What The Hell America!

Democrats have done well in special elections since Donald Trump’s inauguration, but until this week we hadn’t had any statewide contests to really assess how the administration’s radical reshaping of U.S. government was landing with the public.

Well, yesterday, we got one of those: a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin to which both sides ascribed colossal importance. More than $100 million was spent on the contest; Elon Musk poured in more than $25 million in support of Republican Brad Schimel and rallied for him in the state.

Well, Republicans might want to start clanging the alarm bells. In a massive-turnout election, Democrat Susan Crawford won by 10 points. Happy Wednesday.

by William Kristol

Watching the Wisconsin Supreme Court election returns come in last night, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who found himself humming—even occasionally singing!—the great University of Wisconsin fight song, “On, Wisconsin!”

Composed in 1909 by William T. Purdy, “On, Wisconsin!” was considered by John Philip Sousa “the finest of college marching songs.” (He may have said this about multiple college fight songs, including Michigan’s “Hail to the Victors,” which—sorry, Badgers—is of course the superior tune.)

In any case, what more could one say last night than:

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin! Plunge right through that line!

Run the ball clear down the field, a touchdown sure this time.
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin! Fight on for her fame,
Fight! Fellows! Fight! Fight, fight, we’ll win this game.

The Wisconsin Democrats fought, and they won.

All of us owe them a debt for what was perhaps the most heartening election night since . . . the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April of 2023, which the Democratic-backed candidate also won by a similar healthy margin.

Of course, reminiscing about that happy outcome can’t help but trigger another thought—that a year and a half later, in November 2024, Donald Trump won Wisconsin and the presidency. It’s a reminder that, as the wise Aristotle observed, one swallow does not a summer make.

But could this Wisconsin victory be a harbinger of a better summer ahead? Perhaps.

Partly because of Musk’s intervention, yesterday’s election was to a considerable degree a referendum on the Trump administration. And the results suggest that Democrats shouldn’t be intimidated by Trump. Indeed, they suggest Democrats can run against what his administration and Musk’s DOGE are doing.

Yesterday’s high turnout also suggests that voters can grasp that courts matter, and that the rule of law matters. It was a judicial election, so the issue of economics wasn’t central to the debate. But it turns out families talk about more at the kitchen table than the price of groceries. They talk about what kind of state, and what kind of nation, they want to live in. Democrats shouldn’t shy away from raising issues of basic justice and fairness and individual rights.

One of the leading issues in this year’s race, as it was in the state Supreme Court contest two years ago, was reproductive rights. Democrats in Wisconsin hammered away at the theme that the Republican-backed candidate this year, Brad Schimel, would ban abortion. Protecting reproductive rights remains popular in Wisconsin, and presumably beyond.

Finally, Wisconsin Democrats argued that decisions by their Supreme Court could affect citizens’ access to health care. It turns out that voters don’t like Republican efforts to restrict health care.

With votes in Congress looming on Republican cuts to Medicaid, and with yesterday’s bloodbath at the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Democrats should be able to keep the issue of health care front and center.

Beyond the particular issues, what was most striking to an outside observer about the Wisconsin race was the spirit in which it was contested. The Wisconsin Democrats were defending their narrow Supreme Court majority—but the spirit of their campaign wasn’t defensive. Nor did they over-think or over-analyze their task. They went on offense, and, as their fight song urges, they “plunged right through the line.” A good example for their fellow Democrats in Washington, and across the nation.

by Andrew Egger

You can drive yourself crazy, listening to these admin people lie and spin. Every day they shamelessly open new vistas into kaleidoscopic alternate realities; staying moored here in the real world, among the things that have actually happened, is harder after a while than you’d think.

So it’s nice when we get palate-cleansing days like yesterday—when the lies are so obvious, so transparent and crude on their face, that it’s effortless to conclude: Yeah, these folks are just utterly full of shit.

Yesterday morning, JD Vance described Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the migrant wrongly deported to a Salvadorean supermax prison this month—as “a convicted MS-13 gang member.” This was flatly false; Abrego Garcia has never been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime.

But asked about it at her press briefing later, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down.

“The vice president said he was a convicted member of MS-13,” a reporter asked her. “What evidence is there to back that up?”

“There’s a lot of evidence,” Leavitt replied. “And the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have that evidence, and I saw it this morning.”

Again: That this is a lie is a matter of public record. DHS and ICE are not sitting on secret records showing Abrego Garcia is a convict. If they were, they would release them. Instead, the public record is what his lawyers wrote in a filing this week, an assertion the government did not dispute in its response: “Abrego Garcia has never been arrested or charged with any crime in the U.S. or El Salvador.”

A few minutes later, a reporter asked Leavitt: “You said you’d seen evidence that this man was a convicted gang member. In what court was he convicted, and for what?”

“This individual was an MS-13 ringleader,” Leavitt said. “He is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang, and he is involved in human trafficking, and now MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization.” She threw in some stuff about “the insane failing Atlantic magazine” for flavor.

The administration has been rolling out this “human trafficking” line a lot since the Abrego Garcia story broke. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin repeatedly posted yesterday that “we have intelligence reports that he is involved in human trafficking.”

Unlike “convicted,” this could in theory be true.

