The Most Important Election in America is...
In Wisconsin. Again.
We’ve learned quite a few things over the last couple of days: That Trump is prepared to inflict considerable pain on the economy through tariffs, and that he’s serious about seizing Greenland, after he’s finished whining about his fat-faced portrait in Colorado. We learned that his veep really does loathe Europe; that performative cruelty is still the point; and that his national security team of chodes, chumps, and dullards has apparently bungled its way into a genuine scandal with legs.1
Meanwhile, the GOP was shocked by a loss in MAGA Country and is beginning to worry about its grip on Congress. A rather dramatic sign of that panic: Trump unceremoniously dumped Elise Stefanik, who thought that she had sucked her way into a UN ambassadorship, but now has to keep her backbench seat warm for a bit longer.
It was, in other words, a horrid week for MAGA’s political remoras. As Brian Klaas memorably reminded us: the remora is “a marine creature that spends its life attaching itself to a larger, more powerful fish and feeding off its ectoparasites and loose flakes of skin for sustenance.”
This helps the larger fish, perhaps, but the main beneficiary is the remora, as it leeches its lifeblood from the host, drifting through the seas without an independent thought of its own.
Elise Stefanik is a political remora.2
She’s hardly alone, but still: Thoughts, prayers, etc.
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Wisconsin is Ground Zero
Some of you are old enough to remember when Republicans in Georgia tried to ban giving free water and food to people standing in line to vote. But that was pre-Musk. In Wisconsin, this actually happened:
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Elon Musk gives $1 million to a Green Bay voter ahead of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.”
Billionaire Elon Musk has thrown another $1 million into next week's Wisconsin Supreme Court race — but unlike his most recent spending on attack ads and canvassers, he said this sum went to just one voter.
Musk took to X, the social media platform he owns, to announce Wednesday evening that "Scott A." from Green Bay had won the sum for signing Musk's "Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges."
The petition was announced late last week on the X account of Musk's super PAC, America PAC. It offers $100 in cash to people who sign the election petition but does not mention a $1 million giveaway…
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To say that Elon Musk and his co- president, Donald Trump, are all-in on Wisconsin's state Supreme Court race is actually understating the case. Even though the race is technically nonpartisan, there is no longer any pretense that this is about judicial independence.
This is what I got in the mail Thursday. Subtle it is not. (And yes, it's more than a little ironic to see Donald Trump’s face on a piece of literature about protecting the “rule of law”.)
Wisconsin is flooded with this sort of thing: Spending for this single judicial seat, which will determine control of the state's High Court, is expected to top $100 million.
Objectively, the stakes for Wisconsin are huge. The outcome of next Tuesday's election will have dramatic consequences for everything from abortion rights, to redistricting, and public employee rights.
But that is not what makes it the most important election in the United States next week.
In effect, the Wisconsin race has become a referendum on Elon Musk, who has — by the latest estimate —put $20 million into the campaign to elect the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel. Trump has personally endorsed Schimel and Musk will be here on Sunday to campaign for Schimel in person. And he’ll be handing out more checks to voters.
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Not surprisingly, Democrats are targeting Musk directly. One ad accuses the “out of control” Musk of threatening to cut Social Security, slash cancer research and eliminate the Department of Education:
“Elon Musk is out of control, and now the power-hungry billionaire is unloading millions to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” the ad’s narrator says, citing the more than $7 million that a Musk-backed super PAC has dropped on the race. “He knows corrupt politician Brad Schimel is for sale and will abolish the checks and balances that protect us.”
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This one is even more brutal: “Kneepad Brad.”3
Christian Schneider observes: “if Democrats successfully paint the conservative candidate as a Musk puppet, this strategy will undoubtedly spread nationwide. If liberals succeed in defeating Schimel based on DOGE’s handiwork, it might actually be Democrats who keep Musk in the news to use his influence as a talking point in the 2026 midterms.”
On the other hand, a Schimel victory will supercharge Musk’s position as the MAGA kingmaker and enforcer.
GOP Agita
Why did Trump dump Elise? As Josh Marshall notes, the GOP is clearly nervous about holding its House majority, which is now down to just two seats. A special election in Florida — to replace Mike Waltz of Signalgate fame — is much closer than expected and Republicans are clearly worried that they might lose the safe seat.
But even if none of that happens, this is an example of the power of elections and public opinion, even long in advance of November 2026. At a certain point, members of the GOP caucus start to think, “if they’re not sure they win Waltz’s old seat or Stefanik’s, how am I doing? I’m up here in DC owning the libs and all, and it’s a lotta fun. But could I lose my reelect over this?”
That is precisely the kind of fear and tension Democrats — and all upstanding Americans — need to see now in congressional Republican ranks. Florida 6th — Waltz’s — is probably a seat Democrats can only win in a special election or perhaps a big wave election. But that doesn’t really matter. If Democrats were consistently winning House seats like Florida 6th next year, they’d be much closer to 300 seats than 200 seats. But if Democrats can pick those seats up in a special election, that means a lot of House Republicans likely have tough races on their hands. And if that perception takes hold, that changes the calculus for everything that happens in Congress over the next 18 months.
But, but, but…
Democrats are also about to go through some things
Writes Chris Cillizza: ”Joe Biden is going to have a terrible next 6 weeks.”
On Tuesday, a new tell-all book about the 2024 campaign is out. It’s called “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” and it’s by Amie Parnes and Jon Allen. That duo has written several books about past presidential campaigns and they have been larded with amazing details and reporting.
Judging by the snippet of the book The Guardian got its hands on yesterday, I suspect there is going to be a WHOLE lot in that book that is damning for Biden and his inner circle when it comes to how they masked his age and competency issues.
Then on May 20 comes “Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Both Jake and Alex are excellent and very well-sourced reporters. And judging by that title the book is going to be a humdinger for Biden and his team.
My point is this: I think by the end of May we are going to know a whole lot more about the active cover-up of Biden’s decline in office. And it ain’t going to be pretty.
Friday dog
Auggie plans on spending lots of time in the woods this weekend.
Amazingly, we might actually get a congressional investigation:
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker and Ranking Member Jack Reed sent a letter Thursday to the Department of Defnese Acting Inspector General formalizing the request for an inquiry into the Signal chat..
Among the requests the senators asked for, were an assessment of Defense Department classification policies, and "assessment of whether any individuals transferred classified information, including operational details, from classified systems to unclassified systems, and if so, how."
Klaas described Stefanik as “the most disturbingly fascinating political creature in modern American politics.”
She embodies the descent of the Republican party from a flawed, but broadly democratic political movement, to one that is now avowedly anti-democratic, led by an authoritarian who incites political violence.
On Thursday, she got her un-reward.
Want some more irony? Via Source Code: Just last year, Schimel denounced outside influence in judicial elections at a private donor event last year. The video can be viewed here.
“Last April,” Schimel said back in January 2024, “the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin was the most expensive race in American history, not just Wisconsin. That's embarrassing, by the way. Yeah, it's embarrassing because what happened is tech billionaires from California plunked millions, tens of millions of dollars into this race. And by the way, the Democratic Party transferred nearly $10 million to the one who won last April directly. And that money came from outside Wisconsin. The vast majority of her money came from outside the state of Wisconsin. So apparently you can buy the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Not on my watch. I'm in this race now. In April of 25, you're not buying this race. I'm going to earn this race. I'll outwork anybody who gets into it. No money from California or New York or anywhere else is going to buy Wisconsin. We're going to win this back.”
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I may be an aging former waitress with nothing in my bank account, but at least I'm not Elise Stefanik.
So what about BIden. He's not the president any more. We have bigger fish to fry.