Iowa has become the first state this year making it much tougher to vote. It's the vanguard of a nationwide Republican effort to curtail access to the ballot box in response to last year's record turnout, central to both President Biden's election and former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud.
GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday signed a sweeping set of tightened election rules pushed through the General Assembly two weeks ago without a single Democratic supporter.
The law reduces in-person early voting to 20 days, from 29, and shortens the time the polls are open Election Day by 60 minutes, to 13 hours. Local officials are now barred from proactively sending out vote-by-mail application forms. And absentee ballots arriving after the polls close will be discarded, eliminating a six-day grace period for Postal Service delays.
In addition, Iowans may no longer turn over their sealed vote envelopes for delivery by partisan operatives or community activists, the practice critics deride as "ballot harvesting." And Iowans will from now on be removed from the rolls if they skip a single general election and don't report a change in address or register as a voter again.
Finally, there is a new limit of one ballot drop box in each of the 99 counties, no matter how remote or urban, and counties may not set up satellite in-person early voting sites unless formally petitioned by residents.
Like their legislative colleagues pushing more than 250 similarly restrictive proposals in 42 other states, GOP lawmakers in charge of the General Assembly say the tougher rules are necessary guards against cheating — although Iowa has no history of election irregularities and November's election generated record-shattering 75 percent turnout statewide (9 points better than the national number) without any credible hint of shenanigans.
"These additional steps promote more transparency and accountability, giving Iowans even greater confidence to cast their ballot," the governor said upon signing the bill.
"While politicians may claim these provisions ensure 'election integrity,' they do nothing of the sort," countered the Democratic Party's most prominent election litigator, Marc Elias. "They are a result of the record turnout in Iowa and the nation in 2020. This bill will impose unconstitutional burdens on minority, elderly and disabled voters and cannot be permitted to stand."
He promised to file federal lawsuits in Iowa and any other states that follow its lead.
Some of the most prominent efforts are in states that Biden turned blue after they went red in 2016: Pennsylvania, Arizona and maybe most notably Georgia, where the House has debated curbs on "souls to the polls" early voting on Sundays and on Monday the Senate voted to end no-excuse absentee voting.
But Trump took Iowa's six electoral votes by a comfortable 8 points, a slightly bigger margin than four years before. Moreover, Republicans picked up two U.S. House seats in the state, GOP Sen. Joni Ernst survived a dogged and well-financed challenge and the party's legislative majority expanded, too.
And those successes came even as 76 percent of Democrats voted by mail or early and in person — but only 52 percent of Republicans did so in response to Trump's campaign of falsehoods. Overall, a record 60 percent of votes statewide were cast ahead of Election Day, mainly as a consequence of an array of election easements by county officials responding to the pandemic.
On Monday, Heritage Action, a national conservative group, announced a $10 million advertising and grassroots mobilization campaign across eight states, including Iowa, to drum up support for legislation curbing absentee ballots, stiffening voter ID and citizenship verification rules, and more active culling of registration lists. The group's executive director, Jessica Anderson, praised Iowa's new law but urged the General Assembly to do more.
There were 12 convictions for election misconduct in Iowa in the past two years, the state's nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency told lawmakers as they debated the package.
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.