<Tesla CEO Elon Musk has publicly raged in recent weeks about the protests being lodged against his flagship electric car company, and Mother Jones writer Timothy Murphy believes that the demonstrations have been successful beyond their organizers' wildest dreams.

Murphy in particular points to a recent rant from Musk demanding that billionaires whom he baselessly suspects of funding the protests to be arrested.

"This is a bit authoritarian, yes, but just as importantly it is pathetic," Murphy contends. "Suggesting that George Soros and the founder of LinkedIn should be arrested after an old lady shouted at a car is one of the softest moments in recent American history. This is not the gesture of a man who is impervious to protests. It is the response of an oligarch who is being driven visibly insane by them."

He also thinks that Democrats need to start using Musk's angry ravings about the protests against him.

"Musk’s spiraling is an asset," he writes. "He is both deeply unpopular and out of control; his response to opposition is to descend deeper into the paranoia that got him there."

For evidence of this, Murphy points to the way that Musk injected himself directly into the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race by holding rallies in the state where he handed out $1 million checks in a scheme that many legal experts say likely breaks the state's laws against paying people in exchange for votes.

"Musk made the election a referendum on himself, turnout surged, and the Democrat won in a landslide," he argues.

All of this leads Murphy to conclude that Musk "cannot take the heat" and recommends that his opponents wage psychological war against him.

"He has not just the taste and sensibilities of a boy, but the temperament of one," he writes. "He throws a fit out when things don’t go his way. He wilts. This is someone who can be beat.">

<[Event "19th World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1991.07.??"]
[EventDate "1991"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Levitan, Yuliya"]
[Black "Morse, David W"]
[ECO "C05"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<“I’ve got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin — and we won.”

-Judge Susan Crawford Tuesday night after being elected in a landslide to become Wisconsin’s next Supreme Court Justice

In the wake of that stunning election here in Wisconsin, I reckon there will be a lot of people telling you not to over-read the results of just one state election. Those people will be dead wrong when they do it, but before I address their faulty assumptions, let’s talk briefly about a few of the gigantic things Crawford’s win does for the people of Wisconsin — all with associated affects on America:

・It protects women’s right to choose. Had her opponent Brad Schimel won, you could have expected Republicans to drag women by their hair and back to an 1849 state law here heavily banning abortion. And no, that’s not hyperbole.

・The semi-fair political maps that were finally drawn last year abolishing the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, would have been incinerated by Republicans. And I say, semi-fair because the new maps still favor right-leaning voters who are at best 50 percent of the population here. I will be pushing for truly fair maps in this space in the future, but I’m too damn happy to do much grousing about anything right now.

・It protects the recent restoration of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public workers and teachers unions that were lost under Republican control in 2011.

Like I said gigantic.

It also restores what has become a blurry notion of right and wrong in this country, because there is no damn way a grotesque billionaire slime ball bombing into our state and passing out money for votes is anything but wrong.

In fact, it is criminal.

By walloping Schimel by 10 points in a state where razor-thin margins are the rule, the people of Wisconsin put the America-attacking Donald Trump on notice: You’ve gone way too far, sport. Back up now, or prepare to be flattened in the future.

Democrats around the country got the fuel-injected boost they so badly needed, because they finally got around to listening to their voters instead of cowering in the corners, and conceding the floor to these odious Republicans. You feeling me right now, Chuck Schumer?

Because at almost the very moment the Democrats’ new national leader, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, was finally giving his 25-plus hours of good trouble a break, the race here in Wisconsin was being called for Crawford.

If you didn’t feel the earth shift after that one, you weren’t paying attention. And if you weren’t paying attention why in the hell not?

Everything changed in the past 24 hours, and it is the people on the Left, and not most of our damn politicians who we can thank for that. Booker said as much during his heroic speech, and immediately after in a must-see interview with Rachel Maddow:

“I do really credit constituents, who were impatient, who were demanding, who were scared, who were angry, and, very understandably, taking that anger out on Democrats, who have to take some responsibility for being where we are in American history right now.

“But I suddenly realized that I have just got to do something myself. I have got to try to prove worthy for my constituents that I’m willing to step out and step up in some way and hopefully be able to share their stories that were so hurtful.”

