Eisen is a senior fellow at Brookings and a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. Sonnett is a former federal prosecutor, criminal defense attorney and a board member of Lawyers Defending American Democracy. Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to LDAD.
Shootings continue in America, including the slaughter on July 4 in Highland Park, Ill. The legislative breakthrough that happened late last month didn’t stop them.
But it was a breakthrough nonetheless, one created by Americans committed to making a better country, along with bipartisan elected officials pushed into adopting the first gun safety bill in 30 years. Few believed it could occur.
President Biden’s June 25 signature on the legislation followed a 65-33 Senate vote that included 15 Republicans. The House bipartisan vote was 234-193. The NRA could not stop it. Polling shows that Americans support it 3-1.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, was an unexpected lead sponsor. He garnered GOP votes to overcome the filibuster, even though his “A+” NRA rating will surely, as Politico reported, “ take a downgrade.”
Give major credit to the citizen activists who were not daunted by Congress’ repeated failures to do anything, despite hundreds of mass shootings at schools, grocery stores and hospitals.
Those activists seem to have made their mantra Winston Churchill’s words in October 194,1 amidst his country’s against-the-odds survival of relentless Nazi bombing: “Never give in, never, never ... never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
To be sure, the bill accomplishes far less than gun safety advocates sought. Still, the measure reverses the “anything goes,” unrestricted gun culture trend that is, literally, killing us. And perhaps with continuing gun massacres, one Senate success will inspire the next legislation so desperately needed.
As it is, the new law provides billions of dollars for state “crisis intervention programs,” state “red flag” laws, drug courts and veterans courts. The measure authorizes an “enhanced search” window to determine the background of gun-buyers between 18 and 21, and it helps close the “boyfriend loophole” allowing court-adjudicated unmarried domestic abusers to buy guns.
Here are four lessons about fighting for what seems beyond reach:
1. Commitment and persistence matter. Just look at Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in 2018 in Parkland, Fla. He became the face of the gun safety movement. The day after that shooting, a vision of his new life-work emerged: “I walked into my home that night, and ... said: ‘I’m going to break that f...ing gun lobby.’”
Along with others, Guttenberg has lived that vision. He never surrendered to the “overwhelming might of the enemy.” Determined individuals, joined by others, can bring change that most of us doubted would ever happen.
2. Organizing counts. The Senate first announced a “framework” for its package on Sunday, June 12, the day after activist and former Parkland student David Hogg had organized national gun safety demonstrations. It appears that senators did so on a Sunday because of the prior day’s demonstrations.
Hogg applauded the bill as "more than has ever been done in my lifetime on the federal level.”
3. Democracy remains alive. A pivotal moment occurred after many thought mass shootings had become so normalized that we would never cross this red-blue continental divide.
The slaughters in May in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the Tulsa hospital killings and the non-stop shootings since brought us here. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat and a lead negotiator, explained why: Public pressure was being put on lawmakers “at a rate that I've never seen before.”
4. Bipartisanship is possible. The Senate once got bipartisan deals via negotiations by a “Gang of Five.” Today, more mass is needed to overcome polarization. The gun bill required a Gang of 20.
Other important bipartisan legislation has been adopted on Biden’s watch – a Covid relief bill, an infrastructure bill and other smaller but still significant packages. Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, along with Democratic colleagues, are leading Jan. 6 committee hearings consisting of a stream of Republican witnesses speaking out against a former president of their own party.
Bipartisanship, though difficult, is not dead. The gun bill stands out for advancing our safety. The victory rises from the ashes of tragic, needless deaths and from our compassion for the living.
Even in a polarized Congress and country, citizens can flex their muscle and fight with heart. At least so long as they speak out and follow activist leaders who “never, never give in.”
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.