President Donald Trump’s rapid descent into lawlessness has made it clear: Members of his first administration effectively held back his most authoritarian instincts. Powered by a quest for vengeance and the knowledge of experience, Trump returned to the White House in January with a clear mission. But from the beginning, the team he assembled has been besieged by a series of internal disputes. Now another MAGA power struggle has spilled into public view, laying bare the movement’s dissonance about power and progress.

The first nine months of the second Trump presidency have forced the MAGA movement to reconcile populist anti-government positions with the realities of running the federal government. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been at the center of much of that tension. M

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