Update: Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio went to court Monday afternoon hoping to delay until June 2 the in-person Democratic presidential primary vote set for Tuesday, saying that proceeding would not comply with new federal coronavirus guidelines against gatherings of more than 50 people. He filed the suit because elections in the state are run by counties, so DeWine does not have the authority over polling places as he does over the restaurants, movie theaters and other places he ordered shut on Sunday. Ohio has 50 known cases of the virus as of Monday.
The four presidential primaries scheduled for Tuesday are going ahead on schedule, albeit with last-minute modifications and serious wariness about turnout in light of the intensifying national coronavirus shutdown.
Officials in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona have all said they are taking extra health precautions so voting in person remains safe. Besides, they say, so much early balloting has already happened that closing the polls on the final scheduled day of voting would severely muddy the integrity of the results.
After Tuesday, however, the national political calendar is increasingly in flux — making some voting rights advocates wary about the potential for suppression, while other arguing the Covid-19 pandemic presents a silver lining for democracy reform if it prompts more widespread adoption of voting from home and by mail.
After this week, the next presidential primary was to have been Georgia's on March 24, but the state has postponed the contest until May 19, the regular primary day for congressional and state contests. Louisiana acted even more dramatically, postponing its presidential contest from April 4 until June 20 — two weeks after the last nominating contest on the schedule, potentially subjecting the state to a loss of convention delegates as punishment for skirting party rules.
Wyoming, meanwhile, has called off its April 4 in-person caucuses in favor of a totally vote-by-mail system.
New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and four other states also have primaries set in April. None of those plans has been altered yet, although leaders in Albany have been discussing a potential eight-week delay while the state Elections Commission in Madison was taking steps to encourage absentee voting and sending mail ballots to nursing home residents.
A broad coalition of civil rights and voting rights groups warned Monday that disrupting the primary timetable now could disenfranchise legions of voters — but that there was still sufficient time to engineer safer, more convenient options for the fall.
"Sudden changes to election times, locations, and more have been proven to create barriers to, and in some instances the denial of, citizens their right to vote," the coalition said, but "all states should have contingency plans in place for additional voting options for the general election."
What those plans should include may become clearer Tuesday. Officials in the four primary states say their worries are not so much about keeping their equipment sanitary all day and enforcing "social distancing" among voters.
Instead, they cite concerns that last-minute relocation of polling stations — mainly to get them out of assisted-living centers and nursing homes because the elderly are more vulnerable to the virus — will cause confusion. They are also worried about the potential for either plummeting same-day turnout, because of anxieties about being in public, or excessively long wait times because many of the mostly older corps of poll workers decline to show up.
In theory, the intersection of Covid-19 and democracy would be softened if the contest for the Democratic nomination ended, but there was no indication at Sunday night's debate that Sen. Bernie Sanders is contemplating bowing out now that former Vice President Joe Biden has amassed a very-difficult-to-overcome delegate lead. It's also the case that, for the rest of the spring, many of the presidential contests are on the same days as primaries for other offices.
If the pandemic threatens to persist long enough to make it dangerous to hold the general election Nov. 3, Congress has the power to postpone the election — an unprecedented step that would require an extraordinary measure of bipartisan support in order to ward-off suspicions that democracy itself was being suspended.
Several good-governance and civil rights groups have already said this extreme measure would be untenable.
Alternatively, Congress could pass legislation requiring all the states to permit no-excuse and remote absentee voting. That would be welcome news to many who advocate for making it easier and more convenient to exercise the franchise — even when long lines and cramped quarters at polling places do not reset a public health hazard.
A version of this idea was proposed last week by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, whose bill would require mail-in or drop-off paper ballots be available nationwide if more than a quarter of the states declared a state of emergency because of coronavirus — but also provide $500 million in federal aid to carry out that mandate.
The National Vote at Home Institute said it was working with legislators in Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia, New York and Rhode Island on possible measures to expand the use of liberalized absentee mail-in voting this year.
Within days, the group said, it will unveil a "scalable strategic plan that can be adopted by election officials in every state across the country." Although no single plan will work in every state, the group said, "we are confident that we can deliver an actionable way to preserve the integrity of elections through November and beyond."
"It is imperative for state election officials to address voters' and poll workers' fears by limiting the need to cast an in-person ballot," the League of Women Voters said Monday in urging all the states and both parties to permit or expand mail-in voting during both the primaries and in November. "Our top priority must be the health and safety of the American people while simultaneously upholding the rights of all voters."
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.