The legal battle lines are solidifying over how Florida's restoration of felons' voting rights should be implemented.
A stack of 10 briefs were filed this week at the state Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments Nov. 6 on whether a new law was improperly written to disenfranchise the very people whose access to the ballot box was supposed to be restored by the will of the voters.
The dispute is one of the most important voting rights cases in years, legally and politically.
Florida is by far the biggest politically purple state in the country, and Democrats see significant potential benefit from adding as many as 1.4 million people with felony convictions to the rolls in time for the presidential election.
Promoters of ballot initiatives and advocates for prisoners' rights hailed last fall's referendum as a historic victory, because turnout was enormous and almost two-thirds of the state supported voting-rights restoration to felons "who have completed all terms of their sentence, including parole or probation," excluding people "convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense."
But the Republican-controlled Legislature voted this spring to limit the scope of the voter-mandated constitutional amendment, by requiring felons to make good on all "legal financial obligations" — mainly restitution, fines and court fees — before being eligible to vote.
The Republicans in charge in Tallahassee — Gov. Ron DeSantis, Secretary of State Laurel Lee and the leaders of the House and Senate — all filed legal briefs sticking up for the new law, saying those payments are part of sentences and so the law is reflecting the language of the amendment.
Voting rights advocates and civil rights groups emphatically disagree and have filed a federal lawsuit to get the law struck down, arguing it amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax and violates a number of other constitutional civil rights. DeSantis has persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to weigh in on the somewhat narrower question of whether the law is within bounds in responding to the wording of the referendum.
"All of these aspects of Florida's sentencing scheme work in tandem to achieve Florida's sentencing purposes," the lawyers for the House wrote in their brief.
Costs and fees "are categorically not terms of sentence because they bear none of the hallmarks of sentencing," the Fair Elections Center said in its brief, because they are "non-punitive and simply serve to compensate the government for the costs of administering criminal justice."
The American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Brennan Center for Justicefiled a brief declaring that the state's history "of denying votes" to African-Americans reveals the GOP's bad faith in linking finances and voting rights.
"Historically, Florida disenfranchised a higher percentage of its adult citizens than any other state in the United States, more than 10 percent of the overall voting age population, and more than 21 percent of the African-American voting age population," the civil rights groups wrote.
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.