'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.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., speaks to reporters during a press conference inside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, March 27, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The top Republican and top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee sent the Trump administration a joint letter on Thursday, telling the Office of Management and Budget it’s on thin ice with the panel.

The dispute has to do with how the White House is implementing the stopgap spending law that Congress approved earlier this month, which funds the federal government through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash, wrote in the two-page letter that the way OMB is approaching a section on emergency designations is in sharp contrast to how other administrations have implemented it.

“This (or substantially similar) language has been used in appropriations legislation for decades, and it has always been interpreted to give the President a binary choice: He must concur with all or none of Congress’s emergency designations,” Collins and Murray wrote. “Just as the President does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate.

“This interpretation is consistent with congressional intent and is the most logical and consistent reading of the law.”

The two wrote the Trump administration’s new “piecemeal approach” raises questions about whether emergency funding, including $8 billion in housing assistance, will be available as Congress intended.

Collins and Murray appeared to imply that OMB not correcting course on the emergency designation would strain the working relationship between the Appropriations Committee and the Trump administration.

The two will need to work together in the months ahead to draft the dozen appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026, which is slated to begin Oct. 1.

“We are concerned that sudden changes to OMB’s interpretation of long-standing statutory provisions could be disruptive to the appropriations process and make it more difficult for the Appropriations Committee to work in a collaborative fashion with the Administration to advance priorities on behalf of the American people,” they wrote. “Collaboration will become even more challenging when the Committee is first informed of such developments through the press, rather than notified through official channels, as was the case here.”

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

The Elon Musk–founded America PAC has spent at least $11.5 million on the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, WisPolitics reported March 24.

That doesn’t count another $3 million the PAC gave to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which can funnel unlimited funds to candidates.

Both support conservative candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford.

The nonprofit campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets tracks cumulative independent group spending in state supreme court and appellate court races through 2024.

Its figures indicate the biggest spender nationally is the Citizens for Judicial Fairness, which spent a total of $11.4 million in the 2020 and 2022 Illinois court races.

OpenSecrets’ data cover about two-thirds of the states; not all states report independent expenditures.

The progressive A Better Wisconsin Together has spent $9.2 million on ads backing Crawford, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said March 18 he believed Musk’s spending might be a national record.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• WisPolitics: Monday AM Update — 24 March 2025
• America PAC: Website home page
• New York Times: Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Directly Into Trump Political Operation
• Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk Gave Tens of Millions to Republican Causes Far Earlier Than Previously Known
• New York Times: Republican Operatives Function as Hidden Hand Behind Pro-Trump Efforts
• A Better Wisconsin Together: Website home page
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Here are the groups behind the heavy spending in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race
• IllinoisSunshine.org: Citizens for Judicial Fairness
• OpenSecrets: Email, March 24, 2025
• WisPolitics: Monday PM Update — 24 March 2025
• Brian Taylor Cohen: Elon Musk caught pulling bombshell stunt to meddle in key election
• WisPolitics: Tuesday AM Update — 25 March 2025
• AdImpact: Email, March 24, 2025

Has Elon Musk’s PAC in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race set the record for outside spending on state court elections? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

I’ve studied the rulings of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for well over a decade, and for most of that time, the court tended to put corporations and employers over workers or consumers. That has changed in the last couple of years. And now that voters have elected a pro-worker majority, billionaires like Elon Musk are spending big to return a pro-corporate majority to power. 

In a 2023 report that I authored for People’s Parity Project Action, we found that the state Supreme Court had ruled for corporations or employers in most of the cases where individuals were on the other side. The report commented on the stakes of that year’s election: “Instead of the reactionary justices who’ve put corporations over workers, [Wisconsinites] could have a majority that gives everyone a fair shot.”

In the weeks after our report was released, around the time of the spring 2023 election, the high court ruled for workers or consumers in several cases. Later that year, Judge Janet Protaseiwicz was sworn in, forming a progressive, pro-democracy majority. 

Around a year ago, this new majority ruled along ideological lines in a case that impacted workers across the state. The appeal involved unemployment insurance for Catholic Charities and some affiliated charities that help the poor and people with disabilities find jobs. The nonprofit employers tried to argue that they were exempt from the unemployment insurance system under the “ministerial” exception, which applies to employers that are both controlled by a religious organization and “operated primarily for religious purposes.” 

The court ruled 4–3 that the organizations aren’t “operated primarily for religious purposes.” The justices examined the activities of the groups (job training, help with daily living activities, etc.) and concluded that they aren’t religious. As the court notes, the smaller charities weren’t even receiving funding from Catholic Charities and were primarily funded through government contracts. 

The majority emphasized that the unemployment statute has always been interpreted broadly to cover as many workers as possible, ever since the state became the first to set up such a system in 1932. The statute says that unemployment compensation addresses an “urgent public problem” by sharing the burdens of unemployment. 

This ruling meant that dozens of Catholic Charities workers and all of its sub-organizations’ employees — the people who help people in need find jobs — can get unemployment benefits if they lose their jobs through no fault of their own. The Freedom from Religion Foundation noted that a ruling in favor of Catholic Charities would have jeopardized unemployment insurance for thousands of workers at “religiously-affiliated hospitals and colleges.” 

Justice Rebecca Bradley, whose dissent was partially joined by the other conservatives, began with a Bible verse and an invocation of “Jesus Christ himself.” She argued for deferring to an employer’s stated motivations to determine if its workers are ministerial. 

Bradley also argued that the majority’s ruling violates the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The case is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has expanded the First Amendment rights of religious employers at the expense of their workers. Though this case implicates the First Amendment, most cases involving workers only involve state law. This means that the Wisconsin Supreme Court gets the final say. 

Right now, billionaires and corporations are spending big to end the pro-worker majority and put the state Supreme Court’s power back in the hands of right-wing justices who will rule in their favor. With Musk-aligned groups pouring in at least $12 million, spending in the race is on track to break the record for spending in a U.S. judicial election — a record set in 2023 in Wisconsin, the election that changed control of the court. 

The pro-corporate majority that presided over the state for a decade-and-a-half first came to power in 2008. In that year’s election, corporate interests deliberately targeted a justice who had ruled against the manufacturers of dangerous lead paint. This majority was mired in conflicts of interest and bitter interpersonal conflicts. In 2010, they adopted an ethics rule that was literally written by a corporate-funded group that backed the conservative justices. A few years later, they shut down a campaign finance investigation into big business groups that had spent millions to get them elected. 

For billionaires and corporations, the stakes are clear in this year’s high court election. Wisconsin judges are ruling on cases affecting voters, workers, and people facing criminal charges. 

In one case, Musk’s Tesla car company is currently appealing a judge’s decision to deny it an exemption to a state law that prohibits car companies from owning car dealerships. Musk’s company wants to open four dealerships throughout the state — at a time when those dealerships are facing hundreds of protests in states around the country. If a Tesla customer sues the company, Musk would probably prefer that a pro-corporate judge hear the case. 

With the court’s current majority in power, workers and consumers actually have a shot at justice. The justices have made progress in protecting democracy. They finally struck down gerrymandered election districts and overturned a prior ruling that barred the use of ballot drop boxes. 

Musk and his wealthy friends want to take all of that away. But in Wisconsin, the voters decide who sits on their state’s highest court. 

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

About 60% of federal spending is mandatory — appropriations are automatic.

About 27% is discretionary spending, and about 13% pays federal debt interest.

On mandatory spending, more than half is for Medicare and Social Security. 

About 69 million people receive monthly Social Security retirement or disability payments. About 68 million get Medicare, which is health insurance for people 65 and older, and some people under 65 with certain conditions.

Discretionary spending requires annual approvals by Congress and the president. About half is for defense. The rest goes to programs such as transportation, education and housing.

Projected total federal spending in fiscal 2025 is $7 trillion, up about 58% from $4.45 trillion in fiscal 2019.

President Donald Trump pledged March 4 to balance the budget “in the near future.” But the federal debt is projected to grow about $2 trillion annually through 2035.

On March 12, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., said most federal government spending is mandatory.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• U.S. Treasury Department: How much has the U.S. government spent this year? (March 17, 2025)
• USA Facts: How much of the federal budget is mandatory spending?
• Axios: Behind the Curtain: Hard truths about Trump budget cuts
• Congressional Budget Office: Mandatory Spending in Fiscal Year 2023: An Infographic
• Social Security Administration: Fact Sheet
• Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services: Medicare Monthly Enrollment
• Medicare.gov: Parts of Medicare
• U.S. Treasury Department: How much has the U.S. government spent this year?
• Congressional Budget Office: Discretionary Spending in Fiscal Year 2023: An Infographic
• U.S. Treasury Department: Treasury Bulletin December 2024
• Vicki McKenna Show: Glenn Grothman interview, March 12, 2025
• Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035
• Axios: U.S. federal deficit soars to record $3.1 trillion in 2020
• New York Times: Full Transcript of President Trump’s Speech to Congress
• Reason: Trump Promised a Balanced Budget. Don't Believe It.

Is the majority of federal government spending mandatory? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Alexandria Ehlert has pursued a college education hoping to become a park ranger or climate scientist. Now she’s wondering whether she’ll ever finish her studies at College of Menominee Nation.

The scholarship that kept her afloat at the tribal college in Wisconsin vanished in recent weeks, and with it her optimism about completing her degrees there and continuing her studies at a four-year institution.

Ehlert is one of about 20 College of Menominee Nation students who rely on scholarships funded through a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. The Trump administration suspended the grant amid widespread cost-cutting efforts. Unless other money can be found, Ehlert and the other scholarship students are in their final weeks on campus.

“It’s leaving me without a lot of hope,” said Ehlert, a member of the Oneida nation. “Maybe I should just get a warehouse job and drop school entirely.”

Many staff and students at the country’s 37 tribal colleges and universities, which rely heavily on federal dollars, have been alarmed by the suspension of crucial grants early in Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Even before he retook office, the schools essentially lived paycheck to paycheck. A 1978 law promised them a basic funding level, but Congress hasn’t come close to fulfilling that obligation in decades. Today, the colleges get a quarter-billion dollars less per year than they should, when accounting for inflation, and receive almost nothing to build and maintain their campuses. Water pipes break frequently, roofs leak, ventilation systems fail and buildings crumble. Other than minuscule amounts of state funding in some cases and a smattering of private donations, tribal colleges that lose any federal funding have few other sources of income.

“You freeze our funding and ask us to wait six months to see how it shakes out, and we close,” said Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which lobbies for tribal colleges in Washington, D.C. “That’s incredibly concerning.”

At least $7 million in USDA grants to tribal colleges and universities have been suspended, Rose said. The schools’ concerns have been magnified by a lack of communication from federal agencies, which she attributed partly to many federal workers being laid off as the Trump administration has made across-the-board cuts to the federal bureaucracy.

Staff at the College of Menominee Nation were seeking reimbursement for $50,000 spent on research and other work conducted in January, when a federal website indicated a grant from the USDA had been suspended. It was a technical issue, they were told when they first reached someone at the agency, and they needed to contact technical support. But that didn’t solve the problem. Then a few days later the department told the college to halt all grant activity, including Ehlert’s scholarship, without explaining why or for how long.

The frozen grants are administered by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA. They stem from a 1994 law, the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act, which designated the tribal colleges as land-grant institutions. Congress created the land-grant system in the 19th century to provide more funding for agricultural and vocational degrees.

The 1994 addition of tribal colleges to the list of land-grant institutions gave the schools access to more funding for specific projects, mostly focused on food and agriculture. Many grants funded food research and projects to increase the availability of food, which is particularly important in rural areas with fewer grocery stores and restaurants.

“It’s really precarious for tribal colleges,” said Twyla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota. Her college also lost access to NIFA funds that were paying for food research and a program that connects Indigenous farmers, ranchers and gardeners to each other. “We don’t have large endowments to fall back on.”

Several other college presidents said they were preparing for the worst. Red Lake Nation College in Minnesota was freezing salaries, travel and hiring, said President Dan King. So was United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota, which paused renovation of a dormitory originally built as military barracks in 1900. ProPublica reported in October that tribal colleges need more than half a billion dollars to catch up on campus maintenance.

“We’re hoping to get started soon, because we have a short construction season here,” said Leander McDonald, president of the United Tribes college.

At Blackfeet Community College in northern Montana, a NIFA grant is helping to create a program to train workers for the Blackfeet tribe’s new slaughterhouse. The college has started construction on a new building, but President Brad Hall worries that without access to promised federal funds, he might have to pause the project.

Like other tribal college leaders, Hall hasn’t been able to get clear answers from the USDA. Unlike some other schools, his college has been able to access federal funds, but he wonders for how long.

“Without the clarity and without the communication, it’s very hard to make decisions right now,” he said. “We’re in a holding pattern, combined with a situation where the questions aren’t being answered to our satisfaction.”

USDA spokespeople declined to answer questions. The agency emailed a written statement noting that “NIFA programs are currently under review,” but did not provide details on which grants have been suspended or for how long. The agency did not respond to requests for clarification.

Some tribal college leaders theorized they were targeted partly because of the formal name of the 1994 land-grant law: the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act. The Trump administration has laid waste to federal spending on programs with “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in the names.

While “equity” often refers to fairness in relation to race or sex, in the 1994 bill, Congress used the word to highlight that tribal colleges would finally have access to the same funds that 19th-century laws had made available to other land-grant colleges and universities. A spokesperson for the organization that represents nontribal land-grant institutions, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said he was not aware of any USDA funds to nontribal colleges being suspended.

Tribal colleges argue their funding is protected by treaties and the federal trust responsibility, a legal obligation requiring the United States to protect Indigenous resources, rights and assets. Cutting off funding to the tribal colleges is illegal, several university presidents said.

“We were promised education and health care and basic needs,” said King at Red Lake Nation College. “The fact that we’re being lumped in with these other programs — well, we’re not like them.”

The College of Menominee Nation was only a year into its game-changing $9 million USDA grant, which was funding workforce development, training students in local trades such as forestry, and improving food access for Indigenous people. The five-year grant was a “once-in-a-lifetime award,” said college President Christopher Caldwell.

“We want our students to graduate and have healthy job opportunities,” Caldwell said. “Now it just kind of got cut off at the knees.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

She’s on a scholarship at a tribal college in Wisconsin. The Trump administration suspended the USDA grant that funded it. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Spending by candidates and outside groups combined will break records again in this year's Wisconsin Supreme Court race. (Getty Images)

Spending in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race could be two times as high as the record-breaking $51 million spent in the last election for a seat on the state’s highest court, and outside spending is dwarfing what the candidates themselves have raised so far this year.

The race, between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, will determine whether the Court maintains a 4-3 liberal majority that flipped two years ago or reverts to a conservative majority that was in place for more than a decade previously.

“We’re watching money just flood from out of state into Wisconsin,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, in a briefing Monday about campaign finance trends with two weeks to go before Election Day April 1. “It would not be crazy to say that this race could be double what the last Supreme Court race was, especially with the trends and especially with the track that we’re on.”

Crawford is ahead in fundraising by the campaigns themselves, raising $7.36 million. Among her donors, 35 have given the maximum Wisconsin allows an individual to donate to a single candidate, $20,000.

Schimel’s campaign has raised $4.93 million. There are 47 donors who have given him the maximum allowed under Wisconsin law.

The Court race is officially nonpartisan, but over the last couple of decades candidates have divided along partisan as well as ideological lines. Crawford’s campaign has received $3 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Political Action Committee (PAC), and the Wisconsin Republican Party PAC has given $1.68 million to Schimel’s campaign.

Independent expenditures, however, have so far favored Schimel over Crawford by roughly 3 to 1. Independent expenditures, which explicitly favor or oppose a candidate, are spent by groups outside the campaigns.

Independent groups supporting Crawford have spent $7.79 million on pro-Crawford or anti-Schimel advertising — as much as her campaign has raised so far. But independent groups’ spending on Schimel’s behalf is almost three times that: $21.45 million.

With 15 days until Election Day, the independent expenditure total in the 2025 race is more than twice what it was at the same point in the 2023 state Supreme Court contest: $29.24 million compared with $14.4 million.

“Credit” for the trend goes to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that unleashed corporate and union spending on campaigns and to a 2015 rewrite of state law that brought on “this wild west of campaign spending here in Wisconsin,” Ramos said.

The data also shows the outsized influence of billionaires on state politics, he said. Among the biggest spenders in the race are groups funded by Elon Musk and Richard Uihlein, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reports. 

The top two biggest-spending independent groups favoring Schimel are linked to billionaire Musk: America PAC, spending $6.53 million so far, and Building America’s Future, spending $4.54 million, according to the Democracy Campaign.

Three other pro-Schimel organizations have been funded by Uihlein, owner of the office supplies company Uline: Fair Courts America, Americas PAC IEO, and American Principles Project PAC. Another Uihlein organization, Restoration PAC has also contributed to the American Principles Project PAC, according to the Democracy Campaign.

Launched 30 years ago, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign tracks political spending in the state. The nonpartisan organization also promotes campaign finance reform as well as voting rights and access, along with other pro-democracy policies.

Ramos said voters shouldn’t let the immense sums that a few are plowing into the race discourage them from going to the polls or to believe their vote won’t matter. “At the end of the day, money does not vote, people do, and your power and your voice is that vote,” he said. 

Early voting starts Tuesday in Wisconsin, and the Democracy Campaign is taking part in campaigns to encourage people to vote early and “for folks to just continue to be civically engaged,” Ramos added. 

The Democracy Campaign also tracks spending on issue ads — advertising that does not include direct messages to vote for or against a candidate, but highlights information that paints candidates in a favorable or unfavorable light.

Issue ad spending is more difficult to track, and donors behind issue ad spending aren’t required to be disclosed under Wisconsin law. Total issue ad spending data will probably not be available until the summer, said Molly Carmichael, the Democracy Campaign’s communications director.

“Phony issue ads flood our airwaves with disinformation and, somehow, have even less reporting requirements than other forms of spending,” said Ramos. “It’s another part of our unregulated, unruly money in politics problems we’re going to need to clean up.”

One set of issue ads in the Court race has come under scrutiny for masquerading as a pro-Crawford campaign while it’s funded by a conservative group with ties to Musk.

The Facebook and Instagram ads as well as related text messages “are labeled as coming from a group called Progress 2028 and are made to look like authentic messages of support” for Crawford, the Associated Press reported March 5. But records for the ads showed they were underwritten by a conservative PAC for which Musk is a major contributor, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The ads describe Crawford as a “progressive champion,” the AP reported, while they focus “on hot-button issues” and use language “that potentially diminishes her standing with moderate or conservative voters.”

High court spending dwarfs superintendent race

Spending in the hotly contested race for the office of state superintendent is just a fraction of the money being spent on the state Supreme Court race. That election will choose the person to head the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

Incumbent Jill Underly has raised $139,495 as of Monday, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Kinser, a former charter school leader and school choice lobbyist, has raised more than double that, $316,316.

As with the high court race, the DPI contest is officially nonpartisan, but each candidate has been favored by one particular political party. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has given Underly $56,118 from its PAC. The Republican Party has given Kinser $2,500.

Kinser has also benefited more from independent expenditures, with $40,518 spent to promote her or oppose Underly. Independent spending in favor of Underly or opposing Kinser has been about half as much, $23,177.

Elon Musk and President of Argentina Javier Milei speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. | Photo by Gage Skidmore

Fresh from spending nearly $300 million to influence the 2024 elections, the richest person in the world has set his sights squarely on Wisconsin. Elon Musk is apparently not content with taking a chainsaw to the lives of thousands of hard-working federal employees engaged in providing health care to rural American children and veterans, with slashing Medicaid for millions of our most vulnerable citizens, with cutting projects seeking desperately needed cures for cancer, Ebola and other deadly diseases and with eviscerating foreign assistance that thousands of people all over the world rely on for survival. Musk is now also carpet bombing Wisconsin with millions of dollars for negative ads and cash infusions to influence the outcome of the upcoming April 1 election to fill an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

After 30 years of distinguished service, the Court’s most senior justice, Ann Walsh Bradley announced her retirement last year.  Now, with the fast-approaching election to determine her successor in just a matter of days, voters will decide the ideological composition of the majority on the court and therefore the future direction of Wisconsin and quite possibly the nation.   

In January, when Musk announced he was invading our state, he falsely proclaimed on Twitter: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud.” He’s wrong on all counts. In the first place, candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court don’t run for election with party labels. Our judicial elections are nonpartisan – at least they are  supposed to be. Secondly, voting fraud does not occur in our state because we have long had strong safeguards in place to prevent it. Voting fraud is a complete and total non-issue in Wisconsin and a distraction from real and serious attacks on democracy such as ongoing voter suppression proposals and laws that already make it more difficult to vote here than previously.

But the unelected Musk, whose craving for national attention and power rivals that of his partner Donald Trump, has a direct financial interest in a matter that could end up before the state’s high court.  Wisconsin is one of nearly half the states in the nation that prohibit auto manufacturers from being able to directly sell their vehicles to the public because it would provide those manufacturers with a competitive advantage over independent dealers. Musk’s car company, Tesla, has sought and been refused an exemption to the law by state courts, most recently in December. A sympathetic Wisconsin Supreme Court influenced by Musk’s heavy spending in the current election – already well over $12 million and rising — is in his crosshairs as well as enhanced overall political influence and power beyond our state. 

In a campaign that is already the most expensive judicial election anywhere in the nation in U.S. history, Musk may end up as the single largest campaign spender through his “Building America’s Future” Super PAC and other avenues to influence the outcome in Wisconsin with his limitless out-of-state millions. How much will he spend? No one knows. But it is very important that Wisconsinites know that Musk has quickly emerged as the single most dominant source of campaign cash and political influence in this election and in our state.  

It will be up to Wisconsinites to decide if they approve or not of this unelected richest person in the world buying control of our highest court while at the same time continuing his unprecedented destruction of so many vital national services and safeguards Wisconsinites depend on. 

The voters of Wisconsin can prevail over Musk and his millions by turning out in force – by returning their absentee ballots in time to be counted, or by showing up and voting early in person or at their polling place on the first day of April – Election Day.  At the ballot box, each of us still has more voice and control over our destiny than even the richest person in the world who can’t vote here and who knows and cares little or nothing about Wisconsin other than as a place for him to sell more Teslas and ruin more lives.

On the evening of March 6 Musk’s multimillion dollar Space X Starship exploded in the skies over the coast of Florida shortly after it was launched.  Thank goodness no lives were lost but it was nonetheless a spectacular failure.  The April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election could be  another spectacular failure for Musk and his gargantuan bankroll.  It is entirely in the hands of Wisconsin voters to decide.