The fast-spreading national overhaul of this year's electoral process has started to slow down — because most places that could delay their primaries or ease remote voting at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak have done so.
West Virginia has become the 15th state to postpone its Democratic presidential primary and Idaho joined more than a dozen other states in deciding almost all primary voting will be done with absentee ballots. Maryland decided to allow some in-person voting in what was to have been a totally vote-at-home primary, while the pitched battle over Ohio's primary accelerated.
These are the latest developments:
Ohio
The state asked a federal judge Thursday to throw out a lawsuit, filed by voting rights groups only hours earlier, challenging the latest rules and newest date for the primaries as unhealthy and discriminatory.
"It is truly unavoidable that Ohio is now on its third schedule for completing the primary election," the office of GOP Attorney General Dave Yost wrote. The plan "ends the chaos and offers Ohio voters and boards a certain path forward for completing Ohio's 2020 primary. But, a new source of confusion has cropped up: this lawsuit."
The original primary was called off hours before polls were to open March 17, with Gov. Mike DeWine citing the pandemic's reach into Ohio as a health emergency and promising people could go to the polls on June 2 instead. His fellow Republicans in charge of the General assembly decided on something very different: an April 28 primary almost entirely by mail, with postcards going to about 8 million registered voters with instructions for obtaining an absentee ballot.
The lawsuit says the plan violates federal law and the Constitution in several ways, including by not reopening the registration period to permit new voters to participate in the extended contest. (Congressional and legislative seats are on the ballot in addition to 136 Democratic presidential delegates. They also say the timetable is too compressed and complicated to be fair to the electorate.
Maryland
The state Board of Elections reversed itself Thursday and recommended there be at least one voting center open in each of the state's 24 counties (with four in Baltimore) for the June 2 primary.
After saying a week ago that all voting should be done with absentee ballots that get dropped off or returned by mail, the board changed its mind at the behest of progressive groups, who say the in-person option is essential to preserving the rights of homeless, itinerant, disabled and non-English-speaking voters.
State officials say they won't have enough protective gear and sanitizing supplies for poll workers by June.
The altered plan needs the approval of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who endorsed the all-remote options when he ordered a five-week postponement of the primary. On the ballot are the Democratic presidential contest and judicial and local offices across the state. (A special congressional election in Baltimore, for the seat vacated by he death of Democrat Elijah Cummings, is being conducted entirely by mail and concludes April 28.)
West Virginia
The day of the election — when Democrats will declare their preferred national standard-bearer and both parties' voters will choose nominees for Congress, governor and the Legislature — was moved back four weeks, to June 9, under an emergency executive order signed by GOP Gov. Jim Justice late Wednesday.
West Virginia was the last state to report a novel coronavirus case. There are now more than 200 confirmed cases, and epidemiologists say the peak will be right about when the primary was originally scheduled, and about two weeks behind the rest of the country.
"I was absolutely hopeful and very supportive of trying to do our election on May 12," Justice said. "As we continue to get closer and closer, it's ever so apparent that that's just absolutely the wrong thing to do."
Election officials had already announced that all 1.2 million registered voters would be sent an application for an absentee ballot and that the pandemic would count as one of the available excuses.
Idaho
The state's top officials are taking to the airwaves to publicize their decision to switch May 19 primaries to entirely remote voting. Voters will have another two weeks, until June 2, to drop of their ballots or make sure their mailed-in forms arrive.
"Given the growing number of coronavirus cases in Idaho, it simply was not safe for voters, election workers or the larger community to hold in-person voting," Secretary of State Lawrence Denny said in explaining the decision he and Gov Brad Little, a fellow Republican, made this week.
Counties were urged to double their print runs for the absentee ballots, which voters must still request online or at their local courthouse. But they may both register and request a ballot as late as election day. The state's presidential primary happened in March on schedule. The May contests are for congressional, legislative and judicial nominations
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.