Minutes later Tuesday night, the conservative-backed Brad Schimel took the stage at his watch party to acknowledge the loss. Angry yells broke out. One woman began to chant about his opponent: “Cheater.”
Schimel didn’t hesitate. “No,” he responded. “You’ve got to accept the results.” Later, he returned to the stage with his classic rock cover band to jam on his bass.
In any other American era, Schimel’s concession wouldn’t be considered unusual – except maybe the guitar part. But it stands out at a time when the nation’s politics have opened a fissure between those who trust election results and those who don’t.
“It shouldn’t be super laudable,” said Jeff Mandell, general counsel of the Madison-based liberal law firm Law Forward. “But given where we are and given what we’ve seen over the past few years nationwide and in Wisconsin, it is laudable.”
Schimel’s concession of that very same court to a liberal majority, though in line with what generations of candidates have done in the past, was not a given in today’s divisive atmosphere.
Onstage, as his supporters yelled, Schimel shook his head and left no uncertainty he’d lost — a result that would become even clearer later in the night as Crawford’s lead grew to around 10 percentage points.
“The numbers aren’t going to — aren’t going to turn around,” he told the crowd. “They’re too bad, and we’re not going to pull this off.”
By acknowledging his loss quickly, Schimel curtailed the kind of explanation-seeking and digital digging that erupted online after Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 presidential election, with citizen journalists falsely accusing innocent election workers and voters of fraud.
Schimel also avoided the impulses to which many in his party have defaulted in recent elections across the country, as they’ve dragged their feet to avoid accepting defeat.
Last fall, Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde spent days sowing doubt in the results after he lost a Senate race to Democrat Tammy Baldwin. He conceded nearly two weeks after Election Day, saying he did not want to “add to political strife through a contentious recount” even as he raised debunked election conspiracies.
In a 2024 state Supreme Court race in North Carolina, two recounts have affirmed Democrat Allison Riggs narrowly won the election, but her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, is still seeking to reverse the outcome by having ballots thrown out.
Trump also has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 presidential election, even though there was no evidence of widespread fraud and the results were confirmed through multiple recounts, reviews and audits. His close adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, has also spread a flurry of unfounded claims about voter fraud involving noncitizens.
Musk and his affiliated groups sank at least $21 million into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and he personally paid three voters $1 million each for signing a petition to boost turnout. He had said the race was central to the “future of America and Western civilization.”
But after the results came in, he said he “expected to lose” and touted the successful passage of a voter ID amendment in Wisconsin’s Constitution. Trump, who had endorsed Schimel, didn’t post about the loss but used his Truth Social platform to celebrate the voter ID win.
An assessment: ‘That’s democracy’
Not all Republicans watching the race were in a magnanimous mood as they processed the results. Peter Bernegger, the head of an election integrity organization who has brought numerous lawsuits against Wisconsin election clerks and offices, raised the specter that an “algorithm” was behind Crawford’s win. InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reacted to the results on X, saying, “Election fraud should be investigated.”
But at Schimel’s watch party, several supporters applauded his high road.
“He was all class,” said Russell Jones, a 51-year-old attorney. “That’s how you lose.”
Adam Manka, of the La Crosse County Republican Party, said he worries about how a liberal court could redraw the state’s congressional districts. “But you can’t exactly change it,” Manka said, calling Schimel “very graceful” in his defeat. “This is democracy.”
Crawford, in an interview Wednesday, said Schimel’s phone call was “the way elections should conclude” and said she would have done the same thing if she had lost.
The moment is a good example for future candidates, said Ari Mittleman, executive director of the Wisconsin-based nonprofit Keep Our Republic, which aims to rebuild trust and confidence in elections. He compared elections to a Green Bay Packers football game: “We know who won, we know who lost.” He said he thinks Schimel, a lifelong Wisconsin resident, understands that.
“It’s transparent, and we accept the final score,” Mittleman said. “That’s democracy.”
Schimel and his band, performing for a thinning crowd Tuesday night, took the loss in stride.
“Can you ask them at the bar to get me a Coors Light please?” Schimel said between songs. “Put it on my tab.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Susan Crawford’s win in Tuesday’s record-smashing Wisconsin Supreme Court election paves the way for the court’s liberal majority to continue to flex its influence over state politics.
The Dane County Circuit Court judge’s victory guarantees that liberals will control the court until at least 2028.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is at the center of state politics. It has been since 2020, when it denied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and has continued to make headlines — especially since flipping to liberal control in August 2023.
For the past two years, Justices Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz and Ann Walsh Bradley — who collectively make up the court’s liberal majority — have flexed their authority and remade Wisconsin’s political landscape. Crawford, who will be sworn in on Aug. 1, will replace the retiring Walsh Bradley, who has served on the high court for 30 years.
Here’s what Crawford’s victory could mean for some key issues.
1. Abortion rights
The Wisconsin Supreme Court seems poised to, in some form or the other, strike down the state’s 1849 abortion law — which bans almost all abortions in the state.
The court’s current justices in November 2024 heard oral arguments in the lawsuit challenging the statute. It was filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul in the days after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. The lawsuit asks the court to determine whether the 1849 law applies to consensual abortions. It also asks whether the 1849 ban was “impliedly repealed” when the Legislature passed additional laws — while Roe was in effect — regulating abortion after fetal viability.
A Dane County judge ruled in late 2023 that the 1849 statute applied to feticide, not consensual abortions. Abortion services, which were halted in the state after Roe was overturned, have since resumed.
Crawford’s opponent, conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, argued during the campaign that the liberal majority was delaying its ruling in the case “to keep the 1849 law a live issue” in the race.
While working in private practice, Crawford represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in litigation related to abortion access.
Crawford’s victory on Tuesday ensures the court’s upcoming ruling is likely to remain intact — at least for now — meaning abortion will remain legal in Wisconsin.
2. Congressional redistricting
The liberal majority’s decision to throw out the state’s Republican-gerrymandered legislative maps, breaking a GOP lock on the state Legislature, has been its most influential ruling since taking power. As a result, Democrats picked up 14 seats in the Assembly and state Senate in 2024 in a good Republican year nationwide.
However, during the same time period, the high court denied a request to reconsider the state’s congressional maps without stating a reason. The maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, but under a “least change” directive from a previous conservative court, so they remained GOP-friendly. But in the liberal court’s legislative redistricting decision, it overturned the “least change” precedent. Crawford’s victory opens a window for Democrats and their allies to once again challenge the maps, potentially using the argument that the current lines were drawn under rules that have since been rejected.
The future of the congressional districts were a key issue in this year’s state Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Susan Crawford, left, celebrates alongside Justice Rebecca Dallet after her win in the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Elon Musk, who spent some $20 million to boost Schimel’s candidacy, said at a rally in Green Bay last weekend that a potential redrawing of the maps is what made the race so important.
He called Tuesday’s election “a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Democrats have pushed a similar idea.
The Democratic leader in the U.S. House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, last week called Wisconsin’s congressional lines “broken.”
“As soon as possible we need to be able to revisit that and have fairer lines,” he said during an event with DNC Chair Ken Martin. “The only way for that to be even a significant possibility is if you have an enlightened Supreme Court.”
Crawford’s win makes the court friendlier to a potential congressional redistricting lawsuit.
3. Labor rights
A Dane County judge ruled late last year that provisions of Act 10, a Scott Walker-era law that kneecapped public sector labor unions, violated the state constitution. Under the ruling, all public sector workers would have their collective bargaining restored to what it was before the law took effect in 2011.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in February declined to fast-track an appeal in the case, meaning it must first be decided by a conservative branch of the state Court of Appeals, likely ensuring it won’t come before the high court before the end of the current term.
That means Crawford, who challenged aspects of Act 10 while working as a private attorney, will be on the court when it comes before the justices.
She didn’t answer directly when asked during the race’s only debate if she would recuse herself from the case. But she did note that the provision currently being challenged is different from the one she brought a lawsuit over.
“If the same provision that I was involved in litigating back in those early days was challenged again, I most likely would recuse,” she said.
But with conservative-leaning Justice Brian Hagedorn having already recused from the case, Crawford could step aside and liberals would still have the votes needed to overturn the law.
4. Environmental issues
The high court is currently also considering a case about enforcement of the state’s “Spills Law.”
Enacted in 1978, the law requires people or companies discharging a hazardous substance “to restore the environment to the extent practicable and minimize the harmful effects from the discharge to the air, lands or waters of this state.”
