Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct Sen. Lisa Murkowski's support for voting rights legislation.
The new year brought with it a change in leadership at one of nation’s leading cross-partisan political reform organizations, as RepresentUs announced Tuesday that co-founder Joshua Graham Lynn has been elevated to CEO.
Ten years ago, Lynn and Josh Silver co-founded RepresentUs to advocate for systemic changes to the American political system. Silver had been serving as CEO, but is stepping aside to serve as executive chairman.
Lynn and his peers across the democracy reform movement have an ambitious agenda focused on voting rights, gerrymandering, election integrity and campaign finance.
“In 2012, in the wake of Citizens United, we — Josh Silver and I — recognized the urgent need to start addressing systemic reform ... and we recognized the need for an organization not focused on Democrats or Republicans but focused on bridging the ideological divide,” said Lynn.
In the ensuing decade, RepresentUs has been among the leading advocates for causes like open primaries, ranked-choice voting and ethics changes, claiming success in more than 125 instances around the country.
Lynn, who had served as president of the organization, has a background in marketing and creative services. RepresentUs, which counts numerous big-name actors and musicians among its cultural advisers, has gained national exposure through its short films and ads featuring the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Omar Epps, Ed Helms, Michael Douglas, Mark Ruffalo, and Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom.
RepresentUs and other organizations working on election and voting reform are currently supporting efforts to push a pair of bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, through the Senate. The bills have been passed by the House of Representatives but have been blocked by Republican filibusters in the Senate.
“This fight is not over. There’s plenty of opportunity,” said Lynn. “We need to keep the volume turned up and keep being strategic. If we continue to be smart and use the right messengers for the right constituents — the right members of the Senate — we can move forward.”
Lynn likened the fight for federal voting reforms to “The Sixth Sense.. He believes that once the bills pass, it will be obvious that they were needed.
“Once you see it, you go, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn't see it before,’” he said.
The RepresentUs leadership believes that the transition will go smoothly, thanks to the partnership between Silver and Lynn.
“Joshua Lynn has been an essential element in nearly every facet of RepresentUs’ success and has a smart vision for the future. Silver will be continuing to advise as Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition,” the pair wrote in a letter.
Lynn further explained how their collaboration has been key to the organization’s success: “Josh and I have been working very closely in lockstep for the last 10 years. It’s been a great partnership. We challenge each other but it’s been very aligned.”
Lynn and the team have their work cut out for them going forward. There is an urgent need to build on their past nonpartisan victories, he said, because “what we saw in 2020 was not the end but the top of a slippery slope toward the fall of democracy.”
“We basically need to build a nonpartisan countervailing force to those who are countermanding democracy, the followers of the Big Lie,” he said.
To that end, Represent Us will look to fill strategic gaps and boost advocacy efforts where they are needed most. He pointed to the work RepresentUs has done in West Virginia to influence Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Manchin had opposed the Democrats’ first wide-ranging election reform bill, the For the People Act, but worked with colleagues to draft a somewhat more limited version that became the Freedom to Vote Act that he hoped would attract Republican support, but so far none have signed on. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican senator to provide support for the John Lewis voting rights bill.
But Manchin and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema remain opposed to changing the filibuster rules to enable passage of the bill.
Lynn noted that ReprentUs made a heavy push in West Virginia around the Freedom to Vote Act, organizing communities of faith and military veterans, among others, to urge Manchin forward. He has high hopes that similar work — building what he says will “effectively be the largests grassroots, nonpartisan pro-democracy movement in the country” — will form the roadmap for success in 2022, 2024 and beyond.
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.