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A GOP strategist on Sunday flagged what he says is an "underappreciated fracture" among MAGA Republicans.

Brendan Buck, a former key adviser to ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), appeared on MSNBC over the weekend, and was asked about a recent "contentious cabinet meeting" involving Donald Trump appointee and richest man in the world Elon Musk.

The host asked Buck, "Can all sides coexist?"

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

Buck replied that the dispute between Musk and Steve Bannon is "an underappreciated fracture in the current GOP."

"Look, Steve Bannon has been a foot soldier for Donald Trump. He went to jail for Donald Trump for a really long time. And I think he is understandably, deeply skeptical of Elon Musk, who, you know, was not even really a close ally of Donald Trump the first time around and sort of came out of nowhere and has really stolen the spotlight," Buck said. "Let's remember, Steve Bannon was a close advisor in the White House the first time around and I think he has real questions about what Elon Musk is up to."

Buck added, "We know that that Trumpism is sort of anti-immigrant nationalist and it's not clear that Elon Musk shares any of those views."

"Now, Donald trump needs both of those people. I think he likes what Elon Musk is doing," he said. "But if Steve Bannon keeps railing against him, I think that there's a real fracture that could happen here because Steve Bannon has been through this. He has the real, you know, credibility with the MAGA movement. So unless these two get on the same page, I expect trump's going to have to keep intervening."

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Plans by the Donald Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), helmed by billionaire Elon Musk, to dismantle the Social Security Administration, were trashed by a former Democratic senator on Wednesday morning.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said the staffers working DOGE, with an assist from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), hope to slash half the Social Security staffers.

That, she claimed, would not only backfire, but is a sign they have no idea what they are doing.

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

With "Morning Joe" regular Elise Jordan pointing out, "We were talking off camera about just how often you, when you were in office, you had to utilize the local social security offices to really get issues resolved by a caseworker who was local and in person. And I mean, just in terms of practicality, people who are on Social Security tend to be a little bit older. They aren't necessarily going to be as web savvy and immediately able to use the internet to solve whatever problem they have," McCaskill weighed in:

"I would like Elon Musk to sit down with a woman who is struggling with her benefits after her husband has died and trying to reconcile an error in the documents" the Missouri Democrat replied. "I would love him to sit down and talk to one of those people, instead of just assuming that tech can solve everything."

"It's so naive, it's so stupid," she bluntly stated.

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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's request to keep billions in congressionally approved foreign aid frozen, but that fight isn't over.

The court did not set a timeline for when the money should be released, allowing the White House to continue to dispute the matter in lower courts, where U.S. District judge Amir Ali ruled last month that much of the money cut off by the administration should continue flowing while he reviewed the case, reported CNN.

"When you step back and look at what's happening in this order right here, it's 5-4," reported CNN's Katelyn Polantz, "and the four dissenters of what is being done right now for Donald Trump, those people are all the the conservative justices and what they are saying is, we can't believe that this Supreme Court is going to override what the executive wants to do here and just give this lower-court trial judge Ali in Washington, D.C., on the district court the power to figure this out right now, so a big struggle between the court system and Trump."

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

The administration had frozen billions in aid from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and several nonprofit groups that rely on that money filed lawsuits challenging the order as unconstitutional.

Ali had set a deadline for Wednesday to allow the funding to flow, but the administration rushed an emergency appeal and chief justice John Roberts unilaterally issued an stay that paused the case.

The government argued they're making “substantial efforts” to review payment requests to comply with Ali's order, but the plaintiffs were unsatisfied with that explanation.

“The government has not taken ‘any meaningful steps’ to come into compliance,” the groups said a Supreme Court filing last week.

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman found himself particularly floored by a moment in President Donald Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday in which he made boasts about boosting auto manufacturing even as his tariffs on Canada and Mexico threaten to cripple auto supply chains.

Writing on his Substack page, Krugman explained how car production in the United States will be hampered by the tariffs on America's two biggest trading partners given the way that cars are assembled across all three countries.

"Automobile production, which is deeply integrated across our northern and southern borders — there really isn’t a U.S. auto industry, there’s a North American industry operating in all three countries — will be especially hard hit," he wrote. "I almost choked when Trump declared last night that 'we are going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody has ever seen.' Well, I guess we’ve never seen a large downturn in auto production outside a major recession, which is not to say that we won’t get a recession too."