The lawsuit was filed by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s powerful business lobby, in 2021. It argued that the DNR could not require people to test for so-called “forever chemicals” contamination — and require remediation if they’re present — because the agency hadn’t gone through the formal process of designating the chemicals, known as PFAS, as “hazardous substances.” The court’s liberal justices seemed skeptical of WMC’s position during oral arguments in January.
WMC has been a perennial spender in state Supreme Court races. It spent some $2 million targeting Crawford during this year’s race.
Any forthcoming ruling in favor of the DNR is likely safe with Crawford on the court. She was endorsed during the campaign by Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
The Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court defeated a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday, cementing a liberal majority for at least three more years.
Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge who led legal fights to protect union power and abortion rights and to oppose voter ID, defeated Republican-backed Brad Schimel in a race that broke records for spending, was on pace to be the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever and became a proxy fight for the nation’s political battles.
Trump, Musk and other Republicans lined up behind Schimel, a former state attorney general. Democrats including former President Barack Obama and billionaire megadonor George Soros backed Crawford.
The first major election in the country since November was seen as a litmus test of how voters feel about Trump’s first months back in office and the role played by Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has torn through federal agencies and laid off thousands of workers. Musk traveled to Wisconsin on Sunday to make a pitch for Schimel and personally hand out $1 million checks to voters.
Crawford embraced the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates, running ads that highlighted Schimel’s opposition to the procedure. She also attacked Schimel for his ties to Musk and Republicans, referring to Musk as “Elon Schimel” during a debate.
Schimel’s campaign tried to portray Crawford as weak on crime and a puppet of Democrats who, if elected, would push to redraw congressional district boundary lines to hurt Republicans and repeal a GOP-backed state law that took collective bargaining rights away from most public workers.
Crawford’s win keeps the court under a 4-3 liberal majority, as it has been since 2023. A liberal justice is not up for election again until April 2028, ensuring liberals will either maintain or increase their hold on the court until then. The two most conservative justices are up for re-election in 2026 and 2027.
The court likely will be deciding cases on abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries. Who controls the court also could factor into how it might rule on any future voting challenge in the perennial presidential battleground state, which raised the stakes of the race for national Republicans and Democrats.
Musk and groups he funded poured more than $21 million into the contest. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, campaigned for Schimel in the closing weeks and said electing him was essential to protecting the Republican agenda. Trump endorsed Schimel just 11 days before the election.
Schimel, who leaned into his Trump endorsement in the closing days of the race, said he would not be beholden to the president or Musk despite the massive spending on the race by groups that Musk supports.
Crawford benefitted from campaign stops by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice presidential nominee last year, and money from billionaire megadonors including Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
The contest was the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That broke the previous record of $51 million for the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023.
All of the spending and attention on the race led to high early voting turnout, with numbers more than 50% higher than the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago.
Crawford was elected to a 10-year term replacing liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring after 30 years on the bench.
Wisconsin enshrines voter ID in state constitution
Wisconsin’s photo ID requirement for voting will be elevated from state law to constitutional amendment under a proposal approved by voters.
The Republican-controlled Legislature placed the measure on the ballot and pitched it as a way to bolster election security and protect the law from being overturned in court.
Democratic opponents argued that photo ID requirements are often enforced unfairly, making voting more difficult for people of color, disabled people and poor people.
Wisconsin voters won’t notice any changes when they go to the polls. They will still have to present a valid photo ID just as they have under the state law, which was passed in 2011 and went into effect permanently in 2016 after a series of unsuccessful lawsuits.
Placing the photo ID requirement in the constitution makes it more difficult for a future Legislature controlled by Democrats to change the law. Any constitutional amendment must be approved in two consecutive legislative sessions and by a statewide popular vote.
Voters wait in line and cast their ballots at the Villager Shopping Center during the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Republican legislators celebrated the measure’s passage.
“This will help maintain integrity in the electoral process, no matter who controls the Legislature,” Sen. Van Wanggaard, who co-authored the amendment, said in a statement.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is leading Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government, also noted the outcome on his social media platform, X, saying: “Yeah!”
Wisconsin is one of nine states where people must present photo ID to vote, and its requirement is the nation’s strictest, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Thirty-six states have laws requiring or requesting that voters show some sort of identification, according to the NCSL.
State schools chief Jill Underly wins reelection over GOP-backed rival
Jill Underly, the Democratic-backed state education chief, defeated her Republican-aligned opponent, Brittany Kinser.
Underly will guide policies affecting K-12 schools as Trump moves to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Her second term comes at a time when test scores are still recovering from the pandemic, Wisconsin’s achievement gap between white and Black students remains the worst in the country and more schools are asking voters to raise property taxes to pay for operations.
Jill Underly, Wisconsin superintendent of public instruction, speaks to reporters following the State of Education Address on Sept. 26, 2024, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin is the only state where voters elect the top education official but there is no state board of education. That gives the superintendent broad authority to oversee education policy, from disbursing school funding to managing teacher licensing.
Underly, 47, had the support of the teachers union in the general election after failing to secure it in the three-person primary. She also was backed financially by the state Democratic Party.
Underly, who was first elected as state superintendent in 2021, ran as a champion of public schools. Kinser is a supporter of the private school voucher program.
Underly’s education career began in 1999 as a high school social studies teacher in Indiana. She moved to Wisconsin in 2005 and worked for five years at the state education department. She also was principal of Pecatonica Elementary School for a year before becoming district administrator.
Kinser, whose backers included the Wisconsin Republican Party and former Republican Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker, previously worked for Rocketship schools, part of a national network of public charter institutions. She rose to become its executive director in the Milwaukee region.
In 2022 she left Rocketship for City Forward Collective, a Milwaukee nonprofit that advocates for charter and voucher schools. She also founded a consulting firm where she currently works.
Kinser tried to brand Underly as being a poor manager of the Department of Public Instruction and keyed in on her overhaul of state achievement standards last year.
Underly said that was done to better reflect what students are learning now, but the change was met with bipartisan opposition including from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who was previously state superintendent himself. Evers did not make an endorsement in the race.
High turnout leads to ballot shortage in Milwaukee
A voter enters Centennial Hall at the Milwaukee Central Library to vote on Election Day, April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)
Unprecedented turnout led to ballot shortages in Wisconsin’s largest city Tuesday as voters cast ballots in “historic” numbers.
The race for control of the court, which became a proxy battle for the nation’s political fights, broke records for spending and was poised to be the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever.
Early voting was more than 50% ahead of levels seen in the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago, when majority control was also at stake.
Seven polling sites in Milwaukee ran out of ballots, or were nearly out, due to “historic turnout” and more ballots were on their way before polls closed, said Paulina Gutierrez, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Clerks all across the state, including in the city’s deep-red suburbs, reported turnout far exceeding 2023 levels.
A state race with nationwide significance
The court can decide election-related laws and settle disputes over future election outcomes.
“Wisconsin’s a big state politically, and the Supreme Court has a lot to do with elections in Wisconsin,” Trump said Monday. “Winning Wisconsin’s a big deal, so therefore the Supreme Court choice … it’s a big race.”
Crawford embraced the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates, running ads that highlighted Schimel’s opposition to the procedure. She also attacked Schimel for his ties to Musk and Trump, who endorsed Schimel 11 days before the election.
The results of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Susan Crawford’s victory over Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel are shown at the Crawford watch party on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel hugs supporters after making his concession speech Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Pewaukee, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)
Schimel’s campaign tried to portray Crawford as weak on crime and a puppet of Democrats who would push to redraw congressional district boundary lines to hurt Republicans and repeal a GOP-backed state law that took collective bargaining rights away from most public workers.
Voters in Eau Claire seemed to be responding to both messages. Jim Seeger, a 68-year-old retiree, said he voted for Schimel because he’s concerned about redistricting.
Jim Hazelton, a 68-year-old disabled veteran, said he had planned to abstain but voted for Crawford after Musk — whom he described as a “pushy billionaire” — and Trump got involved.
“He’s cutting everything,” Hazelton said of Musk. “People need these things he’s cutting.”
What’s on the court’s agenda?
The court will likely be deciding cases on abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.
Last year the court declined to take up a Democratic-backed challenge to congressional lines, but Schimel and Musk said that if Crawford wins, the court will redraw congressional districts to make them more favorable to Democrats. Currently Republicans control six out of eight seats in an evenly divided state.
Musk was pushing that message on Election Day, both on TV and the social media platform he owns, X, urging people to cast ballots in the final hours of voting.
There were no major voting issues by midday Tuesday, state election officials said. Severe weather prompted the relocation of some polling places in northern Wisconsin, and some polling places in Green Bay briefly lost power but voting continued. In Dane County, home to the state capital, Madison, election officials said polling locations were busy and operating normally.
