Texans must be given a chance to prove they really did sign their own absentee ballots if the handwriting on the envelopes looks fishy to election officials, a federal judge has ruled.
If not quickly and successfully appealed by the Texas government, the ruling will guarantee the franchise to a relatively small but potentially pivotal group of voters in the nation's second biggest state, where the presidential race has become genuinely competitive for the first time in almost four decades.
Officials are expecting a record deluge of mailed ballots — especially from people older than 65, who have long been automatically exempt from the state's strict excuse requirements for voting remotely. They are also among the people likeliest to have signatures that have varied over time.
Local officials have been allowed to simply toss ballots after making subjective judgements about mismatched handwriting — at least 1,900 of them two years ago and 1,600 in the last presidential election, although in those elections mailed ballots accounted for just 7 percent of the total vote.
If the share of absentee voting soars as expected, so too will the number of potentially rejected ballots, in some cases to a number big enough to affect the outcome of close contests.
On Tuesday, Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio said that arbitrariness "plainly violates certain voters' constitutional rights." He told the state to inform local election officials within 10 days it is unconstitutional to reject ballots based on a "perceived signature mismatch" without notifying voters and giving them a "meaningful opportunity" to sign again. The choices for the state's 254 counties, Garcia said, are to either to accept every signature or come up with a do-over procedure in the next eight weeks — one that starts with a phone call to the voters whose signatures don't look right.
The case began more than a year ago, long before the coronavirus pandemic turned once arcane procedures governing vote-by-mail into a top cause of civil rights groups. The suit was filed by two voters who were told, 10 days after Election Day as state law dictates, that their ballots had been rejected because the endorsement on the flap of a ballot envelope didn't look enough like other signatures on file. They were joined by groups that represent Texans with disabilities, veterans and young voters in arguing the state law violates the 14th Amendment.
Texas offers mail-in ballots to voters who are elderly, will be traveling during an election or who claim a disability or illness. It is one of six states, and the only potential presidential battleground, that has not relaxed those rules because of the public health crisis.
The ruling comes as mail-in ballots for the general election are almost set to go out to voters.
Joe Biden is actively campaigning to become the first nominee of his party since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to carry the state, which now has 38 electoral votes, and polling shows him with a realistic shot. Democrats are also in striking distance of picking up a Senate seat, as many as five House seats and control of half the state Legislature — all mainly because of the growth of the Latino and college-educated suburban populations.
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.