Trump’s foreign meddling and border wall face fierce resistance

By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta · October 9, 2026

American power loses its legitimacy when executive muscle replaces lawful procedure, whether in Polish coalition rooms or along Texas border ranches.

The process of power and the temptation of shortcuts

A republic does not die in a dramatic midnight coup. It frays in the daylight, one shortcut at a time, whenever officials treat the machinery of governance as personal property rather than a public trust. In a courts household, you learn early that procedure is where power actually lives. When the executive branch reaches past its statutory bounds, it spends institutional legitimacy. That holds whether redrawing foreign coalitions or bulldozing private ranches. That stock refills very slowly, and every shortcut taken today prepares the ground for your opponents to wield the exact same tool tomorrow.

Consider how the current administration attempts to reshape Europe from the outside. According to Balkan Insight, United States President Donald Trump allegedly encouraged Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz to leave Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition and join the right-wing opposition. Kosiniak-Kamysz leads the conservative Polish People’s Party (PSL). Trump reportedly suggested during a March meeting—arranged by PiS politician Adam Bielan and presidential adviser Nikodem Rachon—that Kosiniak-Kamysz form a government with the Law and Justice party, promising "full US support" in return. Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that Kosiniak-Kamysz briefed him immediately after the session, noting that history will eventually find out the details. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on X to question whether the meeting served as an attempt to involve a foreign state in internal politics. This recalls the Watergate scandal, where operatives targeted political opponents and an administration worked to conceal its involvement.

The revolving door and the border wall

Closer to home, the same preference for leverage over law defines the administration's domestic maneuvers. As CNBC reports, artificial intelligence labs are rushing to hire former administration officials to navigate regulatory levers. Anthropic and OpenAI are actively recruiting former policy hands. Former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy adviser Sihao Huang joined Anthropic as head of frontier compute strategy. Dean Ball joined OpenAI as head of strategic futures after drafting the administration's America’s AI Action Plan.

The same heavy-handed approach marks the administration's border wall project, pursued from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. As ABC News details, the administration plans to spend $7.5 billion in the Big Bend region of Texas. A federal judge has temporarily paused wall construction in the Big Bend area. The No Big Bend Wall Coalition, representing more than 200 landowners, sued to block the work. Plaintiffs argue that Homeland Security is misusing its authority and overstepping congressional limits by issuing waivers to bypass environmental and other regulations. Ranchers like David Keller report that landowner resistance has slowed the project. Residents in Terrell County and Jeff Davis County push back against local land use agreements. When the government treats local property owners as mere obstacles to be bulldozed, it invites a rebellion that leaves officials unprepared.

The cost of treating governance as a game

The defense offered for these aggressive tactics always rests on urgency and results. The strongest opposing case holds that a fractured border requires immediate physical barriers and that strategic pressure abroad and in technology policy is merely robust leadership designed to secure American interests. This argument relies on the premise that formal legal constraints are luxury items to be discarded in times of crisis. But this defense collapses the moment you ask how you would feel if the opposing party held the pen. A rule that only works while your people hold power was never a rule at all.

When foreign ministers must publicly question whether an American president is meddling within an ally's parliament, the administration is not projecting strength. Nor is it strong when multigenerational ranches face five-day ultimatums under threat of eminent domain. It is spending the nation's institutional reserves on short-term political vendettas. Legitimate governance requires boring, predictable machinery that respects statutory limits and procedural boundaries. If we abandon those boundaries for executive convenience, we will find ourselves governed entirely by the whim of whoever holds the levers next.

Judge every administrative shortcut by the day your opponents hold the tool. Respect the statutory limits Congress enacted rather than executive whims that bypass them. Demand an election machinery and foreign policy boring enough to be forgotten.

Trump’s foreign meddling and border wall face fierce resistance

The process of power and the temptation of shortcuts

The revolving door and the border wall

The cost of treating governance as a game

Sources