Record-breaking donations
The contest is the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Musk contributed $3 million to the campaign, while groups he funded poured in another $18 million. Musk also gave $1 million each to three voters who signed a petition he circulated against “activist” judges.
Elon Musk speaks at a town hall Sunday, March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (Jeffrey Phelps / Associated Press)
Schimel leaned into his support from Trump while saying he would not be beholden to the president or Musk. Democrats centered their messaging on the spending by Musk-funded groups.
“Ultimately I think it’s going to help Susan Crawford, because people do not want to see Elon Musk buying election after election after election,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said Monday. “If it works here, he’s going to do it all over the country.”
Dane County Judge Susan Crawford thanks supporters after winning the race Tuesday for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Dane County Judge Susan Crawford was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, solidifying liberal control of the body until 2028 and marking a sharp rebuke by the state’s voters of the policies of President Donald Trump and the financial might of his most prominent adviser, Elon Musk.
Crawford rode massive turnout in Dane and Milwaukee counties and outperformed Kamala Harris’ effort last year in a number of other parts of the state to defeat her opponent, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel by about 10 points.
The former chief legal counsel for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle who represented liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Madison teacher’s union as a private practice attorney said during the campaign that she would look out for the rights of all Wisconsinites on the Supreme Court while repeatedly criticizing Schimel for his eagerness to show his support for Trump, his record as attorney general and the outside assistance his campaign got from Musk.
Crawford’s victory marks the third straight Supreme Court election for Wisconsin’s liberals and maintains the 4-3 liberal majority that has been in place since Justice Janet Protasiewicz was elected in 2023. Crawford will replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.
Since gaining control of the Court, the new liberal majority has ruled that the state’s previous legislative maps were unconstitutional, ending the partisan gerrymander that had locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade, and accepted cases that will decide the rights of Wisconsinites to have an abortion. The Court is also likely to consider a challenge to Wisconsin’s 2011 law stripping most union rights from public employees within the next year or two.
“I’m here tonight because I’ve spent my life fighting to do what’s right,” Crawford said after the race was called for her. “That’s why I got into this race, to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all.”
Schimel said he got into the race because he was opposed to the “partisanship” of the liberal controlled Court but his effort to nationalize the race and show his support for Trump proved unsuccessful against a backlash to the second Trump term and voters’ distrust of Musk, who offered cash incentives for people who got out the vote for Schimel.
Tuesday’s election was the first statewide race in the country since Trump won the presidency last fall. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin and in counties across the state, Schimel failed to match the president’s vote total. In La Crosse County, Crawford performed 11 points better than Harris did last year and Schimel didn’t even match Trump’s vote share in his home of Waukesha County.
Schimel ran nearly even with former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, who lost to Protasiewicz in the 2023 race. Wisconsin’s conservatives have now lost the past three Supreme Court elections by double digits.
The 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race set the record for the most expensive judicial campaign in U.S. history, topping the $100 million mark. While Crawford received support from liberal billionaires including George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Musk dwarfed all other contributors, dumping more than $20 million into the race.
Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel delivers his concession speech in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Musk’s money helped blanket the state’s airwaves with attack ads against Crawford’s record as a judge, often criticizing sentences she gave to people convicted of sexual violence. A Musk-associated PAC also hired people to knock on thousands of doors in an effort to turn out Trump’s base of Wisconsin voters, who have often sat out non-presidential elections. America PAC, a political action committee associated with Musk, paid door knockers $25 an hour, offered voters cash if they filled out a petition against “activist judges” and gave two people $1 million checks at a rally on Sunday.
“But I’ve got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said. “And we won.”
In a concession speech delivered shortly before 9:30 p.m., Schimel told supporters they “didn’t leave anything on the field,” and when a few began to complain said “no, we’ve gotta accept this.”
“The numbers aren’t going to turn around. Too bad. We’re not going to pull this off,” he said. “So thank you guys. From the bottom of my heart. God bless you. God bless the state of Wisconsin. God bless America. You will rise again. We’ll get up to fight another day, it just wasn’t our day.”
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, harnessing voters’ alarm at the actions Musk has been leading from his federal DOGE office to cut government programs and fire thousands of public employees, held People v. Musk town halls across the state where residents said they were worried about the effect those cuts would have on services they rely on like Medicaid, Social Security, veteran’s benefits and education funding.
Gov. Tony Evers said that Wisconsin “felt the weight of America” in this election, which proved Wisconsinites “will not be bought.”
“This election was about the resilience of the Wisconsin and American values that define and unite us,” Evers said. “This election was about doing what’s best for our kids, protecting constitutional checks and balances, reaffirming our faith in the courts and the judiciary, and defending against attacks on the basic rights, freedoms, and institutions we hold dear. But above all, this election was as much about who Wisconsinites believe we can be as it was about the country we believe we must be.”
Democrats and Crawford accused Musk of trying to buy a seat on the state Supreme Court, partially to influence a lawsuit his company, Tesla, has filed challenging a Wisconsin law that prohibits car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. Musk said he was focused on the race because the Court could decide the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps, which currently favor Republicans and help the party hold a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At the victory party, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler compared the effort against Musk and Trump to Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette’s fight against the oligarchs of the early 20th century, adding that Republicans’ association with Musk will be an “anchor.”
“I think what Susan Crawford did by making clear that Elon Musk was the real opponent in this race, what voters did by responding to Elon Musk, it made clear that Elon Musk is politically toxic, and he is a massive anchor that will drag Republicans from the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “And that’s a message that I hope Republicans in Washington hear as fast as possible. Not only will they lose, but they will deserve to lose resoundingly and they will be swept out of power in a wave of outrage across the nation.”
On the campaign trail, Crawford sought to tie Schimel to Musk — she called her opponent “Elon Schimel” at the only debate between the two candidates — while portraying herself as the less partisan candidate. Throughout the nominally non-partisan race, both candidates lobbed accusations of extreme political views at the other.
With Crawford’s victory and the retention of the Court’s liberal majority, the body is expected to rule on cases that ask if Wisconsin’s Constitution grants women the right to access an abortion, the legality of the Republican-authored law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of most public employees, how Wisconsin’s industries should be regulated for pollution and the legality of the state’s congressional maps.
Heather Williams, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Democrats were offering a better vision for the country than the one promised by Schimel, Trump and Musk.
“Despite Republicans’ best efforts to buy this seat, Wisconsin voters showed up for their values and future,” Williams said. “While Trump dismantles programs that taxpayers have earned, support, and are counting on, voters across the country are turning to state Democrats who are delivering on promises to lower costs and expand opportunities.”
This story was updated Wednesday morning with current vote totals.
The campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court neared the finish line Monday as the candidates wrapped up tours of the state and outside spending continued to smash records.
GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - MARCH 30: Demonstrators protest outside the KI Convention Center before the start of a town hall meeting with Elon Musk on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town hall was held ahead of the state’s high-profile Supreme Court election between Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, who has been financially backed by Musk and endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Days before Wisconsinites go to the polls to decide which candidate will win an open seat on the state Supreme Court, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, gave oversized $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters.
Appearing on stage in front of more than 1,000 people and wearing a cheesehead hat, Musk, who has spent more than $20 million supporting the candidacy of conservative-backed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, gave out the money at a rally in Green Bay Sunday night. From the stage, Musk said the race, which will decide the ideological balance of the Court, could “affect the entire destiny of humanity.”
Aside from the two checks he gave out on Sunday, America PAC, the political action committee Musk has used to funnel money into the race, offered Wisconsin voters $100 each to fill out a petition against “activist judges” and provide contact information. Musk’s money has also been used to hire people from out-of-state to knock on doors on behalf of Schimel and blanket the state in ads. The group has also sent texts to voters in an effort to recruit canvassers that offer $20 for each person they get to vote.
Democrats and Schimel’s opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, have accused Musk of trying to buy a seat on the Court, pointing out that Musk’s company, Tesla, is currently fighting a lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin over its law that prevents car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers.
Musk said the $1 million giveaway was a strategy to get attention on the race.
“We need to get attention,” he said. “Somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.”
Wisconsin state law includes provisions that make it illegal to offer people money in exchange for voting. In an initial post on his social media site, X, Musk said that the winners of the money would need to prove they had voted. He later deleted that post and updated the contest so that people only had to complete the America PAC petition.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to block the giveaway, alleging that it violated state law against election bribery. Judges at the circuit, appellate and Supreme Court levels declined to step in.
