While Republican legislators in Michigan are intensifying their drive to enact the most aggressive voting curbs of the year, expecting such moves would help them in future elections, an earlier effort to preserve power has been blocked in court.
To be sure, the law struck down Monday by a federal appeals court theoretically benefits Republican and Democratic politicians equally. But the ruling could nonetheless make it tougher for the GOP's efforts to win back all three top statewide offices next year — by making it easier for minor party and independent candidates to run for those jobs.
The decision comes as Republicans in control of the Legislature have started mulling a plan for getting around Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in order to make access to the ballot box more difficult starting next year.
Cracking the major-party duopoly is a top cause of many democracy reformers, who believe rules ensuring red and blue ownership of the electoral map are a big cause for governing polarization and dysfunction.
So they were pleased with the 2-1 ruling from 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared unduly burdensome the special ballot access requirements for people seeking statewide office who are not from a major party.
Those rules include collecting at least 30,000 signatures, with at least 100 from half of 14 congressional districts, by early summer in an election year — many weeks, in some years, before primaries or conventions that automatically land a Republican and Democrat on the ballot in November.
Only five states have a tougher signature threshold, the court said as it backed a lower court's ruling in favor of cutting the number to 12,000.
"All told, Michigan's system works to disadvantage independent candidates alone by requiring them to seek a significant number of signatures from an electorate that is not yet politically energized and to stake out positions in a race with yet undecided contours," Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote in the majority opinion.
In dissent, Judge Richard Allen Griffin said the ballot access rules should be at the discretion of the Legislature and not open to judicial second-guessing.
In most recent elections, a handful of minor-party candidates have usually combined for about 2 percent statewide. Unless the case is successfully appealed to the Supreme Court, that roster and vote share will likely increase — with the outsiders no closer to victory, but maybe getting enough support to shape the outcome of a close Republican vs. Democratic contest.
Whitmer and two other Democrats, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, are all expecting intense challenges to their re-elections in 2022 in what remains one of the nation's major political battlegrounds. And so they are all counting on strong turnout to continue the success that President Biden had in carrying the state by 3 points last fall, reversing Donald Trump's much narrower win four years before.
A key aspect of the GOP campaign strategy in the state, and many others, is to make voting more difficult. The new chairman of the Michigan party, Ron Weiser, is now encouraging an unusual strategy for accomplishing that goal.
While legislators in Lansing write a comprehensive measure restricting access to the ballot box — knowing that Whitmer will veto it — he wants Republicans to invoke the state's system for allowing the people to essentially have the last word instead of the governor. If the party can persuade 340,000 Michiganders to sign a special petition, then the Legislature would be permitted to enact the provisions mentioned in the petition without Whitmer's say-so.
A political committee to run the signature effort, Secure MI Vote, has already been formed.
Republicans unveiled a package of 39 voting restriction bills last week, repeating the arguments made by their colleagues in Georgia, Iowa and virtually every other battleground state's capital: New curbs are needed to assure election integrity and prevent fraud, even though Trump's insistence that he was robbed of re-election by such cheating has no basis in fact.
Among other things, the Michigan proposals would curb the powers of election boards in urban counties, limit voters without photo identification to casting provisional ballots, prevent the state from proactively sending absentee ballot applications to voters, require vote-by-mail applicants to present a copy of identification, bar local governments from paying the postage on ballots returned by mail, and restrict the use of drop boxes as an alternative.
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.