Breakdown of a Supreme electoral margin in Wisconsin

It was quite the electoral blowout in this purple state when it came down to deciding the balance of power in Wisconsin's Supreme Court. Dem-supported Susan Crawford romped to a 10-point victory, beating the WisGOP/Elon Musk-backed Brad Schimel 55%-45%.

And the outcomes bore strong resemblance to the other double-digit blowouts for the Dem-backed candidates in these April Court elections in the 2020s. You get the first indication on that when looking at the results by county in the state.

See the blue in the Fox Valley and in the southeast corner in the state? That shows Crawford winning the "BOW counties" of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago in northeast Wisconsin and Racine and Kenosha in southeast Wisconsin. All of those counties voted for Republicans Ron Johnson in the 2022 November elections, and Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election, when both of them won statewide by at or just below 1%.

With Crawford breaking 50% of the combined vote in each of those 2 regions, along with getting over 47% of the vote outside of the largest metro areas, you could just look at those outcomes alone, and guess that you were going to get results that looked like the last 2 Court races.

Then things got worse for Schimel in the largest 2 metro areas of Wisconsin. Nearly 82% of Dane County's votes went to Crawford, and she got an even higher percentage in the City of Milwaukee, nearing 84% - more than 6.5% above what Kamala Harris pulled last November. Schimel also got blown out nearly 2 to 1 in the suburbs of Milwaukee County, with Dane County's Crawford putting up margins that even exceeded what Milwaukee County's Janet Protasiewicz drew in 2023.

And the consistent Dem improvement in the Milwaukee County suburbs has been mirrored with Dem improvement in the WOW Counties that border Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington). In 2019's Supreme Court election, Lisa Neubauer lost the WOW Counties by more than 2 to 1. But in both the 2023 and 2025 victories, the Dem-supported Justice candidate got 41% and 41.5% of the vote, respectively.

The other big story in this Supreme Court election was the strong turnout, which was likely spurred by all the local and national attention on the race along with the obscene amount of ad spending. There was over 2.36 million votes cast, totals that are closer to midterm November turnouts than April Supreme Court elections.

Where those votes came from also largely resembled a midterm, with Dane County and (especially) the WOW Counties having less of a share than in previous April elections, and the City of Milwaukee taking a larger share due to stronger turnout than they'd had for past Supreme Court elections.

The combination of larger turnout and larger Dem margins in the already strongly-blue Dane County and the City of Milwaukee means that the vote margins for Crawford grew larger in those places for Tuesday's election. Those margins have been steadily growing for Dem-backed candidates in every Supreme Court election since 2019.

It's near-impossible for Republicans to win anything statewide when they begin with a deficit out of those 2 areas that totals 12% of the state's electorate, as it did last week and in 2023.

One of the ways that Republicans held down those margins in the 2024 presidential election in Dane County and the City of Milwaukee as well as other blue-voting areas was to get more votes from younger men, especially in college areas. But that "bro strategy" didn't work at all for Schimel in this election, especially in the wards in Madison near the UW campus, where Crawford kept 5/6 of Harris's vote totals, but Schimel lost more 2/3 of Trump's votes in the same areas.

The "bro vote" also didn't seem to appear for the Schimel/Musk team in other college counties in Wisconsin, including the ones that included UW campuses in La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point, and Oshkosh.

Dem margins, 2024 Presidential election vs 2025 Supreme Court election
La Crosse (+9.3% in 2024, +26% in 2025)
Eau Claire (+10.6% in 2024, +25.6% in 2025)
Portage (+1.2% in 2024, +15.4% in 2025)
Winnebago (-4.7% in 2024, +7.0% in 2025)

And with no Senate race on the docket for 2026 to misinform casual voters, those numbers should be a big flashing warning to Republicans that they likely can't repeat Trumpian strategies in non-Trump elections.

It's not a guarantee that this translates into a big Dem win in next April's Supreme Court election, (even if the odious Rebecca Bradley hasn't been beamed up to the federal bench and ends up being the GOP's candidate), and it doesn't mean a Dem sweep in November 2026. But the trends are definitely in the right direction for the blue team, especially if they can replicate the huge efforts they pulled off to help push Susan Crawford to victory last week.

