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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,147 bills so far this session, with 576 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,023 bills that expand the rules.
Oklahoma enacted new laws that limit options in election-related litigation, make it more difficult to vote by mail, and create a new voter-facing felony. But Oklahoma and Illinois both enacted legislation improving access for voters with disabilities.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson plans to sign a bill making the voter ID law in the state stricter and another bill to create in-person early voting in the state. Arizona enacted legislation that would expand voter registration services and improve the ability of mail voters to track their ballot.
Looking ahead: North Carolina’s General Assembly is now in short session through the end of June.
Here are the details:
Arizona enacts legislation increasing access to voter registration services and improving a voter’s ability to track the status of their mail ballot. Monday morning, Gov. Doug Ducey signed S.B. 1170, which adds voter registration services at the Department of Fish & Game for people applying for hunting, fishing and trapping licenses. Last week, he signed S.B. 1329, ensuring that mail ballots received on Election Day are promptly loaded into the ballot tracking system. Legislation that would prohibit same-day registration – and create a felony to punish any election official who registers someone on Election Day – is currently on the governor’s desk. Existing Arizona law does not allow same-day registration.
Oklahoma enacts several bills with a mix of provisions expanding and restricting voter access and election administration. On Friday, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed several election-related bills into law. One of the bills would make it more difficult to vote by mail by requiring that mail voters provide a specific ID number when applying for a mail ballot. Another would create new limits on election-related litigation by forcing all lawsuits to be resolved by court order and allowing legislative leadership to intervene. Another bill would allow visually disabled voters to receive an accessible ballot electronically, but it would also threaten voters with a felony if they are not legally blind but apply for a ballot electronically. Oklahoma’s regular legislative session ends this week.
The governor of Illinois signs legislation improving mail ballot access for voters with print disabilities. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a new law making it easier to vote by mail for voters with physical or cognitive disabilities that prevent them from effectively reading or using printed material.
Missouri’s legislative session ends with the governor planning to sign a bill that would create in-person early voting, while also tightening the state’s voter ID law. Gov. Mike Parson announced that he would “certainly” sign H.B. 1878, legislation that would create early voting for the first time in Missouri – but would also make the voter ID law in the state stricter. The bill would create two weeks of in-person early voting via in-person absentee ballots. It would also make the state’s ID law more restrictive by eliminating many of the ID types that Missouri voters are currently allowed to show. In Missouri, the governor has 45 days after a bill is passed and the legislature adjourns to sign or veto that bill.
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.