Missouri's governor signaled Friday he was likely to sign legislation making it easy to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, but not in time for local elections across the state next week.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson tipped his hand as he sought to tamp down a budding furor for what he said a day earlier. Critics viewed him as cavalierly dismissing anxieties of those having to venture out Tuesday for failing to qualify for an absentee ballot under the current excuse requirements.
"I hope people feel safe to go out and vote, but if they don't, you know, the No. 1 thing — their safety should be No. 1," Parson said during a press briefing Thursday. "If they don't, then don't go out and vote."
The governor vowed on Friday to make a final decision next week about legislation, approved by the General Assembly two weeks ago, that would largely suspend through the end of the year the strict rules requiring Missourians to cite a reason for seeking a mail ballot. Those rules have kept the use of such ballots below 10 percent in recent elections.
Parson labeled the measure "absentee reform" in an appearance on all-news KMOX radio in St. Louis, however, and also said he was likely to support additional state funding to make remote voting easier.
He also stressed his hope that Missourians feel safe going to polling places Tuesday because voting is "one of the most important things you can do."
Parson started reopening the state's economy four weeks ago and now all businesses — including large venues, concerts and movie theaters — are allowed to operate so long as seating is spaced out to enforce social distancing.
[See how election officials in Missouri — and every other state — are preparing for November.]
If the measure on his desk becomes law, no-excuse absentee voting will be the default setting for primaries the rest of year everywhere but Texas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Critics of the measure, most prominently GOP Attorney General Jay Aschcroft, are pressing for a veto on the ground that relaxing the rules would invite fraud in the congressional and state primaries in August and the November general election.
The bill would allow people at high risk of Covid-19 infection to obtain a vote-from-home ballot, while other Missourians could use them so long as they got the ballots notarized. Currently, the very small list of available excuses for not voting in person include being ill, disabled, out of town or facing a religious restriction to travel on Election Day.
The governor is expecting to face a viable if long-shot challenge from the state auditor, Democrat Nicole Galloway.
Next week's city council, school board and local ballot measure contests were postponed from April 7 because of the pandemic. Parson said he might vote Tuesday or in-person this weekend at an early voting location.
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.