Americana

1. Trump features in Wisconsin judge race
2. Colleges, law firms make peace with Trump
3. The resistance money machine
4. GOPers defend Tesla from “terrorism”
5. Tim Walz on Democratic resistance

Also: Fresh polling on the Trump agenda

When protesters started showing up at Republican offices and town halls last month, the party was ready to dismiss them. “The videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters, in many of those places,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN.

This is what parties always say when they’re getting ugly footage back from their districts. It became a harder sell this week; the protesters mostly gave hell to Democrats. Liberal groups have, in the past, tried to embarrass the party and move it to the left; think of the Sunrise Movement’s breakthrough action at Nancy Pelosi’s office, in 2018.

But the anger Democrats heard this time was muddled, with no specific ask. Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey and California Rep. Gil Cisneros were both told they were too “polite” and “kind,” not transmitting the anger and fear of their constituents. Illinois Rep. Sean Casten, who represents one of the country’s biggest Palestinian-American communities, shut an event down because some of those constituents wouldn’t let him continue without promising to end aid to Israel.

“What is your point in disrupting this event?” Casten told one protester, who was filming him on her phone, and would upload the footage to Facebook. “I recognize your face. You have disrupted many events.”

The rage was real, and basically unanswerable. Democratic voters pay more attention to mainstream news than Republicans do; Kamala Harris ran strongest with the people who still read newspapers, and weakest with the people who get their news from social media and podcasts. The first group is taking in a stream of scary news that it wants to see somebody stop; the second group is seeing footage of Democrats at their worst or most tongue-tied, because that’s what plays in short viral clips.

All of it looks bad for Democrats, because — as they keep saying, over the boos — they can’t really stop anything Trump is doing. The administration is practicing what Reason’s Stephanie Slade calls “will-to-power conservatism,” using state power to dismantle liberalism. The legal arm of the progressive movement can slow that down, but the legislative arm can’t, unless Republicans screw up.

Electorally-minded progressives are starting to adjust to this, and conceding that Democrats can’t save them. On Thursday, Bernie Sanders told The New York Times that some progressives might need to “run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” as he does. The Working Families Party, which follows the Sanders approach of endorsing Democrats where only they can win and its own candidates where they can’t, announced a recruitment drive for “working class candidates” — Democrats and independents. The premise here is that the party’s brand is so toxic, and its leaders are so committed to preserving norms, that it has to be worked around.

One exception: Just a couple of Democrats, and no senators, said this week that Chuck Schumer should give up his leadership role because he’s bungled the anti-Trump strategy. But there’s obvious enthusiasm for the idea of replacing him in a Democratic primary in three years — not abandoning the party, just taking his seat. “One thing I love about Arizonans is that you all have shown that if a US Senator isn’t fighting hard enough for you, you’re not afraid to replace her with one who will — and win,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in Tempe on Thursday night, to the largest political rally — a stop on her “Fight Oligarchy” tour with Sanders — that anyone has organized since the election.

Trump’s court battles head to Wisconsin ballot

OCONOMOWOC, Wis. — On Monday night, hundreds of conservatives packed into a brewhouse overlooking a baseball diamond to rally for a judge.

“America, last November, stepped right up to the edge of the abyss,” said Brad Schimel, the GOP-backed candidate for state supreme court on Apr. 1. “Do you think the job is done? No way… We want freedom-loving people who don’t want to be a socialist nation to be heard.”

Donald Trump Jr. warned that Republicans might “lose Wisconsin” for good if Schimel didn’t beat Democratic Party-backed nominee Susan Crawford and flip the court’s current 4-3 liberal majority. Staff from Turning Point Action, which organized the rally and a “Chase the Vote” campaign, circled the room to find more volunteers. And former GOP Gov. Scott Walker said that the president needed their help to deport foreign criminals.

“Who’s trying to stop him? A judge,” said Walker. “We don’t want Susan Crawford and three other radicals on this court to say they’re not going to let us deport the worst of the worst back to where they belong! We need Brad Schimel on the court!”

The battle for a swing state’s swing seat, where a Schimel victory would end the two-year-old liberal majority, has already broken spending records. That’s partly thanks to Elon Musk, who started buying ads and sending mailers last month, and is now offering voters $100 to sign a petition against “activist judges who impose their own views.” His spending has cut into the Democrats’ cash advantage, and his focus — telling conservatives that a vote here can advance the president’s agenda — has remade the race in its final weeks.

