Americana

1. Liberation Day in Washington
2. Elon Musk’s cheesehead disaster
3. Liberals storm the polls
4. Texas’ frozen election
5. Trump’s kitchen cabinet

Also: The ads that worked in Florida.

Fight, the new 2024 campaign tell-all from Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, is loaded with bad Democratic omens. One of them was apparent to a Kamala Harris strategist, who kept encountering Black men who were converts for President Donald Trump, and couldn’t be compelled to vote for her.

“Every single one of them said one word and f*ck*ng one word only,” the Democrat recalled. “Stimmy.”

This will be painful for today’s Democrats to read. It was their party that passed stimulus checks in 2020, along with a suite of other pandemic relief measures that voters would associate with Trump. The nostalgia that helped him win again was built, in part, by those checks. The rest was built later, when most Americans experienced the first serious inflation of their lives and began to miss Trump’s economy.

The risk for Republicans right now is that the second Trump term doesn’t bring back those feelings; that people reach for tea-soaked madeleines, and get soggy bread. Trump’s party entered “Liberation Day” very confident in the plan to raise tariffs on nearly every country’s products, ending what he called decades of being “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered.”

Changing that, he said, would mean short-term pain. And he did run on tariffs, waving off Harris when she called them a potential “Trump tax” — countries would “pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world.” But there was no pain in that description. Some voters were ready for some short-term costs that would enable long-term domestic onshoring, but plenty remembered Trump for low prices and free money. The idea of a “DOGE dividend,” which came up at Elon Musk’s ill-fated election rally in Wisconsin last week, is a good example.

“Do you have any information on when DOGE checks would be written or sent out?” one voter asked.“It’s up to the Congress, and maybe the president, too, you know, as to whether specific checks are cut,” Musk replied. “But whether a check is cut or not, whether you reduce wasteful spending, the economy is going to be better off.”

Sure. But only one of those possibilities is a check with Trump’s name on it. What are last year’s swing voters expecting to get from him? What sort of consequences or higher prices did they brace for? Maybe they’ll dig in and bear it; maybe their answers will be “free money and cheap goods,” and “none.”

Republicans mostly get in line behind tariffs

President Donald Trump introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs with near-total support from his party, bending all but a handful of senators toward a position they once opposed.

Just four Republican senators voted with Democrats to advance a resolution ending the emergency declared by Trump to enable tariffs on Canada — the emergency being that it’s all necessary to fight drug trafficking. If passed in the House, the resolution would stymie Trump, a possibility that thrilled Democrats.

“We were pleased that — for the first time since Trump was sworn in — we actually defeated some sort of policy measure that he put forward,” Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin told Semafor.

House Republicans, who ended their legislative week early after nine of them opposed an effort to kill a proxy voting proposal for new mothers, were not racing to pass their own version of the resolution. In interviews around the tariff announcement, they largely repeated the administration’s line that Trump was going to end up bringing jobs and money back to America, and that affected countries could and should negotiate if they wanted relief.

“The benefits of free trade are held as a stalwart position of conservatives,” Republican Tennessee Rep. John Rose said, noting that “most in the Republican Party are willing to give [Trump] a pretty long leash in terms of pursuing opening markets.”

Democrats thank Elon for their Wisconsin win

Wisconsin’s supreme court election, and the 10-point victory of a liberal judge opposed by Elon Musk, thrilled Democrats who’d made opposition to the Tesla CEO the keystone of a new populist strategy.

“Elon Musk should become Donald Trump’s special envoy for midterm elections and go out and speak on the campaign trail in every possible state, in every possible district,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair Ben Wikler, who ran a “People v. Musk” campaign to highlight the more than $23 million Musk spent against Justice-elect Susan Crawford. “At the same time, Elon Musk should be removed as quickly as possible from any position of power.”

Tuesday’s election was the first real test of Musk and DOGE — a test that some Republicans had said they wanted, hopeful that the resources would help them turn out MAGA voters. He stayed out of same-day special House elections in Florida, where Republicans were outspent but won easily. (They celebrated their double-digit victories; Democratic spin was that their candidates had slashed the GOP win margins in two of Florida’s reddest seats.)

“I think we’ve internally won the argument over the last few weeks,” said Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who had urged his party to frame its agenda of protecting entitlements and labor around opposing Musk. “The Democratic Party has named a billionaire who the American people know is screwing them over.”

The liberal turnout surge

Republicans had a theory for how to win Wisconsin’s April 1 elections. They’d lost the 2023 state supreme court race by around 200,000 votes. Since then, the MAGA movement had come together to deliver the state for Trump. Their mission: Find “roughly 200,000” Republicans who’d voted last year, but usually skipped off-year races, and turn them out.

