Here's the original story from @wisconsinwatch.org in January 2024. At the time the case had been open at DOJ for more than a year. The special prosecutor was appointed in March 2024. wisconsinwatch.org/2024/01/wisc...

The court is where the power to effect change in the lives of real people is now concentrated. If those entrusted with power act against the will of the people, the voters will remind them next time at the ballot box.

At Wisconsin Watch, we will continue to scrutinize the Wisconsin Supreme Court closely, as we have since liberals took control in 2023.

The state Supreme Court’s liberal majority is now entrenched until at least 2028 and has the power to ensure abortion is legal, teachers have the same union rights as police officers, polluters clean up hazardous chemicals and congressional maps reflect the state’s 50/50 partisan divide.

But the 10-point win for liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford also reflected an ongoing counterswing to the overreach of the state’s 2010 Republican takeover.

Musk’s attempts to use million-dollar giveaways and pay people $100 to vote for Sch… <ahem>, I mean, sign a petition against activist judges, likely turned off more voters than it turned on.

To put that in perspective, before the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race set the previous spending record north of $50 million, the record was a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race that cost $15 million.

There’s no doubt this election became a referendum on Elon Musk, the unelected centibillionaire running the Trump administration’s dismantling of the federal bureaucracy. Musk poured more than $20 million into a race likely to double the previous spending record on a state Supreme Court race.

But Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election reminded us of a very important lesson about our democracy: The people are the most important guardrail. When the people don’t like what those in power are doing, they have the real power to rise up — at the ballot box — and demand change.

The first two months of the second Trump administration — with cuts to congressionally approved spending, pardons for rioters convicted of beating police officers, mass firings of civil servants and deportations of legal residents — have created the sense that all guardrails of democracy are gone.