The Supreme Court's landmark ruling that federal judges are powerless to police political gerrymandering is not going to be the final word on the matter from an American courthouse.
Opening arguments were heard Monday in a state court lawsuit challenging the work of North Carolina's aggressive Republican mapmakers, the same folks whose work on congressional districts survived a high court challenge in Washington just three weeks ago.
But this time, the plaintiffs (led by Common Cause) are challenging the boundaries of state legislative districts — alleging they abridge North Carolina's constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and equal protection and so should be tossed out, even if they can no longer be challenged as violating the U.S. Constitution.
"Republicans in the General Assembly have manipulated the district lines to guarantee that their party will control both the state House and the state Senate, regardless of how people vote," attorney Stanton Jones declared as what's expected to be a two-week civil trial got underway before a panel of three state judges in Superior Court in Raleigh. "This attack on representative democracy and voting rights is fundamentally unfair."
The attorney for the Republican legislative leaders, Phillip Strach, countered that plaintiffs were seeking to be rescued by "judicial fiat" from the normal consequences of electoral, legislative and even demographic processes, including that Democrats tend to cluster in cities and so don't compete in many suburbs or rural areas.
"This lawsuit is not about protecting democracy," Strach said. "It is a full-frontal assault on democracy."
Challenges like this one are sure to become more common in light of the Supreme Court's ruling three weeks ago, in which the five conservative justice agreed that federal courts have no role in addressing even the most dramatically partisan gerrymanders — those drawn by the party in power in order to stack the deck disproportionally against the other party, even when voter behavior makes plain the desire for an allocation of seats that's closer to even.
Republicans, who have benefitted much more from partisan gerrymandering in this decade, are on alert for the potential their efforts will eventually get undone by these state court challenges.
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has taken the lead in combatting this strategy as chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which will coordinate the party's redistricting strategy after the 2020 census. After the Supreme Court decision he warned members of his party against resting easy. "Now, more than ever, we need all Republicans to join us or we will find ourselves gerrymandered into perpetual minorities by liberal state supreme courts," he wrote on Twitter.
Challenges similar to the new one in North Carolina have been filed in Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, Alabama and Maryland. But none has yet gone to trial.
One such challenge, however, has already produced an enormously consequential victory for opponents of partisan mapmaking, and for Democrats. Last year, in one of the biggest purple states in the nation, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared that the state's constitution was violated by a map drawn by GOP legislators to assure that 12 of the state's 18 congressional districts would be filled by Republicans. Under the new map ordered by the court, the state elected nine House members from each party in the 2018 midterm.
But in North Carolina, even though Republican legislative candidates received less than half the overall vote, district-by-district results yielded a 10-seat advantage for the GOP in the state House and a seven-seat edge in the state Senate.
The trial over the those maps will feature many of the same arguments that permeated the litigation that challenged the state's congressional map, with has reliably led to wins for Republicans in 10 of the 13 districts. One important thing will be different, however: The plaintiffs will be able to present evidence from the files of the late Tom Hofeller, a GOP gerrymandering wizard who helped the North Carolina mapmakers in maximizing their partisan advantage.
The plaintiffs are particularly optimistic about their chances because, no matter what the trial verdict, the case looks destined for final disposition at the Supreme Court of North Carolina, where judges elected as Democrats hold six of the seven seats. Although the new case is just about state legislative seats, a ruling that they violate the state constitution could be applied to the congressional districts in time for the redistricting after the 2020 census, when North Carolina is likely to be awarded a 14th house seat because of its population growth.
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.