Musk’s involvement in the race has become one of the campaign’s major issues as voters are about to head to the polls. The state Democratic party has held People v. Musk town halls across the state as liberals worry about Musk’s involvement in the election and his DOGE agency’s work to cut funds at a variety of federal agencies.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no.
“I just thought big money was an evil, a curse on our politics,” former state Sen. Robert Cowles said recently of his 2015 decision to buck his party.
As Wisconsin voters head to the polls this week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice, Cowles stands by his assessment. Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups, and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents. What’s more, Cowles said, there’s been little discussion of major issues. The candidates debated only once.
“I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”
More than $80 million has been funneled into the race as of March 25, according to two groups that have been tracking spending in the contest — the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy group that follows judicial races, and the news outlet WisPolitics. That surpasses the previous costliest judicial race in the country’s history, approximately $56 million spent two years ago on the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Money is pouring into this swing state election so fast and so many ads have been reserved that political observers now believe the current race is likely to reach $100 million by Tuesday, which is Election Day.
“People are thoroughly disgusted, I think, across the political spectrum with just the sheer amount of money being spent on a spring Supreme Court election in Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, which has long advocated for campaign finance reform.
But the elected officials who could revamp the campaign finance system on both sides of the aisle or create pressure for change have been largely silent. No bills introduced this session. No press conferences from legislators. The Senate no longer even has a designated elections committee.
The current election pits former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, now a circuit court judge in conservative-leaning Waukesha County, against Susan Crawford, a judge in Dane County, the state’s liberal bastion.
Though the race technically is nonpartisan, the Democratic Party, including former President Barack Obama, has endorsed Crawford; the party has received financial support from liberal billionaire George Soros. On the other side, President Donald Trump posted a message on his social media platform on March 21 urging his supporters to vote for Schimel, and much of Schimel’s money comes from political organizations tied to Elon Musk.
The stakes are high. Whoever wins will determine the ideological bent of the seven-member court just two years after Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the court and swung it to the liberals. With Protasiewicz on the court, the majority struck down state legislative maps, which had been drawn to favor Republicans, and reinstated the use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots.
A Schimel victory could resurrect those and other voting issues, as well as determine whether women in the state will continue to be able to access abortion.
Two pro-Schimel groups linked to Musk — America PAC and Building America’s Future — had disclosed spending about $17 million, as of March 25. Musk himself donated $3 million this year to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. In the final stretch of the campaign, news reports revealed that Musk’s America PAC plans to give Wisconsin voters $100 to sign petitions rejecting the actions of “activist judges.”
That has raised concerns among some election watchdog groups, which have been exploring whether the offer from Musk amounts to an illegal inducement to get people to vote.
On Wednesday night, Musk went further, announcing on X a $1 million award to a Green Bay voter he identified only as “Scott A” for “supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin!” Musk promised to hand out other million-dollar prizes before the election.
Musk has a personal interest in the direction of the Wisconsin courts. His electric car company, Tesla Inc., is suing the state over a law requiring manufacturers to sell automobiles through independent dealerships. Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about his involvement in the race.
Also on Schimel’s side: billionaires Diane Hendricks and Richard Uihlein and Americans for Prosperity, a dark-money group founded by billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. Americans for Prosperity has reported spending about $3 million, primarily for digital ads, canvassing, mailers and door hangers.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, a union-supported electioneering group, has ponied up over $6 million to advance Crawford. In other big outlays, Soros has given $2 million to the state Democratic Party, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another billionaire, gave $1.5 million. And California venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, donated $250,000.
In Wisconsin, political parties can steer unlimited amounts to candidates.
State Sen. Jeff Smith, a Democrat and a minority leader, called the spending frenzy “obscene.”
“There’s no reason why campaigns should cost as much as they do,” he said.
Asked for comment about the vast amount of money in the race, Crawford told ProPublica: “I’m grateful for the historic outpouring of grassroots support across Wisconsin from folks who don’t want Elon Musk controlling our Supreme Court.”
Schimel’s campaign called Crawford a “hypocrite,” saying she “is playing the victim while receiving more money than any judicial candidate in American history thanks to George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and JB Pritzker funneling money to her campaign.”
Quizzed Monday by a TV reporter on whether he would recuse himself if the Tesla case got to the state’s high court, Schimel did not commit, saying: “I’ll do the same thing I do in every case. I will examine whether I can truly hear that case objectively.”
A decade after Wisconsin opened the floodgates to unlimited money in campaigns in 2015, some good government activists are wondering if the state has reached a tipping point. Is there any amount, they ask, at which the state’s political leaders can be persuaded to impose controls?
“I honestly believe that folks have their eyes open around the money in a way that they have not previously,” Nick Ramos, executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign spending, told reporters during a briefing on spending in the race.
A loosely organized group of campaign reformers is beginning to lay the groundwork for change. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign recently called a Zoom meeting that included representatives of public interest groups inside and outside of Wisconsin, dark-money researchers and an election security expert.
They were looking for ways to champion reform during the current legislative session. In particular, they are studying and considering what models make sense and may be achievable, including greater disclosure requirements, public financing and restricting candidates from coordinating with dark-money groups on issue ads.
But Republicans say that the spending is a natural byproduct of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which equated campaign spending with free speech and opened the spigots for big-money races.
“For the most part, we don’t really, as Republicans, want to see the brakes on free speech,” said Ken Brown, past chair of the GOP Party of Racine, a city south of Milwaukee. Noting he was not speaking for the party, Brown said he does not favor spending limits. “I believe in the First Amendment. It is what it is. I believe the Citizens United decision was correct.”
Asked to comment on the current system of unlimited money, Anika Rickard, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, did not answer the question but instead criticized Crawford and her funders.
Post-reform bill opened floodgates
At one point, Wisconsin was seen as providing a roadmap for reform. In 2009, the state passed the Impartial Justice Act. The legislation, enacted with bipartisan support, provided for public financing of state Supreme Court races, so candidates could run without turning to special interests for money.
The push for the measure came after increased spending by outside special interests and the candidates in two state Supreme Court races: the 2007 election that cost an estimated $5.8 million and the 2008 contest that neared $6 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Candidates who agreed in 2009 to public financing and spending limits received grants of up to $400,000 for the race. The money came from the Democracy Trust Fund, which was supported by a $2 income tax check-off.
“Reformers win a fight to clean up court races,” the headline on an editorial in The Capital Times read at the time.
But the law was in place for only one election, in April 2011. Both candidates in the court’s general election that year agreed to take public funding, and incumbent Justice David Prosser, a conservative, narrowly won reelection. Then Republicans eliminated funding for the measure that summer. Instead, the money was earmarked to implement a stringent voter ID law.
By 2015, GOP leaders had completely overhauled the state’s campaign finance law, with Democrats in the Assembly refusing to even vote on the measure in protest.
“This Republican bill opens the floodgates to unlimited spending by billionaires, by big corporations and by monied, special interests to influence our elections,” Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, said in the floor debate.
Wisconsin is no longer cited as a model. Activists point to other states, including Arizona, Oregon and Rhode Island. Arizona and Oregon established disclosure measures to trace the flow of dark money, requiring campaign spenders to reveal the original source of donations. Rhode Island required ads to name not only the sponsor but the organization’s top donors so voters can better access the message and its credibility.
Amid skepticism that Wisconsin will rein in campaign spending, there may be some reason for optimism.
A year ago, a proposed joint resolution in Wisconsin’s Legislature bemoaned Citizens United and the spending it had unleashed. The resolution noted that “this spending has the potential to drown out speech rights for all citizens, narrow debate, weaken federalism and self-governance in the states, and increase the risk of systemic corruption.”
The resolution called for a constitutional amendment clarifying that “states may regulate the spending of money to influence federal elections.”
And though it never came to a vote, 17 members of the Legislature signed on to it, a dozen of them Republicans. Eight of them are still in the Legislature, including Sen. Van Wanggaard, who voted for the 2015 bill weakening Wisconsin’s campaign finance rules.
Wanggaard did not respond to a request for comment. But an aide expressed surprise — and disbelief — seeing the lawmaker’s name on the resolution.
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The event came just two days before the closely-watched Wisconsin Supreme Court election between conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel and liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford.
A volunteer clinic escort holds a sign outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday, March 28. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
U.S. Supreme Court justices will hear arguments Wednesday about whether South Carolina can remove Planned Parenthood clinics from the state’s Medicaid program because they offer abortions in a case that could imperil health care options for patients with low incomes.
