The House this afternoon is debating as many as 50 more amendments to a comprehensive overhaul of campaign finance disclosure, government ethics and voting access rules. But passage, almost certainly along party lines, is being put off until Friday by Democrats seeking maximum publicity for their bill, which looks to be a dead legislative letter thereafter in the Republican Senate.
That's because Thursday's headline from the Capitol is sure to highlight something totally different – the House adopting a resolution "opposing hate" in hopes of settling a nasty feud within the Democratic Caucus stemming from comments made by Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the first Muslim women in Congress, widely perceived as anti-Semitic.
But it's the elections and ethics package that has pride of place on the new majority's legislative slate as HR 1. Every one of the House's 235 Democrats is co-sponsoring the bill, the closest thing there is to a virtual guarantee of passage. A couple of Republicans, at most, are considering joining them.
There will still be some suspense on Friday, when the GOP has one opportunity to try to amend the measure on any topic it wants – hoping the language they choose prevails with the support of a score of centrist Democrats, then so poisons the underlying measure that its unified blue base of support cracks apart.
Assuming the bill passes, however, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell remains unambiguous in his position: He won't allow the bill to get any sort of airing in the Senate. "What is the problem we're trying to solve here?" he asked Wednesday at a news conference. "People are flooding to the polls."
The reasons he and almost every other elected Republican in Washington oppose the package are varied – and also worth digesting by advocates of cleaner government. Those groups will be called on to spend much of the run-up to the 2020 election explaining why their arguments ought to prevail over the criticisms that look sure to win for now.
And "even if Democrats recapture the Senate and the White House in 2020 and turn their proposals into law, a Republican-dominated Supreme Court would probably upend Democrats' plans" in at least five different areas, Syracuse University political scientist Thomas Keck wrote today on the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog.
A central provision of HR 1 would compel super PACs and nonprofits that spend money to influence elections to disclose the identities of donors giving more than $10,000. Conservatives say the language is so broad as to violate the First Amendment by making the Federal Election Commission the arbiter of what speech is political and what isn't.
The legislation would also create a new system of matching funds for donations. Candidates who reject the sort of high-dollar donations that critics say are poisonous to the system could get $1,200 for every $200 gift. Republicans say this sort of "political welfare" is a wholly inappropriate use of federal tax dollars.
The bill seeks to make it easier to vote with a series of provisions that would nationalize the current 50-state patchwork of rules governing registration and access to the polls, including by giving back the franchise to all convicted felons. "Not only is this dangerous, it's unconstitutional," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a video his office made attacking the legislation.
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.