Republicans emerged from Tuesday’s elections on shaky footing.

Over the past 10 weeks, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have worked to hobble the federal government, pummel into submission the country’s most powerful independent institutions and enact a sweeping nationalist agenda with little regard — and often disdain — for political norms and the Constitution itself. And they’ve done so with near-universal support from the GOP in Washington.

Then the voters got the chance to speak.

In two deep-red House districts in Florida, Republicans had lower-than-expected margins as they clinched the safe seats vacated by “America First” royalty only after sending in national and state reinforcements, including Trump himself, to drum up support. And in Wisconsin, they suffered a crushing defeat in a record-breakingly expensive Supreme Court race. After Musk’s money and personality dominated the contest, liberal Judge Susan Crawford secured a 9-point victory against Trump’s endorsed candidate, Brad Schimel.

“I’m honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag,” said Pam Van Handel, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County. “I thought [Musk] was going to be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on.”

Rohn Bishop, the mayor of Waupun, Wisconsin, and former chair of the Republican Party of Fond du Lac County, admitted that the race “throws up a bunch of warning signs for the midterm election.”

“I thought maybe Elon coming could turn these people to go out and vote,” Bishop said. Instead, he added, “I think [Musk] helped get out voters in that he may have turned out more voters against [Schimel].”

Democrats had sold the Wisconsin election in particular as a referendum on Trump and Musk. And as the dust settled, they gloated.

“It’s time for them to walk away from this unelected, unpopular, unhinged and un-American billionaire puppet master,” a triumphant House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said of Musk on Tuesday night.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer applauded Wisconsin’s voters, who he said “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and DOGE by rejecting an extreme Republican for their Supreme Court: our Democracy is not for sale.”

Musk and groups he backed, including his America PAC, funneled $20 million into the election through splashy and controversial tactics, including doling out $1 million checks to Republican voters and paying people $100 each to sign a petition to quell “activist” judges.

He called the race “a super big deal” to a Green Bay crowd Sunday and said the outcome could affect “the entire destiny of humanity.”

In the wake of Schimel’s loss, Trump took to Truth Social to sell a ballot measure enshrining voter ID laws into Wisconsin’s constitution as a “BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS, MAYBE THE BIGGEST WIN OF THE NIGHT.”

He made no mention of the decisive loss in the Supreme Court race that he had been urging voters to participate in. And other Republicans sought to separate that loss from the president and place the blame elsewhere.

“First and foremost, this is not a referendum on Donald Trump. It’s a referendum on the Republican Party in Wisconsin,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.).

R.J. Hybben, with the State Federation of Wisconsin College Republicans, admitted that the “results” weren’t “great,” but said, “I don’t think Elon hurt.”

Instead, he blamed the Democratic advantage in special elections, owing to a more highly educated base that is more likely to show up to the polls in off-years.

For now, Republicans will be breathing a sigh of relief that Democrats are no closer to snatching away that House majority. But they came short of Trump’s margins of victory in both states in November.

In the race to replace embattled national security adviser Mike Waltz in Florida’s 6th District, Trump-endorsed Republican Randy Fine delivered a decisive, 14-point victory against Josh Weil, a Democrat who had outraised Fine by over a 10 to 1 rate thanks in large part to small-dollar donations from outside the state. But he underperformed sharply compared to Trump, who won the deep-red district by more than 30 points just four months ago.

Up in the state’s Panhandle, Republican Jimmy Patronis trounced Democrat Gay Valimont by 15 points, winning about 57 percent of the vote. But in the state’s scarlet 1st District, no Republican has won with less than 64 percent since 2001.

Trump himself saw the races as a “crucial” referendum on his party’s continued progress, telling voters last week during a town hall that the results of the election to replace his acolyte, Matt Gaetz, “will help determine whether the radical left will grind Congress to a halt, which is what they want to do — just stop everything, all the progress that we’ve made.”

And the party’s anxieties came into clearer focus last week when the president announced he was pulling Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador. Stefanik had won her safe-red New York district by over 24 points in November. Still, Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social, “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”

The special elections also came on the precipice of a monumental and politically delicate moment for Trump, who on Wednesday is set to unveil an avalanche of tariffs his administration has branded the country’s “liberation day” — but which economists caution could have a deleterious effect on the U.S. economy.

In Wisconsin, Democrats think they may have figured out a playbook that will help them as they gear up for the midterms. They sought to use Musk’s influence against him, framing the race as yet another example of the world’s richest man — a “special government employee” often by Trump’s side — wielding undue influence over the country.

Musk’s approval ratings consistently lag behind Trump’s, and the president has repeatedly had to defend his senior adviser as Democratic messaging has coalesced around criticism of Musk as an unelected “oligarch.”

“He’s becoming electoral poison,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster. “The Democratic Party is going to make Elon a central issue in its messaging, as it should, and Democrats are getting better at focusing on what matters to voters, which is the threat he poses to entitlements.”

Shia Kapos, Meredith Lee Hill, Elena Schneider, Jordain Carney and Andrew Howard contributed to this report.