At the center of the lawsuit is a conflict over whether a section of the Medicaid Act gives people who use Medicaid the right to choose their providers.
“While it might be just South Carolina’s name on this court case, it will have huge impacts nationwide,” said Vicki Ringer, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s director of public affairs in the state. “It will allow all of these red states that have been trying so hard to close down Planned Parenthood, and it will take away medical care for so many low-income people throughout our region of the country.”
Opponents of Planned Parenthood said Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster should be able to direct Eunice Medina, the new head of the state Department of Health and Human Services, to remove the organization’s Charleston and Columbia clinics from the list of qualified Medicaid providers.
If the court rules broadly, it could allow other states to make the same move — and some already have. The case is also part of a broader strategy across the country to drain Planned Parenthood funding for all services, including reproductive health care aside from abortion. Efforts by abortion-rights opponents to do so go back decades in the United States.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has taken interest in the case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. The acting U.S. solicitor general will argue in favor of South Carolina health officials during a portion of the Supreme Court hearing this week.
Lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative advocacy firm instrumental in majoranti-abortion cases that have appeared before the Supreme Court, represent South Carolina officials in the lawsuit.
“This case is about whether states have the flexibility to direct Medicaid monies to best benefit low-income women and families,” John Bursch, senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in an email.
Planned Parenthood’s two South Carolinaclinics offer abortion up to six weeks in compliance with state law. But staff also provide birth control, emergency contraception, prenatal and postpartum exams and STI testing and treatment, among other services.
“Being able to deny Medicaid patients the ability to select their own qualified provider tells low-income women, especially, that once again ‘You’re not important. Your decision-making doesn’t matter. We are here to decide for you what is best,’” Ringer said.
The picture in South Carolina
McMaster’s executive order against clinics that also offer abortions — deeming them “unqualified to provide family planning services” — has been blocked by lower courts since 2018. Throughout a nearly seven-year court battle, appellate judges have repeatedly ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, and the Supreme Court has rejected requests to take up the case — until now.
“South Carolina has made it clear that we value the right to life. Therefore, taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs,” McMaster said in a Feb. 10 statement.
Nearly half — 48% — of South Carolinians surveyed in May 2024 oppose the six-week ban that’s in place, while 31% support it, and the rest were not sure or refused to answer, according to a Winthrop University poll last year.
Arguments in the case over Medicaid funding for South Carolina Planned Parenthood clinics are unfolding against a backdrop of ongoing efforts to drain funding state by state, and in Congress. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
Ringer said South Carolina lawmakers’ anti-abortion positions are at odds with residents’ views on the issue.
“It’s political pandering, but it’s to a population that doesn’t agree with them,” she said. “They think because they’re elected, then that means we’re an anti-abortion, so-called ‘pro-life’ state.”
Like many states, South Carolina only allows Medicaid coverage of abortion in cases of rape, incest or to save a patient’s life.
Julia Walker, a spokesperson for the regional affiliate, said 10% of patients who routinely visit the South Carolina clinics for family-planning services use Medicaid.
Just 0.2% — $88,464 — of the $35 million the state spent on Medicaid-covered family-planning services went to Planned Parenthood in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, SC Daily Gazette reported. Medicaid is a reimbursement program, meaning providers foot the bill and seek at least partial reimbursement for an appointment or procedure.
A case study in Texas
Arkansas, Missouri and Texas — Republican-led states — have ended some clinics’ Medicaid eligibility for reproductive health care services because they provided abortions at one time or are affiliated with Planned Parenthood.
Still, clinic doors remain open in those states, despite ongoing lawsuits and right-wing wrangling that blocked Medicaid patients.
“Let’s be clear about where Texas was even before they cut Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid,” said Melaney Linton, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which still has six locations in the greater Houston area. “Texas already was suffering some of the nation’s worst rates of maternal and infant mortality, and highest under and uninsured populations.”
Most of Houston is in Harris County, an area that has one of the highest Black maternal death rates nationwide. Black women in the county had a pregnancy-related mortality rate of 83.4 deaths per 100,000 live births from 2016 to 2020, according to a report last year.
The maternal mortality rate in Texas from 2018 to 2021 was 28.1, compared with 23.5 nationwide, according to federal data.
A judge ruled in March 2021 that Texas could stop Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds. Linton said the state’s actions cut off an estimated 8,000 Planned Parenthood patients.
“Politicians like to talk about how they care about women and infants and families,” Linton said. “If they did, they would do everything they can to make sure that women have more access to birth control, not less.”
Six months after Texas suspended Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funds for reproductive health care services, the state enacted a six-week abortion ban. Teen birth rates skyrocketed in Harris County and across the entire Lonestar State for the first time in 15 years, data shows.
Linton said what happens in Texas is often replicated in other parts of the country, and the same will probably hold true for the South Carolina case before the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
“Every American should be concerned about that,” she said.
But public clinics are struggling financially, said Dr. Katherine Farris, the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood in the Carolinas and the Virginias, in a news conference Friday. A patient may have to wait three months for an intrauterine device appointment at some of them, but at Planned Parenthood, she said, the patient can walk in and get an IUD insertion the same day.
Ringer and Linton also said finding a provider that accepts Medicaid and can see a new patient promptly is not so simple.
“Doctors who at one time did take Medicaid aren’t anymore. It is a losing prospect for many providers,” Ringer said. “I’ve seen what Medicaid reimburses, and for many of the services we provide, we lose money on them. But because we are a safety-net provider, that means we provide care to people no matter what. If you can or can’t pay, we are going to take care of you.”
South Carolina and Texas are 2 of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, Stateline reported.
When Planned Parenthood’s Texas affiliates were removed from Medicaid eligibility, Linton said the Gulf Coast staff tried to connect their Medicaid patients to other health care providers.
“Unfortunately, what our patients told us is that sometimes it took them three months or more calling around the 20 or 30 practices to find someone who would even take them. Many times they didn’t provide the birth control method that that patient had been accustomed to receiving,” Linton said.
Bursch and other Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys argue that if Planned Parenthood stopped providing abortions in South Carolina, Medicaid funding could be restored.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America attorney Catherine Peyton Humphreville said that South Carolina does allow some abortions to be provided in the state.
“At no point has anyone asserted that Planned Parenthood South Atlantic is not complying with South Carolina law,” Humphreville said.
No one has questioned the quality of care that the organization provides, they said, and the idea that Planned Parenthood can be punished for simply advocating abortion “has serious First Amendment issues.”
On Capitol Hill
Anti-abortion Republicans in Congress are pushing bills to “defund Planned Parenthood” and other abortion providers, including independent clinics, nationwide. Unlike previous sessions when Congress faced gridlock, legislation could advance this year given the GOP trifecta of power in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley filed legislation on Jan. 16 that would prohibit federal funding from going to organizations that provide abortions, referrals and the like, with the stated intention of cutting funds from “Planned Parenthood and abortion providers across the nation.” A 2019 rule passed by the Trump administration blocked $60 million in federal funds from flowing to the organization, Hawley said, before the rule was rescinded under Biden.
The Hyde Amendment, a provision approved annually by Congress since 1977, already prevents federal funds from covering the costs of abortion unless the pregnancy stemmed from rape or incest, or the patient could die in child birth.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said the organization is prepared to defend itself from both state-level and national attacks.
“The most immediate focus is going to be on the Medicaid defund [bills] in Congress, and that has a direct tie to the Supreme Court case,” McGill Johnson said. “That fight looks like doing everything we can to defeat, delay, to litigate, to mitigate every effort that is trying to put sexual and reproductive health care out of reach.”
City of Milwaukee election officials process absentee ballots at one location on Election Day, which sometimes means ballots are still being fed into tabulators late that night or early the next morning. Results are reported once processing finishes.
Conservative Brad Schimel, who faces liberal Susan Crawford in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, suggested the late counting was malfeasance, a long-debunked claim.
Schimel on March 18 urged supporters to vote early “so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines, like they did in 2018, or in 2024.”
Schimel lost his attorney general re-election bid in 2018. Republican Eric Hovde lost to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in the Nov. 5, 2024, election.
State law prohibits municipalities from preparing absentee ballots before Election Day. A bill that would allow an earlier start has stalled.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
A reader asked: Was Elon Musk’s endorsement of Brad Schimel a violation of lobbying laws because of Musk’s status as a federal employee?
We’ll get to that question in a second, but we also wondered about the answer to a related question: Are the cash giveaways from Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal?
Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO turned efficiency czar for President Donald Trump, has dominated the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in recent weeks. Musk and affiliated groups have poured cash into the race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel, which will determine ideological control of the high court and could have national ramifications.
