Trump Is Bulldozing the Rule of Law and Selling America by the Pound

By Rob C.

TL;DR: Donald Trump is using fake “national emergencies” to bypass federal environmental laws, gut national park budgets, and hand out billions in no-bid contracts to his biggest campaign donors. From bulldozing pristine wilderness in Big Bend National Park to dropping $646,000 per migrant crossing on useless border barriers, the entire operation isn’t about national security—it’s a massive, taxpayer-funded pay-to-play scam designed to enrich corporate grifters. WTF? Am I the only one who thinks “emergency” should mean more than - it’s Tuesday?

Subscribe now

Good morning. Grab your coffee and prepare your stomach, because while you’re sweating over rising grocery bills and basic survival, Donald Trump is bulldozing the American wilderness and selling what’s left of our public lands by the pound.

Ever since Trump signed a sweeping “national energy emergency” declaration on his first day back in office, the White House has been using a toxic cocktail of executive orders, plus a border waiver buried in Section 102 of an immigration law from 1996, to completely bypass the rule of law.

We’re talking about legally steamrolling over the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act, the Wilderness Act, and even the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Here’s how the grift works, and it’s honestly almost elegant in its simplicity: declare a bogus “emergency” that the government’s own data flatly contradicts, skip public comment periods, ignore environmental reviews, ditch competitive bidding, award billions to campaign donors, and walk away laughing all the way to the bank.

Two separate agencies—DHS and the Department of the Interior—have independently declared their own emergency hall-passes to hand out federal dollars like party favors. Same move, different letterhead. And the pattern repeats everywhere you look: wall construction, oil and gas leasing, mining permitting. Declare emergency, waive law, award contract, walk away with billions. Rinse, repeat, cash the check.

They Bulldozed a National Park For This?

Look no further than Texas’s iconic Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park — one of the most remote, least-crossed stretches of the entire southern border. Since February 2026, more than 28 federal protective laws have been waived to allow heavy machinery, roads, stadium lighting, and vehicle barriers to tear directly through pristine public wilderness.

CBP’s proposal has morphed multiple times, originally floating a ridiculous 30-foot steel wall before backing off, then floated it again, because apparently “plan” is a fluid concept when you’re not paying for it yourself. Eventually rethinking it amid fierce local resistance. Earlier this month, contractors started bulldozing inside the park. DHS was eventually forced to pause work thanks to massive bipartisan outrage—including from a 26-year Border Patrol veteran and a sitting Republican sheriff who publicly called the barriers completely unnecessary.

More than 140 local outfitters and small business owners warned the project would sever river access and obliterate the regional tourism economy. But hey, who cares about local small businesses when there are corporate donors to enrich? This is the caliber of decision-making we’re dealing with: an idea so dumb it managed to unite park rangers, sheriffs, and river guide companies against it, and they still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into pausing it.

Let’s do the math on this unmitigated disaster:

The Crossing Data: CBP’s own official metrics show there were 3,096 total attempted crossings in the entire Big Bend Sector in 2025—a 74% collapse from 2023, representing a tiny 1.3% of all nationwide border apprehensions.

The Price Tag: Contracts tied to the Big Bend area include a $960.4 million CPB delivery order, a $1.7 billion award explicitly earmarked for “border wall through Big Bend,” and a staggering $2.6 billion award for the adjoining Lower Canyons stretch.

The Math: Using the lowest conservative estimate of $2 billion spent inside the park, divided by the 3,096 sector-wide crossings, taxpayers are spending roughly $646,000 per attempted migrant crossing.

The Reality: If you tally the combined $4.3 billion across the regional awards, that cost skyrockets to nearly $1.4 million per attempted crossing.

We aren’t protecting a border. We are committing state-sponsored environmental terrorism to build a multi-billion-dollar monument to Donald Trump’s ego.

