Always looking for ways to score points with his hero Donald Trump, freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) has introduced legislation called the \u201cDonument Act\u201d to create a sweeping national monument at the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink \u2018Donald\u2019 + \u2018Monument,\u2019\u201d a spokesperson for Cawthorn told E&E News, which first reported on the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The land shrine to Trump\u2019s harsh, nativist immigration policies would be dubbed the \u201cSouthern Border Wall National Monument.\u201d The bill would designate the physical wall and nearby lands \u2014 nearly 300,000 acres in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas\u00a0\u2014 as a monument and \u201cprotect\u00a0[them]\u00a0from alteration,\u201d according to the legislation.<\/p>\n
In a statement announcing the bill, Cawthorn praised Trump\u2019s efforts to make a secure southern border a \u201ctangible reality\u201d and slammed President Joe Biden for his early executive order halting wall construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI will make every effort to protect and secure the southern border, and advance an America First agenda,\u201d Cawthorn said. \u201cIf Biden refuses to finish the wall, you can be sure that American patriots will do everything in their power to protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The measure, which has almost zero chance of being approved by a Democratically controlled Congress, highlights how unserious Cawthorn is about legislating. As he told GOP colleagues in a January email obtained by Time, \u201cI have built my staff around comms rather than legislation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is also a rather perplexing move, given the Republican Party\u2019s fierce opposition to large-scale national monuments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During his tenure, Trump dismantled or desecrated four federally protected land and water sites with significant cultural, archeological and natural resources. He carved more than 2 million acres from a pair of national monuments in Utah \u2014 Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante \u2015 in December 2017, arguing that their establishment and size were an \u201cegregious abuse of federal power.\u201d And to make way for the border wall, the Trump administration\u00a0bulldozed and blew up Indigenous cultural and burial sites within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By contrast, Trump threatened sentences of up to 10 years in prison for anyone who destroyed or dismantled a monument to a slave-owning president or a leader of the Confederacy.<\/p>\n
Republicans have increasingly attacked Biden\u2019s immigration policies, blaming him for the recent surge in migrants at the southern border. And after remaining silent about the significant environmental impacts of wall construction, many have parroted the Trump administration line that the border wall would not only reduce the number of\u00a0undocumented migrants\u00a0but actually protect the environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all of those that are concerned about the environment, we have an environmental crisis because the migrants are running across the border, they\u2019re trampling through the ecosystem,\u201d Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in an interview earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And this week, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) sued the Biden administration over its decision to stop wall construction, arguing that doing so violates the National Environmental Policy Act and is \u201chaving a devastating impact on the environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the Trump administration that waived numerous environmental laws and drastically altered the borderlands in its rush to build the wall.\u00a0Thousands of scientists have warned that the barrier has and will continue to be disastrous for the environment and wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cawthorn\u2019s \u201cDonument Act,\u201d however, seeks not to protect the lands, species and resources along the southern border, but the physical steel structure itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n