A Georgia man is doing his part to keep the voter rolls clean. Or he's a guy with too much time on his hands.
Either way, someone named Lawrence Hoskins is a central figure in the latest voting rights lawsuit in the Peach State. He appears on page 14 of a 195-page complaint filed by civil rights groups against the Board of Registration and Elections in DeKalb County, a decidedly Democratic slice of Atlanta and its suburbs to the east.
The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, alleges the election officials violated federal law and constitutional voting rights protections by failing to do enough to confirm the registration information of more than 50 people and then notify them before they were dropped from the rolls in the past two years.
Hoskins' role is perfectly legal under state law, which permits a registered voter to challenge another person's voting qualifications by filing a written complaint with a county.
So, he did just that: According to the suit, the board reviewed "approximately 100 challenges" Hoskins filed after poring over Postal Service change of address data, which he acquired from "a company in New York," as well as "home-purchase data" to identify people who had potentially moved. He then conducted "door-to-door canvassing" and presented his findings to the elections board in DeKalb County, which is the state's fourth most populous at almost 700,000 people.
State law mandates that boards hold a hearing to consider such a challenge and notify those with eligibility under question. The board then determines whether to keep people on the rolls.
The lawsuit doesn't challenge what Hoskins did, only how the board responded to him.
Election officials there "have encouraged, solicited, and acted on extraordinary voter challenges that extend beyond the routine list maintenance activities that are required by state and federal law" since 2018, the suit contends. Those measures include actively soliciting challenges to voters in Decatur, the county seat, where Hillary Clinton got five out of every six votes in 2016 despite losing statewide.
Two telephone calls to the only Lawrence Hoskins with a listed number in the Atlanta area were not returned Thursday.
The lawsuit also points to challenges brought against seven people whose address was listed as a place where homeless people are able to stay overnight and pick up their mail. An employee of the center who also serves on the elections board filed the challenge.
The suit hinges in part on whether the county adhered to the requirements of a federal law prohibiting the dropping of a person from the rolls unless they've been sent a notice and subsequently failed to vote in the next two federal elections, which didn't happen for those who were removed, according to the complaint.
"All counties in Georgia should be on notice that they cannot skirt the requirements of federal law with impunity," Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.
The ACLU and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.
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.