Republicans may feel that they’re on the up and up, armed with Donald Trump in the White House and a trifecta at the federal level, but former insiders of the conservative party argue that the GOP’s inability to stand up to its executive leader is becoming an unsolvable problem.

Speaking with MSNBC on Sunday, former Florida Representative David Jolly claimed that Republicans have no targetable solutions for some of Congress’s chief jobs due to the legislative branch’s constant deference to Trump’s will.

“I don’t think Republicans in Congress know what they’re doing right now,” Jolly said. “They have a government funding cliff and a debt ceiling coming up in four weeks, and they don’t even know how to solve that.

“I think, Alex, that we’re in a constitutional crisis. I really believe that, people are tepid in saying that—but I would say not just because of Trump and [Elon] Musk, though they’re facilitating it,” Jolly continued. “The constitutional crisis is because the Republican Congress has collapsed.

“It is listless and meaningless, it is not providing the check that the Constitution suggests it should in this environment,” he said, arguing that the only existing check that remains on the “lawlessness and corruption” of Trump and Musk’s power is in the courts, which “takes time.”

“But the immediate ability to rush to the fire is the Congress, and they’ve just laid down and said ‘Hey, Donald Trump is running this place, and Elon Musk is as well, and we’re giving up any authority,’” Jolly said.

Jolly also had harsh words for the MAGA leader’s open-armed reception of the world’s richest man, whose spending-fixated department tapped into federal databases with info on hundreds of millions of Americans, including sensitive details such as Social Security numbers, home addresses, and medical histories.

“How do you think Elon Musk’s cover-boy treatment was received in the White House?” asked MSNBC’s Alex Witt, referring to the billionaire’s front-page spread on Time magazine’s February issue.

“Elon Musk is either a co-president or a first spouse right now, given the power that he’s wielding and the lack of accountability,” Jolly said.

Whether Musk even has the proper clearances to access such sensitive data has been an ongoing topic of discussion. Last week, Trump designated Musk a “special government employee,” which, per the Justice Department, is “anyone who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period.” But hours after the appointment, even top officials in the administration weren’t confident that Musk had cleared a background check to do the job.

The Trump administration is pushing back against a federal court order blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing critical payment systems in the Treasury Department.

Attorneys in the Justice Department wrote an 11-page court filing late Sunday night that the order was “impermissible” and “anti-constitutional,” claiming that “basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president.”

The attorneys addressed their complaint to U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan, asking her to stop or modify the order and allow Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other Trump-appointed leaders to be briefed on the payment system. The original order blocking the DOGE takeover came from U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer on Saturday, who restricted access to career employees with proper training.

The order was the result of a lawsuit from 19 Democratic attorneys general over the access DOGE was given in the Treasury Department, alleging that Musk’s cronies were putting the critical federal payments system, which manages trillions of dollars in federal disbursements, at risk of manipulation or hacking.

According to Politico, DOJ lawyers are negotiating with the 19 states for an agreement to make Engelmayer’s order more narrowly tailored. On Monday, Vargas said that if there was no agreement by 5 p.m., she would demand an expedited review by late Monday night.

Trump allies are furious over the order, claiming that it could even bar Bessent, confirmed by the Senate, from running his own department. Some of them have even suggested ignoring the order, Politico reports. Still, the DOJ says that Treasury officials are complying with the order.

One of Musk’s henchmen, Marko Elez, reportedly had administrative access to sensitive federal payment systems and was even rewriting code, before resigning after his racist social media posts came to light last week. In X posts last week, Musk suggested that Elez would be rehired, but the Justice Department’s court filing only states that he resigned and that he returned materials and equipment.

DOGE employees have been allowed access in not just the Treasury Department but all over the federal government, including the Department of Energy, which manages the country’s nuclear arsenal, and the agency that manages the federal workforce, the Office of Personnel Management.

In some cases, federal court orders have restricted or even barred DOGE’s access, but Trump, Musk, and Vice President JD Vance are openly discussing defying the federal judiciary and igniting a constitutional crisis. The next several months will be pivotal not just for the future of the federal government, but also for the country.

Donald Trump is fleshing out his idea of taking over the Gaza Strip—but it doesn’t include any long-term contingencies other than carving up the nation to be consumed by other countries in the Middle East.

“The White House press secretary told us last week that you’re committed to rebuilding Gaza. Steve Witkoff said that process would take 10 to 15 years,” started a reporter in the room, referring to the real estate developer and U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. “Does your commitment to rebuilding Gaza extend beyond your time in office?”

“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza,” Trump said. “As far as us........

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