The reversal of voting by mail's standing and credibility, with Donald Trump gone and Washington newly in Democratic hands, appears complete.
A symbolic capstone on the transformation — from obscure second-tier cause of democracy reformers before the pandemic, to the heart of Trump's crusade of lies about the election, and now to an established aspect of good governance — was delivered Wednesday by President Biden. He said he wanted to put Amber McReynolds, the most prominent evangelist for absentee balloting as head of the National Vote at Home Institute, on the board that oversees the Postal Service.
Assuming she is confirmed by the Senate, which seems likely given initial positive reaction to the nomination, McReynolds would bring several types of diversity to the job. She would become the only woman on the board, and also its first member with expertise about how the beleaguered USPS could become a lasting force for good in the electoral system.
Of the three Biden proposed for the board of governors, McReynolds is also the only political independent. But her tiny nonprofit advocacy group has gained outsized influence among the mainly left-leaning voting rights organizations that pushed last year to make access to the ballot box easier because of Covid-19 — and are now working to protect those gains from a barrage of Republican efforts in state capitals to roll back the rules.
Slightly more than 40 percent of all votes for president arrived in envelopes last fall — 65 million of them, tens of millions more than in previous elections, either returned by mail or put in drop boxes. The record-shattering number would surely have been higher except for two things: deficiencies in the Postal Service's ability to deliver the ballots to election offices in time to be counted, and Trump's constant false claims about the mail guaranteeing widespread election fraud.
McReynolds, who turns 42 next week, took over the fledgling Vote at Home Institute in 2018 after spending most of the previous decade as the top elections official in Denver, a time when Colorado became the first somewhat politically purple state to switch almost entirely to vote-by-mail.
But her standing in the fix-the-system world was obscure enough that, when the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers met in Denver in December 2019, her impassioned presentation about the civic virtues of remote voting drew a smaller audience than panel discussions on money in politics or ranked-choice voting. That all changed three months later, when the pandemic took hold of the country and her organization rushed to produce a report for election officials in all 50 states detailing how they could combat the spread of disease by proactively mailing ballots to all voters and giving the option to return them in postage-paid envelopes or secure drop boxes, or with a trip to election offices or voting locations.
Biden's other nominees are Anton Hajjar, a former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union, and Ron Stroman, who stepped down as deputy postmaster general last year. Their confirmations would mean a board with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, with McReynolds the partisan tie-breaker.
This could give her enormous influence over the future of the agency — starting with the fate of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. The major Republican donor took the job last year and immediately confronted intense criticism for quick changes that prompted national mail slowdowns, and sustained skepticism that his policies were designed to make Trump's derision of voting by mail into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The criticisms have not let up. While the election was not extensively sullied by postal problems, service delays and financial woes persist. At a testy hearing Wednesday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, DeJoy defended his stewardship and said he would press ahead with plans to raise prices and slow the mail.
The new makeup of the board could influence the efforts by Democrats in Congress to bolster the future of mail voting, including with potential federal subsidies, in time for the 2022 midterms. That effort could help counter the restrictive absentee ballot measures now moving through many GOP-run legislatures, including those of battlegrounds Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Some leading GOP members of Congress, even those who voted to certify the Electoral College count in the face of Trump's lies about the election, are nonetheless supporting such bills.
Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa endorsed a measure, which the Repubican-majority General Assembly of his state cleared this week along party lines, that would reduce the days for early in-person voting, close polls earlier on Election Day and set stricter standards for using absentee ballots.
"State legislatures ought to be working on laws that will enhance the protection for mail-in ballots the same as what we have protection for voting in person," told reporters Wednesday. "In other words, the person that casts the ballot is the person that asks for it and is properly registered and property identified and somebody else isn't voting the ballot."
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.