So the president is promising to pardon his subordinates if they have to break the law to carry out his orders to build the Big, Beautiful Wall, the latest spasm of abject lawlessness from someone whose lifelong principle is that the rules do not apply to him. This is not the best attribute to have in the world's most powerful man, particularly with a supine Congress—where one body is controlled by his lackeys and the other is run by Democrats afraid of their own shadow—and a court system increasingly stuffed full of Federalist Society dependables who can help enact conservative priorities from the bench. That's the same court system that OK'd his phony national emergency, which he admitted was phony while announcing it.

This week, we are seeing the results. By declaring the emergency, Trump sought to seize funds Congress appropriated for different purposes—specifically, to the Department of Defense—and use them to build his Big, Beautiful Wall. This was an explicit response to the Legislative Branch's refusal to appropriate Wall funding. The power of the purse is the legislative branch's lever to reign in the power of the executive. If the president can simply take money and use it for whatever he wants, Congress is functionally powerless. It deals profound damage to the separation of powers, and the checks and balances that ensures, which undergird the American republic.

Having run roughshod over such foundational legal principles, then, it was no surprise the president would bulldoze other legal hurdles. The Washington Post predicted as much in its report detailing his pledge to pardon his law-breaking staff.

President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

Now, as CBS News reports, we're seeing that in action.

The first phase of construction in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which runs along the southern border with Mexico, will replace a two-mile stretch of 15-foot-high fencing with structures that are twice as tall and feature large flood lights to illuminate the surrounding areas, according to a government court filing and congressional staffers familiar with the plans.

The project is the first construction of new border barriers on federal lands using funds diverted from the Defense Department under President Trump's national emergency declaration. The Department of Homeland Security told a federal court earlier in August that it plans to eventually replace nearly 44 miles of existing pedestrian and vehicle fencing with 30-foot steel bollards, creating a barrier spanning most of Organ Pipe as well as portions of an adjacent wildlife refuge.

Some members of Congress and environmental activists say erecting the massive structures will severely hamper animal migration, cut wildlife off from already-scarce desert water sources and threaten animals' ability to flee natural disasters like floods and wildfires. The 516-square-mile Organ Pipe monument is named for the unique cacti that dot the landscape. Several endangered species call it home, including the Sonoran pronghorn and desert bighorn sheep.

It seems almost quaint to hope this administration would heed environmental concerns before embarking on a project that tickles The Base. Workers are using heavy machinery and pumping the scarce groundwater nearby, but the idea Donald Trump would care verges on the absurd. So is the notion he would care what local communities think.

Anything to stimulate The Base. Joe Raedle Getty Images

But note that this is federally protected land: it's a national monument, and there's a wildlife refuge next door. This is the law, and it's getting trampled.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security waived dozens of laws to allow construction in Organ Pipe and other wildlife refuges in southwestern Arizona. In a notice in the Federal Register, Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan pointed to high level of illegal crossings in the Tucson sector, which includes Organ Pipe, and said existing barriers "no longer satisfy Border Patrol's operational needs." ...

Under a 2005 law, the homeland security secretary can waive any laws "necessary to ensure expeditious construction" of barriers along the border and can overrule other agencies like the National Parks Service, which administers national parks and monuments. McAleenan invoked that authority to waive the department's obligations under 36 federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the National Fish and Wildlife Act.

So, there's a law which says you can just "waive" other laws if you want to build a wall. The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to this totally normal thing in 2008, essentially offering the Bush administration—and now, the Trump administration—carte blanche to ignore inconvenient environmental statutes. What a stunning illustration of our national priorities.

What we all increasingly must come to terms with is that the law is whatever five guys on the Supreme Court say it is—and, to a lesser extent, what folks on the various lower courts say. Whether that is grounded in precedent and reason and the circumstances of reality depends on who's doing the saying at any given time. The Court's ruling on the national emergency, which ignored that Trump openly admitted he was declaring an emergency to speed up the process—that is, that there wasn't actually an emergency—was not the only recent ruling made from some sort of existential vacuum. The Court also OK'd Trump's Definitely Not a Muslim Ban in a decision that completely ignored the fact that Trump had referred to previous versions of the Definitely Not a Muslim Ban as a "Muslim Ban."

Anything is permissible if it leads to The Wall. MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

Yes, lawlessness is the order of the day. In an authoritarian state—and that is what we're heading towards—the law is what those in power say it is. This isn't even the first time Trump has dangled pardons for subordinates who break the law following his orders. The New York Times reported in April that Trump told then-Border Patrol chief Kevin McAleenan—now head of the Department of Homeland Security—that he'd pardon him if he hit some legal trouble for following the president's directive to shut down the southwestern border entirely. The president did this in a room full of people! There were witnesses! Now the Washington Post's Greg Sargent reminds us that House Democrats requested a list of people who were at the meeting in order to corroborate the story, and the Department of Homeland Security has simply ignored them.

Fuck your oversight powers. The president believes he can do anything he wants, and that he is not accountable to the other branches of government. In theory, this is crazy, and it is grounds for his removal from office. In practice, it appears that he is right, and that everything you learned in school about our constitutional system was a fairytale. Unless, of course, the American people decide that it all still matters.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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