GOP Senator Says Trump Destruction Is Good Way to “Test” Constitution

At least one Republican lawmaker is openly admitting that he’s interested to see how Donald Trump’s unconstitutional challenges to the federal government will “play out.”

During an interview on CBS’s Face The Nation Sunday, Utah Senator John Curtis appeared to encourage a constitutional crisis by suggesting that the president’s decision to freeze congressionally appropriated funds to agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development should be welcomed as a test to the Constitution.

“Do you believe the president has the unilateral authority to cancel funds appropriated by Congress?” asked CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

“Well what we’re seeing play out is this wrestle between the three branches of government,” Curtis said. “We’ll find out.”

“You don’t have a point of view?” pressed Brennan.

“Well, listen, I believe in the Constitution, right? I believe this is how we test the Constitution,” Curtis continued. “And people have said, ‘Oh this is a constitutional crisis.’ And I say exactly the opposite. It’s proving to work. We have the courts play in, we have Congress who will play in.

“Let’s let this play out by the Constitution, and then Congress—let’s step up. Right? I’ll be the first to say it, this is a problem that Congress has, in many cases, given the American people,” Curtis added.

The Trump administration’s prerogative, however, seems less inclined to follow the law on this particular issue.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 grants Congress the authority to reexamine executive branch withholdings from the budget. In a 1985 memorandum, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the executive branch has no authority to block such spending and that “impoundment is not a promising avenue for resolving budget disputes with Congress on any significant scale.” He also urged that the power could not be wielded under “normal” circumstances.

“Our institutional vigilance with respect to the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency requires appropriate deference to the constitutional prerogatives of the other branches, and no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse,” Roberts wrote at the time.

But when asked during his confirmation hearings if he would obey the Impoundment Control Act, Trump’s then-nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget (and Project 2025 architect), Russell Vought, claimed that the law itself was unconstitutional and that he would defer to the Trump administration as to whether his office would act in accordance with the law.

Former lawmakers haven’t been shy about criticizing the current state of the Republican Party for failing to stand up to Trump’s overbearing administration.

Speaking with MSNBC earlier this month, former Florida Representative David Jolly argued that the country is in a “constitutional crisis,” and his party has been “facilitating it.”

“The constitutional crisis is because the Republican Congress has collapsed,” the Republican told the network.

“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 Elon 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.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort experienced a setback in court Monday when a federal judge blocked the Office of Personnel Management and Department of Education from sharing sensitive information with the pseudo-agency.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman noted that DOGE has been granted access to information including “Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home address, income and assets, citizenship status, and disability status—and their access to this trove of personal information is ongoing. There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate.”

Boardman denied the plaintiffs’ motion to block the Treasury Department from sharing information with DOGE, noting that another judge had already done so.

DOGE has already sought access to taxpayers’ personal information right in the midst of tax season—and it hasn’t exactly been careful with sensitive data in the past. Its own website was hacked because its developers made coding errors, left open too many vulnerabilities, and hosted the page outside of government servers.

Musk has attempted to gain access to other sensitive government agencies as well, such as the Social Security Administration, leading some top officials to resign rather than hand over data. What the tech mogul plans to do with his new trove of sensitive information is unclear, although some Democrats think he’s trying to train his AI model Grok 3. There are also numerous benefits from that data for his business ventures, including ending government investigations into his activities.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump named right-wing talking head and MAGA hard-liner Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI on Sunday—and received congratulations from some of the worst people.

“Dan Bongino, a man of incredible love and passion for our Country, has just been named the next DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI, by the man who will be the best ever Director, Kash Patel,” Trump wrote Sunday evening on Truth Social. “He was a member of the New York Police Department (New York’s Finest!), a highly respected Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, and is now one of the most successful Podcasters in the Country, something he is willing and prepared to give up in order to serve. Working with our great new United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Director Patel, Fairness, Justice, Law and Order will be brought back to America, and quickly. Congratulations Dan!”

The appointment of the former Fox News host, who once declared his entire life is “about owning the libs,” drew applause from some of MAGA’s most reprehensible foot soldiers.

“Even the WWE never constructed a tag-team better than: KASH / BONGINO,” former Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X. “We are making @FBI great again!”

“Huge congrats to my friend @dbongino. No better patriot or professional,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote. “Patel-Bongino atop the FBI is pure [fire emoji].”

“This. Is. EVERYTHING!!” said known Trump groupie Lauren Boebert.

Others outside of the MAGA inner circle are horrified by the pick.

“Trump has chosen grifters to lead the FBI. Kash Patel sells “K$SH” branded merch, vaccine reversal pills,” Senator Chris Murphy wrote on X. “Dan Bongino’s entire show is telling listeners the world is ending so they buy the dozens of survivalist products he sells. I know this feels like a bad dream. It isn’t.”

After Elon Musk issued an ultimatum Saturday for federal employees to explain five things they accomplished last week or lose their jobs, several Trump appointees at federal agencies told their employees not to comply with the demand.

Musk posted on X Saturday afternoon, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Shortly afterward, federal workers received an email from the Office of Personnel Management, asking them to email five bullet points listing their accomplishments from the previous week and copy their managers. Many federal agencies then told their employees not to respond, including the Department of Defense, the FBI, the State Department, and other intelligence agencies.

Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel instructed the bureau’s employees not to respond as well, saying that the agency’s leadership would handle responding to the bureau and coordinating employee reviews tailored to the FBI. The State Department also issued a statement that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also told the intelligence agencies that she oversees not to respond to the email due to “the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work.”

The Department of Defense followed suit, as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Darin Selnick told employees that “when and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week.’”

Some agency heads, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, told their employees to comply with the email. His instructions contradicted the department’s acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, causing confusion before new directives from the department’s leadership Sunday night told employees to “pause activities” on the request until noon Monday.

“I’ll be candid with you. Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Keveney said in an email viewed by the Associated Press.

Employee unions across many agencies responded angrily to Musk’s ultimatum.

“We believe that employees have no obligation to respond to this plainly unlawful email absent other lawful direction,” said Everett Kelley, president of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, in a letter to the Trump administration. He also requested an apology from OPM to all federal employees, calling Musk “unelected and unhinged.”

Musk is exercising some kind of power play across the federal government with his demand. It remains to be seen whether others in the Trump administration, including the president himself, will ever push back against a tech mogul who doesn’t seem to see many, if any, limits on his own power.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who previously described the Trump administration’s orders to USAID employees as a total “mess,” on Friday allowed the president to move forward with gutting the agency.

Nichols removed his block on the mass firing spree, ruling that plaintiffs “overstated” the harm caused by Trump’s actions. Trump is now allowed to continue with his slashing of USAID, which he wrongly alleges is a woke, corrupt, Communist entity. USAID will move forward on placing an estimated 2,200 workers on leave, after already doing so with 500 during the first freeze.

“Weighing plaintiffs’ assertions on these questions against the government’s is like comparing apples to oranges,” Nichols said in his 26-page order. “Where one side claims that USAID’s operations are essential to human flourishing and the other side claims they are presently at odds with it, it simply is not possible for the Court to conclude, as a matter of law or equity, that the public interest favors or disfavors an injunction.”

“They will be locked out of all computer systems, all payment systems, email systems, as well as systems that inform them of security threats,” Karla Gilbride, the recently fired general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, warned last week. “This would imperil their safety, the operations of USAID and their institutional partners, and it adds to the instability of these already unstable regions.

“Once the agency is dissolved, it cannot be put back together again.”

Nichols, a Trump appointee, was unconvinced.