Liberal institutions knuckle under to Trump

Universities and law firms buckled under pressure from the Trump administration this week, fueling liberal anger at how their institutions are accommodating the president instead of fighting him.

On Thursday, Trump announced an accord with Paul Weiss, a law firm he’d sanctioned over its pro bono work on Jan. 6 cases and one attorney’s involvement in his New York campaign finance trial. In a Truth Social post, the president said that the firm’s chair, Brad Karp, agreed to fight the “grave dangers of Weaponization” with $40 million of pro bono work on certain administration priorities, and that Karp acknowledged “wrongdoing” by attorney Mark Pomerantz.

But Pomerantz denied any wrongdoing in a statement to The New York Times. Blowback was swift, even though the firm was losing clients after Trump ordered anyone with federal government business not to work with it. The firm joined Columbia University, the University of California system, and a number of other colleges in quickly acquiescing to demands from the new administration — threats to cut off research funding if they did not comply with demands to eliminate DEI policies and crack down on protesters, followed by compliance.

Resistance cash flows to two strange races

Two Democratic House candidates are taking heat over their fundraising and campaign spending, case studies in how liberal anger can be tapped but not always channeled effectively.

In Houston, on Tuesday, 26-year-old old party activist Isaiah Martin entered the race to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner. It was his second run for the safe Democratic seat, after briefly running in 2023 and abandoning his campaign after the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee lost a mayoral bid and ran again. Martin was promptly sued by Grassroots Analytics, a firm he hired in 2023, which claimed that he stiffed them but continued to draw on campaign funds to pay expenses. FEC records show Martin spending more than $14,000 on flights, nearly $13,000 on hotels, and close to $13,000 on Uber rides in 2024, when he was not seeking any office.

“GA’s lawsuit fails to mention that they previously breached the contract with the Campaign by failing to deliver the agreed upon services,” Martin told the Houston Chronicle. He did not explain the spending from the campaign account that had raised nearly $400,000 for the 2023 campaign.

In Florida, Democrats were surprised to see Josh Weil, their candidate in an Apr. 1 special election for a safe GOP seat, report raising more than $10 million for his short campaign. Weil, who raised less than $37,000 for a longshot US Senate bid in 2022, had gotten no attention from the national party — except the negative kind. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and DNC vice chair David Hogg had both criticized Weil for running online ads that claimed endorsements from them; Hogg wrote on X that he sent the Weil campaign a cease-and-desist letter over what his consultant, Key Lime Strategies, was doing. Weil had also burnt through most of what he raised, $2 million of it on Meta advertising, including the spot that used Ocasio-Cortez. Still: Democrats, who’ve overperformed in some races this year, are making a small last-minute investment in Weil’s race and in the other Apr. 1 election in Florida, for the safe GOP seat vacated by Matt Gaetz.

Trump admin goes after anti-Tesla “terrorism”

Elon Musk’s Tesla is facing peaceful protests, mockery from Democrats, and violent attacks on cars and charging stations. And the Trump administration has begun to treat those attacks as terrorism.

The electric car’s sales, still dominant in the EV market, have fallen off since 2023; its stock has lost nearly 40% of its value since the start of the year, as Musk’s political role angered liberals and most Cybertrucks were recalled over faulty construction. Democrats like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly have posted videos about selling their Teslas, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has joked about watching its value sink, though he told Minnesota Public Radio that he wouldn’t divest the state’s stock.

Since last month, “Tesla Takedown” protests have been organized around the country, led by Elizabeth Leonard, a Maine academic and liberal activist. She was committed to peaceful direct action, she said in an interview, so much so that protesters had called police if they saw damage to cars or charging stations when they showed up.

“I’m not interested, personally, in vandalism and that kind of destruction,” said Leonard. “I don’t think that’s a particularly useful approach, although I could certainly understand the level of frustration.”

But Republicans have linked the protests to the vandalism, blaming all of it on Democratic rage. On Thursday, the Department of Justice charged three people over attacks on Teslas in Oregon, Colorado, and South Carolina, acts that Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi called it “domestic terrorism.” Trump has described the incidents in the same way, expanding the government’s definition of the term, which will be tested when those cases go to trial.

