The top elections official in Pennsylvania, who became one of Donald Trump's most prominent villains and scapegoats as he sought to reverse his defeat, has been forced to resign.
But the sudden ouster of Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar by Gov. Tom Wolf, a fellow Democrat, has nothing to do with how she ran the presidential contest in one of last year's biggest tossup states. Instead, she is taking the fall for how her staff overlooked another pressing and high-profile matter during the height of the campaign.
The mistake will delay for at least two years a statewide vote on whether survivors of sexual abuse should be permitted to sue their perpetrators and institutions that covered up the crimes which occurred decades ago.
Advocates were planning for such a referendum on the May primary ballot — but now it won't happen, because of a blunder that came to light only in recent days: The Department of State forgot to place the legally required advertisements in newspapers last fall describing the proposed state constitutional amendment, which would give adults who kept silent about their abuse when they were children a special two-year window to file lawsuits.
Boockvar's departure "has nothing to do with the administration of the 2020 election, which was fair and accurate," Wolf said in announcing the firing on Monday. "The delay caused by this human error will be heartbreaking for thousands of survivors of childhood sexual assault, advocates and legislators, and I join the Department of State in apologizing to you."
The Republican-majority Legislature will now be pressed to pass fresh legislation, over the objections of the state's Roman Catholic bishops and the insurance industry, to revive the referendum — but not before 2023. The Department of State's bureaucratic failing was first reported last week by Spotlight PA.
"I've always believed that accountability and leadership must be a cornerstone of public service," Boockvar said in a statement. "I accept the responsibility on behalf of the department."
Boockvar, 52, had become one of the nation's most prominent secretaries of state in just two years on the job and was named by her colleagues to be a spokeswoman on many of the contentious matters related to conducting the 2020 election during the pandemic.
When she took office the state had just enacted the biggest overhaul to its election laws in 80 years. And so it was her responsibility to implement the transition to no-excuse absentee voting, an expanded voter registration timetable, and the purchase and deployment of new voting equipment across all of the state's 67 counties. Not all that work had been completed before the Covid-19 pandemic started, and so the spring primaries were marred by criticism about confusing rules and delayed vote counts.
Boockvar began drawing Trump's ire in the fall, when she decreed that mailed ballots postmarked on time but arriving three days late would be counted. The decision withstood a series of Republican legal challenges on the grounds she had claimed power reserved for the legislatures.
"We are winning Pennsylvania big, but the PA Secretary of State just announced that there are 'Millions of ballots left to be counted," Trump falsely tweeted the day after Election Day.
In the end, Boockvar's decision preserved the votes inside only about 10,000 tardy envelopes, and President Biden carried the state and its pivotal 20 electoral votes by a full percentage point, or 82,000 votes.
But after that imbroglio subsided, she became the face of the state's ultimately successful defenses against a torrent of lawsuits by the defeated president's campaign and his allies. One of them was successful, holding that Boockvar was moving to exceed her authority on an obscure matter involving ballot envelope signatures, but that ruling came before any of the disputed ballots were counted.
All the others died for lack of evidence or legal foundation, although one made it as far as the Supreme Court before being dismissed. That suit, challenging the legality of switching to no-excuse absentee voting in the state, was at the heart of why Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri objected to counting Pennsylvania's electors on Jan. 6, shortly after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. The Senate voted 92-7, and the House 282-138, to accept Biden's victory in the state.
Boockvar has continued to endure withering criticism from Republicans in Harrisburg, many of whom still profess support for Trump's conspiracy theories about voting irregularities and assert without evidence that her incompetence allowed widespread cheating to go unchallenged.
Just last week, Boockvar told a state House hearing on the election that "it is time for truth" and that an "assault on facts" must end.
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.