Kansas may not require people registering to vote to provide documents proving their citizenship, a federal appeals court has ruled, striking down one of the most prominent Republican efforts to prove assertions of widespread election cheating.
The law was enacted in 2013 at the behest of Kris Kobach, the polarizing GOP figure who was then the state's top elections official and went on to chair President Trump' s commission to investigate voter fraud, which disbanded after coming up nearly empty.
Wednesday's ruling could bolster the prospects for other lawsuits by progressive groups and the Democrats. They are challenging election laws in more than a dozen states, many of them 2020 battlegrounds, arguing many rules were designed by conservative legislators to suppress the votes of racial minorities, college students and other reliably Democratic voters on the pretext of outsmarting an army of fraudsters that doesn't actually exist.
"Kansas wasn't able to muster evidence that the law in question here was necessary to prevent voter fraud, and I think that broader principle could have reverberations beyond the specific context of this case in a wide range of disputes over voting access between now and November," said Dale Ho, the American Civil Liberties Union's top voting rights lawyer.
Top GOP officials in Kansas said they may ask the Supreme Court to reverse the decision, in which the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded the statute violated the Constitution's equal protection guarantee and the federal law regulating voter registration.
In the past two decades, the court said, 67 noncitizens at most registered or tried to register in Kansas — concluding that "incredibly slight evidence" of misbehavior was "statistically indistinguishable from zero" and did not justify preventing more than 31,000 applicants from registering, disenfranchising them during the five years the law was being enforced. (It has been blocked since 2018 because of the litigation.)
The state's interest in preventing such minimal fraud, the three-judge panel unanimously concluded, does "not justify the burden imposed on the right to vote."
The Kansas law is unique in requiring people to show a physical document such as a birth certificate or passport when applying to register. The state argued that is not too much of a burden and would assure the integrity of the voter rolls.
Mississippi is the only other state requiring would-be voters to similarly prove their citizenship, and that law only applies to naturalized Americans. It is being challenged in a separate federal lawsuit.
Kobach derided the decision as the "essence of judicial activism" and urged an appeal by his successor as secretary of state, Scott Schwab. He and Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a fellow Republican, said they were considering doing so.
The Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, has no say in the matter but urged them to give up. "If we have a problem with voting in the state of Kansas and across the country, it is that not enough people exercise their right," she said in a statement. "So I think eliminating any barriers to voting is a good thing."
Kobach, who was upset by Kelly in a bid for governor in 2018, is now seeking the state's open Senate seat in a competitive Republican primary.
"Make no mistake — this is a huge victory," said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of "Election Meltdown," a sharp critique of the American electoral system.
The case produced "the most important voting trial of the 21st century so far because it was the chance for those like Kobach who claim that voter fraud is a major problem in the United States to prove that in a court of law under the rules of evidence, "The proof was woefully inadequate."
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.