We Can Do Hard Things
Finally Some Good News! Wisconsin Deals Big Blow to Elon & Trump | Jessica Yellin
Thu, 03 Apr 2025
399. Finally Some Good News! Wisconsin Deals Big Blow to Elon & Trump | Jessica Yellin Amanda and award-winning journalist Jessica Yellin break down this week’s biggest political stories—from elections to immigration to authoritarian warning signs—and what it all means. -How the Wisconsin election served as a clear rejection of Trump’s policies and Elon Musk -What this week’s revelations about forced removals mean for the future. -Why Republicans and Democrats are unexpectedly joining forces over the by proxy bill -The health risks we’re all facing due to Trump administration cuts and policies -Why Republicans may be thinking about breaking from Trump Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand -- dedicated to helping you manage your “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellin. And also, to get real time, clear and brilliant reporting, go to substack.com and search for her page newsnotnoise and subscribe there. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did the Wisconsin election affect Trump and Elon Musk?
No, but it is a good moment to take a beat and say Democrats for the first time had a good day this week. Yes. And we are recording on a day that Donald Trump has declared Liberation Day and he will unveil why at an event he is calling Make America Wealthy Again. It's just, you can't make it up.
Yeah. It's like, how many words can we fit after make America blank again? They're going to run out of words because that's the move. So this is the tariff day, right? This is the day where he's going to tell us all of the reciprocal tariffs in the world, which are- Yes. Right.
And that's gone well so far for America. I would say, yeah. You know, it's like, I can't remember. The stock market has lost some unprecedented amount of gains this year. There's like a lot of talk in the business community that what Trump is really doing is he's giving CEOs a chance to negotiate opportunities to have carve outs and tariffs, which is a form of, can we say it together? Corruption.
Oh, that's the theory behind it? One piece of the theory. That like he's telling this so that CEOs will come to him and say- Spare me. Yes. And here's dollars for that. So that's like what he's doing to the law firms. Like I will extract a hundred million dollars in concessions from you to not.
He would say that's cutting deals and negotiating because he's an amazing deal maker. That's the art of the deal. OK, if you're in the mafia. But anyway, we don't know what because we're talking before the announcements are coming out. But that the announcement keeps getting rolled back and back and back.
And one of the conversations I'm hearing behind closed doors is it's because they're working out the deals. Trump has said, I'm very open to deals.
So we'll see. All right. So Liberation Day is not our good news, but we did have a good night yesterday. Tell us what happened yesterday in Wisconsin and our heroine there who got it done. Isn't she lovely?
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Chapter 2: Why was the Wisconsin Supreme Court race so significant?
So Wisconsin was maybe the most closely watched and certainly most expensive race since Donald Trump was elected for state Supreme Court. And the liberal-backed judge, Susan Crawford, won. And she won handily. And this is despite the fact that Elon Musk poured more than $20 million between himself and his allies. into trying to get her opponents, the conservative-backed judge, elected.
Musk wanted the conservative on the court because this seat decides the direction of the court. Wisconsin is the swingiest of swing states. Trump won it. And let's just bottom line it. For Musk, the motivation seems to be foremost of all the possible reasons that Wisconsin has this rule that says car manufacturers can't sell their own cars in the state.
And so Tesla is not allowed to sell Teslas through dealerships there. And he wants that overturned. So there is a personal monetary reason for his interest there.
And that court case is before the court now. Tesla filed the case. And I think it was three days later, Musk started tweeting about this. election and started pouring his money into it.
Which he, by the way, said is the most, I'm going to, this is paraphrasing, most important election for the future of humanity. An obscure state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. Love to all Wisconsinites, important election. Will it decide the future of humanity? I guess Elon Musk said he felt it would, or at least the fate of his stock price. Maybe those two are the same for him.
I mean, it's so interesting about the Tesla court case was a clear conflict of interest, but it's also this kind of role of him as the central bank of MAGA and the kind of king maker where- He was pivotal in making Trump the president.