They pulled it off — but it wasn’t enough for a win. GOP-backed nominee Brad Schimel won more than 1.06 million votes, which would have been enough to narrowly beat the Democrats two years ago. Democrats found even more new votes for Susan Crawford, blowing away the GOP’s turnout model, with an increase of 47,000 Democratic ballots in Milwaukee County alone. (Some Democratic groups were worried about voter excitement there.)

Some of Schimel’s supporters, including Elon Musk, were stunned by the surge. Early on Thursday morning, Musk commented “Hmm” on a discussion between Alex Jones and Roger Stone, who speculated that the election had been stolen because it made no sense that Wisconsinites voted for a liberal judge and a voter ID amendment. That wasn’t fraud. Five months ago, Democrats dealt with their own version of the paradox: Millions of people voting for abortion rights amendments, then for Trump, confident that the first vote limited the risk of the second. And in other, less-closely watched Tuesday races, their voters were much easier to turn out than Republicans.

Democrats fret House vacancy and aging candidates

House Democrats threatened to sue Gov. Greg Abbott over not scheduling a special election to replace Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor and congressman who died of cancer on March 5.

“His refusal to call a special election is a direct assault on the rights of nearly 800,000 Texans in one of the most historic Black districts in the country,” said Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, one of the first candidates to announce for Turner’s seat, after Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the party might go to court.

Texas gives its governor some leeway on when to call special congressional elections, and Abbott had moved faster to fill Republican vacancies; he waited just 16 days to call one when the late Ron Wright died, four years ago. But Abbott missed the cutoff to put the election on the May 3 ballot, which passed 11 days after Turner’s death, and unless he calls for an emergency election, the replacement vote couldn’t happen until November.

Turner was one of two Democrats who sought election last year while battling cancer, and died this year. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs scheduled a September vote to replace the late Raúl Grijalva, but the fact that Democrats will be down two seats during this summer’s funding debates has highlighted its “gerontocracy” debate — whether too many incumbents are seeking reelection into old age.

Younger Democrats have taken advantage of the mood. Virginia Democrats anointed Abigail Spanberger, 45, as their candidate for governor on Thursday, stating that no one else had filed to seek their nomination, while New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas, 44, announced that he’d run to replace retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. One day earlier, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, 38, entered the race for her state’s US Senate seat.

Trump shuffles NSC on MAGA activist’s advice

The president fired at least six National Security Council officials this week, after a meeting with conservative journalist and activist Laura Loomer. The White House did not name or quantify the layoffs, but the president confirmed that they’d happened, and that he had met with Loomer, who attended the “Liberation Day” announcement in the Rose Garden.

“Laura Loomer is a very good patriot. She is a very strong person,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, praising her while not crediting her specifically for the personnel decisions. “She makes recommendations of things and people. Sometimes I listen to those recommendations, like I do with everybody.”

Loomer’s fame and notoriety has confused Republicans before; some fretted last year, when she joined Trump on his campaign plane before the debate against Kamala Harris. But this meeting reflected the confidence of the president’s return to power, and his reluctance to listen to media outlets when they report on the controversial views of people interacting with him.

That started with the rehiring of a DOGE staffer who quit after a Wall Street Journal investigation into racist writing he’d done under a pseudonym. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” wrote Vice President JD Vance, explaining the decision. Thursday’s moves revealed that people labeled as “conspiracy theorists” in the media, if they get Trump’s ear, can help decide who gets a job and who doesn’t.

“Russia and China are laughing at us,” Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, one of just three Republicans in seats Trump lost last year, told Fox News.

Since the 80s, Piers Morgan has ridden massive changes in the media industry, jumping from print to cable to, more recently, YouTube. This week on Mixed Signals, the TV star joins Ben and (subbing in for Max) Semafor’s head of comms, Meera Pattni, to discuss how he’s building his Uncensored brand, what he likes about being a YouTuber, and if he misses anything about legacy media. They also talk about how some journalists take themselves too seriously, why having fun is important even in news media, and his views on Trump’s term so far.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Polls

If it wasn’t clear from the Wisconsin supreme court race that voters are angry at DOGE and its leader, this Wisconsin pollsters’ numbers underscore that sentiment. Elon Musk’s personal popularity has tumbled with non-Republicans, and the idea of a government efficiency task force is more popular than the reality. Musk and DOGE are marginally less popular than Trump, thanks to lower support from independents, and have slightly less support from self-identified Republicans. Musk had crossover appeal in 2024, and it’s largely vanished this year.

