By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign.

And it was a flop.

Musk, the richest person in the world, said Tuesday that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points.

Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments show that a party-led effort in this spring’s election, dubbed “People vs. Musk,” succeeded in making Musk and his money “toxic.”

“The people have won,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”

Brandon Scholz, a retired longtime Republican strategist in the state, said that at least in Wisconsin, “after that court race he deserves to be labeled as toxic.”

But that doesn’t mean Musk couldn’t spend money on races in the state and nationally again, especially if the stakes are high and his money could make a difference, Scholz said.

“Does he bring with him a lot of baggage? Possibly,” Scholz said. “But over time, maybe not as much.”

Musk’s spending in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race helped make it the most expensive court race in U.S. history. And it came just five months after Musk spent at least $250 million to help President Donald Trump win, reversing losses in Wisconsin and other battleground states four years earlier.

Musk was all-in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, even making a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat — popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers — and personally handing out checks for $1 million to supporters. It was an extension of Musk’s high-profile role in the presidential race, where he campaigned alongside Trump and headlined some of his own rallies.

“It’s a super big deal,” he told the roughly 2,000-person crowd in the event center, where hundreds of protesters were rallying against his appearance outside. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”

But his appearance — and money — didn’t work.

The candidate Musk backed lost Brown County, the home of Green Bay, by 3 percentage points, going on to lose statewide by more than three times that margin.

After the defeat, Musk has said little publicly about the race and his involvement in it. His popularity has also plummeted.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll taken two weeks after the Wisconsin court election found that just 33% of adults had a favorable view of the Tesla CEO, down from 41% in December.

Musk’s involvement in the race came at the same time he was the chain-saw-wielding face of the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal government.

His Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, has enacted deep cuts to the workforce and spending, in some cases seeking to shutter entire agencies, but it has fallen far short of its goals for reducing federal spending.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, of Wisconsin, is one of the most liberal members of Congress and a loud critic of both Trump and Musk.

Pocan is skeptical that Musk truly will back away.

“I don’t believe any of it, first of all,” Pocan said. “This just means they realize how toxic Elon Musk is and the work he did through DOGE.”

Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator, was also tempered in her excitement over Musk saying he plans to do a “lot less” political spending in the future.

“There’s a ton of other billionaire bros, I’m sure, willing and happy to step up in his place,” Roys said.

Musk could also get involved with future races, but in a much more low-profile way, said Scholz, the Republican.

“In Wisconsin, he had such a huge, huge, huge profile,” Scholz said. “He became the campaign. He became the story.”

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Musk spent at least $3 million on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race himself. Musk-backed groups America PAC and a Rebuilding America’s Future spent another $19 million in support of the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel. That was part of more than $100 million spent on both sides.

America PAC spent at least $6 million on vendors who sent door-to-door canvassers across the state, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It was a reprise of what the group did last fall across the seven most competitive presidential battleground states, including Wisconsin, which were carried by Trump.

In addition to his political contributions, Musk paid three individual voters $1 million each for signing a petition in an effort to goose turnout. Musk also offered to pay $20 to anyone who signed up on his group’s site to knock on doors for Schimel and posted a photo of themselves as proof. His organization promised $100 to every voter who signed the petition against “activist judges” and another $100 for every signer they referred.

Musk himself hosted Schimel on his podcast and cast what was at stake in stark terms.

“A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” Musk said in a social media post on the April 1 election day. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

Democrats made the race a referendum on both Musk and Trump’s agenda, successfully electing a judge whose victory ensures the Wisconsin Supreme Court will remain under liberal control until at least 2028.

Coincidentally, Musk’s announcement about spending less on political races came just hours after a liberal judge announced her candidacy for the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor is challenging a conservative incumbent justice who sided with Trump in his unsuccessful lawsuit that attempted to overturn his 2020 loss in Wisconsin. The race will be decided in April, months before the midterms in which Democrats hope unease with Trump and Musk will help the party make gains.

Taylor appeared to be taking a similar approach to her campaign that the winning Democratic-backed candidate did this year.

“My campaign is going to be a campaign about the people of this state,” she told The Associated Press, “not about billionaires, not about the most powerful.”

Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip and for an end to the “heartbreaking” toll on its people, as he presided over his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

The Vatican said that around 40,000 people were on hand for the audience, which came just days after an estimated 200,000 people attended the inaugural Mass on Sunday for history’s first American pope.

Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, began the audience with a tour through the piazza in the popemobile and stopped to bless several babies. In addressing specific greetings to different groups of pilgrims, Leo spoke in his native English, his fluent Spanish as well as the traditional Italian of the papacy.

“I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entrance of dignified humanitarian aid to Gaza and to put an end to the hostilities whose heartbreaking price is being paid by children, the elderly and sick people,” he said.

The general audience on Wednesdays is a weekly appointment that popes have kept for decades to allow ordinary faithful to have a face-to-face encounter with the pontiff. It features the pope delivering a brief reflection on a theme or Scripture passage, with summaries provided by others in different languages and the pope directing specific messages to particular faith groups.

The encounter, which lasts more than an hour, usually ends with a brief topical appeal by the pope about a current issue or upcoming event. Leo began it with his now-frequent mantra “Peace be with you.”

To that end, Leo on Tuesday reaffirmed the Vatican’s willingness to host the next round of ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine during a phone call with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, the Italian leader’s office said.

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Meloni made the call after speaking with U.S. President Donald Trump and other European leaders, who asked her to verify the Holy See’s offer.

“Finding in the Holy Father the confirmation of the willingness to welcome the next talks between the parties, the premier expressed profound gratitude for Pope Leo XIV’s willingness and his incessant commitment in favor of peace,” Meloni’s office said in a statement late Tuesday.

Trump had referred to the Vatican’s longstanding offer to host talks in reporting on his phone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While low-level talks could take place in Rome, Italy would be hard-pressed to allow Putin to fly into Rome for any higher-level negotiation. Putin is subject to an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, of which Italy is a founding member and therefore obliged to execute its warrants.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge has ordered U.S. officials to appear at an emergency hearing Wednesday to answer questions about their apparent deportation of immigrants to South Sudan and other countries.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts ruled late Tuesday that the Trump administration must retain custody and control of those “currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return” if he finds such removals were unlawful. Lawyers for immigrants said the Republican administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.

The judge left the details to the government’s discretion, but said he expects the migrants “will be treated humanely.”

FILE – Internally displaced people walk along a street in Juba, South Sudan, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

Attorneys for the migrants told the judge that immigration authorities may have sent as many as a dozen people from several countries to Africa. The lawyers say that violates a court order that people have a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety.

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his lawyers learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.

A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa on Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.

The lawyers asked Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations.

Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya without notice would “clearly” violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.

Murphy summoned U.S. officials to court Wednesday to identify the migrants impacted, address when and how they learned they would be removed to a third country and what opportunity they were given to raise a fear-based claim. He also ruled that the government must provide information about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already removed.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

South Sudan’s police spokesperson Major General James Monday Enoka told The Associated Press on Wednesday that no migrants had arrived in the country and that if they do, they would be investigated and again “redeported to their correct country” if found not to be South Sudanese.

Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States. That has led the administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Panama, to house them. The U.S. has sent Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, an action being contested in the courts.

South Sudan has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 amid hopes it could use its large oil reserves to bring prosperity to a region long battered by poverty. Just weeks ago, the country’s top U.N. official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.

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The situation is “darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives,” Nicholas Haysom, head of the almost 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The State Department’s annual report on South Sudan, published in April 2024, says “significant human rights issues” include arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane treatment by security forces and extensive violence based on gender and sexual identity.

The Homeland Security Department has given Temporary Protected Status to a small number of South Sudanese already living in the United States, shielding them from deportation because conditions were deemed unsafe for return. Secretary Kristi Noem recently extended those protections to November to allow for a more thorough review.

South Sudan’s diplomatic relations with the U.S grew tense in April when a deportation row led to the revocation of visas and a ban on South Sudanese nationals.

The U.S is one of the biggest donors to South Sudan’s humanitarian aid programs with the total funding in 2024 standing at over $640 million, according to the U.S embassy in South Sudan.

Associated Press writers Tim Sullivan in Minneaopolis, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Rebecca Santana in contributed to this report.

While politicians, environmental groups and union leaders rejoiced that Empire Wind can move forward, some worry the Trump administration’s concession is meant to pressure Gov. Hochul to approve local gas pipeline projects. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul at a press conference about offshore wind opportunities in 2022. (Flickr/Governor Kathy Hochul)

The U.S Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) lifted a month-long stop work order Monday on the New York-based offshore wind project, Empire Wind 1. 