Well, let's get to that. So there's two things. One is Schimel, the candidate Musk backed, lost by 10 points. That's a lot. That's a huge defeat. And Wisconsinites are really googly eyed about this because they always point out our elections are always razor thin, or as they would say, wafer thin. there's never a landslide win. So when there's a landslide, it's remarkable.
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Chapter 3: What role did Elon Musk play in the Wisconsin election?
It's a real repudiation by the voters. Just on the substance, it's also worth noting that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is deciding cases related to reproductive rights, union rights, important union organizing case, and they help decide the districts, how gerrymandered things are. And as a vital swing state, they'll have a say in election results and election procedures.
So, you know, if the GOP were able and Musk were able to control that court, it could swing not just elections in Wisconsin, but nationally. Yes. So there are larger implications than just Tesla dealerships. Now, to your point that so Musk went to town and he didn't just say this was important. He didn't just give money to the races.
He also held that town hall where he showed up, wore a cheese head and gave out million dollar checks to two different people. a reprise of the role he played in Pennsylvania during Trump's election that seemingly helped Trump win in November. Just a few months later, Musk doing the same thing not only didn't help his candidate win, but politicos from the state say voters came out to defeat Musk.
His involvement actually drove turnout for the opponent. And so what you're getting at is like, It seems that this magic touch that Musk was supposed to bring to Republicans is actually the opposite, and he could actually be toxic. They will still want his money, but they're not going to want his presence. And it's not clear that you can get one without the other. That's so interesting.
And what do you, I mean, the implications, especially on a judicial election, because this is, as you said, it was the most expensive judicial election election in United States history. There was $90 million in this election, $20 million of which was Musk brought, either individually or with his groups. It seems especially offensive to have the purchasing of an election for a judgeship.
And again, she had raised multi-million dollars too, but do you think the idea, I mean, they were calling him, what did they call him? The knee pad Brad that he was like on his knees in deference to Trump and Elon, this idea that like he had already said that he would vote in favor of the anti-abortion law. You know, a judge is supposed to do the case before them.
And so is this idea that like, okay, you can buy an election, but to buy a judge feels like real antithetical to our state's right to be represented by who we actually choose, not who your money picks?
Yes. I mean, the judge dressed as Trump for some in a costume as Trump. The voters, you could hear them say it over and over in interviews, the campaign was very much about Musk and Trump. So all the ads had Musk and Trump in them. So it wasn't just, you're electing this guy, Brad, or not electing him. It was a referendum on the administration so far.
And Musk made it, like, even if Democrats had tried that Musk made sure that was the case, right? He gave them that gift. And voters would say, I need balance. I don't like what Doge is doing. I'm a social security recipient. I'm scared about my social security. I don't want Musk in that business. And so this was a real repudiation of Doge and the Trump policy so far.
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Chapter 4: What were the implications of the Florida election results?
I think it was 30 points in the seat that was vacated by, was it Gates' seat? So it was one of the seats that was up for election was Matt Gates, who- Whoops-a-daisy, had to resign in disgrace. And the other one was our Mr. Walls, who you might know from the recent Signal debacle. So it was those two seats. And they were, I think, on average, like 30 points up for Trump.
You know, John King on CNN was talking about the numbers as they were coming in, and somebody said, so where are the blue parts of this district? And he laughed. He said, there are no blue parts. This is just all Republicans in these districts. And Republicans did win the elections in each of those races, but they won it by 15 points less than Trump, right?
So they shedded 15% of the support that had been there is gone. Yeah.
So they cut their margin by 50%. So half, right? That's not insignificant.
And I heard Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader of the House, you know, saying that there are 60 Republicans in the House, six zero. who are in districts that Trump won by 15 points or less. And he said, now there's a target on all their backs. Oh, right. Because if it goes down 15 percent, they've lost that support.
