Republicans may hang on to the top spot on Florida ballots, a federal appeals court has decided — a significant boost for the GOP in the biggest purple state, and also perhaps the biggest defeat yet for Democrats counting on winning a wave of lawsuits that boost their prospects this fall.
The ruling Wednesday was mainly on technical grounds but nonetheless nullified a lower court decision. Last November a federal trial judge declared unconstitutional a Florida law awarding the most prominent place on every ballot to the governor's party. That design feature guarantees an artificial boost in the vote of candidates from the benefiting party.
Such laws are a feature of a system assuring the major parties can box out worthy insurgent and independent candidates, democracy reformers lament. The parties listed second view such measures as arbitrary and discriminatory, arguments the Democrats have made in challenging first-on-the-page laws the past year not only in Florida but also in Texas, Georgia and Arizona.
The case in Florida, where the occupant of the governor's office means the GOP has been listed first on every ballot since 1999, has proceeded furthest. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the plaintiffs, several Democratic voters and campaign organizations, lacked the standing to sue and sued the wrong people.
Judge William Pryor also said the Democrats had not proved they were being harmed by the seven-decade-old law.
That was the opposite of what District Judge Mark Walker of Tallahassee had said in November, when he ruled the law impermissibly "allows a state to put its thumb on the scale and award an electoral advantage to the party in power." His decision pointed to experts who testified that listing GOP candidates first gave them as much as a 5-point advantage in Florida's elections.
Earlier this month Walker had ordered the state to come up with a more equitable ballot architecture by the end of May, accusing Florida officials of slow-walking their planning in hope of winning their appeal.
The attorney leading the lawsuit campaign by the Democratic National Committee and the party's congressional campaign arms, Marc Elias, signaled that an appeal would be filed soon.
"Arguing that Democrats are not harmed by an illegal and unwarranted 5 percent Republican advantage in every single election in the state is wrong, inconsistent with running a fair election, and we are considering all of our options in this case," he said. "We can assure you that we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect Florida voters this November."
Absent a quickly successful appeal, however, President Trump's name will be first on the November ballots in all 67 counties. He is counting on the state's 29 electoral votes, but former Vice President Joe Biden has led in recent polling. The state has been a tossup every year since 1996 and has narrowly gone for the winner every time. The 2016 margin was just 113,00 votes out of 9.1 million cast.
That margin of 1.2 points is much less than the 5 percent cited in the case.
The other ballot primacy lawsuits remain in the trial courts. Georgia and Arizona are looking at highly competitive Senate races this fall, and Biden appears to have a shot at carrying their combined 27 electoral votes. Texas is more of a long shot for him and the Democratic Senate challenger but is not entirely out of reach.
Republicans have been listed first on the ballot in every election in Arizona for almost a decade, in Georgia for more than a decade and in Texas for two decades.
Georgia is also in the jurisdiction of the 11th Circuit and so that claim's future could be limited by Wednesday's decision.
Political operatives pay so much attention to the vote-getting power of topping the ballot that they have several nicknames for it: The "primacy effect," the "windfall vote" and the "donkey vote."
The high partisan stakes in the Florida case were reflected in the 11th Circuit's decision. Pryor, a nominee of President George W. Bush, was joined in most of his opinion by Judge Robert Luck, a nominee of President Trump. Dissenting on several issues was Judge Jill Pryor, put on the court by President Barack Obama.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.