America PAC and Building America’s Future, two groups that are funded by Musk, have spent more than $16.7 million on advertising and voter mobilization efforts meant to aid Schimel’s candidacy. Musk has also donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer the money to Schimel’s campaign.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing “activist judges.”
“Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” the petition reads. “By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
Participants can also get $100 for referring another petition signer.
Late on Wednesday the super PAC announced that “Scott A.” from Green Bay had been selected to win $1 million after filling out the petition. That mirrors a move America PAC deployed in last year’s presidential race.
It’s less clear whether America PAC’s “special offer” violates Wisconsin’s election bribery statute, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
(1m) Any person who does any of the following violates this chapter:
a. Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend, or endeavors to procure, anything of value, or any office or employment or any privilege or immunity to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to:
i. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.
ii. Vote or refrain from voting.
iii.Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
iv. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular referendum; or on account of any elector having done any of the above.
The $100 reward for signing the petition “definitely falls into a gray area because (America PAC) is paying people to sign the petition,” Godar said. “The question is whether the payment is being given in order to induce anyone to vote or refrain from voting.”
“These payments kind of walk an uncertain line on whether they are amounting to that or not,” Godar added.
Godar also noted that you have to be a registered Wisconsin voter to receive the payment, “so it does seem like it is inducing people to register to vote.” That violates federal law for federal elections, she said, but “federal law doesn’t apply to this election because there aren’t any federal offices on the ballot.”
“Under the state law, that’s not specifically one of the listed prohibitions,” Godar said. “It’s definitely in a gray area and sort of walks the line.”
Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, that he would incentivize voting in Wisconsin with $1 million checks. The post appears to have been taken down. An X user asked the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, whether Musk’s plan was election fraud. The bot responded that the plan likely violates Wisconsin election law.
Late on Thursday, Musk announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” in a social media post that has since been taken down.
“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote. “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
An AI chatbot on Musk’s own social media site flagged the activity in the post as potentially illegal. “Though aimed at boosting participation, this could be seen as election bribery,” the AI profile @grok replied to someone asking if the post was legal.
In a follow-up email, Godar said giving “the payment for voting instead of for signing the petition much more clearly violates Wisconsin law.”
On Friday afternoon, Musk posted again: “To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”
“I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition,” he wrote.
UPDATE (March 31, 2025, 9:00 a.m.): On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit to bar Musk and America PAC from promoting the “million-dollar gifts.” The suit also sought to prohibit Musk and America PAC “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” The case was randomly assigned to Crawford, who immediately recused, and then reassigned to Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt. Voigt declined to hear the petition prior to Sunday’s event, so Kaul went to the Court of Appeals and subsequently the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both turned down his request to stop Musk from giving away two $1 million checks, which he did on Sunday evening.
Violating the statute is a Class I felony, which can carry a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to three-and-a-half years, or both.
A county district attorney or the Wisconsin attorney general would be responsible for filing criminal charges for violations of the statute, Godar said. It’s also possible someone could try to bring a civil claim to have a judge halt the payments. So far that hasn’t happened.
Now back to our reader question about Musk’s political activities as a federal employee.
Musk, in his role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bound by the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting “political activity while you’re on duty, while you’re in the workplace, and the use of your official position to influence the outcome of an election,” said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.
But special government employees like Musk are only bound by the Hatch Act while they’re on duty representing the federal government, Marsco said, so the world’s wealthiest man “is allowed to engage in political activity that might otherwise be prohibited as long as he’s not on duty when he’s doing it.”
The Hatch Act is intended to “maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coercion,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
The U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration submitted an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday in an effort to resume the rapid deportations of Venezuelans accused of gang ties under a wartime law that a lower court blocked.
Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued in a brief to the Supreme Court that a federal judge’s temporary restraining order this month, and an appeals court ruling Wednesday upholding it, wrongly denied President Donald Trump the authority to make decisions about national security operations, including the removal of Venezuelan nationals the administration says are subject to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
“The district court’s orders have rebuffed the President’s judgments as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,” Harris wrote in her request to the court.
The Alien Enemies Act had only been invoked three times, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.
The Trump administration has tried to use it in a novel way, when the nation is not officially at war. The administration designated the Tren de Aragua – a gang that originated in Venezuela – as a foreign terrorist group, and argued that any Venezuelan nationals aged 14 and older with suspected ties to the gang are subject to the proclamation.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg placed a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration’s use of the law this month, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the order this week. The administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the order.
“As long as the orders remain in force, the United States is unable to rely on the Proclamation to remove dangerous affiliates with a foreign terrorist organization—even if the United States receives indications that particular (Tren de Aragua) members are about to take destabilizing or infiltrating actions,” Harris said Friday.
Extending restraining order
Boasberg’s temporary restraining order placed on the use of the Alien Enemies Act is set to expire Saturday. The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit, requested that order be extended for an additional two weeks.
The ACLU also plans to request Boasberg issue a preliminary injunction, which would block the administration from deportations under the act until the lawsuit is complete. A hearing is set for April 8.
Boasberg has rejected the Trump administration’s move to lift his restraining order, on the grounds that those subject to the Alien Enemies Act should have due process to challenge those accusations.
At the D.C. Circuit this week, Department of Justice attorneys for the Trump administration argued that those subject to the proclamation do not need to be notified they are being removed under the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration also argued that those who fall under the Alien Enemies Act can bring a challenge of their detention under a habeas corpus claim.
Defied verbal order
The White House quietly implemented the act on March 15 and a verbal restraining order given by Boasberg that day to block it went into effect hours later.
In that order, Boasberg barred the Trump administration from applying the act but three deportation planes landed in El Salvador after the order was issued. The Trump administration has argued that his verbal order was not enforceable.
Boasberg also ordered that anyone subject to the Alien Enemies Act be returned to the U.S., but federal immigration agents took more than 250 men aboard the three flights to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Boasberg has vowed to determine if the Trump administration violated his restraining order in sending the deportation planes to El Salvador, but Attorney General Pam Bondi invoked the “state secrets privilege” to refuse to answer detailed questions about the flights.
Friday’s emergency request is one of several immigration-related appeals the Trump administration has made to the high court, such as the request to lift several nationwide injunctions placed on the president’s executive order that ends the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.
'Which shall rule — wealth or man; which shall lead — money or intellect?' asked a former Wisconsin Supreme Court chief justice | Getty Images Creative
Does it matter to Wisconsin voters that Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court? Maybe not to “Scott A.” as Musk called him, the Green Bay voter to whom Musk gave $1 million as part of his campaign to reward Wisconsinites who sign a petition against “activist judges,” while at the same time handing over their personal data to Musk. Scott A.’s haul is one-fifth the size of Musk’s $20 million investment in campaign ads and door-knocking to support his preferred candidate, Brad Schimel.
And Musk’s $20 million spending spree accounts for about one-fifth of the total, record-breaking $100 million that makes the April 1 contest the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.
The race is a test of many things: Whether Musk, serving as unelected and unpopular co-president to Donald Trump, is a political asset or a liability; whether the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will endure; whether the highest bidder is destined to win state court races even as the ad war becomes a blitzkrieg; whether three months into the Trump administration, amid mass firings, the dismantling of federal agencies and voter unease about the destruction of their health care and retirement security, Wisconsin might be the place where things begin to turn around.
The money pouring into the Supreme Court race is obscene and a bad sign for the health of democracy regardless of next week’s outcome. But the sickness didn’t flare up overnight. It has been getting steadily worse for almost two decades.
Schimel makes the claim that he is running to restore the Court’s “impartiality,” motivated by his disgust at how “political” the Court’s new liberal majority has become. In truth, the politicization of the Court goes back almost two decades and Schimel, a highly partisan Republican, is an unlikely candidate to take us back to pre-partisan times. On the other side, Susan Crawford is backed by the Democrats and big out of state donors including George Soros. In a recent debate she conceded that the public has an interest in ethics rules that would require judges to recuse themselves from cases involving their donors, but the current rules don’t require that. Neither candidate has promised to recuse from such cases.
The turning point that led us to the current moment came in 2008. That was the year disgraced former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman defeated incumbent Justice Louis Butler in a dirty campaign that broke all previous spending records. The race cost $6 million — at the time, an astounding sum.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Gableman’s biggest-spending supporter, paid for ads calling Butler “Loophole Louie” and accusing him of being soft on crime. Gableman himself ran a disgusting ad that placed Butler’s face next to the mugshot of a convicted rapist. Both men were Black. The ad misleadingly claimed that Butler “found a loophole” and let the man out of prison “to molest another child.” In fact, Butler was not the judge in the case. As a public defender assigned to defend his client, he lost in court and his client was imprisoned, then later reoffended after he was released, having served his full sentence.
