America is just hours away from a holiday government shutdown caused by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Everyone knew the president-elect and his new super-disruptor pal would wreak havoc in Washington. But even before the 47th president was sworn in, no one thought they would pull it off.

Unless there is a pre-Christmas legislative miracle, the US government will plunge into a partial shutdown at midnight on Friday after Musk collapsed a year-end spending deal and Trump followed up with calls for new debt-issuing authority, which he never had a chance of had by Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s desperate Plan B only managed to introduce a bill on Thursday that sparked a revolt in the House of Representatives by 38 Republicans and almost all Democrats against Trump.

Two days of chaos on Capitol Hill upended the seemingly calm end of a deeply ill-tempered 118th United States Congress.

It was a social media storm Wednesday from Musk, who will co-chair an ad hoc government efficiency department next year, and the return of Trump’s wrecking ball to Congress that turned everything on its head.

Johnson had worked for weeks to keep the government open. It’s now a strategy that threatens his already shaky position as speaker, as many MAGA Republicans would be happy to see it end, even if it could inconvenience and economically harm many of their working-class voters.

On Thursday night, his authority was in tatters as angry Republicans squared off in the House of Representatives. Democrats suddenly woke up from their post-election jitters and warned that the real new power in the country was not Trump, but the richest man in the world: “President Musk.”

Read Collinson’s full analysis here.