AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Not content with spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Donald Trump, we look now at how the richest man in the world, senior adviser to President Trump, Elon Musk, is pouring money into an election in Wisconsin. Musk has spent more than $18 million to support the Republican Brad Schimel over Democrat Susan Crawford and has been paying Wisconsin voters $100 each to help flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This would allow Republicans to keep gerrymandered districts in place and control Congress. If Democrats retake the House, they could investigate Musk, DOGE and his millions in government contracts.

For more, we’re joined by Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine, author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It. His recent pieces are headlined “Elon Musk Revealed Why He’s Spending Millions to Flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court” and “The Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Is a Referendum on Elon Musk.”

So much is happening with voting rights. Let’s start in Wisconsin. Then we’ll move on from there. Ari, can you lay out what’s at stake, why Wisconsin is about the country, and then, of course, will affect the world?

ARI BERMAN: Well, good morning, Amy.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is important in its own right, because this election on April 1st will determine which party and side controls the ideological majority of the court. And that will decide things like the fate of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, laws restricting labor rights, illegality of Wisconsin’s congressional maps, which could decide control of Congress.

But it’s taken on much more significance, because Elon Musk is now spending over $20 million to try to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is a record for any state judicial race in the history of the United States. And it really has become a test of whether Musk can buy Wisconsin, like he bought the White House, and can extend his plan for oligarchy to the states, or whether Democrats can fight back and strike a tangible blow against him, and whether there can be a reaction to all of the things that he’s done in Washington, that he’s now trying to do to the states. And so, it’s an extremely important race in the state, in one of the most important swing states in the country, but it really has taken on a tremendous amount of national significance since Musk got so involved in this Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain. What does paying $100 to voters mean? What’s that about?

ARI BERMAN: So, Musk is paying voters $100 a pop to sign a petition opposing, quote-unquote, “activist judges.” And I just saw that he has now given a million dollars to a supposedly random winner of the petition signing, which is just a staggering amount of money. And he’s going to keep doing that every two days until the election. And this is just a crazy scheme in a state Supreme Court race. Remember, Amy, this is about electing judges. These are people that are supposed to be impartial in terms of how they rule.

And basically, what Musk is doing is he’s taking the playbook that he used, which was very controversial, very legally suspect, certainly ethically dubious, in terms of getting Donald Trump back in the White House, and he’s trying to use it in a state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. And we’ve never seen this kind of thing in a judicial race before. We’ve never seen this kind of money in Wisconsin before or any other state Supreme Court race. We’ve never seen these kind of tactics in a state Supreme Court race before. And so, just the level of corruption at play here, the level of money at play here, really is a warning sign for what’s happening to our democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re a voting rights specialist journalist. And this comes amidst a slew of other election news. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments against Louisiana’s voting map that includes two majority-Black districts, that could also help shape the balance of power in the House. And President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to overhaul U.S. elections and stop the counting of votes after Election Day, including absentee ballots sent by mail. And on Wednesday, Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed law to end the state’s popular universal vote-by-mail election system. If you could talk about all of that?

ARI BERMAN: Yeah, so, I think the most significant of those three so far is President Trump’s sweeping and really unprecedented executive order, which would give the president the authority that he really doesn’t have under the Constitution. The Constitution gives the states and Congress the power to set the rules for federal elections. Trump is trying to take that power for himself, in a really crazy voter suppression scheme that would make it harder to vote in so many different ways. It would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, which could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who don’t have ready access to those documents, like a U.S. passport or potentially birth certificates or naturalization papers. It would hamper vote by mail by saying that if ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they won’t count if they arrive after Election Day, which is currently the law in 18 states. It would put Elon Musk in charge of searching voter rolls and searching for suspected voter fraud, which could just lead to incredible abuse and further access of sensitive voter information. So, really, the president is trying to do an illegal power grab that would provide voter suppression on steroids and take away so much power that is currently reserved for the states and for Congress and make it so much harder for people to vote, at a time that we’re entering a really crucial election cycle.

That’s on top of the fact that before the Louisiana Supreme Court, white voters are basically trying to dismantle a second majority-Black district in that state to try to turn the Voting Rights Act on its head, take away representation for Black voters. Republicans at the state level are continuing to make it harder to vote, through things like chipping away at mail voting, like in places like Utah, where it’s very popular and widely used.

So, there’s a lot of disturbing things on the democracy front. And I think this all really fits together, which is that there is just this five-alarm fire for democracy happening all over the country, and it’s taking many, many forms. One of the most tangible forms it’s taking is the attempt to try to restrict participation in elections and to try to put in place a form of oligarchy instead of a form of democracy. You see that in Wisconsin with Elon Musk trying to buy the Supreme Court race. You see it in Washington with Trump issuing executive orders that are clearly unconstitutional. You see it at the state level with how Republicans are ripping away voting rights. So I see a through line to all of these different anti-democratic tactics.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, there’s Trump’s new executive order that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Ari Berman, I want to thank you so much for being with us, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine.

Next up, we look at the backgrounds of some of Trump’s closest and most powerful allies, the South African-born billionaires Peter Thiel [sic] and Elon Musk. Back in 30 seconds.