Even a good jobs report is a bad thing for Trump and Wall Street

With all of the turmoil of the last month overall and the tanking of the stock market on Thursday, lots of people were looking to see if Friday's US jobs report for March was going to show a significant slowdown (if not outright decline) in job growth.

Wait, really? Apparently so, if you buy the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 228,000 in March, higher than the average monthly gain of 158,000 over the prior 12 months. In March, job gains occurred in health care, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment also increased in retail trade, partially reflecting the return of workers from a strike. Federal government employment declined.

Health care added 54,000 jobs in March, in line with the average monthly gain of 52,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment continued to trend up in ambulatory health care services (+20,000), hospitals (+17,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+17,000).

If our economy keeps adding jobs in health care, maybe we shouldn't be cutting back access to health care or stopping research on diseases, eh?

That said, the first two months of the year had their job numbers revised down.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised down by 14,000, from +125,000 to +111,000, and the change for February was revised down by 34,000, from +151,000 to +117,000. With these revisions, employment in January and February combined is 48,000 lower than previously reported.

Ok, that makes the March number make a bit more sense, as we're 180,000 above where we thought we were. But I did find it interesting that the BLS added this note in light of Elon Musk and other DOGE dweebs trying to impose large nunbers of layoffs in the federal government over the last couple of months.

Within government, federal government employment declined by 4,000 in March, following a loss of 11,000 jobs in February. (Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)

So if these former or furloughed employees are getting paid via buyouts or other severance packages, they still are part of the payroll, according to the BLS. It also makes me wonder if this is a big reason why unemployment claims have stayed so low despite all of the Trumpian economic vandalism going on.

Even the increase in unemployment to 4.2% was really a minor change from 4.13% to 4.15%, with solid increases in labor force (+232,000) and number of people working (+201,000). In addition, the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers not in the work force and Americans forced into part-time work, retreated from its 40-month high of 8.0% in February down to 7.9% for March.

However, after President Trump announced massive, across-the-board tariffs on Wednesday and the DOW Jones falling by 1,680 points, a good jobs report is NOT what the stock market wanted to hear. And so the bleeding kept happening on Wall Street for Friday.

The reason I say that the good jobs report was bad news for Wall Street is that it showed there was no reason to lower interest rates at this time, no matter what debt-laden oligarchs like Trump and Musk want. We have costs and prices slated to rise with tariffs, and that report gives no indication of widespread job loss in America, despite what the headlines say about TrumpWorld’s efforts to wreck the operations of the federal government. Which is why I think the report is real and hasn't been messed with by the White House.

With the data coming in combined with recent events, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell admitted that he was going to have to wait to take any action when asked about where things stand on the economy and related monetary policy.

President Donald Trump's new tariffs are "larger than expected," and the economic fallout including higher inflation and slower growth likely will be as well, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday, while cautioning it was still too soon to know what the right response from the central bank ought to be.

"We face a highly uncertain outlook with elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation," undermining both of the Fed's mandates of 2% inflation and maximum employment, Powell told a business journalists' conference in Arlington, Virginia, in remarks that pointed to difficult decisions ahead for the U.S. central bank and did nothing to staunch a global bloodletting in stock markets….

Powell said the Fed has time to wait for more data to decide how monetary policy should respond, but the central bank's focus will be on ensuring that inflation expectations remain anchored, particularly if Trump's import taxes touch off a more persistent jump in price pressures.

"While tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation, it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent," Powell said.

In other words “HEY DONNIE, I CAN’T LOWER RATES WHEN YOU’RE DOING STUPID SHIT LIKE THIS!” You think Tariff Man will get the hint this weekend while he’s entertaining the Saudis at the LIV Golf tournament at Doral?

The good jobs report also indicates to me that the fall in the coming months is going to be even harder. We've seen how manufacturers boosted imports and orders in the first 2 months of 2025 to try to get ahead of the tariffs, and with the drop in the stock market and Trump/Musk Admin layoffs hitting Americans' pocketbooks, we are likely to see significant cutbacks sooner than later.

Trump tariffs tank the market today, and manufacturing set to tank in near future

So what's going on in the US financial news today?

Seems like it'll be quite an adjustment for people. For no good reason beyond...they can?

