One of the more fascinating sidelights of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's now-consistent threat to declare an actual emergency over a phantom national threat on the southern border of the country is the obvious problem that the federal government is going to have to grab somebody's land in order to build this big monument to the president*'s tiny self. Already, the Molon Labe chorus is rising from the Texas outback. (Let us set aside the obvious historical irony in the fact that there wouldn't be a Texas at all without one of the biggest federal land-grabs in history.) From the Washington Post:

She, along with dozens of other landowners in the Rio Grande Valley, received surprise letters from the federal government in recent months, requests from officials who are seeking access to their properties for surveys, soil tests, equipment storage and other actions. It is, lawyers and experts say, the first step in the government trying to seize private property using the power of eminent domain — a contentious step that could put a lengthy legal wrinkle into President Trump’s plans to build hundreds of miles of wall, some of which passes through land like Alvarez’s. Previous eminent domain attempts along the Texas border have led to more than a decade of court battles, some of which date to George W. Bush’s administration and have yet to be resolved. Many landowners, like Alvarez, are vowing to fight anew.

People walk on the Mexican side of the border fence in Tijuana. Mario Tama Getty Images

Alvarez refused to sign over access to her property, which was handed down from her grandfather. She yelled at her father for allowing the government onto his land. And she had a message for Trump, who is scheduled to visit nearby McAllen on Thursday afternoon: no border wall, a phrase she wanted to write on her roof so Trump could see it if he flew over her home. She decided against doing so because of rain. “I’m against the wall because I’m going to get evicted by it,” said Alvarez, a 47-year-old high school teacher.

And good for them, says I, and not just because their efforts could help keep the big, beautiful stupid wall tied up in court until half-past the Mars landing. The idea that the government can just grab your property so that the president* can fulfill a mnemonic device created by his campaign staff so he could remember how to be a bigot on the stump should revolt anyone.

Trump salutes a helicopter at the border. JIM WATSON Getty Images

One thing we have learned over the past few years is that the abuse of the eminent domain power is a powerful unifying force for people of radically different backgrounds and political beliefs. For proof of that, the Texans in question need only to look a few degrees north to Nebraska, and the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel and conservative fetish object. There are serious environmental concerns about the pipeline, but what galvanized mass opposition was the attempt by TransCanada, the energy behemoth that was trying to build the death-funnel, in conjunction with much of the Nebraska political establishment, to seize private property for their project. All of a sudden, way out in their fields, farmers began to see strange people in suits, carrying clipboards and behaving like they owned the place.

This is what brought together conservative farmers and liberal greens. This is what brought together, literally, cowboys and Indians. Under the leadership of Jane Fleming Kleeb, now the state Democratic Party chair, and a number of others, the fight against the pipeline became a model of consensus-driven resistance and the glue that held it together was the opposition to what Kleeb branded "eminent domain for private gain." This, I assure you, is not a fight that many Republicans want to have, especially in Texas, a state that's purpling by the minute. Already, the members of the state's congressional delegation, and many of the members of the state government, all are running for cover. If the president* pulls this stunt, and if people like Ted Cruz keep running interference, Beto O'Rourke is going to be the least of their problems.

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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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