First Thing: Liberal judge beats Musk-backed candidate in Wisconsin supreme court race

Good morning. The liberal judge Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday in a major coup for Democrats, after Elon Musk backed the conservative candidate, making it the most expensive judicial contest in US history. “Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” Crawford said in her victory speech.

“Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.” Musk and associated groups spent millions on her rival, Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge.



With more than 84% of the vote tallied, Crawford led Schimel by nearly 10 percentage points. Schimel accepted his defeat as crowds booed. Trump to announce another tranche of sweeping tariffs Donald Trump will announce his latest round of tariffs on Wednesday afternoon in a moment he has called “liberation day” in his trade war that has sent jitters through global markets and is proving unpopular with much of the public.

Trump has caused bitter divisions with the US’s major trading partners, most notably Canada, with his bellicose rhetoric on tariffs since taking office. He has also repeatedly delayed and rolled back plans to impose them. The White House has said the introduction of sweeping tariffs, scheduled to be announced at 4pm ET, would be immediate, but nothing has been confirmed ahead of the speech.

Trump’s press secretary said he was still “perfecting” the plan on Tuesday. Israel announces plan to seize ‘large areas’ in Gaza Israel intends to expand its war and capture “large areas” of Gaza, the country’s defence minister has said. Israel Katz said in a statement that the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel”.

Strikes continued on Gaza on Wednesday morning. Medical sources in the territory told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks had killed 21 Palestinians since dawn. In other news .

.. Stat of the day: Lowering bad cholesterol ‘may cut risk of dementia by 26%’ Cutting your levels of bad cholesterol could lower the risk of dementia by 26% , a study suggests, with the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease particularly reduced.

Foods high in saturated and trans fats are common sources of LDL-C, also known as bad cholesterol. The number of people living with dementia worldwide is expected to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, but close to half may be possible to prevent or delay the onset of the condition. Don’t miss this: Ezra Klein on Trump – ‘It feels like we are in one of the darkest imaginable timelines’ The New York Times podcast host Ezra Klein and the Atlantic journalist Derek Thompson wrote Abundance in a different time, before the Trump administration and Elon Musk had taken a sledgehammer to the services provided by the government.

The book’s central premise is that government is so tied up in red tape and nimbyism that it struggles to execute projects that benefit people’s lives. Rather than rendering it irrelevant, Klein argues that this “darkest timeline” makes it more vital than ever that liberal democracy can deliver. Climate check: Last summer was second worst for common UK butterflies since 1976 Common butterflies found in gardens, parks and fields in Britain had their second-worst summer since 1976 last year, the world’s largest scientific survey of insect populations has found.

Dr Richard Fox, the head of science at Butterfly Conservation, said extreme weather, made increasingly common by the climate crisis, was turbocharging the biodiversity crisis that affects their numbers. “When we have poor weather, these already-depleted butterfly populations are highly vulnerable and can’t bounce back,” he said. Last Thing: What’s on your ‘do not play’ list? Whether you’re vetoing Kanye after his antisemitic slurs or Kid Rock over being close to Donald Trump, there’s more than a few songs you might not want to hear on your wedding day or party.

In that case, tick them on the ‘do not play’ list . Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to just be political. You can also ban Sweet Caroline, just because.

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