What The Hell America!

SPEAKING ON MARCH 1 to a group of canvassers for the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA in deep-red Waukesha County, Wisconsin, Brad Schimel explained why it is so important that he be elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“Donald Trump doesn’t do this by himself, there has to be a support network around it,” said Schimel, who is seeking a ten-year term in the April 1 election. “They filed over seventy lawsuits against him since he took the oath of office barely a month ago, over seventy lawsuits to try to stop almost every single thing he’s doing because they don’t want him to get a win.” He told the canvassers, “The only way we’re going to stop that is if the courts stop it.”

By “they,” Schimel is referring to the broad swath of litigants who have rushed to challenge Trump’s efforts to violate, evade, misinterpret, rewrite, and ignore the law. Evidently, Schimel believes the role of the judiciary is not to assess the validity of the president’s use of executive power but to defend it.

Schimel’s inclination to judicial acquiescence goes a long way toward explaining why he has received Trump’s endorsement—and also why Schimel and Trump have the same top campaign contributor. Co-president Elon Musk has thus far spent at least $14.6 million on Schimel’s behalf, which has funded blitzkrieg levels of attack ads, as well as tactical support including canvassing and field operations. Last week, Musk upped the ante, offering $100 payments to Wisconsin voters who sign a petition stating their opposition to “activist judges,” in apparent violation of state law.

Schimel, a conservative Waukesha County judge and former county district attorney and state attorney general, is running against Susan Crawford, a liberal Dane County judge who worked as a prosecutor, as former Gov. Jim Doyle’s chief legal adviser, and as an attorney for various state agencies and in private practice. The officially nonpartisan election result will determine whether liberals backed by Democrats will retain a majority on the seven-member court or whether conservatives backed by Republicans will regain control.

At stake is the future of reproductive rights in Wisconsin, which were completely suspended for a fifteen-month period following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. During this time, a 1849 state law that Schimel has championed was deemed in effect, an interpretation now under state supreme court review. Also hanging in the balance are key rulings made by the court’s liberal majority regarding voting rights, labor law, and redistricting.

Beyond that, Wisconsin’s supreme court race is shaping up to be a referendum of sorts on a second Trump presidency that is far more radical, lawless, and chaotic than his first, as high a bar as that set. It is also something of a test of public sentiment toward Musk, as he continues to wreak havoc on federal agencies, employees, and functions without just cause, due process, or authority.

For these and other reasons, the race has been called perhaps the most important U.S. election this year. Already, it is the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with predictions that total spending, thanks in part to Musk, may top $100 million—twice the previous record of $51 million that was set in Wisconsin’s last supreme court race, in 2023.

Liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz won that election by a mile, giving the court its first liberal majority in decades. Schimel claims he entered the race because he was “horrified” by how the court’s liberals have wielded that power but, by his own explicit admission, wants to use that power to steamroll those people who are standing in Trump’s way.

SCHIMEL’S PLEDGE TO THE TURNING POINT USA canvassers to serve on Trump’s “support team” is markedly at odds with his campaign rhetoric about seeking to restore impartiality to the state supreme court. During the one and only candidate debate on March 12, Schimel proclaimed: “If President Trump or anyone defies Wisconsin law and I end up with a case in front of me, I’ll hold them accountable as I would anybody.”

That seems unlikely, given how precisely Schimel seems to grasp, in unguarded moments, that his relationship with Trump would be one of subservience. Speaking with supporters last month in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, Schimel mused that his odds at getting an endorsement were “probably pretty high because, you know, one thing [Trump] doesn’t do is forget people that screw him over, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court screwed him over.”

The Washington Post, which obtained a recording of this meeting, said Schimel was referring to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s September 2020 decision, joined by one court conservative, to keep the Green party’s candidates for president and vice president off the state’s ballot, against the wishes of Republicans who were hoping to siphon votes away from Joe Biden. Crawford’s campaign and supporters contend Schimel’s remark about Trump being screwed over refers to the court’s narrow rejection of Trump’s baseless efforts to overturn the state’s election result.

On March 15, at a “Mega MAGA Rally” in Waukesha, Schimel posed in front of a huge inflatable Trump with a raised gloved fist and the words “Vote Brad Schimel Supreme Court” on his chest:

Two days later, presidential son Donald Trump Jr. appeared with Schimel at a Turning Point USA rally in Oconomowoc. Calling Crawford a “radical leftist,” Don Jr. said Wisconsin’s election was about the future, warning that Trump’s “presidency could be put to a halt with this vote.” If only.

Trump finally got around endorsing Schimel last Friday night in a typically unhinged social media post in which he called Crawford “the handpicked voice of the Leftists who are out to destroy your State, and our Country” and said electing Schimel will, among other things, “Protect our Incredible Police.” That’s odd, because Schimel expressed sympathy for the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, saying they did not get “a fair shot” in court, and has refused to criticize Trump for pardoning cop-beaters. Schimel, who attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., and courted his endorsement, said he was “humbled and deeply honored” to receive it.

Meanwhile, Crawford and her supporters are hammering away at Musk’s involvement in the race, accusing him of trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. One ad describes Musk as “out of control” and says he “knows MAGA politician Brad Schimel is for sale and will abolish the checks and balances that protect us.”

As with everything else he does, Musk’s efforts to influence Wisconsin’s April 1 election are remarkably ham-handed. A flyer put out by his America PAC brazenly contradicts Schimel’s claims of impartiality. “Conservative Brad Schimel will support President Trump’s agenda!” it shouts. And Musk’s Building America’s Future group ran a digital ad attacking Schimel’s opponent that mistakenly used a photo of Harvard Law School professor Susan P. Crawford.