Gableman went on to help destroy ethics rules on the Court, refusing to recuse himself from cases involving WMC, which had spent more than $2 million to help elect him. He played a key role in passing the current ethics rule allowing justices to decide for themselves whether to recuse in cases involving their big-money campaign contributors.
Gableman embarrassed supporters, including Dodge County District Attorney Steven Bauer, who publicly withdrew his support during the campaign because of the attack ad. Tellingly, after he left the Court, Gableman disappeared, never landing a job at a law firm or in public service. His brief return to the limelight, as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s chief investigator of nonexistent voter fraud, featured Gableman threatening to jail the mayors of Democratic cities and wasting more than a million taxpayer dollars on a farcical investigation that ended when Vos fired him.
But the damage done by Gableman and the people who poured money into electing him endures.
The 2025 Supreme Court race, which is on track to double the cost of the last record-breaking election in 2023, is 15 times as costly as Gableman’s expensive and shamefully politicized campaign.
Ads featuring scary crime stories are still a major feature of Supreme Court races, sponsored by people who know and don’t care that tough-on-crime issues aren’t coming before the Court. Instead, the ads are paid for by ideological groups, political parties and corporations interested in favorable treatment — like Musk, who has a current lawsuit in Wisconsin seeking to overturn a state law blocking him from opening Tesla dealerships here.
Back in 1873, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Ryan worried about the rise of the robber barons, their accumulation of vast personal wealth and with it political power. Speaking at the University of Wisconsin Law School, he posed the question: “Which shall rule — wealth or man; which shall lead — money or intellect; who shall fill public stations — educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?”
We are well on our way to becoming a nation of feudal serfs to Elon Musk. The liquidation of government agencies and institutions that serve the public interest are a giant step in that direction. The Wisconsin Supreme Court election will take us further down that road, or move us in the opposite direction. But until we do something about the arms race in campaign spending, Ryan’s vision of government by “educated and patriotic free men (and women)” will be increasingly out of reach.
The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
This report was updated at 2:30 p.m. EDT.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday overwhelmingly upheld a Biden-era regulation governing kits that can be assembled into untraceable firearms, also known as ghost guns.
In the 7-2 decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch, the author of the opinion, said that the regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is “not inconsistent” with the Gun Control Act of 1968. The rule was written during the administration of former President Joe Biden.
In his opinion, Gorsuch said that the Gun Control Act allows the ATF to regulate “any weapon . . . which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.”
“Neither the rule of lenity nor constitutional avoidance applies where, as here, the statute’s text, context, and structure make clear it reaches some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers,” he continued.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent.
The case, Bondi v. VanDerStok, renamed to reflect Trump administration Attorney General Pam Bondi, raised the question before the high court as to whether a 2022 rule issued by ATF overstepped in expanding the definition of “firearms” to include “ghost guns” under a federal firearms law.
Ghost guns are firearms without serial numbers. The kits can easily be bought online and quickly assembled in parts.
Law enforcement officials use serial numbers to track guns that are used in crimes and have raised concerns about how ghost guns can impede investigations involving firearms.
The regulation that was challenged by gun advocacy groups did not ban ghost guns, but instead required manufacturers of those firearm kits or parts to add a serial number to the products, as well as conduct background checks on potential buyers.
The ATF rule also clarified those kits are considered covered by the 1968 Gun Control Act under the definition of a “firearm.”
‘Buy Build Shoot’ kits
Gorsuch noted in his opinion that the statute in the Gun Control Act gives the ATF the authority to regulate any weapon designed to “expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” through two requirements.
The first is that there needs to be a “weapon.” The second is that “weapon” has to meet one of three criteria.
“It must be able to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive, designed to do so, or susceptible of ready conversion to operate that way,” he said.
The appeals court interpreted the ATF regulation as invalid because “no weapon parts kit” can meet those two requirements. Gorsuch said the high court did not agree.
“We disagree because, to our eyes, at least some kits will satisfy both,” he said.
In the Supreme Court’s reasoning, Gorsuch pointed to an example of a ghost gun kit – a Polymer80’s “Buy Build Shoot” kit.
He noted the kit came with all the tools needed to build a “Glock-variant semiautomatic pistol.”
“And it is so easy to assemble that, in an ATF test, an individual who had never before encountered the kit was able to produce a gun from it in 21 minutes using only ‘common’ tools and instructions found in publicly available YouTube videos,” Gorsuch said.
He said when assessing if the “Buy Build Shoot” kit applies to the two requirements, he first questioned if the word “weapon” could apply to a kit.
“Reflecting as much, everyday speakers sometimes use artifact nouns to refer to unfinished objects—at least when their intended function is clear,” he wrote. “A friend might speak of the table he just bought at IKEA, even though hours of assembly remain ahead of him.”
Gorsuch said the same logic can apply to the kit.
“But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its intended function as instrument of combat is obvious,” he said. “Really, the kit’s name says it all: “Buy Build Shoot.”
As for the second requirement, Gorsuch noted the kit met it because “a person without any specialized knowledge can convert a starter gun into a working firearm using everyday tools in less than an hour.”
Thomas dissent
Justice Thomas argued that firearm kits do not meet “the statutory definition of ‘firearm.’”
Thomas also wrote the opinion on a 2022 decision that greatly expanded the Second Amendment by determining the New York concealed carry law violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“The majority instead blesses the Government’s overreach based on a series of errors regarding both the standard of review and the interpretation of the statute,” he wrote in his dissent Wednesday. “Congress could have authorized ATF to regulate any part of a firearm or any object readily convertible into one. But, it did not.”
He argued that the ATF regulation rewrites what a “frame” and “receiver” is on a weapon. Thomas wrote that ghost guns do not meet this definition because they are “unfinished.”
Thomas also pushed back against the majority opinion on how easy it is to assemble a firearm through a kit.
“Special tools and an indeterminate amount of time are required to convert an unfinished weapon-parts kit into a functional weapon,” he said. “Thus, even assuming that the ordinary meaning of ‘weapon’ does not resolve whether the term includes weapon-parts kits, at minimum the term ‘weapon’ cannot encompass weapon-parts kits in ‘the same way’ it covers disassembled firearms.”
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan attend U.S. President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Tuesday rejected calls to impeach federal judges who issue rulings that block Trump administration policies, a rare public statement from the nation’s highest sitting judge.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
The comments, provided to States Newsroom by a spokesperson for the court, came just hours after President Donald Trump vented his frustration with a federal judge on social media.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
The post appeared to be directed at U.S. Judge James Emanuel Boasberg in the District of Columbia, who over the weekend blocked the Trump administration from deporting certain immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The American Civil Liberties Union is arguing the Trump administration violated the judge’s order by not bringing back flights traveling to Honduras and El Salvador on Saturday.
The U.S. House of Representatives must vote to impeach federal officials. Trump was impeached twice by the House during his first term in office.
The Senate then holds a trial, after which at least two-thirds of the lawmakers in that chamber must vote to remove the federal official from office. The upper chamber didn’t take that step during Trump’s first term and he was acquitted twice.
“The House has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times; roughly a third of all proceedings have led to full impeachments,” according to a post by the Office of the Historian. “Just eight individuals—all federal judges—have been convicted and removed from office by the Senate.”
The Trump administration Thursday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to take action on three cases from lower courts dealing with the president's executive order ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the scope of three nationwide injunctions from lower courts against the president’s executive order ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.
It’s the first time the administration has asked the high court to intervene in cases challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order that aims to redefine birthright citizenship, under which children born in the United States are legal citizens.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris is asking the Supreme Court to scale back the nationwide injunctions to apply to only the individual plaintiffs in the cases brought before federal courts in Maryland and Washington, or 18 people.
The Trump administration is asking for a full stay of a third suit filed by Democratic attorneys general in Massachusetts.
Harris argued “universal injunctions compromise the Executive Branch’s ability to carry out its functions….”
“These cases — which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship — raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” she wrote in her emergency request. “At a minimum, this Court should stay all three preliminary injunctions to the extent they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing guidance explaining how they would implement the Citizenship Order in the event that it takes effect.”
Appeals underway
The Trump administration has appealed to the 4th Circuit of Appeals the case from Maryland, brought by two nonprofits — Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and CASA — that represent five women who are currently pregnant and do not have legal status. Other individual plaintiffs belong to the two organizations.