ALSO READ: 'The savings aren't large': Conservatives say DOGE is just 'a distraction' for what's next

Taking stock of Trump's economic policies as a whole, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk's slash-and-burn approach to federal workers, Krugman argued that the United States right now is "trapped in a burning Tesla."

"If you don’t know this, the doors on Musk’s cars are designed to open electronically; if they have manual releases at all, they’re difficult to get at and use," he explained. "As a result, there have been multiple instances of people burning alive inside Teslas when the engines catch fire. Well, large parts of the U.S. economy and government appear to be on the verge of self-immolation. And given the combination of arrogance and ignorance shared by Musk and Trump, it’s hard to see how we get out."

Hours before delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term, President Donald Trump issued what some legal experts quickly condemned as an attack on the First Amendment—a statement threatening imprisonment or deportation for certain forms of campus protest. The order, seen by some as authoritarian, targets students and faculty and raises questions about whether he anticipates resistance to the announced theme of his speech, “The Renewal of the American Dream.”

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump declared at 7:30 Tuesday morning. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Legal experts and historians swiftly condemned Trump’s threats, arguing they were intended to suppress free speech and, if enforced, could constitute a violation of the First Amendment.

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

Larry Sabato, the well-known University of Virginia professor of politics and founder and director of the Center for Politics, had already written remarks about Trump’s theme for his address to Congress.

“You must admit, #Trump 2.0 has exceeded expectations. In both foreign and domestic policy, it’s far worse than most critics had predicted. You might call it the Renewal of the American Nightmare,” Professor Sabato observed.

NCRM asked him to weigh in on the President’s latest statement.

“My response is the First Amendment,” Professor Sabato replied.

Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a professor of law and NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst, said, “Peaceful protests, of course, are not ‘illegal.’ A government ban on peaceful protests would violate the First Amendment. The goal here seems to be intimidation and fear to chill free speech.”

Journalist and historian Paul Brandus, author of books on the presidency and the White House, asked: “The president – who swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution – is accelerating his attack on the First Amendment. Protests are ‘illegal?'”

Immigration attorney Eric Lee offered this response: “Only in a dictatorship can the president deem protests against his government and its policies ‘illegal.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Constitutional attorney Casey Mattox, vice president for legal and judicial strategy at the conservative Americans for Prosperity, served up this detailed response:

“1. ‘illegal’ would have to do a whole lot of work here for this not to violate the 1st A. Enough that it would have been better to not even bother using the ‘protest’ word. So let’s assume that.
2. The President can’t expel students from their colleges.
3. Good morning.”

Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party Republican congressman turned independent talk show host blasted Trump, who just last week declared himself a “king.”

“‘Illegal protests?’ He’s not a king,” Walsh exclaimed. “He doesn’t have the authority to stop protests. Or expel students. Or tell protestors not to wear masks. He’s not a king.”

Attorney and editor-in-chief of MediasTouch, Ron Filipkowski, slammed Trump: “Presumably, this government by Truth Social posts will define exactly what an ‘illegal protest’ is, and that definition will not be so broad that it encroaches on free speech guarantees we’ve enjoyed for two centuries.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy flatly rejected the idea that Elon Musk’s Starlink is the key to fixing FAA’s struggling air traffic control system.

Duffy delivered the slap down of the tech billionaire's satellite internet network while speaking to Fox News on Tuesday about air traffic control shortages and other issues plaguing the agency following a series of deadly aviation disasters in the opening weeks of 2025.

“Elon Musk has hinted that Starlink is the solution – is that?” Fox News host Sandra Smith asked Duffy, to which Duffy bluntly responded: “It's not.”

The answer seemed to take Smith by surprise. “It’s not?” she repeated.

“So, so, no, it’s part of a solution,” Duffy said, adding that accessing fiber wire in certain remote terminals in Alaska proved difficult.

“There are some facilities that Starlink can be helpful,” he said. “But again, we want to make sure we have fiber-connected systems in place. So, they can play some part in it, but not all of it.”

ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight

The transportation secretary told viewers that engineers have been sent to assist in government efforts to upgrade the air traffic control system by not only Musk's SpaceX, but “other great companies.”

“We have to move at the speed of business not the speed of government,” he said.

Duffy acknowledged that while Americans want “the best air traffic control system in the world,” he said “we’re not there yet.”

“But we can get there if we have the help of the private sector, and the Congress gives us the money."

Musk suggested that Starlink should replace Verizon to upgrade the FAA’s communications system, according to media reports.

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