Clearly, Musk does not care about the substance of these ads, which in the brainless style of modern judicial campaign messaging focus on Crawford’s alleged fondness for child rapists and other violent criminals. So what’s his real motivation? Interestingly, on one possible answer, Crawford and Schimel seem to agree.

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WISCONSIN IS AMONG THE HALF OF STATES that prohibit auto manufacturers from selling their vehicles directly to the public, as this would give those companies a competitive edge over independent dealers. Just days before he began shoveling money into Wisconsin’s supreme court race, Musk sued the state of Wisconsin over its refusal to grant his car company Tesla an exemption, a case that could very well come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Crawford, during the debate, said Musk has “got a Tesla lawsuit going in the state of Wisconsin, and thinks it might be good to have some influence over the Wisconsin judiciary.” Schimel also gave this credence, saying he has “spent thirty-five years representing the people of Wisconsin, during a large part of that as the attorney general,” whose job it is to defend the state’s laws. He said the law barring direct car sales was “passed by the legislature” and is therefore “entitled to a presumption of constitutionality.” Therefore, Schimel said, “if Elon Musk is trying to get some result in that lawsuit, he may be failing.”

It was a dazzling display of sophistry. First of all, the four-year stretch that Schimel spent as Wisconsin’s attorney general before being defeated in 2018 is actually not “a large part” of his thirty-five years of public service. More importantly, the job he is seeking, with substantial help from Musk, is not one that requires deference to laws passed by the state legislature but precisely the opposite: Justices do not presume constitutionality, they decide it.

Moreover, Schimel’s tenure as state attorney general offers no evidence of his capacity for impartiality. He routinely used his office to advance highly partisan issues unrelated and even contrary to the interests of Wisconsin citizens, like defending corporate polluters in other states, challenging teacher-tenure laws in Indiana and gun-control laws in Washington, D.C., and playing a lead role in a multi-state effort to destroy Obamacare. Last month, 44 former Wisconsin assistant attorneys general signed a letter accusing Schimel of having used his office “to promote an extreme partisan agenda.”

Crawford, in contrast, has presented herself as a common-sense jurist who believes the law ought to be used to help people—hence, the “radical leftist” tag. She’s touted her past role as an attorney in private practice seeking to protect voting rights and workers’ rights and representing Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in defending reproductive rights.

Despite staking out these positions, Crawford has done a much better job than Schimel presenting herself as someone who can decide cases fairly. During the debate, she declined to say how she intends to vote on a GOP-driven state constitutional amendment on the April 1 ballot to require that voters present voter ID, which is already the law in Wisconsin, saying she might someday have to interpret it.

Schimel, in turn, blurted out: “When I’m on the bench, my personal or political views are utterly irrelevant and they’re utterly irrelevant in the supreme court race. But if you want to know how I’m going to vote, I’m going to vote yes.”

THOUGH SCHIMEL, A VETERAN OF SEVERAL electoral campaigns, has more experience as a debater than Crawford, she clearly bested him in this matchup. Take the exchange on abortion.

Schimel said he and his wife, who have two adoptive daughters, “treasure life even when it’s not planned.” He then claimed his views abortion don’t matter, since it should be voters and not courts who get to decide whether abortion remains available in Wisconsin. It’s a disingenuous argument, given that Wisconsin voters have never been asked to decide this issue, except indirectly via state supreme court elections. Crawford, while not weighing in on cases before the court, made clear her support for reproductive choice. Here’s how she put it:

My 23-year-old daughter doesn’t have the same rights that I do, and what I want for her and what I want for Judge Schimel’s daughters is the same: If they are pregnant and something goes terribly wrong in their pregnancy, I don’t want them to lie bleeding on a hospital bed while their doctors are huddled in another room trying to decide if they’re close enough to death before they can deliver health care services to them.

Crawford also got the better of Schimel in the discussion on crime. Both sides have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to convince voters that the other candidate is not just soft on crime but actively pro-criminal. Schimel, in this vein, said his opponent “has repeatedly just ignored the pleas of victims to lock up dangerous offenders, [including] a man who sexually assaulted a 5-year-old child repeatedly.” Crawford, in response, said Schimel and his supporters were focusing on “two cases out of thousands I have handled” and that, even in these two cases, she acted in accordance with the law and in a way that preserved public safety.

She then turned the tables on Schimel, saying he has “given dozens of people convicted of crimes like domestic violence, sexual assaults, and abuse of children short jail sentences or no jail sentences, and those offenders have gone on to re-offend,” which “has not happened in the cases [of mine] that they’re highlighting.”

Asked about the financial support he was getting from Musk, Schimel launched into a tirade about how a singer at a recent Bernie Sanders rally in Wisconsin performed “an absolutely grotesque attack on people of faith,” which he called on Crawford to disavow. Crawford’s reply: “I do disavow that. I heard some of those lyrics, and I don’t agree with those sentiments. It wasn’t my event. I wasn’t there. I didn’t organize it, and I certainly didn’t hire the singer. But let’s get back to campaign finance.”

But Schimel’s biggest flub came toward the end of the debate, when both candidates were asked which current member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court they “most resemble.” Crawford went first, with an instant and straightforward response: She named Ann Walsh Bradley, the court’s longest-tenured justice, whose place Crawford seeks to take. Here was Schimel’s swing at this softball: “Oh, my goodness. We’re all human beings. We all have good character traits and we all have weaknesses. I don’t—I’m not a—I don’t hero worship [or] anything like that.”

Looks like Schimel found a way to overcome this reticence. Just three days later, he was posing in front of that giant inflatable Donald Trump.