to make sure that screws were fully screwed in to prevent a wire from popping out and was careful that uninsulated ground wasn't touching any uninsulated hot (which I imagine would have caused an immediate short/breaker flip if it had).