Boutros is the community organizing manager at Chicago Votes Action Fund. Desrosiers, a first-generation Haitian American, is the organization's policy associate.
It was late May in Springfield, and the Illinois Capitol saw more action than it had in the previous five months. Lawmakers and advocates alike rushed to tie up loose ends and pass crucial legislation before the May 31 deadline. Among the scene of suits, middle-aged lawmakers and an array of advocates were two 20-something Black and Brown lobbyists for Chicago Votes. If our identities themselves didn’t set us apart, our Gen Z interpretation of professional attire did.
We were just 20 votes away from advancing, from the House to the Senate, a bill that would restore voting rights to people currently in Illinois prisons. Between conversations with lawmakers and staffers, we spotted a representative who had yet to confirm his stance on the bill. We approached him and asked for his support, to which he replied, “I believe if you break the social contract, you should not have the right to vote.”
Hearing that justification immediately struck a chord within us. Disenfranchising people in prison on the basis of the social contract theory is a flawed argument that assumes the state is upholding its end of the deal. It’s not.
Social contract theory argues that the government guarantees certain rights and privileges in exchange for people obeying the government’s laws. It is an imaginary contract we all “signed” the moment we were born or stepped foot on U.S. soil.
But the state never provided these things to begin with and we have all been gaslighted and fooled into believing it is providing all these magnificent things for us. This is because if you are poor, of color, from an immigrant community, not a cis-white male, you probably are not receiving equal protection of the laws.
Let’s use incarceration as an example. According to the Bill of Rights, the state must guarantee several protections, including freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to due process, the right to a jury of one’s peers, freedom from excessive bail, and protection from cruel and unusual punishments. The government must guarantee these protections regardless of race.
Yet, in the United States, the average bail for someone charged with a felony is $10,000, costing the average incarcerated person eight months of income. That’s excessive bail. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey, Black people are more likely than white or Latinx people to be the target of a traffic stop. Furthermore, while drug usage and distribution is consistent among races, Black people are roughly 2.6 times more likely to get arrested for drug crimes. Black and Latinx people are more likely to be excluded from a jury due to the disproportionate incarceration of people of color.
At every stage of the American legal system, the poor and people of color are harmed by the unequal protection and enforcement of laws. Simply put, the social contract is already broken and depriving people the right to vote based on that construct is unjust and racist.
People directly impacted by incarceration already know that they are not and have never been equally protected by the law. For lawmakers to stand on the social contract as a reason to disenfranchise citizens is morally flawed and factually incorrect.
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.