It’s a slow week for elections, with North Carolina the only state hosting voters on Tuesday – and mostly for municipal elections. Without any statewide or legislative races on the ballot, expect minimal turnout. In fact, the average turnout drop off for North Carolina federal runoffs is around 54 percent.
Fewer than a dozen states require runoffs when no candidate in a race receives a majority of the vote. But North Carolina’s version is different. A runoff is only necessary if no candidate receives a “substantial” plurality of votes, meaning 30 percent plus one. Additionally, a runoff is not required unless the candidate with the second most votes asks for one.
The election will include 10 municipality races, two board of education elections, and at least two counties' — Graham and Wake — races for sheriff. The biggest races include mayoral and city council contests in Charlotte, Fayetteville and Greensboro.
On Nov. 8, North Carolina voters will decide 14 seats in the House of Representatives — most of which are currently held by Republicans — and one Senate seat. On May 17, Cheri Beasley won the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat and she will face off against Republican Rep. Ted Budd.
In the 2020 election, Republicans won the majority of seats without much trouble. Former President Donald Trump won North Carolina with 49.9% of the votes compared to Biden’s 48.6%.
Cooper has been facing off against a Republican-led legislature, which means there’s been little action on election laws in the battleground states.
There have been few changes to the battleground state’s election law in recent years, with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the Republican-led General Assembly working at odds.
Through a ballot initiative, voters approved a strict photo ID requirement that has been challenged in court by groups claiming it discriminates against Black people. The law remains on hold.
In fact, the courts have been the main source of changes to election policy in recent years:
A federal court in 2020 decided absentee ballots without the required voter information could not be rejected without allowing the individual sufficient time to fix the issues with their ballot. This process still stands.
A budget bill passed under the state’s governor would allow North Carolina to join the Electronic Registration Information Center, an interstate system for sharing voter registration data. ERIC helps states maintain accurate voter lists. The bill only provides enough funding for one year.
Read about additional changes in North Carolina.
This article was updated on July 26, 2022.
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.