Gov. Tim Walz on what Democrats need to do next

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — The third stop on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s “I told you so” tour was an arts center in this western Wisconsin college town, a blue dot in a Republican-held swing seat. The anger that has rumbled through some Democratic town halls was absent here. Taking questions from friendly liberals — a small group of men in MAGA gear were not allowed in — Walz called Elon Musk a “dipshit,” shared the joy of watching Tesla’s stock fall, and puzzled over what Democrats could do to be credible again.

“I’m not a vindictive person or anything but I take great pleasure in the fact that this guy’s life is going to get very, very difficult,” Walz said of Musk, to an audience of around 900 people.

Quiet in the weeks after the 2024 election, Walz has begun to analyze what went wrong for him and Kamala Harris, and give his advice, as a governor, for what Democrats needed to do in exile.

“There will be another opportunity here, after the CR,” Walz told Semafor before taking the stage. “And I think it behooves us, who care about the American people, to be a little more strategic and organized together on how we approach that.”

Polls

Republicans in Congress have largely handed their power over to the administration. Voters noticed. The share of voters who think the House and Senate have too much power has crashed to a low in this poll, as more Democrats said that of the presidency and more Republicans said that of the judiciary. At the same time, by a 46% plurality, voters say that they approve of the creation of DOGE. There’s support for the idea of a fast-moving government reform regime, and skepticism of the executive branch using it recklessly.

Has the president already fulfilled his most popular campaign promises? There’s broad public support for his new restrictions on asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, and a majority behind defining binary, biological sex in federal law. High-profile stories about the impacts of that haven’t lowered support for those decisions. There’s much less support for the rest of his conservative domestic policy agenda, with a third of Republicans opposing the dismantling of the Department of Education, an official goal of the party for generations. White voters, who backed Trump by 15 points in 2024, are split on the rollback of DEI programs and layoffs of federal employees.

Ads

• Susan Crawford for Wisconsin, “How Corrupt?” The meta-argument for Democrats in Wisconsin is that the GOP’s state supreme court nominee is owned by donors. “Schimel always helps his big campaign donors,” says the narrator here, linking together a more obscure accusation that the judge went soft on a donor with the high-profile Elon Musk support. The footage of Musk comes from the inauguration day rally where he twice raised his arm in a salute, but cuts right before that. Schimel’s own paid TV messaging has continued to highlight sympathetic crime victims and plaintiffs from his courtroom.
• Ciattarelli for Governor, “Enough.” Four years ago, when few Republicans wanted to challenge New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Jack Ciattarelli nearly beat him with high GOP turnout and criticism of COVID-era school closures, while distancing himself from Donald Trump. Democrats have lost more ground since then, and Ciattarelli’s using more MAGA messaging, as he fends off a pro-Trump primary challenge. “I’ll work with President Trump and end Murphy’s sanctuary state on day one,” he says here, saying that woke Democrats “care more about pronouns than property taxes.”
• VoteVets Action Fund, “Stop Elon Musk’s War on Veterans.” One of the Democrats’ worries about their weak messaging is that that they have not found compelling DOGE human interest stories to tell. There are tens of thousands of people affected by layoffs and aid cuts, hundreds of them getting covered in mainstream media, and most of them disappearing from the news cycle. This spot, running in Republican-held swing seats, gathers (and doesn’t name) a group of veterans in a room, where they briefly talk about losing their jobs to DOGE, and their disbelief that it’s happening: “It feels like veterans are being personally attacked by Elon Musk.”

Scooped!

At Monday night’s rally for Brad Schimel, after Donald Trump, Jr. bemoaned “the fraud that’s probably going on” at the Democratic online donation portal ActBlue, Charlie Kirk cheered him up. “I think the FBI’s going to do something about ActBlue soon,” he said. Kirk didn’t expand on that comment, which got a round of loud applause. But three reporters have explained what’s going on here — Chris Smith in Vanity Fair, plus Shane Goldmacher and Ken Vogel in The New York Times. Republicans have questioned whether ActBlue does diligence to prevent illegal donations, and the administration is dismantling programs that it sees as power centers for liberals, ones that it would be difficult for Democrats to ever rebuild.

Next

• 11 days until Wisconsin’s state supreme court election
• 228 days until off-year elections
• 591 days until the 2026 midterm elections

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