This weekly update summarizing legislative activity affecting voting and elections is powered by the Voting Rights Lab. Sign up for VRL’s weekly newsletter here.
The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,187 bills so far this session, with 580 bills that tighten voter access or election administration and 1,042 bills that expand the rules. The rest are neutral or mixed or unclear in their impact.
Last week, a Michigan ballot initiative seeking to create stricter voter ID requirements received enough signatures to allow the Legislature to enact it without the governor’s approval. In Pennsylvania, a court affirmed that voters may vote by mail without having to provide a special reason or excuse, while a federal judge struck down voting restrictions targeting students in Texas.
Meanwhile, of about 4,000 Iowans who regained their right to vote post-incarceration and registered, nearly 77 percent cast a ballot in the 2020 general election. And the Postal Service announced a new division that will focus on ensuring timely and secure delivery of ballots for the November election.
Here are the details:
A Michigan initiative to create stricter voter ID requirements gets sufficient signatures to allow the Legislature to enact it without governor approval. Sponsors of the Secure MI Vote initiative turned in over 500,000 signatures, well over the roughly 340,000 required. The initiative seeks to create a strict photo ID requirement for in-person voters and to require voters applying for mail ballots to include a specific ID number on their ballot application. After the state’s Bureau of Elections approves the legitimacy of the submitted signatures (which may take months), the Legislature has 40 days to enact the initiative. If enacted, the initiative would not be subject to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s veto. Since the signatures were submitted well past the June 1 deadline, the initiative will not be on the 2022 general election ballot.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that all voters may continue voting by mail. In 2019, a bipartisan law expanded mail voting availability in Pennsylvania to all voters. Previously, mail voting was limited to voters with a specific reason or excuse. Following the 2020 election, some of the same legislators who expanded mail voting sued to strike it down as a violation of the state constitution. The trial court struck down the law in January, but on Aug. 2, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld it, affirming the freedom of all Pennsylvania voters to choose to vote by mail.
A federal judge strikes down voter registration restrictions targeting students, others. In 2021, Texas enacted S.B. 1111, which imposed new restrictions on who could register to vote. Specifically, S.B. 1111 prohibited voters from using a P.O. box as a registration address and authorized election officials to require additional evidence of residence from certain voters. On Aug. 2, a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing these rules because they would have made it impossible for some people to register – including part-time and off-campus college students – and would have required an unjustifiable documentation burden for certain voters.
More than three-quarters of Iowans who had their voting rights restored after felony convictions and registered to vote in the 2020 election cast their ballots. Gov. Kim Reynolds pursued voting rights restoration via constitutional amendment for years, but she finally found success ahead of the 2020 general election through an executive order. After the order was issued, 3,955 Iowans who had previously been ineligible to vote due to felony convictions re-registered in time for the 2020 elections. Of those voters, over 77 percent cast a ballot in the election.
The U.S. Postal Service launches a new division focused on election mail. USPS announced on Wednesday the creation of a dedicated division, known as Election and Government Mail Services, which will focus on ensuring timely and secure delivery of ballots for the November election. The plan will involve local “election mail strike teams” prepared to handle any problems that arise.
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.