Days after the speaker of the Ohio House was charged with racketeering, colleagues from both parties are lining up to bolster the state's donor disclosure laws.
By Thursday, 22 majority Republicans and five Democrats in the General Assembly had signed on to a measure requiring political advocacy groups to begin naming the original sources of their funds and file disclosure reports with the state.
The bill's prospects are not certain. Still, it's an unusual level of bipartisan collaboration — at either the state or federal level, and especially in an election year — to bolster regulation of campaign finances in hope of controlling the secretive influence of special interests over campaigns and then governing. Good governance groups see mandating this sort of sunshine as essential to the running of a clean democracy.
Had such transparency been in place, the allegedly corrupt way Republican Speaker Larry Householder benefitted from tens of millions in dark money would have been revealed much sooner — if not warded off from the outset.
Householder was removed from the speakership two weeks ago after he and four of his allies were charged in federal court with a bribery scheme that prosecutors describe as probably the biggest instance of public corruption in the state's history.
The group was accused of accepting $60 million in payments from FirstEnergy Solutions over the past three years as donations to a dark money group called Generation Now, created to help Householder win and hold the gavel in Columbus. In return, prosecutors allege, the speaker pushed to enact a $1.3 billion bailout for two of the company's nuclear power plants.
"Now more than ever, Ohioans have seen first-hand how dark money can influence the decisions that impact our lives," said Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Ohio's top elections official. "I'm hopeful that this legislation will be a positive first-step towards finding the solutions necessary to get voters the transparency they deserve."
The bill was introduced in the state House last week by Democrat Jessica Miranda and Republican Gayle Manning. The companion Senate bill is sponsored by Manning's son, Republican Nathan Manning.
No votes have been scheduled, and both chambers are dark for all but one day until the middle of next month. If enacted, the measure would take effect next year and:
- Require groups spending to support or oppose ballot referendums or initiatives to register with the state.
- Align state law with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision by allowing corporations to make independent expenditures and requiring spending and contribution reports.
- Mandate nonprofits that spend politically to file campaign finance reports.
- Give the secretary of state subpoena power to look at bank records and other related documents.
- Require federal political action committees spending in Ohio to file reports with the state.
The legislation is modeled after a bill, proposed by Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted when he was a state senator, that died a decade ago. "Ohio would be in a much better place today" had it passed, Husted said, adding he hopes "enough lessons have been learned" in the intervening years to change its prospects.
"This is the first step to rein in the wild west of dark money spending we've seen in Ohio over the last decade or longer," Miranda said. "Corruption has tainted our statehouse for far too long. We're seeing the sowing of all that right now more than ever."
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.