And so now you wake up today, a member of Congress in the Republican Party, knowing that Donald Trump is executing on a suite of policies that's wildly unpopular with the American people, including your constituents, that your party has eroded 15 points off the support. So you are now at neck and neck race or underwater where today, all things being equal, a Democrat would be ahead.
And you were counting on Elon Musk and his magic wand to come in and somehow make that go away. You've just seen that the voters are not having it and that that magic wand doesn't exist. Do you rethink your approach after today? And do you think about flexing a little muscle and resisting? And will we start to see more cracks in the Republican wall?
So if the defense of the Constitution and the defense of the federal government was not motivation enough for these people, which it clearly has not been, you're saying that the political reality that your king is not going to save you, in fact, he's hurting you, might actually be motivation for some kind of pushback.
It's political survival. If nothing else, and everybody was banding together in silence because of their own political survival, the evidence is mounting that saving your own professional skin requires rethinking your strategy, a breaking with Trump or breaking with the party or standing up to the most unpopular policies and not counting on Elon Musk to save you.
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Chapter 5: Are Republicans starting to break away from Trump?
what were our audacious, creative, innovative ideas to the world in a way that partners and the public would pay attention to. From the start, we used Canva. We used Canva to show our stories. We had so many dreams. We wanted to build the community on Glennon's blog, publish Glennon's first book, Carry On Warrior, raise money from folks for people in crisis. through what became Together Rising.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges facing new parents in Congress?
So Luna decided that she felt that as a mother of a young child, Congress should be more accommodating of young parents. They want a generational change. You want young voices in there. And she teamed up with some Democrats to push for a measure that will allow members, elected members of Congress who are new parents, men and women, whoever is having a baby to
to take time away from being in Washington and to vote by proxy around the time their kids are born. So what that means is for the 12 weeks around your child's birth, you can be in your home district because if you live in Arizona or California, flying back and forth for votes is a huge burden and you don't wanna expose your brand new infant
to like all the germs of a plane at week one so that you could stay home and vote by proxy. Meaning if you're in Washington and I'm home, I'd call you and say, cast my vote no on this and you do it for me. So that was allowed during the pandemic. During COVID, voting by proxy was standard. So it can be done.
They figured it out and they said, we want this implemented and they have the votes and Republican leadership led by Speaker Johnson said, No way. Bright line. This is so offensive and so wrong. We will go to the mat on this. No. And she's like, let's just give it to a vote of the Congress. If this is all about protecting the sanctity of the vote, shall we put this to a vote? To a vote.
And Representative Luna wanted this to come to a vote, as you're saying. And he said, absolutely not. So what happened? Speaker Johnson used these elaborate procedural moves to to try to prevent Congress from voting on allowing parents to vote by proxy. And this was a shenanigan that happens in Congress all the time.
Usually when the speaker flexes their muscle in this way, they just get away with it and railroad the other side and the vote never happens. But instead, nine Republicans broke with Speaker Johnson and broke with leadership, voted with all Democrats to say, uh-uh, We demand a vote on this issue. We want a vote on having parents have the right to vote by proxy.
And because of the weird procedures of Congress, because the Republicans broke and this issue failed, there's no vote on the House all week. The House action is frozen. So there's no votes on any of the bills that Speaker Johnson wanted to pass this week, which includes a measure that would have blocked federal judges from putting injunctions on Trump's policies and even the SAVE Act.
which is that separate bill that will make it harder for everyone to vote, but especially married women, that's not getting a vote this week. Everything's frozen on the House floor until Monday because Speaker Johnson was so opposed to allowing parents to have this proxy vote. One more thing. I'll tell you why.
Speaker Johnson said it's unconstitutional to allow them a proxy vote, even though it happened during the pandemic. And other members of the Republican leadership said, if we allow parents to vote by proxy, who's to stop cancer patients from voting by proxy from their hospital bed? Real thing, he said. He also said, and what's to stop other members from voting from their boat?
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