The mailing of absentee ballots in Wisconsin has been put on hold just a week before voters are required to start receiving them, the result of a state Supreme Court ruling in a case pitting the rights of minor parties against the orderly conduct of a battleground state's presidential election.
The court ruled 4-3 on Thursday that no vote-by-mail ballots may be distributed until the justices decide whether to add the Green Party presidential ticket to the ballot, an action that may come more than a week from now.
The four Republicans on the court favored hitting the pause button and the three Democrats opposed it. The outcome of the Greens' bid could decide the fate of the 10 electoral votes in the tossup state, because the chance to vote for the progressive candidates is sure to siphon off support from Joe Biden to the benefit of President Trump.
More immediately, the high court's order added another chaotic chapter to the story of courts complicating voting in Wisconsin during this year's pandemic.
Almost 1 million requests for mail-in ballots have already been received, signaling use of the mail this fall will smash past records in the state. (The presidential vote total four years ago was 2.8 million). And at least 378,000 absentee voting envelopes have already gone in the mail, the state's chief elections official estimated Thursday night.
"It would be incredibly complicated and difficult" at this point to print more than a million new ballots and come up with a reliable system for relying on replacements for the ones already distributed, she said, especially because the responsibility falls to 1,850 municipal clerks across the state. (One illustration of the logistical nightmare is that Milwaukee County has to print 475 different ballots.)
The state's high court has the authority to suspend the law requiring that absentee ballots go out starting Sept. 17 — but it has no power to address a federal law requiring them to be sent to military and overseas voters just two days later.
The Green nominee, retired UPS laborer Howie Hawkins from upstate New York, is not the only minor party candidate who's sued after being denied a spot on the ballot by the state Elections Commission. So has rapper Kanye West, and his separate case could further delay ballot distribution.
Four years ago, Green candidate Jill Stein received 31,00 votes in Wisconsin — while Trump's margin of victory was only 23,000 votes, or less than a single percentage point.
The party sued after its 2020 ticket was blocked from the ballot last month, when the Elections Commission deadlocked on whether that was the right punishment for vice presidential candidate Angela Walker having used two different South Carolina addresses on her filings. The panel's three Democrats said that was enough to disqualify her and Hawkins. The three Republicans wanted to allow Wisconsinites the chance to vote for the Green ticket.
The GOP seems less interested in seeing if West, too, will take votes away from Democratic ticket. The commission rejected him for a spot on the ballot, 5-1, after finding his team was minutes late in filing the proper paperwork last month. An initial ruling in his lawsuit is expected next week.
A decision is also expected any day in a wide-ranging lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee, which is pushing to ease the rules in ways the party hopes will boost turnout — and with it Biden's chances.
The state's voters have become very used to watching judges arbitrate election rules this year.
Republicans who insisted on conducting the primary on schedule in April, as the first wave of the coronavirus was surging, got their way by persuading the state Supreme Court to overrule Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' plan for a delay — and by getting the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court's decision that absentee ballots cast at the last minute should count even if delayed in the mail six days. At least a score of poll workers and in-person voters later became ill with Covid-19, the state says.
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.