Under pressure from voting rights groups, Georgia's third largest county will make it slightly easier to vote in the crucial Senate runoffs.
Cobb County planned to open only five instead of the usual 11 places for early in-person voting, which civil rights organizations complained would suppress the Black and Latino vote in the Atlanta suburbs. On Wednesday the county conceded the problem by moving one polling location and adding two more, but only for the final week of early voting.
But that partial victory may soon be overwhelmed by a bigger challenge to the cause of civic participation in the nation's newest big purple state. Top Republicans say they'll soon launch a bid in the General Assembly to reverse many of the policies that made voting easier this year.
Making the ballot box accessible to all who are eligible has long been a central tenet of the democracy reform movement, but it is of particular short-term importance in Georgia because who votes in the twin Jan. 5 runoffs will determine which party controls the Senate next year — which will decide whether any aspect of the good-governance agenda stands a chance in Congress.
Six voting and civil rights groups sent a letter Monday to Cobb County officials asking for all 11 voting centers that were used in the general election to also be open for the runoffs.
The new plan doesn't go as far as the groups hoped. Instead, one voting center was relocated to the southern part of the county where there is a higher Black population. And two more locations, one in the north and another in the south, will be open the final four days before early voting ends on New Year's Eve.
The county elections chief, Janine Eveler, said staffing shortages because of the holidays and the coronavirus surge made it impossible to do more than that. "We have simply run out of people," she said. "Many workers told us they spent three weeks working 14- or 15-hour days and they will not do that again."
Meanwhile, the Republican majority caucus in the state Senate promised Tuesday to make a tightening of election laws one of their top priorities in the new year.
They said they were responding to "the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our election process abused" in the general election.
Many in the GOP base are furious and suspicious about an election where Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry the state in seven elections and neither of the GOP senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, was able to muster the 50 percent the state requires for re-election.
The GOP lawmakers said they would push legislation to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, bar the use of drop boxes to return mail ballots and add a photo ID requirement for those seeking to cast an absentee ballot.
These proposed changes are in direct response to the Nov. 3 election in which many more voters than ever before — in Georgia and across the country — decided to cast their ballots by mail due to the Covid-19 pandemic. President Trump and many other Republicans have repeatedly and falsely asserted that widespread mail voting leads to fraud. There has been no evidence before or after this year's election to back up that claim.
The Republican legislators are also requesting an investigation and additional audits into the Nov. 3 election. Three counts of presidential ballots so far have produced the same result: Biden won by about 12,000 votes.
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.