Immigration was one of Trump’s best issues in the 2024 campaign, and it’s consistently been the highest-polling part of the agenda since he returned to office. Democrats, who constantly rose up to attack Trump over deportations in the first term, have been more careful this time; activists complain they’ve even said too little about the deportations of non-citizens who had legal status, but were critical of Israel. But their quiet, and quiet on the border, has meant less attention paid to the issue overall. There’s much more coverage of the economy, and much more opposition to Trump’s use of tariffs — and they’re his weakest issues right now. This poll found the same skepticism about Trump and trade in his first term, giving him just a 40% approval rating on the issue when it last asked about it, in Jan. 2020. But voters then separated the trade threats from their view of the economy, which was overwhelmingly positive. Now, the two topics are interlinked.

The Signal scandal was the first damaging story about the Trump administration that significantly angered Republicans. They’ve been sympathetic to the president during other media frenzies, but they break off here. Fifty-six percent of Republicans agree that the war room group chat shared accidentally with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg should not have happened. They’ve also heard less about this than non-Republicans, but most (64%) say they’ve seen “a lot” or “some” news about it. Other administrations sometimes appointed special counsels or endorsed FBI investigations to probe breaches like this, which have dragged them across news cycles. This one said “case closed” and pressed on. When Politico reported that NSA Michael Waltz had launched more Signal groups to discuss sensitive information, the administration just said that none of the information on them was classified. (“Don’t bring that up again,” Trump said Thursday, when asked about the stories on Air Force One.)

Ads

• Friends of Jimmy Patronis, “They Hate All of Us.” Republicans didn’t sweat the race for Florida’s 1st Congressional District, and didn’t worry when Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer, won it by less than half as much as Matt Gaetz did last year. Northwest Florida simply didn’t want to elect a Democrat, a correct assumption that built this ad. “These radical Democrats hate President Trump, and hate all of us that voted for him,” says a female narrator, after footage of Democrat Gay Valimont criticizing “President Musk” and participating in protests.
• Josh Gottheimer for Governor, “Crazy.” The New Jersey congressman has run for governor as a pragmatic Trump-fighting liberal obsessed with lowering the cost of living. He’s run one of the first ads that discusses tariffs as new problems caused by Republicans, not warnings of what they could do. “Insane tariffs, jacking up prices, threatening the economy,” says Gottheimer, promising a suite of tax cuts that will make it easier for New Jersey to endure it all.
• Fulop for Governor, “Steps.” Jersey City’s mayor has been running for governor for two full years, jumping ahead of candidates who’d end up getting more support from local parties and electeds. He’s continued to treat that like a strength: “Since when did anyone in New Jersey let someone tell them what they can or can’t do?” To dramatize his youth, vigor, and independence, he races up his city’s “100 Steps,” a project finished right after he became mayor.

Scooped!

We’ve closely covered the Republican effort to take the “T” out of “LGBT,” and the implications of Trump’s inauguration day order to recognize two, unchangeable biological sexes in the law. Benjamin Ryan and Aria Bendix identified a major implication of that — the erasure of more than $125 million in grants for LGBT health research. They got the first statement on this I’ve seen from the new team at NIH, that moving “away from politicized DEI and gender ideology studies” means ending research that had transformed understanding of AIDS and options for preventing its transmission.

Next

• 67 days until primaries in New Jersey
• 74 days until primaries in Virginia
• 81 days until primaries in New York City
• 214 days until off-year elections
• 577 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

The Biden campaign books are finally here, written in post-election flurries of activity and angst. “Fight,” the Allen/Parnes collaboration I quoted at the top of this newsletter, is very worth reading — the best of their three campaign books, full of not just news (the failed negotiation to get Kamala Harris on Joe Rogan) but insights. Trump really did think he could lose the election; his team was genuinely worried about Biden dropping out of the race; he and Barack Obama undermined her in ways that make you question how serious they were about democracy itself being at stake. (One favorite anecdote: After Biden quit, a call was scheduled between him and Obama just to kill a story about how their friendship was kaput and they hadn’t talked.) You have 500 or so more pages of these books coming, so get cracking.

Sweeping global tariffs announced by President Trump this week will significantly raise the costs of renewable energy, making it harder for US Big Tech companies to meet their data center energy needs, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell writes.

Higher costs will be passed on to energy consumers at a moment when, as NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum recently told Semafor, renewables are still the cheapest and most readily available solution to the looming US power deficit. Tariffs on critical minerals, steel, aluminum, and components for power transformers will also make energy projects of all kinds more expensive.