Border agency built the wall eleven days before admitting the pause had ended.

…(cont) What I have is a Civic with a fan belt I keep meaning to replace, a dog who eats dinner before I do most nights, and just enough in checking to cover the electric bill and maybe the dentist, if it's a slow month at the dentist. That's the whole of my personal economy, and it is not, it turns out, a unit of measurement anybody in Washington uses. So let's use theirs instead — the calendar they kept, in their own filings, about a wall through a national park in Texas.

On August 19th, after what the wire service called rare bipartisan pushback, did the government pause construction in Big Bend National Park?

Nine days later, on August 28th, did Customs and Border Protection extend that pause through September 15th, attorneys said, following a federal court hearing?

Six days after that, on September 3rd, did a federal filing extend the pause again — this time, the judge wrote, through the end of the month?

I went out to the garage for that one, because I wanted the two filings side by side instead of just scrolled past each other on a screen. I put the September 3rd filing on the hood, weighted down with the fan belt I still haven't bought, and set the next one beside it under a socket wrench so the wind wouldn't take it.

Sixteen days after that filing — on September 19th — did Customs and Border Protection tell the Associated Press that installation of thirty-foot panels was already underway along that stretch of the border?

I don't know what "pause" means in a federal filing. I know what it means in my garage — the engine's off. So I just want to ask: on September 19th, when CBP told the Associated Press the installation was already underway, does that mean the engine, whatever federal pause means, was actually running the whole time?

Eleven days after that — on September 30th — did the government finally tell the court the pause itself had expired, in the document the Center for Biological Diversity posted that day?

Two days after that — on October 2nd — did a federal judge in El Paso block the construction again, in a ruling the plaintiffs called a win for landowners and conservationists alike?

I keep coming back to that number, eleven, and I'm sorry, I know I've been here before — let me ask it a different way instead. Is eleven days how long the installation ran before the government got around to telling anybody, including the court, that the pause it announced in August was over?

Oh — one more thing, actually, before you put the paper down. The project that broke ground on September 19th, the one with the thirty-foot panels — is that the same project the federal government fast-tracked by waiving dozens of laws, the one that runs, all told, $1.7 billion?