Millions of voters out West were asked explicitly this week to stick up for expanded voting rights — and in the main they did so in a series of ballot measures.
In a pair of resounding decisions, Nevadans enshrined 11 voting rights in their state Constitution and Calfornians restored voting rights to nearly 50,000 people who are on parole for felony convictions.
But statewide voters in California rejected the idea of 17-year-olds voting in primaries, while San Francisco shot down a proposal to let 16-year-olds vote in local elections.
Here are the details on each of the most important voting rights measures on Tuesday's ballots:
Felons voting
The measure was added to the ballot by the General Assembly this spring, during a period of intense national reckoning about race — especially the impact of the criminal justice system on people of color. It had the approval of 59 percent with about three quarters of the ballots tabulated Thursday morning.
The initiative's supporters included the state Democratic Party and Sen. Kamala Harris, the party's vice presidential candidate and a former California attorney general. The state Republcian Party opposed it.
Improving voting rights for ex-convicts nationwide has become a decade-long cause of civil rights groups, who say democracy is enhanced when political power is given back to people who have paid their debt to society. The campaign has resulted in more than 2 million felons, a group disproportionately Black and Latino, getting more political rights in the past decade. (Republicans, who argue that rewarding violent or repeat offenders is an injustice to their victims, have most notably succeeded in restricting newly restored rights for felons in Florida.)
The state estimates that three out of four men released from its prisons these days are Black, Latino or Asian American. "For far too long, Black and brown Californians have been excluded from our democracy," said Taina Vargas-Edmond, who ran the campaign for the referendum. "Voters definitively righted a historic wrong."
California joins 17 states that already allow felons to register upon release from prison. It was one of the first states to restore any of their political rights, allowing felons to vote since 1975 after completing probation and parole. That is too strict by today's standards, ballot measure advocates argued.
Teens voting
Californians rejected a proposal, by a margin of 10 percentage points, that would have added their state to the roster of 18 others (plus D.C.) where 17-year-olds may vote in primaries if they are going to turn 18 by Election Day.
And the adults in the state's iconic bastion of liberalism, San Francisco, narrowly rejected a proposal to allow 16-year-olds to vote in elections for mayor, Board of Supervisors and other municipal posts. The margin was just 4,000 votes out of more than 330,000 cast.
Proponents of lowering the voting age from 18 say doing so would boost civic engagement by establishing the habit of election participation at an earlier age. But opponents say the change would give too much responsibility to youngsters neither mature nor informed enough to make decisions about political issues.
Voting bill of rights
With three-quarters of the expected total vote counted in Nevada on Thursday, a voter bill of rights was garnering 63 percent support.
The state enacted a law 17 years ago guaranteeing Nevadans 11 voting rights and privileges. The ballot measure does not alter that law, but putting the measure in the Constitution makes it much tougher to alter or overturn someday.
The state Constitution will now guarantee that voters will have their ballots recorded accurately, can cast votes without intimidation or coercion, and can get answers to questions regarding voting procedures and see those procedures posted at polling places.
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.