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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,151 bills so far this session, with 575 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,027 bills that expand the rules.
Last week, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed a bill that would have given mail voters an opportunity to correct an error that may prevent their ballot from counting. The bill would have provided election officials more time to review and count mail ballots.
Meanwhile, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a bill creating no-excuse mail voting, sending it to Gov. Daniel McKee for his signature. And bills that would have severely restricted drop boxes and essentially banned emergency vote centers both failed to pass the Arizona Senate. Additionally, Gov. Doug Ducey vetoed a "voter purge" bill that lacked safeguards to prevent the improper removal of eligible voters, and the Legislature passed a bill to give mail voters the choice to bypass the signature verification requirement by showing ID when they return their mail ballot.
Here are the details:
Rhode Island passes legislation creating no-excuse mail voting. Legislation creating no-excuse mail voting in Rhode Island passed the Senate last week and is eligible for the governor’s signature. While most states allow all voters to vote by mail, Rhode Island is currently one of the 17 states where voters still need a special reason, or “excuse,” to get a mail ballot. In addition to creating no-excuse mail voting, this bill also ensures that voters have access to 24-hour secure drop boxes to return their ballots.
In Arizona, bills that would have severely restricted drop boxes, created problematic voter purges and prohibited emergency vote centers all fail to become law. Last week a bill that would have severely restricted the availability and accessibility of drop boxes failed the Senate. The bill would have prohibited drop boxes unless they were continually monitored by election staff or video monitoring. Opponents argued that these restrictions would be cost-prohibitive and threaten to eliminate drop boxes in many areas, particularly on tribal lands. Legislation that would have effectively banned emergency vote centers also failed the Senate.
On Friday evening, Ducey vetoed a problematic voter purge bill that landed on his desk after passing the Senate last week. The bill would have required state and local officials to use the drivers license file and other incomplete federal databases to identify and remove voters due to a change of address or non-citizenship. Ducey’s veto letter cited concerns about vagueness and the lack of safeguards to prevent lawfully registered citizens from being removed.
Meanwhile, the Arizona House passed S.B. 1362, which would allow mail voters to bypass the signature verification requirement if they return their mail ballot to their polling place, show ID and insert the ballot directly into a tabulator. That bill is now eligible for the governor’s signature.
Maryland's governor vetoes strong cure legislation. Hogan vetoed S.B. 163, which would have created a cure process to allow mail voters to fix possible errors on their ballot to avoid having their ballot rejected. The bill would have also allowed boards of elections to verify mail ballots earlier than currently allowed under state law. In his veto message, the governor praised these provisions, but explained that he was vetoing the bill because it did not impose signature matching as a ballot validation tactic and “did nothing to address ballot collecting.” Under current regulations, Maryland voters do have some ability to cure mistakes with their mail ballots, but only due to a skeletal, non-statutory process through the State Board of Elections.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.