Elon Musk million dollar giveaway: Tesla CEO hands over checks to voters at Wisconsin rally after Supreme Court declines request to stop him

He gave out the checks on Sunday (30 March) on the stage at a town hall in Green Bay in his latest effort to support conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Urging the crowd to back Schimel, Musk cast Tuesday as "a vote for which party controls the House of Representatives" and implied "the future of civilization" is at stake.

One of the recipients of a large, showy check, Nicholas Jacobs, is the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans. Musk handed out the checks just hours after the state Supreme Court rejected Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul's effort to block Elon Musk from handing out $1 million payments on Sunday night.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's order came just minutes before the event was set to start. Kaul wrote in his initial filing on Friday that he was asking for emergency relief to stop Musk and America PAC "from further promoting a million-dollar giveaway to attendees of a planned event on Sunday, March 30, 2025, and prohibiting Respondents from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote."

In the initial lawsuit, shared by Kaul's office, Kaul argued that "Musk's announcement of his intention to pay $1 million to two Wisconsin electors who attend his event on Sunday night, specifically conditioned on their having voted in the upcoming April 3, 2025, Wisconsin Supreme Court election, is a blatant attempt to violate" state law, which "forbids anyone from offering or promising to give anything of value to an elector in order to induce the elector to go to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote for a particular person." So far, two political groups aligned with Musk -- America PAC and Building America's Future -- have poured nearly $20 million into supporting Schimel for the open seat.

The world's richest man has used cash giveaways in the past, including a controversial $1 million sweepstakes offered to voters in swing states during last year's election cycle as part of an effort to boost President Donald Trump's chances of winning in those states. A few hecklers yelled at Musk during his speech on Sunday - only to be drowned out by the crowd, which yelled, “USA, USA, USA.” Schimel did not attend as the event, which was sponsored by Musk’s America PAC, thus preventing the candidate taking part with a political action committee.