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With continued influence over nearly every major government agency, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been granted extraordinary power over federal systems and programs which has the strong potential of directly boosting his bottom line.
Even as Tesla faces a nationwide public backlash, Musk is poised to weaken federal agencies with direct oversight of his companies and just last week capitalized on President Donald Trump’s promotion of his vehicles outside the White House.
He’s also making his gratitude known — and proving that it pays off.
While setting himself up to affect policy that could conceivably increase his net worth by billions, Musk is pouring millions into efforts to cement the Republican Party’s control across the nation. His latest effort is taking place in Wisconsin, where a critical statewide election is taking place at the beginning of April.
The state’s supreme court is currently split 4-3 with a liberal majority, one that has been in place just two years since the election of Janet Protasiewicz. Conservatives, emboldened by Trump’s victory in Wisconsin this past November, are hoping to seize on that momentum and retake the court’s majority.
Democrats this time around are backing Susan Crawford, a circuit court judge from Dane County. She’s up against Brad Schimel, a fellow circuit court judge and Wisconsin’s former attorney general.
Schimel is an open Trump supporter (even dressing as him for Halloween) and has attended multiple explicitly Republican events despite bans on openly partisan activity for members of the judiciary. He was appointed to the circuit court bench in 2018 after losing his battle for reelection.
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Health care advocates are particularly worried about the impact the race could have on Wisconsin, given Schimel’s history. In 2018, a year after the failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Congress, Schimel teamed up with the Texas attorney general to lead a multi-state lawsuit aimed at killing the healthcare program largely known as Obamacare.
“I can tell you that as a physician, I am very concerned about my patients’ ability to get health care in Wisconsin,” Dr Kristin Lyerly, an OBGYN and board member of the advocacy group Committee to Protect Health Care, told The Independent.
“When he was the attorney general, [Schimel] led the charge to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and to me, that’s where I get my own health insurance,” said Lyerly, a former Democratic congressional candidate. “That’s where so many of my patients, over 300,000 Wisconsinites, are able to access healthcare, because of the ACA.”
Lyerly’s group joins a host of others including reproductive rights advocates in lining up against Schimel, who is endorsed by one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion campaigns: Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America.
Abortion rights were formally re-established by law in Wisconsin in 2023, following the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the US Supreme Court, but the return of a conservative majority at the state’s highest court could reverse that landmark gain for the left.
Musk is pouring money into Schimel’s cause even as Donald Trump has not yet formally endorsed in the race — a sign that the tech billionaire is hoping to strengthen his own ties with the broader GOP base, and is taking on his political activities for the long haul.
Crawford has spent more than Schimel directly as the race nears the April 4 vote, but a Wispolitics.com analysis found that outside spending (led by more than $10 million in ad buys from two Musk-aligned PACs) is tilting the money game in Schimel’s favor.
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Even without Trump’s endorsement, Musk’s America PAC has issued mailers describing support for Schimel as a vote to support Trump and the MAGA agenda.
The race is likely to be the most expensive state supreme court election in history — just beating out the previous one in 2023. Spending that year totaled more than $45 million.
Lyerly warned that the impact of setting the state on a radically different course — overturning abortion rights and rolling back healthcare access — would accelerate a “brain drain” in Wisconsin as younger residents and physicians leave for safer opportunities elsewhere.
“Attitudes like Brad Schimel’s … which prevent people from getting full scope reproductive health care, drive doctors out of the state, drive people of reproductive age out of the state,” Lyerly said.
“This brain drain, which has been happening since … before he was the attorney general, it has continued to deplete the state, both from a talent perspective and an economic perspective.”
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All of this comes as Musk is leading cuts at the federal level targeting agencies which deliver critical social-safety net benefits to vulnerable Americans, including the elderly and low-income families.
In Congress, Republicans are taking a similar route by eyeing cuts to Medicaid and federal food stamp benefits as well as the implementation of work requirements as they work to construct a budget plan. More than one million Wisconsinites rely on Medicaid benefits in some fashion, according to a recent analysis.
The result? Voters in the state are quickly turning out to express their displeasure. Several of Wisconsin’s Republican members of Congress have said that they would opt for tele-town halls going forward to dodge a wave of angry constituents turning in-person events into calamitous screaming matches.
“So many people are worried about what’s going to happen with their Medicaid,” said Lyerly. “My friends and my neighbors who are disabled are concerned about how they’re going to be able to continue living.” They’re “already living on a shoestring budget,” she noted.
“Constituents are very angry and very frustrated.,” she emphasized. “They want to be represented. They’re not thinking about this in terms of Republicans and Democrats. They’re thinking about this like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to live my life if this continues.’ And it’s just getting started.”
