Troiano is executive director of Unite America, a nonpartisan organization seeking "to bridge the divide by enacting structural political reforms and electing candidates who put people over party."
Leading up to Tuesday's state legislative primaries in Virginia, a Roanoke Times editorial asked a key question of our political times: "Will what's left of the center hold?"
The paper went on: "Do voters in one-party districts want legislators who can at least see the center or do they want someone further to the left or the right? When the choice is left to hardcore party activists, the answer is often the latter – which explains why we see so few moderates in either party, and so little bipartisanship in either Richmond or Washington."
Party loyalists and ideological extremists often prevail in low turnout primaries. But not always. And not on Tuesday.
All three candidates endorsed by Unite Virginia, a state affiliate of Unite America, won heavily contested elections. Two were Democrats running in open seats for delegate, Martha Mugler and Suhas Subramanyam. The other was incumbent Republican State Sen. Emmett Hanger. Each prevailed over competition from their ideological flank in lopsided districts where general elections are forgone conclusions.
The significance is not their commitment to a "centrist" label – in fact, these leaders are principled progressives and conservatives – but their shared commitment to finding common ground on issues that will improve the lives of their constituents and championing structural reforms that will make our political process more accountable to the people.
Their wins are not just wins for their party, but for all the people of the state.
Take Hanger, for example. He was Republican chief co-patron of a redistricting reform amendment last session in Richmond, which is moving through an arduous process and must be approved by the state legislature in two consecutive sessions before going on the ballot for voter approval. He's also won numerous awards for his effectiveness as a legislator. Yet he faced a far-right primary challenger, in large part, because he had the political courage to work across the aisle to expand Medicaid.
His primary was brutal. Despite being pro-life and pro-Second Amendment, an outside group leafletted the senator's own church parking lot, warning voters that he funnels money to Planned Parenthood "to kill unborn babies," and also canvassed his neighborhood claiming he was coming for their guns.
Unite Virginia spent heavily to defend Hanger, knowing whichever candidate won the primary would be elected in November in the solidly right-leaning district. Thanks in part to this support, in January a statesman and reformer will return to Richmond, where he has signaled a willingness to help organize a new bipartisan caucus to regularly bring together leaders from both parties.
Unite Virginia's successful pilot project offers political reformers a critical electoral strategy to scale for 2020 and beyond: Apply a counter-weighing force to partisan flamethrowers in primaries on both sides – not to influence which party controls government, but to influence which leaders control both parties.
The need and opportunity for proactive engagement in primary elections is only growing because an increasing number of elections are decided in primaries and, for the first time in more than a century, all but one state legislature is controlled by a single party.
As the New York Times recently reported, legislatures have "grown more tense and vitriolic." Republicans and Democrats in the minority are boycotting sessions entirely, as majority parties flex their muscle, instituting ambitions agendas not only to secure policy wins but also to establish political dominance.
As Michael Wear observed of the abortion debates in both red Alabama and blue New York, they were driven by "politicians supported by advocacy groups and moneyed interests whose goal is to attain whatever level of power is necessary to act unilaterally. This is what a representative democracy looks like when stripped of trust, respect, virtue, and sense of community."
Electing pragmatic reformers such as Muglar, Subramanyam, and Hanger can blunt disturbing trends of party tribalism by building bridges across a widening partisan gulf. We saw a similar situation play out in Alaska this year when a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents created a majority coalition, ensuring every bill passed had bipartisan support.
The aim of political reform is good governance and – ultimately – better policy outcomes on issues that impact people's lives, from education to health care.
We must not forget the recipe for good governance requires both the right incentives and the right leaders; that is, both reforms to unrig a broken system and the leaders who will put people over party.
Reforms like automatic voter registration, independent redistricting commissions, open primaries and ranked-choice voting are all important and necessary. But, by themselves, they are insufficient to cure our politics of growing polarization or deliver policy solutions.
Electoral politics may be more controversial than non-partisan rules changes, but elections matter and leadership matters – especially in the 26 states where citizen-initiated ballot measures are unable to force reform upon our broken system.
Electing strong leaders who are reform-minded and solutions-oriented is an indispensable part of a national strategy to improve our politics and solve our pressing challenges. Virginia has paved a path forward for our movement to follow.
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.