The pardon is different to others though. He is pardoning the refusal to follow a court order, not the original offence that resulted in the injunction being filed in the first place. It is not a small check on the power of the courts when that happens, it is completely steamrolling the legal process.
I still think pardons should only be used in the most extreme circumstances, and should be excessively rare. Barely anyone bat an eye when former presidents pardoned hundreds of people on the same day, or pardon someone convicted of espionage and high treason...but pardon someone for ignoring a bench order and everyone loses their shit for reasons completely unrelated to the pardon process.
Personally, pardons should generally only be used for obvious miscarriages of justice, or if some new information becomes known or had to be classified that can now be declassified where we can say "there are extenuating circumstances, and this punishment is now (or always was) unjust". Stuff like that.
And plenty of presidents before have had "pet pardons" they've used for whatever reason they've wanted to in the past. I'm pretty sure I remember plenty of conservatives making a big fuss when Obama did it; but liberals had very little to say, or the argument was "this was a non-issue". But this one is an issue right? And we all know why, because the guy doing it plays for the other team, or he's literally Hitler and about to murder all 150 million people who didn't vote for him, or whatever.
Protip: Don't want presidents doing lots of shitty things you don't like? Reduce the amount of power granted to the branch.
Hahahaha. I basically agree with your assessment.
Really, you don't need a reason to impeach a President. Any Congress can do it at any time for any reason or no reason. Although it should only technically only be in certain cases. Per the Constitution -
Article II of the United States Constitution states in Section 4 that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."
But then in 1804, Samuel Chase, a Justice on the Supreme Court was impeached for "Political bias and arbitrary rulings, promoting a partisan political agenda on the bench". If you impeached an officer for that shit these days, you'd run out about half of all government workers. Mark W. Delahay, in 1873, was a judge for the District of Kansas. He was impeached for "drunkenness", which was not really a crime then (most people were drunk most of the time). So it's not like a strict reason by the Constitution is required.
The procedure is, the House of Representatives calls a vote for a hearing, which requires a simple majority. Then the Senate tries the case, requiring a 2/3 majority to convict. If convicted, the officer is removed from office, may be barred from holding office in the future, and becomes liable for criminal charges. They won't get 2/3 of the Senate, I think, unless the Republican Party is willing to complete abandon Trump at this point (which I don't think is in the cards yet). But even then, it seems unlikely since I think more than a few senators will be willing to sit and say "Wait a second, we don't actually have any solid dirt on this guy yet. We've got a shitzillion smoke clouds going up around him, but no actual fire. I can't convict without some kind of solid evidence." Let's not forget we did have solid evidence for Clinton, and he still got off.
Every single time a president pardons or commutes someone he is nullifying the judiciary. That's the whole idea. It is a small check on the power of the courts. This is just another impeachment fantasy for anti-Trump people to masturbate to until the next one comes out.