Outside a wedding venue in Stoughton, Wis., the other night, a group of Democratic protesters unfurled an enormous “For Sale” sign and a giant check while a man dressed as Elon Musk pursed his lips. It was meant to represent the millions that the world’s richest man had spent on behalf of Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for State Supreme Court in Wisconsin who was about to appear inside.
“Elon has just taken over the presidency,” fumed Mary Nervig, a resident of nearby McFarland who had joined the protest. Now, she worried, Musk could take over Wisconsin’s highest court, too.
Inside the venue, though, Musk barely came up during a marathon of speeches. Not by name, at least.
“Isn’t it great,” former Gov. Tommy Thompson told his fellow Republicans from the stage, that Republicans and Democrats in the race were “spending almost on par for the first time?”
Indeed, Musk has spent some $20 million on behalf of the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel, erasing what has in recent years been a Democratic fund-raising advantage in the state. But Wisconsin Democrats are betting that a focus on Musk’s role in the race will turbocharge their base, firing up supporters like Nervig, as they try to preserve the court’s narrow liberal majority. They’ve put his face in campaign ads and even named a statewide tour “The People v. Musk.”
“As much as it is a choice between these two Supreme Court justices, it is also a way to send a message about what Musk and Trump are doing,” Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman, told supporters at an event I attended in Eau Claire last week.
If any of that spooks Republicans, they’re not showing it. They’ve welcomed Musk’s money. And when I asked Brian Schimming, the Wisconsin Republican chairman, how his party should respond to the charge that Musk is trying to buy a State Supreme Court seat, his answer was simple.
“Not at all, to be honest with you,” Schimming said. “I’ve spent about one second worrying about what they say about Elon Musk.”
It made for an odd contrast when I was in Wisconsin on Tuesday: The only places I didn’t hear about Musk were the campaign events for his chosen candidate.
At first, I wondered if this reflected some discomfort with President Trump’s billionaire buddy on the part of Republicans on the ground in Wisconsin. After all, polls show that Musk is pretty unpopular.
But Musk isn’t unpopular with the crowds turning out to see Schimel. One retiree, Renee Hynes, went to see Schimel at a sports bar in Jefferson, Wis., wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with both Musk’s and Trump’s faces.
“I love Elon Musk,” she said, before pointing out that Democrats take money from plenty of big donors, too.
Charlie Untz, a 76-year-old dairy farmer in a barn jacket, said Musk was doing a “great thing” for the country. “I wish he’d dig even deeper,” he said.
“I think he loves America,” said Karen Gartzke, 80.
These voters seemed to embody something Schimming, the Republican chair, had told me about Musk. “Because he’s associated with Trump, they’re fine,” he said, referring to Republican voters.
Just like Democrats, Republicans are hoping that Musk will actually fire up their voters. His planned trip to Wisconsin this weekend is further evidence of that bet.
And if Republicans are right, Democrats’ reminders about Schimel’s support from Musk could actually end up helping, rather than hurting, him.
AGENCY REPORT
The DOGE playbook
Several of my colleagues have laid out the blueprint that has emerged for the Department of Government Efficiency’s method of operations.
The department places staff members in key offices. They gain access to data and systems. Then agency contracts, spending and jobs are cut.
At the Department of Agriculture, civil servants were told to follow a flow chart like this one to identify contracts to eliminate, according to an internal agency document.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk throws a little shade at Mark Zuckerberg
My colleague Kate Conger, who is tracking Musk’s activity on X, parses a one-word post that appeared to cast critical attention on another platform: Facebook.
Elon Musk has a lot to say online. But even when he is at his most laconic, more is often going on than meets the eye.
That was the case on Friday, when Musk wrote “Hmm” in response to a complaint on X by one of his followers that a fact check had been added to his Facebook post about long Covid. The fact check noted that long Covid was not considered a “vaccine injury.”
Musk has previously shared his own skepticism about Covid vaccines, posting on X in 2023 that he experienced “major side effects” after a booster shot and adding, “Hopefully, no permanent damage, but I dunno.”
Musk’s interest in the post, however, may well have had more to do with Facebook’s continued reliance on fact-checking.
Back in 2021, before Musk bought Twitter (and renamed it X), the company was experimenting with letting users add corrections to misleading posts. The crowdsourcing program, known as Birdwatch, was meant to copy Wikipedia’s open-editing model and improve accuracy.
In 2022, when Musk took over the platform, he liked the crowdsourcing idea so much that he expanded it sharply. Musk viewed content moderation as akin to censorship and preferred to put such decisions in the hands of users. So he effectively replaced all of Twitter’s content-moderation work with Birdwatch, which — in a purge of all avian-themed nomenclature — he renamed Community Notes.
Independent researchers who study Community Notes have found that the program is effective for combating misinformation when there is widespread agreement about the truth. But they say it is less useful for correcting misleading posts about political content, because users often can’t agree on the truth about a polarizing issue.
Still, Facebook announced this year — just as Trump was set to begin his second term — that it would follow X’s example and replace fact-checking with Community Notes. The move was seen as a concession to the incoming administration, and was celebrated by Musk as a sign of X’s policy prowess.
That work, however, has barely begun at Meta, the company that owns Facebook. Meta just started testing its version of Community Notes last week, with 200,000 contributors across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Musk’s one-word post suggests he may be growing impatient.
— Kate Conger
ON THE AIR
The charm offensive
I’ve been interested in how, after revealing little publicly about who works for DOGE or what those people do, Musk and his team of cost-cutters have begun something of a charm offensive by participating in friendly interviews on Fox News. I asked my colleague Theodore Schleifer, who covers Musk and other billionaires, to tell us what he took away from a segment of one such interview that aired last night.
So much of the news media’s coverage of DOGE has centered on either Musk or “the kids,” as they’ve become known — the 20-somethings who have been his foot soldiers at various departments in Washington. This interview, in which seven members of the department joined Musk to answer softball questions from Bret Baier, showed how Musk is trying to shift the coverage.
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It largely did not feature “the kids.” Many of the people who work for DOGE are middle-career entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley or Washington veterans. The Fox News interview highlighted people like Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley banker, and Brad Smith, an experienced D.C. player. The effect, and most likely the intent, was to project a more serious image of the DOGE operation than is often portrayed.
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Steve Davis stepped into the spotlight. This longtime Musk ally, who essentially leads DOGE, has what his friends describe as a healthy paranoia of being in the public eye. So I was struck to see Davis, seated on Musk’s left, participate in this interview, even if he did resist Baier’s description of him as DOGE’s chief operating officer.
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Musk is embracing conventional public relations. He believes he is his own best publicist and generally disparages the traditional news media. The extensive interview suggests he is learning the limits of that approach. “Should have done it sooner,” Musk posted afterward on X.
— Theodore Schleifer
