President-elect Donald Trump is entering the White House with a Republican trifecta, but he may hit roadblocks to implement his America First agenda — and not because of Democrats. Instead, Republican swamp creatures like Texas Sen. John Cornyn are signaling their intent to sabotage Trump’s cabinet nominees because they threaten the deep state.

Trump tapped former Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. Gaetz, prior to March of 2021, “had been an effective and prominent voice in Congress pushing back against the Washington establishment’s worse impulses and abuses of power,” as my colleague John Daniel Davidson wrote.

Gaetz took on the Democrats headfirst, exposing the deep-state’s lies during the Russia collusion hoax and sounding the alarm on Washington’s excessive (and perhaps unconstitutional) response to the Jan. 6 riot and the weaponized Department of Justice prosecutions targeting everyday Americans caught up in the political crackdown.

But “Gaetz couldn’t very well critique the Department of Justice for their political prosecutions if he was a pariah who everyone thought was a pedophile,” as The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote.