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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,448 bills so far this session, with 573 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,089 bills that expand the rules.
Last week, a Missouri bill that would create a stricter voter ID law and introduce in-person early voting advanced toward a floor vote. Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s strict voter ID bill passed the House and an appellate court reinstated Florida’s restrictive election law in time for 2022 elections.
Looking ahead: The Missouri bill may see a vote on the Senate floor this week, and the Texas House Elections Committee will hold its first hearing since the sweeping elections bill known as S.B. 1 was first tested in the state's March primary election.
Here are the details:
Florida restrictions on drop boxes, mail voting and voter registration were reinstated. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the permanent injunction that blocked some provisions of S.B. 90, including restrictions on drop boxes, third-party voter registration, mail voting and line warming activities. Though the court has not yet issued a final ruling on the case, this stay means the voting restrictions will be in place for the 2022 elections while the appeal is pending. S.B. 90 was enacted in 2021; the state enacted another piece of restrictive legislation ( S.B. 524) this year that will also likely be enforced due to the 11th Circuit’s stay.
Missouri’s legislation creating in-person early voting, but also stricter voter ID, is headed to a Senate floor vote. H.B. 1878, a bill that would make the state’s voter ID law more strict but also create two weeks of in-person early voting, was perfected in the Senate last week. This bill would allow Missouri voters to cast a ballot in-person absentee ballots, for the first time. (Missouri is currently one of only eight states that do not offer in-person early voting.) The bill would also require photo ID for all in-person voting. Under existing law, voters are permitted to provide certain types of non-photo ID and still vote using a regular ballot. If the bill passes on the Senate floor, it will head back to the House for concurrence.
The Texas House Elections Committee will hold its first interim hearing this week. The committee will hear invited testimony on the implementation of poll watcher training required by S.B. 1, as well as recommendations to quickly report accurate election results. This hearing comes after Texas election officials faced challenges in conducting the state's first elections under the overhaul passed last year. Among the required changes, S.B. 1 restricts early voting and bans unsolicited mail-in voting applications from being provided to voters. Texas officials had less than six months to prepare for implementation of the new law in time for the March primary. Voters faced significant barriers to ballot access including high rates of mail-in ballot application rejection and temporary voter registration card shortages. Mail ballot rejection rates soared to nearly 13 percent, up from just over 1 percent during the 2020 election.
New Hampshire’s strict voter ID bill passed the House. S.B. 418, which would make state voter ID law more restrictive, passed the House with an amendment clarifying the deadline for voter ID materials. Current New Hampshire law allows voters without ID to cast a regular ballot if they complete an affidavit affirming their identity, under penalty of perjury. This bill would eliminate that alternative, and instead rescind their vote from the count if they are unable to provide an ID. Most states with voter ID laws offer an alternative method of voting to ensure the identity of voters without ID can still be verified. This new bill would put New Hampshire in the minority of states by doing away with that option. The amended version of the bill will return to the Senate for a vote.
The Oklahoma Legislature enacted a comprehensive private funding ban. Lawmakers enacted H.B. 3046, which prohibits the acceptance of anything of value for purposes of conducting elections. Any violation of the new rules could result in criminal charges for election administrators. Oklahoma is one of five states to pass new criminal penalties targeting election officials this year.
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.