Minnesota, which takes pride in posting the biggest turnout numbers year after year, is now the newest home for the debate over a more hot-button aspect of elections: voting rights for convicted felons.
The law is the same in Minnesota as 20 other states: The franchise is automatically restored to felons once they finish probation or parole. But the American Civil Liberties Union maintains such a waiting period violates the state constitution. A judge this summer dismissed the group's lawsuit, and on Monday the ACLU asked the state Court of Appeals to revive its claim.
Bolstering the political power of ex-convicts, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, has become a major goal of civil rights groups. The number of felons at issue in Minnesota is 53,000, an estimated three in eight of them Black men in a state with a 6 percent Black population.
Voting rights for about 2 million felons nationwide have been eased in the past decade through a mix of litigation, legislation, ballot measures and gubernatorial decrees. Californians voted last month to make their state the 17th where felons can register as soon as they get out of prison, which is what the ACLU is suing to achieve in Minnesota.
Proponents say democracy is enhanced, and a bit of racial justice achieved, when political power is given back to people who have paid their debt to society. Opponents say rewarding criminals too soon is an injustice to their victims. The fault lines generally fall along party lines, since the felon vote is reliably Democratic.
The Minnesota appeal says the state's rules violate the due process and equal protection guarantees of the state Constitution. The suit was filed in October 2019 after the Legislature deadlocked on bills that would have allowed felons to vote right after their incarceration ended.
The lawsuit argues the waiting period is unfair because probationary periods vary widely. One plaintiff is on probation for 40 years for a drug possession conviction that led to a year in county jail, while another is on probation for just eight years after serving 17 years for murder. (Since the suit was filed the state has capped most future probationary periods at five years.)
Judge Laura Nelson dismissed the suit in August, ruling the plaintiffs had not shown that convicts have a fundamental right to vote and that the racial and regional disparities in sentencing were something to be addressed by the Legislature, which will be the only one in the country with divided control next year — Democrats in charge of the House and the GOP of the Senate.
Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats, have backed a change in the rules.
The switch could propel turnout statewide even higher. It was 80 percent of eligible voters this fall, No. 1 in the country for the fifth consecutive presidential contest.
The Sentencing Project estimates that of the 5 million Americans without voting rights due to felony convictions, three-quarters have done their time.
The attorneys general of 14 states and the District of Columbia have urged the appeals court to rule in favor of the ACLU. "The disproportionate impact of felon disenfranchisement laws on voters of color raises serious state constitutional and democratic concerns," their brief said, adding that Minnesota's law "is out of step with these important interests."
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.