In recent years, elected officials have faced threats and suffered a deterioration in mental health. While coverage of such incidents often focuses on federal and state officials, local leaders have come under attack as well.
The Elected Leaders Coalition is trying to help local officials work through those challenges, one small group at a time – for now.
Skippy Mesirow is a member of the Aspen (Colo.) City Council. He’s also the founder of the Elected Leaders Coalition and has spent the past six months directing the first cohort of a new ELC initiative called The Pride.
“It’s a one-year commitment but a lifetime opportunity,” Mesirow said of the program. Participants “cultivate a space that is truly safe, open and peer level, where they get a sense of bonding and community they can’t get anywhere else.”
The program welcomes both elected officials and staff, who separately negotiate the hazards that come with their roles in government. Participants gather once per month for 90 minute sessions covering three areas: skill training (such as overcoming personal blocks, dealing with hate and communication), group coaching and peer counselor support.
“I did not know then that the root of my desire to eat was coping mechanisms cleverly designed by my subconscious to protect me. They were the first of my unconscious self-medication strategies, nor would they be the last whose side effects I had to overcome,” Mesirow explains on the ELC website. “Over the following few decades, I remade my life, delved deep into the heart of my traumas, and turned crisis into creation and roadblocks into building blocks.”
And now he is trying to use his own growth experiences to help others to create a better political system. “I want to keep people from dropping out and burning out,” he said.
ELC surveyed participants at the six-month mark to determine whether the program has been successful. And measuring against a benchmark survey conducted at the beginning of the program, Mesirow sees positive results, even though not everyone was able to stick with the program.
“We lost a couple cohort members early on. We know the work is challenging. Most of us [at the local level] are overwhelmed,” he said. “It’s hard to look in the mirror sometimes.”
In fact, ELC grew out of Mesirow’s own desire for self-improvement, going all the way back to his years in youth football, when he was punished by a coach for being too heavy.
Everyone still in the program said they have seen either significant or slight reduction in mental health symptoms since the cohort first started meeting. And everyone also said the program has helped them with professional relationships.
“We have seen across-the-board improvements with colleagues across the council table including people they’ve had challenges with … as well as staff and the public,” Mesirow said.
Of course, working with a dozen people isn’t going to bring about nationwide change – but ELC has a plan for that.
“We need to roll out more cohorts. We need to get more data,” Mesirow explained. “We need to be more robust and reflect the larger kaleidoscope of elected leaders.”
In addition to The Pride, ELC runs a number of other programs that offer similar learning opportunities without the long-term commitment. For example, it offers multi-day “immersive” retreats for local governments or regional gatherings.
“We are trying to get enough data by the two-year mark to support what types of intervention will be the most efficacious in driving mental health and mental well-being,” Mesirow said. “That’s where we can be the best for our community.”
People interested in participating in the cohort kicking off in January can sign up now.
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.