The third case is in Washington state and the Trump administration has appealed to the 9th Circuit. It was filed by attorneys general from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington state and includes two individual plaintiffs.
The executive order that brought a flurry of legal challenges says that the federal government will not recognize or issue citizenship documentation to any child born after Feb. 19 to parents who are in the country without proper authorization, or if the parent is in the United States on a temporary visa and the other parent is a noncitizen or green card holder.
14th Amendment
The Supreme Court in 1898 upheld the 14th Amendment, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, extending birthright citizenship.
In that case, Ark was born in San Francisco, California, to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had legal authority to be in the country. Ark’s citizenship was not recognized when he left the United States and he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act— a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.
The high court ruled that children born in the United States to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.
Attorneys on behalf of the Trump administration have argued that the case was misinterpreted.
The Trump administration contends that the phrase in the 14th Amendment means that birthright citizenship only applies to children born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. That would mean, under their view, people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status are “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin.
The payment to a Green Bay man, which Musk announced Wednesday night on his social media platform X, is similar to a lottery that Musk’s political action committee ran last year in Wisconsin and other battleground states before the presidential election in November.
The upcoming election on Tuesday, filling a seat held by a liberal justice who is retiring, will determine whether Wisconsin’s highest court will remain under 4-3 liberal control or flip to a conservative majority. The race has become a proxy battle over the nation’s politics, with Trump and Musk getting behind Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate in the officially nonpartisan contest.
The campaign for the Democratic-supported candidate, Susan Crawford, blasted the $1 million payment from Musk as an attempt to illegally buy influence on the court in a state where Tesla, his electric car company, has a lawsuit pending that could end up before the court.
“It’s corrupt, it’s extreme, and it’s disgraceful to our state and judiciary,” Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.
No legal action against Musk’s payments to voters has been filed in Wisconsin with the Supreme Court election five days away.
Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the payments were a last-minute attempt to influence the election.
“Whether or not Wisconsinites will believe this is legitimate or not probably won’t be settled until after the election,” he said. “But this is not what a Wisconsin Supreme Court election ought to be decided on. Races for the high court are supposed to be on judicial temperament and impartiality, not huge amounts of money for partisan purposes.”
Musk’s political action committee, America First, announced last week that it was offering $100 to voters who signed a petition in opposition to “activist judges.” He did not say there would be $1 million prizes at that time, but in his post on Wednesday said an additional $1 million award would be made in two days.
It was not clear who determined the winner of the $1 million or how it was done.
Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the White House election last year, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.
It is a felony in Wisconsin to offer, give, lend or promise to lend or give anything of value to induce a voter to cast a ballot or not vote.
The Musk petition says it is open only to registered Wisconsin voters, but those who sign it are not required to show any proof that they actually voted.
The petition says: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
The petition, while designed to collect data on Wisconsin voters and energize them, also is in line with Trump’s agenda alleging that “activist” judges are illegally working against him. Trump’s administration is embroiled in several lawsuits related to his flurry of executive orders and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy.
During last year’s presidential race, Philadelphia’s district attorney sued in an attempt to stop the payments under Pennsylvania law. But a judge said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.
America PAC and Building for America’s Future, two groups that Musk funds, have spent more than $17 million trying to help elect Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. Musk also has given the Wisconsin Republican Party $3 million this year, which it can then give to Schimel or spend on the race.
More than $81 million has been spent on the race so far, obliterating the record for a judicial race in the U.S. of $51 million set in Wisconsin just two years ago, according to Brennan Center tallies.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The number of people choosing early, in-person voting is nearly double what it was during the state's last supreme court election with Waukesha County currently leading Milwaukee and Dane counties in early votes.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and political groups he backs are pouring millions of dollars into the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as the electric vehicle company sues to overturn a state law that prevents it from opening dealerships — a case that eventually could make its way to the high court.
Tesla’s multiple attempts to open its own dealerships in Wisconsin keep running up against a state law that allows only third parties, not auto manufacturers, to operate them. The company filed a lawsuit in January seeking an exemption, just as two Musk-backed political action committees started supporting the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel, over his opponent, Susan Crawford, who is supported by Democrats.
Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest person and is running President Donald Trump’s initiative to slash the size of the federal workforce, has given $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP while groups he supports have funneled more than $17 million into the race. The contributions are part of an extraordinary spending spree in the race, making it by far the most expensive judicial race on record in the United States. Total spending has eclipsed $80 million with days still to go before the final day of voting on April 1.
Schimel’s critics have accused Musk of trying to buy a favorable ruling for Tesla should the dealership case make it to the state Supreme Court. Here are details of the law and Musk’s lawsuit:
Why can’t Tesla set up Wisconsin dealerships?
State statutes generally prohibit vehicle manufacturers from owning or operating dealerships in Wisconsin and give that franchise to third parties. The law was intended to prevent manufacturers from undercutting independent dealerships.
Nearly 20 states have similar prohibitions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws took hold in the 1930s as carmakers started to rely on independent dealerships to sell and service vehicles so they could focus on production. Later, independent dealers wanted to prevent manufacturers from opening their own dealerships and driving them out of business.
Tesla sells its vehicles directly to consumers, who can have their vehicles shipped directly to them or to dealerships in 27 states. Because the company can’t set up its own dealerships in Wisconsin, buyers there must have the cars delivered to them or travel to dealerships in neighboring Minnesota or Illinois to pick them up.
Tesla officials have been working for almost a decade to secure an exemption from the law. In 2017 and 2021, Republican legislators introduced bills that would permit Tesla dealerships, but none of those made it out of the Legislature. They inserted an exemption for Tesla dealerships into the 2019-21 state budget, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers used his partial veto powers to erase the provision.
The Wisconsin Automobile and Truck Dealers Association has been fighting to preserve the law. Bill Sepic, the association’s president and CEO, told The Associated Press that Tesla should have to follow the law like any other vehicle manufacturer. He said the statutes exist to enable third parties to act as consumer advocates “in making one of the larger purchases of their life.”
What is the company doing now?
Tesla filed a lawsuit in state court in January seeking permission to open four dealerships in Wisconsin.
The company argues that independent dealers wouldn’t meet its standards and says selling vehicles at its own dealerships is in the public interest because unaffiliated dealers’ prices are higher and less transparent.
Its lawsuit says that the state law barring manufacturers from running their own dealerships violates economic liberty rights and that the prohibition exists only to protect independent dealers from competition.
The case is pending in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, though no hearings have been scheduled.
The state Justice Department is defending the law. An agency spokesperson declined to comment.
How did Musk get involved in the state Supreme Court race?
Schimel, the conservative state Supreme Court candidate, is vying with Crawford for an open seat on the high court.
The race is the most significant election nationally since the November presidential contest, providing an early barometer for Republicans and Democrats given the intense interest and outside spending it has generated. It also will determine whether the highest court in the perennial presidential battleground state will flip from liberal to conservative control with major cases involving abortion, union rights and congressional redistricting on the horizon.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Susan Crawford, left, and Brad Schimel wait for the start of their debate March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee. The hourlong debate was the first and only debate between the candidates ahead of the April 1 election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Eight days after Tesla filed the Wisconsin dealership lawsuit, Musk tweeted: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”
To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud in Wisconsin. Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 was affirmed by a recount and an independent audit. Trump, a Republican, won the state last November and offered no objections then to the voting or ballot-counting.
According to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice, Musk-backed groups America PAC and Building America’s Future have spent more than $17 million to support Schimel with ads and flyers. The money he donated to the state Republican Party has been used to help Schimel, who has been endorsed by Trump.
Are the candidates focused on the Tesla case?
Crawford’s supporters contend the timing of the contributions show Musk is trying to ensure that Schimel wins and creates a conservative majority on the court that ultimately would rule in Tesla’s favor. Crawford said during a debate with Schimel this month that Musk “has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.”
Sepic, president of the state dealership association, said Wisconsin should elect the candidate who enforces the prohibition but declined to comment when asked if he thought Schimel or Crawford would do that.
Schimel has repeatedly said he would treat any case involving Tesla the same as any other when he considers whether to hear it or recuse himself. Schimel also has insisted that the donations from Musk and his groups do not make him beholden to them.
Crawford has said the same thing about billionaires who have donated to her campaign, including George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Soros has contributed $2 million and Pritzker $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which has funneled the money to Crawford’s campaign.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives says Wisconsin's Supreme Court election is vital because the only way to challenge "gerrymandered" congressional voting maps is "if you have an enlightened Supreme Court" overseeing a legal challenge.
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