Apparently, President Trump is so desperate to finish at least part of his border wall before the 2020 election that he is telling aides to seize private land under eminent domain rules and ignore environmental regulation. If they get in trouble, he is allegedly telling them, “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” which is about as close to an abuse of presidential power as you can find.

Over the past several weeks, as many Americans were hitting the beach for summer vacation — blissfully unaware of the doings in our nation’s capital — the president of the United States was finding new and creative ways to commit seemingly impeachable offenses.


What’s more, it directly echoes the findings of the Mueller Report, which offered evidence that Trump had dangled pardons in front of those caught up in the Russia investigation.

This move comes only days after the Trump administration revealed that it is moving $271 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security, including money for disaster relief, to ICE in order pay for housing migrants detained under the president’s zero tolerance policy. Aside from the taking money away from relief efforts in the midst of hurricane season, the Trump administration is arguably undermining Congress’s Article II power to control the nation’s purse strings.

It is not the first time Trump has done this. After Congress refused to appropriate money for his beloved border wall, he declared a phony national emergency so he could divert money from military construction jobs for the project.

Then there are the collection of impeachable-lite offenses that Trump is committing. Like the revelation last week that when he claimed Chinese officials had called the White House to “get back to the table” on trade talks. Turns out that was a lie intended to “project optimism that might boost markets.”


What’s a little market manipulation in order to boost the president’s political standing?

While at the G7 summit in southern France, he suggested that the next international pow-wow (to be hosted by the United States) would take place at his golf resort in Doral, Fla. — a comment that made the drafters of the emoluments clause of the Constitution roll over in their graves.

Trump isn’t even pretending any more about personally profiting from his office. Indeed, this week, while on a state visit to Ireland, Vice President Pence is staying at a Trump-owned golf resort more than 150 miles from Dublin, where his public meetings are scheduled. Why bed down at a spot so far away? Surely, putting money in the president’s pocket has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps most amazingly for a president who ran against his Democratic opponent in 2016 for having a private e-mail server, Trump appears to have taken a picture of a classified image from his intelligence briefing that showed the aftermath of a failed Iranian-missile test and tweeted it out for the world to see. As many have pointed out, Trump has the right to declassify any piece of classified information. At the same time, Congress has the right to impeach a president for doing something that unbelievably bone-headed.


Then there are the various public statements Trump has made over the past several weeks — the incessant and juvenile attacks on his political opponents and various media personalities who have upset him; the constant and unending lies; the slandering of American cities and US territories; his norm-slashing attacks on Jay Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve; his continued praise for right-wing and authoritarian leaders around the world. According to Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, Trump has launched 80 separate attacks on the news media — any one of which would be a national scandal in days past, but today has simply become the soundtrack of the Trump Era.

It’s no longer a question of becoming inured to Trump’s outrages; it’s practically impossible to keep up with them. Any one of the aforementioned acts by the president would, arguably, be grounds for impeachment — and yet, amazingly, they are dwarfed by the far larger and more damning impeachable offenses laid out in the Mueller Report.

As Congress returns this month from its recess, the question of impeachment will be front and center. More than half of House Democrats have already indicated their support for an impeachment inquiry. But as the president’s reckless, impulsive, infantile, and arguably criminal behavior this summer has shown, impeachment might be the only tool left to save us from the ongoing trainwreck that is the Trump presidency.

Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.