April We’re Not Fools Day

From the US Senate Floor to Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan, April 1, 2025 was a Blue Letter Day - and then came "The Day After" and we are anything but liberated.

Editor’s note: Bob McElvaine has generously shared this piece with Lincoln Square. We cannot recommend subscribing to his outstanding substack, Musings & Amusings of a B-List Writer, enough.

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Oh, Happy Day!

April Fool’s Day 2025 may go down as the day when it became apparent that the tide is turning against the outrageous, anti-democracy, anti-American—indeed, anti-human—actions of the Trump/Musk regime.

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Choosing a Human Destiny for Humanity

On Sunday, Elon Musk went to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and proclaimed that “the entire destiny of humanity” rested on the outcome of the state supreme court election there. On Tuesday, Musk doubled down on that assessment, tweeting: “A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” the billionaire said Tuesday in a last-ditch call to voters on his social media site X. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

In late December, Musk had made clear what he really thinks of the populist base of the MAGA movement, calling them “contemptible fools [who] must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” On Tuesday, many of them sent a message that they are tired of being taken as fools.

Musk treated the voters with the contempt he has for them, spending $25 million on this state judicial race and trying to bribe voters with the chance to get a $1 million check from him.

The voters of Wisconsin made clear that a large majority of them want the destiny of humanity to be human. In a state that Donald Trump won by 29,000 votes, less than one percent, five months before, liberal judge Susan Crawford trounced the MAGAMusk candidate 55 percent to 45 percent. Elections in Wisconsin are almost always decided by razor-thin margins, so this was a landslide by the state’s standards.

Two other April Fool’s Day elections also indicated that the MAGAMusk plan to end the American government and democracy while turning against our international friends and raising prices through insane tariffs, the details of which he did not reveal until Wednesday, is rapidly losing support among those who voted for Trump in November.

Republicans handily won both the special elections in Florida to fill seats vacated by Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz, but anyone who believes that was a good sign for the Trump Muskovites is … well, in Musk’s words, a contemptible fool. These districts have long been the deepest of red—call them burgundy—seats that Trump, Gaetz, and Waltz won by huge margins in November.

In the First District, Republican Jimmy Patronis won by 14.6 percent. Five months ago, Gaetz won by 32 points. That is a 17+ point shift towards the Democrat. Gaetz won Escambia County, which was once called the most Republican county in the United States and had not been carried by a Democrat since 1992, by 14 points. On Tuesday, Democrat Gay Valimont won the county by 3 points.

In the Sixth District, Republican Randy Fine won by 14 points. Five months ago, Signal aficionado Waltz carried the district by 33 points. That is a 19-point shift towards the Democrats.

A week earlier, Democrat James Malone won a special election for a Pennsylvania State Senate seat by 1 point in a district that Trump had carried in November by 15 points, and no Democrat had won in 136 years. That was a 16-point shift towards the Democrats.

There would appear to be an unmistakable trend in the special elections over the last ten days:

Mr. Booker Goes to Washington

Overarching the day’s remarkable election results on April We’re Not Fools Day was something that seemed transcendent. On Monday evening, Sen. Cory Booker (D, NJ) took the Senate floor and announced that he intended to keep speaking about the existential threat the Trump-Musk actions pose to the American people (not his exact words, but clearly his intent) for as long as he was “physically able.” Through the night and into and through the day Tuesday, Senator Booker, with the aid of several other Democratic senators who asked questions to give him brief periods of rest for his voice, held forth. He spoke passionately about the meaning of the United States and how the current administration is destroying all of the best that our forebears established and fought—both militarily and in social justice movements—for over two and a half centuries.

Booker sounded the alarm to the American people and showed Democrats how to fight back. And he just kept going and going. Large numbers of Americans were enthralled. I kept hearing from people with whom I am only rarely in touch, saying how taken they were with what the senior senator from my home state was doing and saying. It was reminiscent of the speech by the fictional Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Like the Jimmy Stewart character, Booker preached American ideals, but not in the schmaltzy “Capra-corn” way.

Here’s a bit from the Capra version:

Plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little lookin’ out for the other guy, too. … Just get up offa the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up there on top of this Capitol dome. That lady that stands for Liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes, if ya really wanna see somethin’. You won’t just see scenery—you’ll see the whole parade of what man’s carved out for himself after centuries of fighting and fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so’s he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed—that’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties.

Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light; they’re right here—you just have to see them again. … one, plain, simple rule: Love thy neighbor.

You think I’m licked . . . Well I’m not licked, and I’m gonna stay here and fight for this lost cause, even if this room gets filled with lies like these and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place, somebody’ll listen to me

At that point, Senator Smith collapsed. Senator Booker never did. Ultimately and oh-so-fittingly, on Tuesday evening, as voters in Florida and Wisconsin were still going to the polls, Sen. Booker surpassed the record for the longest speech in Senate history, which was set by segregationist Strom Thurmond in filibustering a very mild civil rights bill in 1957.

When he finished, shortly after passing the 25-hour mark, Senator Booker quoted from the late John Lewis:

“He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation. I want you to redeem the dream. Let’s be bold in America.”

Among his accomplishments, Booker demonstrated extraordinary physical stamina. At 55 and a healthy-living advocate and former Stanford football player (as well as a Rhodes Scholar), Booker presents a very different face of the Democratic party from those of Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer.

Oh Happy Day When Cory Talked.

One More Cause for Hope: Mallory McMorrow

It is easily overlooked on such a day, but another cause for hope that America can be saved was the formal announcement by Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow that she is running for the United States Senate seat that will be vacated next year by Senator Gary Peters.

Ms. McMorrow burst on the national scene in 2022 when a right-wing Michigan state senator sent out an email accusing her of wanting to “groom and sexualize” children. A few days later, McMorrow gave a stunning speech in the Michigan State Capitol. What she said on that April day three years ago is even more needed in the face of what the Trump/Musk regime is doing in 2025:

“So who am I? I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.

I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian.

The speech spread quickly and widely on the internet, and McMorrow was seen as a future Democratic star.

I was among those who were immediately taken with her and her ability to present American (and Democratic) values in a way that connects with a wide swath of Americans. Though the leap from state senator to the White House is a long one, I thought she should be the nominee to succeed Joe Biden. I sent her a message and advocated for that impossible dream, pointing out that I had identified Barack Obama as capable of a similar leap, which he accomplished after a short stopover in the United States Senate. She chose to do neither then, but she, along with Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker, is one of the best communicators the party of democracy has.

The Bottom Line on a Great Day

At one point during his marathon speech, Senator Booker said,

“My efforts today are inadequate to stop what they’re trying to do. But we the people are powerful.”

That is the message many more Americans showed themselves to be waking up to on April We’re Not Fooled Day.

The Day After: Economic Lunacy Day

The Day After is the title of a television movie about nuclear war that aired in 1983 and had an audience of over 100 million people. It came at a time of heightened fear that President Ronald Reagan might get into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

On the day after April We’re Not Fooled Day, another reckless president (fortunately for the world, Reagan ultimately moved away from those policies) launched an economic world war with a stunningly ignorant package of tariffs sure to raise prices substantially for American consumers, add further to the breakdown of the post-World War II world order that kept general peace and prosperity for three-quarters of a century that he had already significantly undermined, will ignite a tariff war, produce a completely unnecessary recession, and quite possibly worse.