But the government has been in court talking about Abrego Garcia a lot this week, and in that forum—where, unlike on social media and from the White House podium, you’re actually legally obliged to tell the truth—they haven’t alleged anything of the sort. And DHS has released no evidence whatsoever in support of that claim. I asked McLaughlin yesterday whether the agency had any plans to release that supposed evidence. She responded with a word-for-word repeat of her original tweet: “The individual in question is a member of the brutal MS-13 gang—we have intelligence reports that he is involved in human trafficking.”

This is becoming a pattern. Besides Abrego Garcia, the most controversial of the deportees to El Salvador has been Andry Hernandez, the gay makeup artist who was seemingly deported due to his “Mom” and “Dad” tattoos, which DHS flagged as linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Not so, said McLaughlin: “This man’s own social media indicates he is a member of Tren de Aragua.” But DHS hasn’t released any evidence to back that up, and when I emailed McLaughlin this week to ask to see that evidence, the department declined to comment.

I am not Facebook buds with Andry Hernandez. I have not peeped his Insta. His socials, for all I know, could be chockablock with the bloodthirstiest gang content imaginable. But the only data point we have saying there’s any there there is the good word of press flacks in an administration that will also claim straightfacedly that a guy who’s never been arrested has, in fact, been convicted of crimes. It ain’t worth much without the evidence. They’ve given us zilch.

There was a time when conservatives weren’t bending over backwards to trust the government when it spun them unsupported whoppers. Of course, there was a time when they weren’t cheering on the annihilation of due process, too. What a time to be alive!

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ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS: Last night, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) broke the record for the longest speech ever delivered on the Senate floor. Back in 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) spoke for 24 hours in protest of the Civil Rights Act. Booker’s speech protesting the Trump administration’s arsonist attack on the government and the rule of law lasted more than 25.

When Booker finished, Andrew hopped on YouTube with Sam, JVL, and Joe Perticone to break it down. We were frankly a little gobsmacked, both at the physical feat involved and at the rhetorical one: He seemed to strengthen as he went on, and the last hour was a soaring call for the nation to rise to meet the present moral moment.

Democrats are out of power all over Washington; their options for countering the Trump program are grievously limited. But anti-MAGA Americans have been dismayed by how complacent many elected Democrats appear to be about that state of affairs. They’re clamoring for leaders who—to borrow a phrase—know what time it is. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has become a real party figurehead in recent days just by being willing to show a little fight and fire.

Booker’s historic speech puts him right up there with her among the Democrats who are proving they’ve got something to bring in the current moment. Who knows how broadly it will resonate outside the Democratic base—but the base desperately needs leaders to steer their rudderless party right now. At a minimum, he gave them that.

A CLASS ACT: Freshman Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) had a remarkable exchange with a fired federal worker this week. Mack Schroeder, a former employee at Health and Human Services, approached Banks in the U.S. Capitol basement, filming with his phone camera. He introduced himself, stated that he was “fired illegally on February 14,” noted that there were many others “not getting social service programs, especially people with disabilities,” and asked the senator: “Are you going to do anything to stop what’s happening?”

He was confrontational, but reasonable and perfectly polite. Banks hopped into an elevator and replied: “You probably deserved it.” As the doors closed, he added: “You seem like a clown.”

Even more remarkably, when the video was posted online, Banks took a victory lap—sharing the clip to his own social media and changing his X profile pic to an image of his smiling face between the closing elevator doors.

There is a real groundswell of anger building at Republicans’ spoliation of the federal government. The angry town halls across the nation and election results like last night’s in Wisconsin show that. But Banks’ actions here show that Republicans, by and large, are whistling past the graveyard. That, or they just can’t help themselves: They’re addicted to mugging for the hoots of their base.

WHAT’S A LITTLE BLACK LUNG AMONG FRIENDS: When he ran for president the first time, Donald Trump was keen to boast about what a champion he was for the miners of America. He pledged to bring back fledging industries and restore the prominence of coal. He even donned a hard hat during a speech in West Virginia.

The promises ended up being bunk. The coal industry lost jobs under Trump.

The latest setback the industry has suffered under his watch came Tuesday with the announcement of massive cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Among the agencies that were gutted was the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Mining Program, whose job it is to “eliminate mining fatalities, injuries, and illnesses through relevant research and impactful solutions.” All told nearly 200 union workers at the Morgantown NIOSH location were put on administrative leave.

Naturally, the United Mine Workers of America wasn’t pleased. “Without these resources, it may become harder to monitor and control harmful dust levels in mines, leaving miners at a higher risk for conditions like black lung disease,” a union rep told The Bulwark. “The loss of these programs could also disrupt efforts to enforce health regulations and reduce mining-related respiratory illnesses, ultimately jeopardizing the health and safety of workers in the mining industry.”

But union officials long ago came to see Trump as a snake-oil salesman. As for the Republican politicians in West Virginia, they seem to be alarmed—but not to the point of making too big a fuss. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told a local news outlet that while she still supports the cuts to spending facilitated by Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and DOGE, she was “concerned” with the gutting of NIOSH.

“During my meetings with Secretary Kennedy prior to his confirmation and as recently as last week, we discussed how important the health of coal workers is to West Virginia,” the senator said in a statement to MetroNews. “Any cuts that impact their health monitoring need to be restored immediately.”

—Sam Stein