Late Thursday afternoon, Elon Musk appeared at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in sunglasses and toting a shiny chainsaw, being weird. The professed drug user proceeded to slur and sputter through any number of the lies or wholly misunderstood “discoveries” his DOGE teams have made as they unaccountably cancel congressionally appropriated funds, terminate the careers of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and generally make life worse around the world. All this, while the mother of several of his children had to reply to him on X to get him to respond to one of their kids having a medical crisis. He’s more grating and wrong with each passing day, but always confidently so. GOD. Where were we going with this? Oh, right: He has this line he repeats, and it is killing us. “The president is the elected representative of the people, so he’s representing the will of the people,” Musk said in a joint interview with Trump this week. “And if the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then what we live in is a bureaucracy, not a democracy.” Congress, the Article 1 branch, never enters his mind, because he’s never bothered to study the basics of the republic he’s now shadow-running. There were 10,000 other things about him that annoyed us this week, but we’re going close the entry so we can stop thinking about him.

The Trump administration had reached a sleazy agreement in which they would—for now—withdraw federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his cooperation on immigration enforcement in the city. In other words, Adams would serve the rest of the term as an informant for the feds in order to avoid prosecution. This, as we wrote much about last week, is a scandal. But in one of those You Can Only Laugh situations, this corrupt arrangement wholly conceived and executed by the Trump administration became a source of Democratic infighting this week. That’s because New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has the power to initiate the removal of NYC’s mayor, something she deliberated over this week. While there’s certainly a strong case to do it, she ultimately declined to, instead choosing to apply stricter oversight to the mayor’s office for now. While this will earn her criticism from some Democrats for playing it too safe or lacking a spine, the Surge—which does not live in New York City, and doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of this!—thinks it may be the right choice. Removing Adams would throw the question of overreach from Trump to Democrats and spark backlash among the core Democratic base groups, like Black and Hispanic working-class voters, that are already on the verge of abandoning the party. Among other political considerations. Letting the clock run out on Adams’ term could be the least bad of Hochul’s terrible options.

Just as the Senate was about to begin a two-bill process for enacting Republicans’ legislative agenda, Trump interrupted with a play call: He preferred the House’s approach of stuffing border, defense, energy, spending cuts, and tax cuts into “one big, beautiful bill.” Senate Republicans proceeded to work on their blueprint for two bills anyway, and for good reason: If (or when) the House’s one-bill approach collapses in another legislative horror scene, the GOP is going to need a quick backup plan. House Republicans have set themselves up for something that’s going to be miserable to achieve. Per their budget, they need to find $2 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending programs in order to realize their massive tax cuts, and they’re looking to take nearly half of that from Medicaid. As those who recall the failed 2017 attempt to slash Medicaid will remember, such a move could come at a steep political price, and it’s one that moderate members are already insisting they don’t want to pay. And you know what happens when moderate House Republicans show a little spine? No, really, that’s a question. What happens? We’ve never seen it.

The loudest voices in American foreign policy right now are Trump, going on regular rants against Zelensky and stressing Russian talking points; Vice President J.D. Vance, chastising European leaders and defending Trump’s Russia positions in social media exchanges for which he seems to have a lot of time; and Elon Musk, doing all of this but in a somehow louder, more deranged and offensive way on his social media platform. So where’s our secretary of state? Sure, he was sent to Saudi Arabia for the initial meeting with the Russians earlier this week. Sure, he’s not in any way breaking with Trump publicly. But as the New York Times reported, Rubio has spent much of his week seeking “to reassure nervous European allies that the talks did not represent an abrupt departure from American policies, as many feared.” Instead, the talks were “a test of whether the Kremlin was serious about making a deal, Mr. Rubio said in a call with several European diplomats.” Oh, is that what it was? We’re not sure that the secretary of state is on the same page with his boss. This was always going to be the case with someone like Rubio, who has a notable history as a hawk and a Putin opponent. As Politico has reported, Rubio is already under surveillance by the more MAGA elements of the administration, waiting for him to step one toe out of line before he’s replaced with a lunatic. Rubio does not, to put it mildly, seem to be the Cabinet secretary most likely to make it four years.

This week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo calling on Pentagon leaders to propose 8 percent cuts to the defense budget. It appears, however, to be more about moving money around than actually cutting overall defense spending. The administration wants to cut from the budget things it doesn’t like—climate change readiness, DEI programs, anything that might be helpful to other countries around the world, etc.—and refocus the annual budget toward preferred programs. Besides, in their upcoming reconciliation bill, House and Senate Republicans are looking at increasing annual top-line defense spending, presently around $850 billion, by another $100–$150 billion. Republicans in Congress will have plenty of time to get mad if the administration ultimately targets something manufactured in their districts or states. For now, though, the generality of it all allows them to appreciate Hegseth’s vision. Which brings us to this beauty from Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, speaking to reporters this week: “I wouldn't be against them taking it from a Pentagon to a Trigon. Cut a couple sides off of it.” The trigon, America’s beloved name for a three-sided shape. Put it in the Associated Press Stylebook, stat.

Rich McCormick is a sophomore congressman in a safe Georgia Republican district, and he got positively roasted at a packed town hall on Thursday night, as constituents pressed him about Musk’s rampage through the federal government. This is a useful place to remind everyone that there are federal workers everywhere, and when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, headquartered in Atlanta, cuts 1,300 heads, the nearby Republican members of Congress might catch some shit for that. It’s also a useful time to remind Rich McCormick that when constituents express concern about these job cuts, he should have a better response handy than “a lot of the work they do is duplicitous with A.I.” (We think he meant “duplicative,” as in, “most rank-and-file members of Congress are duplicative.”) He’s not the only GOP member to be greeted with an angry response recently, and the nerves might be starting to catch on among members. Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson, also serving in a safe district, said this week that Musk’s orders were “getting out of control” and that, for example, “Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away. Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides.” Usually it takes six or 12 months for the incumbent’s party to recognize that they’re facing a tidal wave in the midterms after overreaching or misreading their “mandate.” Given how quickly this administration has moved, we might get there sooner.