And before I continue here, a lot of us have caught a lot of crap for trying to hold Democratic politicians into account since that ghastly election November 5th. Knuckleheads like James Carville have even suggested we stand down. If I had a dollar for every time somebody told me to “stop beating up on your own” I’d have enough money to buy some election.

But if you still somehow didn't feel the switch in the political winds last night, let me tell you who did: the racist Trump....>

<....Something that got very little mention in the run-up to this crucial race in Wisconsin was the absence of the serial liar in the state. Say what you want about the economy-crasher — and don’t stop — but facts are he has won two out of three times he’s run up here, which is a pretty good batting average for a bunt-hitter.

While Trump did throw his support for Schimel, he made sure to do it from the safety of his nuclear-powered social media accounts. There were none of his unhinged cult rallies in the state, where literally anything would come out of his trashcan of a mouth.

Trump’s absence in Wisconsin did all the talking for him. He knows deep in his empty, black heart that he is failing, and people aren’t at all entertained by what he has been serving. Markets are crashing, food prices are going up, national security is at risk, and benefits like social security are no longer safe.

Human beings are being disappeared.

Never underestimate the vanity of a guy who paints himself orange, and tapes dead ferrets to his head each day before going off to berate the public. He wasn’t going to be seen anywhere in the vicinity of this state, if losing big up here was a possibility.

So the despicable bastard needed somebody to blame for his potential failure — a scapegoat.

Enter oily Elon.

As I was spiking the football in this column, I got this alert from my friends at Raw Story: Trump says Elon Musk will be out of the White House 'soon'

See? Everything that went wrong Tuesday night was Elon’s fault.

Nobody in history has been better at recycling one-time supporters into trash than Dumpster Donny, but Musk presents a unique challenge. How does he say, “Sure I’d love to take gobs more of your money, Elon, but is there any way I can see you less?”

The answer to that question is, no. Musk completely owns him, even if Vladimir Putin would disagree.

Trump is now being dragged around the world by Putin and here at home by Musk, and the good people on the Left need to be pointing this out every other minute.

What happened up here in Wisconsin Tuesday night, and with Booker’s epic speech on the Senate floor in Washington, completely changed the playing field and how we patriots must look at things going forward.

Never underestimate your power as a United States voter, even if Republicans are doing everything they can to take that power away. Our representatives work for us. That has somehow been forgotten. I will expect the battle to be joined by all those gutless Democrats who ran for cover after November 5th. When we fight, we win.

Never underestimate the women in America. No surprise, all four liberal justices on our court in Wisconsin are women. Watching them on that stage last night gave me goosebumps. They-were-feeling-it. THEY DID THIS. They stood up to the patriarchy and all that damn dirty money, and showed them who was really boss.

Ya know, I dig around in a lot of the corners here in the powerhouse of Madison, Wisconsin, where we voted for Crawford to the astonishing tune of roughly 85% to 15% over Schimel. Let me tell you who you will find knocking on the doors, making the phone calls, working the polls, opening their homes, and fighting back with a vengeance at our one-after-another rallies in this city: WOMEN.

Damn, I am proud to stand with them. And damn I am one happy dude right now.

Forward!>

<Donald Trump doesn’t like losers. So one has to wonder what he is thinking after Elon Musk, his biggest political donor, fell flat on his face in an attempt to prop up a MAGA-backed candidate in this week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

While it’s important not to overthink the results of an off-cycle election, Trump and Musk’s embarrassing loss is a warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

It came at an unfortunate time, as Trump announced massive across-the-board tariffs that spooked Wall Street, leading to the biggest one-day loss since 2020. Two Florida Republicans also underperformed in special elections for House seats, raising concerns among Republicans about their narrow majority.

But Wisconsin was the clearest signal of the looming danger for Republicans.

Musk overplayed his hand. The tech tycoon and his super PAC poured tens of millions of dollars into the race, but all that money could not stop the growing pushback against Trump’s trail of destruction. Despite Musk’s efforts, voters elected state Circuit Judge Susan Crawford to the state’s Supreme Court, maintaining the court’s 4-3 liberal majority.