While there was a minor decline in the trade deficit in February compared to January, it's still a massive jump compared to where we were at the start of 2024.

February exports were $278.5 billion, $8.0 billion more than January exports. February imports were $401.1 billion, less than $0.1 billion less than January imports.

The February decrease in the goods and services deficit reflected a decrease in the goods deficit of $8.8 billion to $147.0 billion and a decrease in the services surplus of $0.8 billion to $24.3 billion.

Year-to-date, the goods and services deficit increased $117.1 billion, or 86.0 percent, from the same period in 2024. Exports increased $24.0 billion or 4.6 percent. Imports increased $141.2 billion or 21.4 percent.

This is a clear example of businesses trying to get imports into the country before any Trump tariffs would raise the costs of those products. And in addition to that big jump in imports, new orders and shipments for manufacturing went up in February.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in February, up two consecutive months, increased $2.8 billion or 1.0 percent to $289.4 billion, up from the previously published 0.9 percent increase. This followed a 3.4 percent January increase. Transportation equipment, also up two consecutive months, led the increase, $1.5 billion or 1.5 percent to $98.4 billion. New orders for manufactured nondurable goods increased $0.8 billion or 0.3 percent to $304.5 billion.

Shipments of manufactured durable goods in February, up three consecutive months, increased $3.4 billion or 1.2 percent to $292.3 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.7 percent January increase. Transportation equipment, also up three consecutive months, led the increase, $2.0 billion or 2.1 percent to $96.7 billion. Shipments of manufactured nondurable goods, up five consecutive months, increased $0.8 billion or 0.3 percent to $304.5 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent January increase. Chemical products, up twelve of the last thirteen months, led the increase, $0.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $83.7 billion.

Let’s remember that these new orders and imports happened before the main tariffs hit, so they shouldn’t cost as much for consumers vs orders and imports that happen after the tariffs hit. But I bet that won’t stop those businesses from raising prices in the coming weeks and blaming the tariffs, while pocketing large profits on the excuse.

If we had an administration that really wanted to improve things for American workers and consumers with these tariffs, they’d include this announcement with an added emphasis on going after price-gouging companies in the coming months. But does anyone believe an administration that is defunding the CFPB and the SEC to allow companies to avoid consequences for defrauding consumers and investors is going to do anything legit to stop price-gouging? Me neither.

All of this would indicate a growth scenario in manufacturing, and we did see a rush to buy cars last month, even as consumer sentiment collapsed. But given that the economy is (to be kind) in an uncertain place, I’d be surprised if a lot of people want to run out and buy vehicles and other goods in big numbers in the near future, especially if they've already pulled some purchases forward.

That means there won't be buyers for the added orders in manufacturing, so there won't be any need to keep this level of production going. Businesses can try to pass on the higher costs from tariffs to consumers, but I doubt consumers will go along with it if they have any choice. So you’ve got a collision of several factors that lead to further declines in manufacturing in the coming months.

Now combine those cutbacks in manufacturing and consumer spending, and do you see a scenario to keep the economy growing in 2-3 months? I sure don't, and then compound it with major job losses imposed by the Trump/Musk Administration, the latest coming from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

But hey, this will bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, so it's worth it, right? Isn't that the headline on factory jobs that I saw today?

Just hours after the latest tariffs went into effect, Stellantis has announced it would idle plants and begin layoffs.

President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on imported vehicles was put into action at midnight, Thursday, April 3. The White House has also said it plans to place tariffs on key auto parts and components.

In a letter sent out Thursday morning, Stellantis’ North American COO Antonio Filosa said that despite seeing market growth since January, the company would idle its Windsor Assembly Plant for two weeks and its Toluca Assembly Plant for April and temporarily lay off 900 workers.

"With the new automotive sector tariffs now in effect, it will take our collective resilience and discipline to push through this challenging time,“ Filosa wrote. ”But we will quickly adapt to these policy changes and will protect our company, maintain our competitive edge and continue delivering great products to our customers."

I don't think this is the “winning” that low-info voters imagined they were going to get with a Businessman in the White House. But it sure looks like the type of careless idiocy that a lot of us tried to remind these low-info dipshits about, and instead those folks decided to follow what the algo told them was "expertise" instead, and now we are all going to be paying the price.