This month Juan Cartagena marks nine years as president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. It advocates for Hispanic civil and voting rights, and his interests include the effects on those rights of mass imprisonment, language barriers and gerrymandering. After Columbia Law School he spent seven years in the 1980s as a junior attorney for the same organization, then called the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. He later worked for the government of Puerto Rico, as a municipal judge in Hoboken, N.J., as general counsel of the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey and as a top official at the Community Service Society, which litigates on behalf of the poor. He also lectures at Rutgers. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's democracy's biggest challenge, in 10 words or less?
Easing the way for the unregistered to vote.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
Supporting the candidacy of Julian Robinson, the first African American to run for mayor in Jersey City in 1969 — before I was of age to vote. The power of electoral politics was forged for me, and the fact it was a local election made the connection between that power and my neighborhood more direct. The buzz created by this historic campaign was palpable and reflected the expansive mood of the country with the ascendance of the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, justice for Latino farmworkers and the protests against the Vietnam War. Everything seemed possible, and the ballot was one of many accessible tools for change.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Decades later there was a mayoral election in Jersey City when the incumbent conspired to win by "slowing down" the vote in black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, which can only happen if that vote is suppressed. After nine years of litigation under the Voting Rights Act, we secured a million-dollar fund to compensate the voters discriminated against. The suit also led to a change in the state election code preventing the targeting of voter challenges by neighborhood or because of residence in public housing. Early on, over beers after a long day of depositions, my co-counsel and I made a pact never to withdraw from the case no matter where we worked. Nine years later, we toasted again.
And your most disappointing setback?
Removing the right to vote for someone simply because they are incarcerated, or on parole, is an affront to an inclusive democracy. In Canada, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Israel, you can vote from your prison cell, as you can in Vermont and Maine. But 48 states still prohibit it. That's the background for one of my biggest disappointments in court — losing a challenge to New York's restrictions in this regard. But years later, I celebrated in Florida with LatinoJustice staff and community leaders who themselves were previously incarcerated when voters in 2018 restored the vote after someone finishes their prison terms and parole. Over a million citizens became eligible to vote but the battle, for me, is not over until everyone, regardless of incarceration, can have a voice in our democracy.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
I am a Puerto Rican man raised in a working-class home by a single head of household, my mother, in urban America. You cannot escape learning about the injustices and exploitation that surround you in such an environment. Nor could I ignore the fact that there was amazing talent all around me in public schools whose lives were never nurtured. I cannot accept injustice. Never could and never will.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
From my family: Never forget who you are. From my professional circle: The law is easy. Facts are hard.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
CafeBuca. Coffee ice cream laced with a syrup made from Sambuca.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"The Wire."
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Set the alarm.
What is your deepest, darkest secret.
I want to whistle a solo on a recording of Afro-Blue.
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.