The Project 2025 Playbook: Gutting the Parks, Burning the Forests

This isn’t an accident—it is the explicit blueprint of Project 2025 and Trump’s loyal budget-cutter Russell Vought. The goal is simple: destroy every single government agency that dares to place public health or environmental preservation above corporate profits.

National Park Service (NPS): Facing a proposed $736 million (20%) budget cut, a brutal 72% cut to its repair and construction budget (so long, working public restrooms), and a 95% execution of the Historic Preservation Fund—all on top of roughly 1,000 Park Service workers already laid off in 2025.

U.S. Forest Service: Lost 5,860 staff members (16% of its total workforce) and faces a 75% budget slash, including the complete elimination of its research program and all 1,215 scientist positions.

Wildfire Chaos: Thanks to these gut-job cuts, hazardous fuel reduction work is already down 38%—in a year where devastating wildfires have burned over 12 million acres, blowing past all of 2024.

Meanwhile, The Interior Department announced that oil, gas, and mining permit reviews on public land that normally take one to two years are now rubber-stamped in just 28 days. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officially killed the 2024 Public Lands Rule—which had placed conservation on equal footing with drilling and had 92% public support—claiming it “restricted productive use.”

They’ve slashed clean-up bonding rules so fossil fuel companies can abandon toxic wells on the taxpayer’s dime, reopened 82% of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, reinstated drilling across 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain, and proposed opening 1.3 billion acres of offshore waters to commercial exploitation. Think of all the oily beach we can visit to see the dead animals.

Follow the Money: The Pay-to-Play Hall of Fame

You can’t talk about a Trump policy without following the trail of corporate cash. Two companies alone—Barnard Construction (Bozeman, MT) and Fisher Sand & Gravel (ND)—snagged roughly 73% of the total value of new Texas and New Mexico wall contracts. That’s roughly $14 billion combined, according to a federal lawsuit filed by a passed-over bidder.

Let’s meet the big winners in the Trump Pay-to-Play Lottery:

Barnard Construction

Chairman Tim Barnard and his wife wrote a cool $1 million check to a Trump joint fundraising committee in 2024, alongside massive PAC contributions. The return on investment? Barnard and its affiliates have snagged over $5.6 billion in second-term wall contracts (over $7 billion total). Federal contracting now accounts for over 80% of the company’s entire revenue. Back in 2019, a Barnard subsidiary contract magically ballooned from $142 million to over $1 billion via no-bid modifications, costing taxpayers $33 million per mile—$13 million over the standard government rate. A Senate investigation was called, the GAO told the Army Corps to fix its procurement process, and absolutely nothing changed.

Fisher Sand & Gravel

Fisher’s track record is a pure crime-comedy script. The Army Corps originally rejected Fisher’s bids due to a terrible track record and missed deadlines. But after Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)—a direct recipient of Fisher family campaign contributions—pushed DHS, Trump personally intervened to hand Fisher a $400 million contract in December 2019 anyway.

Fisher was also the firm behind the privately funded 3.5-mile wall built by “We Build the Wall”—the scam fronted by Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage. Kolfage was convicted of wire fraud for pocketing $1 million in donor cash, Bannon got a pre-trial Trump pardon, and independent engineers later concluded the wall segment was at risk of collapsing into the Rio Grande.

Did that stop the government cash flow? Of course not. Fisher was handed a $309 million contract for the San Rafael Valley and another $400 million contract near Yuma, all while hiring Trump’s former CBP Commissioner and former ICE Director as lobbyists to secure parallel state contracts in Texas.

This is what modern corporate fascism looks like.

They manufacture a crisis, waive every law designed to protect our water, air, and public heritage, and then funnel billions of your hard-earned tax dollars straight into the pockets of the donors who financed their campaigns.

We aren’t just losing our money to corporate grifters. We are losing the wild, pristine spaces that belong to every single American—all to make sure a handful of corrupt contractors can keep lining their pockets. This isn’t just blatant corruption— it’s environmental terrorism, dressed up in an American flag and handed to the highest bidder.