President Trump signed a late-night executive order launching an aggressive investigation into Joe Biden and his former top aides—marking an extraordinary escalation in his efforts to rewrite the recent past.

At first glance, the move appeared designed to change the subject from Elon Musk’s brutal takedown of Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill.

But the implications could run far deeper.

The order directs federal agencies to investigate whether White House staffers “abused the power of Presidential signatures”—a thinly veiled accusation that they used an autopen to mask Biden’s cognitive decline and falsely exercise Article II powers on his behalf.

Specifically, it mandates inquiries into two vague but politically charged areas:

1. Whether Biden’s aides engaged in a conspiracy to conceal his “mental and physical health,” and

2. The legitimacy of executive actions signed during Biden’s final years in office.

In effect, Trump is seeking to delegitimize a former president’s official acts — including his pardons — potentially laying the groundwork to nullify them.

It’s an unprecedented use of executive power to target a political predecessor—and one that could entangle former Biden officials in legal battles for years.

While Elon Musk grabbed headlines for blasting Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” the real message came from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who made the stakes plain: “Failure is not an option.”

It wasn’t just rhetoric. There are three immovable realities driving Republicans toward a deal:

• First, if Congress does nothing, the 2017 Trump tax cuts will expire — and that’s a non-starter for GOP donors and business interests who would see their tax bills soar.
• Second, the debt ceiling must be raised this summer. The only way Republicans will swallow that vote is if it’s bundled with tax cuts they can sell as a win.
• Third, for all the noise around Trump, this legislation is largely a congressional Republican product. Its core provisions reflect longstanding GOP orthodoxy, from corporate tax relief to cutting Medicaid spending.

That’s why — despite Musk’s theatrics — the bill is still on track. A final version will likely pass and land on Trump’s desk before mid-July, ahead of any debt ceiling deadline.

None of this means the internal drama is fake. Musk’s attacks exposed real tensions between the party’s economic establishment and its populist wing.

But Republicans don’t have the luxury of starting over.