I have a deeply embedded—and I think, perfectly understandable—distrust of the American "intelligence community." That being said, holy hell, this is something I don't like to hear. From CNN:



The Secret Service director reports directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned on Sunday amid growing pressure from the President. The director oversees the Secret Service's work on both protection and investigations. "There is a near-systematic purge happening at the nation's second-largest national security agency," one senior administration official says.



Camp Runamuck is showing its teeth these days. The president* wants to put the ghastly Stephen Miller in charge of all immigration matters, and now he's tossing the head of the Secret Service out as well, and in such a manner that Senior Administration Officials are calling it a "purge" which, historically, do not end well for spies and intelligence operatives. He also seems to be gathering a large portion of federal law enforcement under his control, which, again, historically does not end well for a country. If the president* is trying to draw fire away from the Mueller Report, he's going about it quite enthusiastically.

Once again, an entirely new cast of characters will discover what it's like to work for a petulant would-be authoritarian whose empathy for other human beings stops at what he sees in the mirror, and whose idea of whimsy is to mock the disabled and to accuse the victims of natural disasters of ingratitude while they're trying to avoid starvation and cholera. He will be done with them soon enough. After all, apparently part of what set off the current tantrum was a reluctance of DHS officials to break the law on his command. Again, from CNN:



Two Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials -- including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more -- the President, according to one attendee, was "ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue." Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President. She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports. According to two people in the room, the President said: "I don't care."



The benign explanation is that he's going for the most clamorous distraction he can from the fight over the Mueller Report and, more recently, his taxes. The more perilous one is that he's completely losing it and that he doesn't care if the temple comes down on his head. So, now, while the country is continuing to be targeted by other nations, the DHS is, at the moment, a blind chicken with, apparently, more defenestrations to come. There is nothing that can possibly go wrong in this scenario, which is scaring the daylights out of people who do not scare easily.



Trump surveys the Executive Branch. JIM WATSON Getty Images

Elsewhere in our rapidly blossoming authoritarian state, the president* is planning to demonstrate the Republican Party's devotion to the 10th Amendment by trying to strip the states of their rights to regulate pipelines that pass through them. From CNBC:

The effort was spurred by the blockage of the construction of the 125-mile Constitution Pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York. A protracted legal battle over the project has been underway since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, gave a greenlight in 2014 and 2016, because the state of New York has refused to issue a water permit. According to four current and former administration officials, the order directs the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to clarify Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, the law that gives states authority over permits where water quality is concerned.

This is of dubious legality, which is no surprise to anyone. And because this administration* is good only at firing people, and doing that by remote control, it's undoubtedly important that it left itself an escape hatch.

The executive order is currently slated to be signed on Wednesday, with Texas as one suggested location for the event. Administration officials caution the plans could change.

As they generally do, without warning, and to the detriment of the republic.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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