The victory wasn’t easy. Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin by less than 1 point, making it the closest state race in the 2024 presidential election. Yet Crawford defeated Trump-endorsed Brad Schimel by 10 points.

Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin is not the only sign that Republicans need to read the writing on the wall: Trump and Musk’s DOGE tactics are toxic in the minds of voters. While GOP candidates won both special elections for two House seats in Florida, Democrats cut into the margin of victory in each race by double digits. By sticking with Trumpism and enabling an unelected billionaire, the Republican Party has exposed itself to a possible bloodbath during the 2026 midterms.

I know a thing or two about winning tough races. I served as chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2010 midterms, when a “Republican wave” changed the power dynamics in Washington and state capitals across the country. But 2010 didn’t start out that way. It came about because of a concerted effort to take advantage of an incumbent president’s missteps.

If I were a state Republican chairman looking at Tuesday’s election results, here’s what I would be thinking: First, voters are already sick and tired of all the chaos Musk has unleashed across America. Trump will be left to clean up the mess that Musk leaves behind on every aisle. Voters will blame the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers who didn’t stand up to Musk. The Republican Party needs to understand this reality.

We’re already seeing voters express their anger at town halls, and GOP leadership asking Republicans in Congress not to meet with their constituents doesn't help. Republican candidates are stuck with the Trump brand if they don’t offer the electorate an alternative path.

That brings us to my second point: Republicans in tight House races must differentiate themselves from Trump. They can only do that if they’re more concerned about what their voters want instead of what Trump thinks of them. However, since Republicans seek Trump’s endorsement to win primaries, it becomes nearly impossible for them to distance themselves from his damaging policies.

It will take individual candidates who are not afraid to draw stark contrasts between their vision for American families and whatever politics Trump is playing. If they are successful, it creates a lane for a new generation of GOP candidates to rise above Trump’s stranglehold on the party.

Lastly, Democrats have a role to play if they get out of their own way. Republicans have been masterful at defining the Democratic Party. It’s now time for Democrats to define exactly what this Republican Party is. Voters are just starting to process the chaos, the mixed messages, the damage to institutions and the growing sense of insecurity surrounding Trump’s second term. This can’t be a missed opportunity. Democrats must find a straightforward narrative and make it stick. Drive it home every single day and don’t give an inch.

The key to success is keeping it simple and standing with voters heading into the midterms next year. GOP communications veteran Doug Heye warned Democrats not to overplay their hand. This week on MSNBC, he said, “Democrats don’t need a wave. They just need a ripple, given how small the House majority is. Stay focused and say the smart things. Don’t make overpredictions.”

<In many ways this was another horrific week. Like a terrible hurricane, the Trump dictatorship is sweeping more people into its maw while further destroying our public institutions and wrecking what’s left of our civil norms.

Yet this week also featured 11 reasons for modest optimism:

1. Wisconsin Supreme Court vote

Despite Elon Musk’s hysterical warnings, cheesehead preening, and more than $20 million spent by the Republican in the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court — much of it by Musk — it didn’t matter: Liberal judge Susan Crawford won by a remarkable 10 points, securing the court’s liberal majority. A state that narrowly backed Trump in 2024 swung sharply away. Every county in Wisconsin shifted to the left in this race compared to the 2024 presidential race.

Not only did Judge Crawford pile up huge margins in Milwaukee and Madison, but she kept those of her opponent, Brad Schimel, down in Milwaukee’s predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs, where the abortion issue doubtless moved some Republican women to cross over and vote for her.

Wisconsin voters recoiled at the odor of Musk. At one point, Crawford referred to Schimel as “Elon Schimel.” That said it all.

Elon is proving to be a huge political liability. Trump says Musk is leaving the regime in a few weeks but I have my doubts.

2. Other races

In other down-ballot races, Democrats saw success on Tuesday.

Democrats won the other statewide races in Wisconsin. For state superintendent of public instruction, incumbent Jill Underly, who was backed by unions and Democrats, defended her seat comfortably against a GOP-backed challenger who supported school vouchers. Wisconsin Democrats also dislodged an incumbent county executive in light-red Winnebago County, and Illinois Dems flipped the mayoralty in the city of Aurora.

