Hart is a columnist for the Tennessee Lookout and the chief communications officer for Haywood County Schools. Opdycke is the president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization.
Modern voter suppression is typically understood as Jim Crow-adjacent laws designed to surgically limit the ability of people of color to cast a ballot in November: voter registration purges, restrictions on drop-off sites and early voting, voter ID laws, etc. Civil rights organizations have – properly – devoted huge time and resources to defeating these practices.
But what about the non-surgical forms of voter suppression, efforts so broad as to be almost invisible?
One example of “broad but invisible” voter suppression just took place in Tennessee.
Tennessee is an open primary state with nonpartisan voter registration. On primary day, any voter can go to the polls and request a Democratic or Republican ballot. And primary day is a big deal because 90 percent of races in November are not competitive.
In much of Tennessee, the Republican primary is the only election that matters.
Madison County, where Gabe lives, is heavily conservative. The local Republican Party is powerful, while the Democratic Party is the exact opposite. Conservatives control most decision-making responsibilities and nearly every major public service that a county provides its citizens. This year’s mayoral election was a common example. The group of candidates consisted of three Republicans and one token Democrat with no chance of winning the election.
Tennessee election law requires voters to “affiliate” with a party to vote in the primary. However, since Tennessee does not register voters by party, there is no mechanism to do so. There are no Republican or Democratic voters as far as the state of Tennessee is concerned, only voters.
This year, on the first day of early voting, a voter was “challenged” at the polls because she was not affiliated with either party. Remember, Tennessee has nonpartisan voter registration; everyone is not affiliated with a party. Later that day, the Madison County GOP issued a statement asserting that it was illegal to vote in the primary unless you were a party member.
Gabe then wrote a column in the local paper about why he, a progressive, voted in the Republican primary to have a say in his representation. He was threatened by the chairman of the County Commission that he “may see his day in court” for breaking the law. The Madison County and state GOP chairmae f ollowed up with an op-ed misstating that a person could be prosecuted in Tennessee for cross-voting in a primary election.
But this was not just misinformed party leaders spreading false and intimidating information.
The following week, the Tennessee secretary of state came to Madison County and, speaking at a local Rotary Club, declared that non-Republicans voting in the Republican primary could “possibly” be prosecuted. The gentleman elected by the people of Tennessee to oversee the election process was publicly affirming false information about voter’s right to participate in a publicly funded election that the law states is open to all registered voters!
By the time primary day rolled around, the local election commission had posted a signature sheet that every voter had to sign that stated: “A person commits a criminal offense if the person knowingly votes in a primary election or participates in a convention of another party during the same voting year.”
This was not surgical voter suppression. It was a broad intimidation campaign to keep everyone at home except partisan activists.
This is the voter suppression no one talks about – partisan politicians using intimidating tactics to lie to voters and keep them from exercising their rights to choose their leaders.
By the end of primary voting in Madison County, 11,768 registered voters cast votes out of a possible 61,757. Eighty percent of the citizens of Madison County who were eligible to vote, didn’t. How much of the 80 percent who chose not to vote did so because they were afraid of going to jail if they chose to vote for the candidate of their choice?
Much of the tension about voting in Madison County has evaporated since the May 3 primary. But the damage done by the strong-arm scare tactics of the local Republican Party and the secretary of state will have lasting effects on future elections. We may never know how much damage, because no one is standing up for these voters. Is anybody listening?
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.