After helping achieve record voter turnout in the Latino community in 2020, two nonprofits hope to build on that success by engaging 1 million potential Latino voters across four battleground states during this fall’s midterm campaigns.
Corazón Latino and EcoMadres, which address environmental and health issues, are expanding their civic engagement efforts through their joint Soy Latino, Sí Voto campaign.
“We know that clean air and water are essential for healthy lives. EcoMadres, the Latino community outreach program of Moms Clean Air Force, and their advocates around the country are leading the charge to bring awareness of these critical issues to their communities,” said Carolina Peña, program manager for EcoMadres. “The SLSV campaign is an important step forward in continuing this work and making sure we have a livable planet for our children.”
The campaign will focus on races in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Each of those states features hard-fought races for Senate and governor, as well as contests for U.S. House and state legislative seats and other statewide offices.
“These are states in which the Latino vote will play a decisive role in the outcome of the elections,” said Felipe Benitez, executive director of Corazon Latino. “Our goal is to increase Latino voter participation and build Latino political power.”
Slightly more than half (53 percent) of Latino adults told Pew Research in August that they have been thinking about the upcoming midterms “a lot” or “some” – 11 points lower than among all U.S. adults. Arizona (24 percent) and Nevada (20 percent) have significant Latino populations eligible to vote. About 5 percent of eligible voters in both Georgia and Pennsylvania are Hispanic.
In 2020, more Latino adults registered to vote, and voted, than ever before. That year, the SLSV campaign focused on engaging voters in five battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. That year, Arizona and Ohio had the fourth and fifth highest turnout rates among Hispanic voters. Michigan was 10th.
UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights group, estimates that 1 million Latino people turn 18, and thus become eligible to vote, each year. An additional 800,000 Latino immigrants become U.S. citizens each year.
While the SLSV organizers favor certain policy positions, they do not campaign for particular candidates, Benitez explained.
“We will mainly motivate Latino registered voters to exercise their right to vote. This is a non-partisan effort,” he said. “We advocate for environmental protection, economic justice, health and conservation.”
To achieve their goals, they will run paid media campaigns on digital platforms in addition to TV and radio, while seeking media coverage, running canvassing programs, use text messaging campaigns and engaging in peer-to-peer organizing.
This year, SLSV has enlisted Lalo Alcaraz, author of La Cucaracha, a nationally syndicated comic. Alcaraz won the prestigious Herblock Prize for excellence in editorial cartoonists.
“I couldn’t be more excited about creating voter engagement cartoons and making sure Latinos come out and raise their voices through the ballot box,” Alcaraz said.
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.