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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,197 bills so far this session, with 581 bills that tighten voter access or election administration and 1,050 bills that expand the rules. The rest are neutral, mixed or unclear in their impact.
The Midwest was home to the latest legal maneuvering of election rules last week, while a court opinion in Delaware delivered mixed results for voting rights advocates in the First State.
In Michigan, a court upheld state statutes that prohibit some types of voter assistance and a Wisconsin group filed a new lawsuit challenging the state’s use of the federal voter registration form. The Delaware ruling prohibits voters from voting by mail this election, unless they have a specifically enumerated reason but upheld the state’s new same-day registration law.
Looking ahead: The North Carolina Supreme Court is expediting a challenge to the state’s 2018 voter ID law. The state’s highest court will hear the case in October and determine the law’s fate prior to the November election. A lower court struck down the law, finding it intentionally discriminated against Black voters.
Here are the details:
Delaware court blocks no-excuse mail voting, but upholds same-day voter registration. Earlier this summer, Delaware enacted new laws creating no-excuse mail voting and same-day registration. Both laws were challenged in court. On Wednesday, Vice Chancellor Nathan Cook of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued an opinion enjoining the state’s Department of Elections from offering no-excuse mail voting for this November’s general election, finding that the law likely violates the state’s Constitution. Cook wrote that he was bound by judicial precedent to come to this conclusion, but that if he were looking at the issue “on a blank slate,” his finding would be different. No-excuse mail voting was established earlier this year by S.B. 320. In a consolidated opinion, Cook also dismissed the challenge to the state’s new same-day registration law, which was enacted by H.B. 25.
Federal court upholds unusual Michigan laws that prohibit certain types of voter assistance. A federal district court denied challenges to unusual Michigan statutes that prohibit hiring transportation to the polls for most voters and prohibit people who are not registered voters from assisting with absentee ballot applications. In the past, the challenged transportation law has been an obstacle for third-party organizations providing rides to voters without easy access to public transportation, rideshare apps offering discounted or free rides for voters, and organized voting efforts like “Souls to the Polls.”
Wisconsin group sues to prevent the state from using the federal voter registration form. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has filed another lawsuit to restrict voting access. After successfully ending Wisconsin Election Commission guidance authorizing drop boxes and allowing spouses and friends to return ballots for one another – and winning another case that will disenfranchise some eligible voters this November – WILL is now attacking the WEC’s approval of the federal voter registration form. WILL argues the form violates state law and cannot be used. Although the National Voter Registration Act requires most states to accept the federal form, Wisconsin is exempt because it offered same-day registration when that law was enacted. WILL is not challenging the registration of the people who previously used the form.
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.