In Florida, Republicans defended two congressional seats — but by much tighter margins than in November. Democrats in both districts campaigned against the DOGE cuts to Social Security/Medicaid/VA. These two districts were so red that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not even consider investing campaign funds.

If you apply the shifts in Florida across the House battlefield in 2026, Democrats would be on track to flip over 40 seats and easily retake the majority.

In another major upset, voters in Aurora, Illinois, ousted their Trump-aligned mayor, Richard Irvin, and elected city councillor and community labor activist John Laesch as their next mayor.

What should really concern Republicans is that this growing rejection of Trump took hold even before he lowered the boom on the economy with his inflation-blowing tariffs. “[I] think that these elections are going to be proxies, or almost like weather devices for figuring out what kind of storm we’re going to be up against next year,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned fellow Republicans.

3. Nationwide, an ever-stronger rejection of Trump

What happened in Wisconsin and Florida reflects something that’s happening nationwide. Trump is doing far more to mobilize his opponents than to rally his supporters. Here are this week’s poll numbers (again, all polls conducted before Trump’s wildly irresponsible tariffs).

Reuters/Ipsos done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 43% approval, 53% disapproval — the lowest approval since his return to office

YouGov/Economist poll done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 46% approval, 49% disapproval — lower approval than Biden’s at this point in his term

Marquette Law poll done between 3/17 and 3/27: Trump has 46% approval, 54% disapproval

Morning Consult poll done between 3/28 and 3/30: Trump has 47% approval, 50% disapproval

4. Town halls are terrible for Republicans

Indiana Republican Representative Victoria Spartz was booed and scolded by constituents at two town halls this week, over Signalgate, deportations, and DOGE cuts.

Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert held a telephone town hall this week but still faced tough questions about Musk/DOGE, Medicaid, and SNAP cuts.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to hold town halls in GOP districts where Republican incumbents are unwilling to hold them. Republican Representative John James wouldn’t meet with voters in his district, so Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Maxwell Frost went to James’s Michigan district last Saturday to hold a town hall meeting with James’s constituents instead....>

<....5. Democrats are fired up (finally)

No wonder Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) have become heroes far beyond the party’s progressive wing and have drawn such enormous crowds for their anti-Trump, anti-oligarchy rallies. The next stop on their tour against oligarchy will be Los Angeles on April 12.

Tomorrow’s nationwide April 5 “Hands Off” day of action also promises to be a big one.

The conventional wisdom had been that Trump’s opponents are less mobilized than we were at a comparable point in his first term back in 2017. In fact, the opposite is true. A study released last month by the Crowd Counting Consortium found “more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.” The researchers concluded “that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker spoke against Trump on the Senate floor for 25 hours and five minutes this week without sitting or exiting the Senate chambers to eat or use a bathroom, thereby breaking by nearly an hour the previous record set 68 years ago. He streamed the speech live on TikTok, where it garnered more than 400 million “likes.” The truly remarkable aspect of his speech was that it was a speech — not a venom-filled rant, but a substantive and thoughtful address to the nation.

Kudos to Senator Booker for reminding us of the importance of speaking out for what we believe and demonstrating America at its best. Meanwhile, Trump and his regime are demonstrating America at its worst: cruel, inhumane, and greedy.

6. Tesla continues to plummet

Meanwhile, Elon is the worst sales rep Tesla and its shareholders could ever imagine. We learned this week that Tesla’s global sales in the first quarter fell 13 percent from a year earlier, largely due to a worldwide consumer backlash against the role that Musk is playing in the Trump administration. After Musk endorsed far-right parties, Tesla sales plunged in Germany by 41.5 percent compared to last year; they were down in France by 41 percent; and down in the UK 0.6 percent

Oh, and Democratic lawmakers in New York state introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at Musk and the so-called Buffalo Billion project, in which the state spent $959 million to build and equip a plant that Musk’s company leases for $1 a year to operate a solar panel and auto component factory. The bill would determine whether Tesla was meeting job creation targets, making promised investments, paying enough rent, and honoring job training commitments. If not in compliance, the state could claw back state benefits from Tesla, impose penalties, and terminate contracts.

