I was driving from Eau Claire, Wis., to Minneapolis last week when I saw the sign.
A Tesla sign.
Soon after I crossed the St. Croix River, which divides Wisconsin and Minnesota, a brick-and-steel tower visible from Interstate 94 advertised the Tesla store and service center in Lake Elmo, Minn.
The dealership’s proximity to the state line is probably no accident: Wisconsin law prohibits vehicle manufacturers from selling cars directly to customers there, the way Tesla usually does. Instead, companies need to work through local franchisees — think Hank’s Ford or Jimmy’s Subaru, that sort of thing.
This means that, in Wisconsin, you can’t actually stroll into a dealership and leave with a Tesla. You can look at one — the company has showrooms in Madison and Milwaukee — but if you want one, you’ll generally have to buy it online and pick it up somewhere like Lake Elmo or Northern Illinois, or have it delivered.
Tesla sued Wisconsin over this law in January. Now, Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, is spending big money on the state’s Supreme Court race.
The lawsuit has become a major focus for Democrats, who are accusing Musk of trying to buy a justice and swing the very court that might at some point consider his lawsuit. My colleagues Reid Epstein, who writes about national politics, and Neal Boudette, who covers the auto industry, teamed up to explore the relationship between the lawsuit and Musk’s $20 million investment — so far — in the judicial election, which will be held on April 1.
The politics of Tesla’s fight with Wisconsin are, like so much involving Musk, kind of topsy-turvy. It pits car dealers, who tend to be Republican, against Musk supporters, who these days also tend to be Republican.
It used to be that Democrats were the reliable cheerleaders for electric vehicles, including Tesla. But in 2019, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, struck from the state budget a G.O.P.-backed measure that would have allowed direct Tesla sales in the state, seeing it as a sop to an influential Republican lawmaker known to be a big fan of the vehicles.
Now, some Democrats are standing by the state’s car dealers. “The dealers tend to be family businesses in our communities, and we want to protect them,” State Senator Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat, told Reid.
Tesla has already successfully pushed to have similar laws repealed or modified in a couple dozen states. (In Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, told Reid he was happy to show up at a Tesla ribbon-cutting back in 2015. At the time, McAuliffe said, “everybody knew I was for it.”)
Musk’s heavy spending now might be a reflection of the changing times. Or, as Reid and Neal wrote, it might simply be a way of showing his loyalty to President Trump and Republicans.
MEANWHILE on X
Pressing the case for defunding NPR
Musk is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger explains how he’s using it to go after National Public Radio.
Musk made clear even before Trump’s inauguration that he wanted to kill federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. At the time, I reported that stations across the country were bracing themselves for cuts and trying to find ways to continue serving rural communities with few other media options.
NPR, in particular, had been in Musk’s cross hairs for quite some time. As the owner of X, he added a label to the radio network’s account on the platform in April 2023, calling it “state-sponsored media.” When one of the outlet’s tech reporters, Bobby Allyn, asked Musk why he had done so when government funding accounts for only about one percent of the public radio network’s budget, Musk said he would auction off the @NPR handle to the highest bidder.
NPR stopped posting on X soon after. Its handle was never sold.
Musk also tangled with NPR’s chief executive, Katherine Maher. Soon after she assumed the role in 2024, Musk called for NPR to be defunded.
So when Maher appeared before Congress today to testify about NPR’s funding, it was no surprise that Musk responded.
“It’s a taxpayer-funded arm of the DNC,” Musk wrote about NPR, referring to the Democratic National Committee. He also recirculated several posts from other accounts accusing NPR of liberal bias.
“NPR is extremely biased to the far left,” he wrote later, in case anyone had missed his point.
— Kate Conger
BY THE NUMBERS
$20,488.90
That’s how much America PAC, Musk’s super PAC, is spending on “texting services” in a pair of Florida special elections for seats in the House of Representatives next week, according to a federal disclosure form filed late Tuesday.
Both seats were previously held by Republicans. Matt Gaetz resigned from his Pensacola-area seat after Trump chose him to be attorney general, a selection that turned out to be short-lived. And Mike Waltz stepped down from his seat in northeast Florida to serve as Trump’s national security adviser.
Weak fund-raising in the race to fill Waltz’s seat has alarmed some Republicans.
America PAC had not been involved in either race, so the expenditure came as a surprise, though the amount was relatively puny.
— Theodore Schleifer