Although it took 14 years to secure federal approvals for the venture, on April 16 the Trump administration had halted work on the project, claiming the approval process had been “rushed.”

But Empire Wind was set to power 500,000 homes in New York City with clean energy and create more than 1,000 union jobs in New York communities, leading environmental groups and politicians to push back on the federal hold. 

“I fought to save clean energy jobs in New York—and we got it done,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement this week. The governor was on the phone with President Donald Trump three times over the weekend, for over an hour each time, fighting to bring the project back, her Deputy Communications Director Paul DeMichele told City Limits.

Although environmentalists applaud the governor’s effort, it’s also spurred speculation that Hochul may have struck a deal with the administration to bring more gas into the state in exchange for lifting the stop-work order. 

President Trump said earlier this year that he wanted to revive fracked gas projects like the Constitution Pipeline, a major venture by the Williams company that sought to transport fracked gas from Pennsylvania to the Southern tier of New York. New York State rejected permits for the project in 2016 and the company pulled out of the venture in 2020.

“I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who ordered Empire Wind’s pause, said on the social media platform X hours after the administration agreed to resume the project. 

But the governor’s office told City Limits the social media nod did not mean they agreed to approve any projects in return. 

DeMichele confirmed that during lengthy conversations with Trump over the weekend, gas pipeline projects were brought up, but said “no deal on any natural gas pipeline was reached.”

However, Hochul’s office said the governor is not opposed to pipeline projects more generally, as long as they have undergone the necessary permitting processes issued by the state authorities.

“New York will work with the Administration and private entities on new energy projects that meet the legal requirements under New York law,” the governor said in a statement.

Environmental groups warn that  new gas pipeline projects would usher in more planet-warming emissions into the state, accelerating the impacts of climate change. But utility companies and some experts argue that added gas supply is necessary, saying there still isn’t enough clean energy available to heat New York homes, especially in the winter.

The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park is being revived as an operation and maintenance hub for the Empire Wind project. (Adi Talwar for City Limits)

 ‘So much at stake‘

Putting Empire Wind on hold would have dealt a blow to New York’s local economies, City Limits reported earlier this month.

The project, BOEM projects, will generate $195 million in income for New York City and inject $1.6 billion into the state-wide economy during the planning and construction phases, according to developer Equinor.

It also seeks to breathe new life into the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT), an industrial port in Sunset Park that serves as an operational and maintenance hub for Empire Wind and other offshore ventures.

The project ushered in business to the industrial zone, which has long been overlooked for economic investment, into what the city calls “a prime destination for environmentally sustainable industry.”

A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that Equinor signed for the construction of SBMT guaranteed “over 1,000 union construction jobs and apprenticeships in local New York communities.” The agreement prioritizes hiring union members from the Sunset Park community, and secondarily, union members from New York City. It also gives hiring priority to union members who are NYCHA residents and veterans.

“There was so much at stake for the renewable energy industry, the union employees who would be performing the work, and the opportunities for the surrounding communities to participate in the project,” said Christopher Erikson in a statement. 

Erikson is business manager at Local Union No. 3 IBEW, representing the workers at Sunset Park’s marine terminal.

Despite its reversal on Empire Wind, the Trump administration said it’s still reconsidering a federal grant to build an onshore and offshore wind safety training facility un upstate New York. And an executive order that suspended new leasing and permitting for wind projects is still at large. 

Raking in record donations from the fossil fuel industry while running for office, Trump has continuously positioned himself against non-polluting renewable energy sources like wind and has encouraged drilling for more oil and gas instead.

At the same time, environmental groups worry Gov. Hochul’s commitment to significantly lowering New York’s greenhouse gas emissions may be waning, citing the state’s approval of another pipeline expansion project earlier this year. 

The decision is out of step with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, they argue. The CLCPA, passed by Albany in 2019, established a roadmap for the state to mostly phase out planet-warming fossil fuels like gas by 2050, and transition to clean energy instead.

“We and others will fight tooth and nail to stop new fracked gas pipelines the state already rejected, if Hochul is doing a deal to approve those. Hell no to that,” said Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director with New York Communities for Change.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Mariana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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