President Donald Trump and his "first buddy" Elon Musk have moved swiftly to precipitate more than one constitutional crisis during the first few weeks of the new administration. The two are running roughshod over the basic separation of powers in American government, aided and abetted by the Republicans in control of Congress. Which leads to a serious question -- how long will it be before they just wash their hands of all pretense of power and formally hand it all directly to Trump?

Sound farfetched? Well, it's happened before. Legislatures have essentially disbanded themselves or made themselves completely irrelevant by handing over -- to one man -- not only the "power of the purse" (the ability to set the government's budget) but also the ability to write all other laws as well. If this comes to pass, it'll be called a "temporary emergency measure," but it will be the death knell of the separation of powers. All that will be left would be for Trump to ignore the Supreme Court, and he will have seized full control of all levers of government. There would simply not be anyone left to stop him, at that point.

You may be inclined to dismiss the idea as overwrought or not very probable. But some of the worries about it are actually emanating from conservatives. Even the Wall Street Journal has published some scathing editorials warning of the damage Trump and Musk have been doing. Here's an article from Salon that caught my eye (there are more conservative voices quoted in the full article, I should mention):

"The Trump administration has essentially declared war on Article I of the Constitution," Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute and former aid to retired Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said in an interview with Salon.

. . .

"The Constitution put Congress in Article I because Congress is designed to be the primary branch. It's the closest to the people. Its elections are the most often, and it ensures that no single person will have the power of the purse," Riedl said. "If Congress isn't going to have the power of the purse -- they've already surrendered the power of tariffs and declaring war -- what's the point of having Congress?"

Good question. And it's not that far a leap from claiming that the president has the power to decide to cut off funding for any program he doesn't personally like (which Musk has already been doing with a passion) to declaring that the president also has the power to decide what money gets spent on everything. If Trump can ignore laws passed by Congress in willy-nilly fashion, then he can also ignore budgets passed by Congress just as easily. Who's going to stop him? Republicans in Congress? Don't make me laugh. Here's the worst of the worst reactions from a GOP senator (so far, at least):

Another senior Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, R- N.C., acknowledged that Musk and Trump's actions were unconstitutional but said that "nobody should bellyache about that."

"That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense," Tillis told NOTUS. But "it's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending."

I'm sorry, but: "in the strictest sense"? I must have missed that clause in the oath you swore to defend the Constitution that said "except for a little bit of flex, of course."

Conservative voices in the media are also pointing out the danger of what is happening, with varying degrees of alarm and snarkiness:

To say that what is happening now is a constitutional crisis is to put it too mildly.

Let's call it what it is: a constitutional collapse.

Congress's abdication of its constitutional powers and responsibilities to an executive branch run amok -- or, you might say, run-a-Musk -- would surely have horrified the Founders.

Media voices on the left are just as alarmed about the danger, but they tend to add more snark to their commentary:

The GOP's failure goes far beyond Senate confirmations. With Trump's blessing, the unelected and unaccountable Musk is trying to decimate and ultimately destroy the nonpartisan civil service, without a peep of protest from Republicans. Foreign aid programs that long enjoyed bipartisan support have been axed -- and only Democrats complain. Trump seizes powers that the Constitution clearly gives to Congress, not the president -- and Republicans in Congress pretend not to notice.

Rather than push back, leaders of Trump's party lavish him with North Korean-style praise. I'm confident that if the top Republicans in Congress were meeting with Trump and the president accidentally spilled Diet Coke on his red necktie, they would all promptly spill Diet Coke on their red neckties, too.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. And then it would be lauded as a fashion statement and every Republican politician would sport ties with Diet Coke stains from that point on, as a mark of loyalty to the Dear Leader. Trump would then quickly auction off the first stained tie he wore to the highest bidder.

Snark aside, though, at this point I can only see congressional Republicans waking up and pushing back on one possible big issue: Pentagon spending. What happens when Elon Musk turns his budget-slashing sights on Pentagon procurement? That may be a bridge too far for Republicans. Pentagon spending is spread around everywhere -- there are people making money supplying the Pentagon in just about every state (if not every single congressional district). This is by design, so that anyone proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget will cause a very widespread outrage among those who profit from it -- spread around enough that every senator and a whole lot of representatives start getting irate calls from big donors in their states and districts. Plus, there's the whole built-in jingoism of never approving the cutting of a single dollar from the nation's defense, no matter what (which exists on both sides of the political aisle, but it has always been completely dominant on the Republican side in particular).

So what's going to happen when Musk and his tech-bro underlings show up at the Pentagon and demand access to the computer systems that hold the accounting for the billions upon billions of dollars the Pentagon spends? What is Trump's secretary of Defense going to do when this does happen? And more importantly, how will congressional Republicans react?

If the answer to those questions is "they will roll over and allow Musk to do whatever he wants" then the Republican Congress should really consider just making it all official, hold a final vote on giving up all their powers to Donald Trump with an emergency "Enabling Act," and call it a day. That way Musk can fire them all and stop all their salaries, all in the name of cutting more wasteful government spending.

It's a dystopian concept to be sure, but we now live in dystopian times. So having the Republicans in Congress just vote themselves out of existence isn't as farfetched (or "laughably impossible") as it seemed just three weeks ago.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant