Elon Musk Is On The Ballot

Welcome to the first elections of the DOGE era.

Happy April, all! No fooling here. I do have a programming note, though: I’ll be joining newly minted Substacker

Tara Palmeri

, a former journalist at Politico, ABC, and Puck News who is well sourced in Trumpworld, for a livestream at 12 p.m. ET. You’ll get an email when it starts; you can also join by logging into the Substack app at noon.

Now, let’s head to the Badger State…

Photo by America PAC

Hakeem Jeffries and Elon Musk don’t agree on much, but they agree on this: the future of the U.S. House could be decided today.

No, not in a pair of Florida special elections that are for actual House seats. We’ll get to those later.

Instead, the House Democratic leader and the top Trump adviser are referring to a contest that, on its face, doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Washington: a race to fill a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Here’s their logic. The state’s Supreme Court is currently composed of four liberal justices and three conservatives. Today’s election is for a seat being vacated by one of the liberals; that means if the Democratic-backed candidate wins, liberals keep their majority on the court. If the Republican-backed candidate wins, a 4-3 liberal majority will become a 4-3 conservative majority.

What does that have to do with Congress? Well, Democrats believe that Wisconsin’s congressional district lines are unfair. In the 2024 elections, Republican candidates won 51% of the statewide House vote, while Democrats won 48%. But, because of the way the lines are drawn, Republicans ended up with six seats and Democrats won only two.

Democrats tried challenging the map last year, but the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The court did not reveal how each justice voted, but one of the liberals did not participate, which likely contributed to the result.

“As soon as possible, we need to be able to revisit that and have fair lines,” Jeffries said last week. “The only way for that to even be a significant possibility is if you have an enlightened Supreme Court.” In other words: Democrats want to challenge Wisconsin’s congressional map again, but they’ll only have a shot at getting the lines redrawn if they win today’s court race.

With Republicans poised to defend one of the narrowest House majorities in history, even one or two Wisconsin seats going from red to blue — or red to purple — could go a long way towards deciding the 2026 midterms. “What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives,” Musk said at an event in Green Bay this weekend.

In fact, he said, the stakes are even higher: “Whichever party controls the House, to a significant degree, controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like it’s one of those things that may not seem it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”

No biggie.

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The Wisconsin race is nominally non-partisan, but no one is under any illusions about the leanings of the candidates.

The liberal contender is Dane County judge Susan Crawford, who served as chief counsel to a former Democratic governor. The conservative candidate is Waukesha County judge Brad Schimel, who formerly served as a Republican state attorney general.

Crawford has received donations from the Wisconsin Democratic Party and Democratic billionaires like George Soros; Jeffries referred to her as the “Democratic candidate.” Schimel is endorsed by President Donald Trump. Both of them have generated controversy with their overt partisanship: Crawford participated in an event for Democratic donors billed as a “chance to put two more House seats in play,” a fairly obvious reference to her potential role over redistricting. Schimel has promised to be part of a “support network” for Trump.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the two candidates and their allied groups have spent more than $90 million on the contest, making it the most expensive judicial election in American history. (“Only” half as much — $45 million — was spent on the previous record-holder, Wisconsin’s 2023 Supreme Court race.)

The winner will have sway over a range of hot-button issues, not just congressional redistricting. The state Supreme Court has already agreed to hear a case seeking to recognize a constitutional right to bodily autonomy, including abortion, in Wisconsin. (A separate case, on the constitutionality of an 1849 state law banning abortion, will already be decided by the time Crawford or Schimel takes the bench.)

The court is also poised to hear a challenge to a state law ending collective bargaining rights for most public employees, which sparked mass protests and a recall fight after being signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) in 2011. In addition, the court struck down GOP state legislative district maps in a major ruling in 2023; Republicans could seek to revisit that decision if conservatives retake the court.

Oh, and Tesla is also mired in a legal battle that could reach the state Supreme Court, challenging a Wisconsin state law that prevents auto manufacturers from operating their own car dealerships in the state.

Even with those significant policy implications for the state, the race is set to reverberate beyond Wisconsin.

As the first major election since Trump’s November victory, it will be treated as a referendum on the president — and on Musk, the ubiquitous figure of his second term.

Musk has loomed over the Wisconsin election, not least because his political group America PAC has spent $12.2 million backing Schimel, more than the $11.6 million Schimel’s own campaign has spent. Another PAC with ties to Musk, Building America’s Future, has poured $6 million more into the race; Musk himself has personally donated $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP.

The Tesla CEO-turned-White House adviser visited the state this weekend (wearing a cheesehead, of course), handing out a pair of $1 million checks to Schimel backers. (The state Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the state’s Democratic attorney general challenging the legality of the giveaway.) Musk has tweeted about the Wisconsin race more than 70 times.

Democrats have also placed Musk at the center of their efforts, hoping that his controversial work in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will ultimately redound to their benefit. Wisconsin Democrats staged an ad campaign and statewide tour titled “People v. Musk”; Crawford referred to her opponent as “Elon Schimel” in a debate.

Musk has similarly been the star of Democratic messaging in a pair of House special elections taking place today in Florida. The two races are in deep-red territory: Florida’s 1st district, the seat vacated by Matt Gaetz when he was briefly poised to become attorney general, and the state’s 6th district, vacated by national security adviser Michael Waltz (heard of him?). Both districts went for Trump by at least 30 points in November.

Republicans are favored in both seats — but the margins will be closely watched to see how much they swing from November. In particular, the GOP has been gripped by last-minute worries about the Waltz seat.

(Another election to keep an eye on: Wisconsin voters will also decide whether to enshrine a photo ID requirement for voting, currently a state law, as a constitutional amendment. Trump devoted a Truth Social post to the amendment fight on Monday.)

But be careful about making too-broad assumptions about tonight’s results. Special election voters are not representative of the wider electorate: they generally tilt whiter, older, and better educated.

This sort of highly engaged voter used to lean Republican; now they are firmly planted in the Democratic coalition. If Democrats win in Wisconsin and overperform in Florida — as most observers expect — it won’t necessarily be sign of how the country at large is reacting to Trump’s second term. It may simply be a barometer of how highly engaged voters are feeling. And we already know that group leans blue.

Graph by Patrick Ruffini

Still, a gauge of enthusiasm among the country’s most engaged voters can still tell us some things. Even if special election voters are a poor stand-in for the country’s general mood, they are closer in kind to voters who turn out for midterm elections, a group that is also more politically engaged than your average American.¹

That means both parties are looking at today’s races as the first testing ground for strategy and messaging ahead of the 2026 elections. Musk is already making plans to export his Wisconsin operation to other states; meanwhile, Democrats will likely take successes tonight as proof that their best message is a Musk-centric one.

If Schimel wins, Wisconsin Republicans will “have to thank Elon,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said recently. But if Crawford comes out on top, Musk will likely receive the blame, potentially hurting his standing within the White House.

Either way, perhaps for the first time since Donald Trump rode down the escalator in 2015, you can now make a credible case that the political universe revolves around someone who isn’t him. 70 days into Trump’s second term, American politics are suddenly all about Elon.

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More news to know

Deportees from the U.S. being transferred to a notorious El Salvador prison. (Photo by the El Salvador president’s office)

The Trump administration acknowledged in a Monday court filing that it mistakenly deported a man with protected legal status back to El Salvador. However, the administration argued that a court lacked jurisdiction to order the man’s return now that he is out of U.S. custody. The man was deemed by an immigration judge in 2019 to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang.

Over the weekend, the U.S. deported 17 more alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to the same notorious El Salvador prison. (The Alien Enemies Act was not used as a legal authority.) Meanwhile, federal judge blocked the Trump administration from curtailing a temporary legal status that shields 600,000 Venezuelans from deportation.

President Trump pardoned a January 6th rioter whose sentence he had previously commuted and commuted the sentence of a second Hunter Biden associate who testified against the ex-First Son. The Biden associate had been serving a 14-year prison sentence for defrauding Native Americans and other investors.

He also signed an executive order to combat price gouging in live entertainment by cracking down on ticket scalpers and nominated former New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito to be Labor Department inspector general. While in Congress, D’Esposito was accused of putting both his mistress and his fiancée’s daughter on the government payroll.

The Trump administration has launched a review of $8.9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard over claims of antisemitism at the school.

DOGE staffers gained access to a payroll system for federal employees over objections from IT staffers who feared it would make the information more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Paragraph that caught my eye: “President Trump’s tariffs could drive up prices. His efforts to reduce the federal work force could increase unemployment. But ask economists which of the administration’s policies they are most concerned about and many point to cuts to federal support for scientific research.” (New York Times)

• Related: “Trump administration fires workers at NIH's Alzheimer's research center, including incoming director” (ABC News)

Influencer watch: “Joe Rogan Splits From Trump on ‘Horrific’ Deportations” (The Daily Beast) … “Dave Portnoy on Signal scandal: ‘Somebody has to go down’” (The Hill)

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The day ahead

All times Eastern.

• President Trump and Vice President Vance will have lunch together at 12:30 p.m. The president will then sign executive orders at 3:30 p.m.

• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a press briefing at 12 p.m.

• The Senate is in a standstill as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has held the floor in a marathon speech that has now stretched more than 15 hours. (He is speaking in opposition to the Trump administration broadly, rather than filibustering any specific bill or nomination.) Whenever Booker finishes, the chamber is expected to hold a vote on a Democratic resolution to undo the national emergency that underpins Trump’s Canada tariffs. The resolution could receive enough Republican support to pass.

• The House is scheduled to vote on two resolutions to overturn Biden-era regulations. However, to vote on them, the chamber will first have to pass a “rule” — which could be complicated by GOP leadership’s attempt to include a provision in the rule resolution blocking a bipartisan measure to allow proxy voting for lawmakers who are new parents.

• The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over whether Americans wounded in terrorist attacks in the Middle East can sue the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization in U.S. courts.

1. If you want an example of a party that forgot the lesson that special/midterm electorates ≠ the overall electorate, you only have to go so far back as…last year, when Democrats misinterpreted the 2022 midterms as a gauge of the 2024 presidential electorate.