On National Voter Registration Day last September, activists, neighbors and community volunteers across the country took to the streets to help 1.5 million voters get registered in the span of just 24 hours, a historic feat in preparation for the 2020 election. But today, on this year's National Voter Registration Day, those same volunteers are being targeted by extreme, partisan anti-voting measures around the country.
Since 2012, National Voter Registration Day has mobilized thousands of volunteers to help fulfill the promise of our democracy: ensuring that all Americans have access to the ballot. While election officials work tirelessly to expand participation in our elections, many of them have too little funding and resources to reach potential voters, especially those in communities that have been historically underserved and disenfranchised.
Voter registration volunteers fill that gap. They expand the reach of election officials, building trust with their community members and encouraging them to participate in our elections. They regularly reach voters who are missed by government efforts by meeting them where they are, including at grocery stores, schools and community events. These efforts are a necessity for people with disabilities, young people, and Black and Latinx voters, who are up to twice as likely to register at voter registration drives than white voters.
Now, those very acts of civic engagement are being penalized in states across the country. Volunteers and community organizers in states like Texas, Florida and Kansas can face felony charges or hefty fines for helping voters register if they accidentally run afoul of needlessly cumbersome regulations that are often vague and may be enforced unpredictably.
These laws do nothing to strengthen voter registration; on the contrary, they are having immediate, debilitating impacts on efforts to sign up more voters. After Kansas made it a felony offense to give off the appearance of being an election official — a frighteningly ambiguous and subjective law — multiple groups, including the League of Women Voters, were forced to suspend their voter registration drives. As a result, fewer prospective voters will have the opportunity to get the voter registration assistance they need, shutting them out from the electoral process. These attacks on community-centered registration efforts are a severe threat to our democracy and a clear, partisan attempt to make it harder to vote. They must be stopped.
Laws penalizing essential, good-faith efforts to help voters register sow unnecessary distrust between volunteers and their neighbors, with the intent of restricting who gets to vote in our elections and without making elections any fairer.
Overturning extreme voter suppression laws and protecting the rights of the American people will require an all-hands-on-deck effort, including fighting these needless regulations in the courts. That's why my organization filed a lawsuit against Florida's bill SB 90 for requiring volunteers to provide misleading information to potential voters that could make them less likely to register and harder for community groups to build trust with those they help.
As election lawyers and voting rights advocates fight against the extreme, state-level restrictions to accessing the ballot box, the federal government needs to pass protections that remove unnecessary barriers to voter registration. The new Freedom to Vote Act introduced in Congress would make it easier for more people to register, including through same-day voter registration, thus freeing up more time and resources for election officials and community organizations to focus their outreach on communities that need it most.
Whatever their race, background or ZIP code, all eligible Americans deserve access to the ballot. Helping our neighbors and fellow citizens exercise their right to vote is a non-negotiable part of making that right a reality.
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.