Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
On July 11, early voting began in Ohio on Issue 1, an August 8 special election measure that the state’s Republican-controlled legislature fast-tracked as a preemptive attack on abortion rights. Legislators knew that petitions were circulating for a November ballot initiative to enact constitutional protection for reproductive freedom in Ohio. Last week, pro-choice advocates filed those petitions.
Issue 1 would make that November measure far harder to pass. Issue 1, if adopted, would raise to 60 percent the current threshold of 50 percent + 1 for approving state constitutional amendments.
Gene Krebs, a former Ohio Republican legislator, pinpoints what’s behind the change: politicians not wanting to share lawmaking power with citizens. Still, in a glimmer of bipartisanship, five Ohio Republican Assembly members voted with the 32 Democrats against placing Issue 1 on the ballot. Former Republican Governors John Kasich and Bob Taft also oppose it.
The specious ballot arguments of those sponsoring Issue 1 betray a covert agenda. But first, here’s some background.
Last year, following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in Kansas and Kentucky sided with abortion rights on measures seeking to amend their constitutions. In neither state, however, did the victory percentage reach 60 percent.
Consider how limiting citizens’ state lawmaking power connects to history. Measures like Ohio’s pending pro-abortion ballot, initiated by citizens gathering signatures, are the pro-democracy legacy of the early 20th century’s Progressive Movement. Today, 18 states allow voters to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot, all but three of them with a simple majority vote threshold for passage.
Early 20th century reformers devised initiative measures as a way to return power to citizens. Using their new power, voters enacted minimum wages, the eight-hour day, and paid vacations for workers. Voters circumvented legislatures that were often bought, sold and paid for by the robber barons of the 19th century's "Gilded Age.”
They say that history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. “Ohio has one of the most corrupt state governments in the country,” writes David DeWitt, the Ohio Capitol Journal’s editor-in-chief. “Politicians have regularly given away billions of dollars in public money . . . in scandal after scandal.” Note that in March, a federal jury convicted Larry Householder, the Ohio House’s former speaker, of a $60 million bribery scheme.
As for Issue 1, the first sentence of Republican Rep. Brian Stewart’s ballot argument in favor suggests that the measure is a counter to corruption. Stewart writes that it “protects our Constitution from deep-pocketed, out-of-state interests.” But the biggest funder of Issue 1, conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein, lives in Illinois!
That’s not the only apparent hypocrisy. In calling a special August election to disadvantage the expected November ballot measure protecting abortion rights, Republican lawmakers have done a sharp procedural about-face. Less than a year ago, the Legislature eliminated local special August elections except in cases of fiscal emergency. The argument was that making important decisions in low-turnout August elections “isn’t the way democracy is supposed to work.”
Ohio’s legislators could have argued that a 60 percent threshold for initiatives changing the constitution would safeguard minority rights. That could attract some fair-minded voters. But keep in mind that this legislative majority just enacted a highly restrictive 2023 voter ID law, with its evident suppression of minority voting rights.
If you are an Ohio voter concerned about individual rights, Issue 1 presents a choice: Should you vote to maintain majority rule to help restore women’s protections that the Ohio legislature has already voted to take away, or vote to protect rights that some future ballot measure might eliminate?
None of this is to say that Democrats’ ballot arguments against Issue 1 are paragons of civic discourse. The anti-Issue 1 advocates assert that the measure would “shred our constitution” and “take away our freedom.”
Wouldn’t it be enough to say that Issue 1 would shred a vital constitutional provision, the one protecting majority rule? And that the measure aims specifically to take away reproductive freedom? Overstatement may amplify messaging, but it risks diluting credibility and public understanding.
Ohio voters who want to retain their power have recent history on their side. In 2022, voters in two other red states, South Dakota and Arkansas, rejected measures just like Issue 1.
At the same time, a June Scripps News/YouGov poll found that Ohio voters were evenly divided on Issue 1. Education about the measure’s anti-abortion purpose is important because the polling also showed that 58 percent of voters back enacting reproductive rights into the state’s constitution.
It’s that majority sentiment that’s in Issue 1’s crosshairs. Starting this week, Ohio voters can choose between majority rule and politicians who would like to keep power for themselves.
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.