7. Paul Weiss and Skadden are paying a price for selling out to Trump

The disgraced elite law firms Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps — both of which capitulated to Trump to avoid executive orders that could have crippled their businesses — are already paying a price. The firms’ associates are saying both privately and openly that their leaders betrayed their firms’ principles with deals that undermine a commitment to provide free legal work to public interest groups and causes at odds with the White House. A few have quit their jobs. Many aspiring young lawyers are boycotting the two firms. Good!

8. Trump’s tariffs cause utter chaos

I’m including Trump’s bonkers tariffs as a reason for modest optimism even though many in the United States and around the world will be terribly harmed by them, but the tariffs will smooth the way for Trump to be booted out of office — in 2028 or sooner.

Those tariffs are likely to be the worst economic policy since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which worsened the Great Depression. They will cost the typical American family at least $4,000 this year, fuel inflation, and very possibly wreck the economy.

Stock and bond markets have plunged in reaction. The Wall Street Journal estimates that $2.7 trillion of the value of American corporations has already disappeared as a result of the tariffs. Many big corporations are planning layoffs.

Other nations will surely raise their tariffs on American exports or even block certain American services in retaliation....>

<....9. Trump has lost his Senate majority (at least on tariffs against Canada, which may be a harbinger of more Senate votes against him)

The Senate voted 51-48 Wednesday to undo President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada — delivering its first major rebuke to Trump since his return to the White House.

Four Republicans — Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Rand Paul (Kentucky) — defied Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune by voting with Democrats to invalidate a national emergency that Trump declared in February, allowing him to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. “Unlike Mexico and China, Canada is not complicit in this crisis,” Collins said.

The resolution’s supporters have described it as a way to send a message to Trump about the broad discontent with his tariff strategy, even if the measure has no chance of becoming law. (Trump has vowed to veto the bill, even if it makes it through the Republican-controlled House.)

In addition, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley introduced legislation (with Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell) to claw back Congress’s tariff power. The bill would force levies to be approved by Congress and allow them to end the tariffs.

10. Trump’s abductions

My tenth reason for modest optimism is also a tragedy in the making, but it’s stirring up so much public antipathy toward Trump and his incompetent cronies that I’m listing it.

Earlier this week, Trump officials admitted they had made an “administrative error” in abducting a Maryland man whose wife and child are both American citizens and sending him to a notorious Salvadoran prison — despite a court order that he could remain in the United States because he might face torture in El Salvador. The prison where he is now being held, known as CECOT, has long had a reputation for its brutal conditions.

To make matters worse, the Trump regime says it has “no power” to get him out of that El Salvador prison.

This is horrific but it’s also a cause for modest optimism because Americans are beginning to see Trump’s tyranny for what it is. Forcible abductions off the streets and from their homes of people (in) the United States whom the Trump regime only accuses of being dangerous foreign nationals — without oversight by a neutral trial court — opens the way for the “disappearance” of anyone the regime dislikes. This is what dictators do. It is not something America does — at least not until Trump,

11. Trump’s attack on Social Security is beginning to harm beneficiaries

Let me end today’s list with another horror show that’s about to harm millions of Americans but will almost certainly hasten the end of Trump’s reign of terror (if not also the end of the Republican Party).

Social Security is now engulfed in the worst crisis of its history. That’s not because it’s running out of money or because of fraud or high administrative costs. This crisis is entirely the doing of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

More than 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s staff have been pushed out, and Trump has announced plans to fire nearly half of the total Social Security workforce.

The result so far: Social Security field offices are being shut down. Hold times for customer service phone calls are over 2 to 3 hours. The Social Security website crashed four times in 10 days.

I once served as a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. I know how critical this program is to the 73 million Americans who rely on it. They will not abide this raid on a program to which they’ve contributed throughout their working lives.

***

By listing these reasons for modest optimism this week, I don’t mean to imply we are in good shape. To the contrary, the scourge of Trump is worsening.

My purpose in bringing you this list is so you know that despite Trump’s tyranny, the resistance to him is wide and deep — and it continues to build. That’s partly your doing, for which I send you my heartfelt thanks.>