Democratic senators introduced a bill on Wednesday that would allocate $20 billion in federal funding for election administration. Like other election-related legislation offered over the past two years, it faces a difficult path to enactment.
The bill, sponsored by Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, would fund improvements to election management, poll worker training and the elimination of barriers to voting.
“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, but in recent years we have seen a barrage of threats seeking to undermine our elections. It is critical that we respond to these threats head-on by ensuring that state and local governments have the resources needed to strengthen the administration of our elections, protect election officials on the frontlines, and provide all eligible voters with the opportunity to make their voices heard,” Klobuchar said.
The Minnesota Democrat has been a leading advocate for federal election reform and funding. In February, she led 23 Democrats in urging President Biden to designate $5 billion for election security and to prioritize funding for election administration in his fiscal 2023 budget. Biden in fact included $10 billion for election administration as well as $5 billion for the expansion of mail-in voting in the budget proposal released in March.
Klobuchar chairs the Rules and Administration Committee, which held a hearing on the security of the 2022 election Thursday.
The bill mirrors the recommendations offered in a new report from the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Another report, the Election Infrastructure Initiative’s “ 50 States of Need ”, however, goes much further. It calls for more than $50 billion over 10 years for states to improve election administration, equipment, cybersecurity, voter registration systems and post-election audits. Both reports emphasize not just increased funding but also a consistent flow of dollars to the state for election infrastructure.
If and when this bill comes up for a vote, it will likely face the same procedural barriers that have stopped other election reform bills in the Senate. Three bills – the For the People Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act – would have instituted changes to elections but were blocked by Republican filibusters in the Senate.
In 2017, Klobuchar teamed up with Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma on a bill to strengthen cybersecurity, but that also failed to pass. A 2019 bill focused strictly on election security passed the House but did not make it out of committee in the Senate.
But there have been a handful of bipartisan successes over the past 20 years. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which provided federal funds for the improvement of election infrastructure and established the Election Assistance Commission. Since 2010, HAVA funds have only been appropriated twice. In 2018, a larger appropriations act included $380 million to increase the cybersecurity of voting systems. An additional $400 million in HAVA funds were appropriated in 2020 through the CARES Act to help state and local governments pay for additional costs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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.