The 2022 primaries are heating up, with voters in two states casting ballots tomorrow to select nominees for Congress as well as state and local offices.
The most prominent races in Nebraska are a pair of GOP nominating contests, for governor and the House seat vacated by a lawmaker forced to resign after being convicted for lying to authorities about illegal campaign contributions. And in West Virginia, two Republican incumbents are facing off after the state lost a U.S. House seat following the 2020 census. West Virginia allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary. Legislative elections in Nebraska are nonpartisan, with the top two finishers advancing to the general election.
Since 2019, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and amid partisan fighting over administration of the 2020 presidential election, many states have been making changes to their election systems. In some cases, legislatures made it easier to vote whereas others tightened the rules. So with key races on the ballot, let’s review the changes made in the Cornhusker and Mountain states, both of which are controlled by Republicans.
Nebraska
While the state has made a number of minor changes in recent years, the biggest alteration occurred in two bills.
First, in 2020, Nebraska enacted a bill that sets new rules for pollwatchers, allows hand-delivery of ballots to the county clerk and requires at least one 24-hour drop box to be placed in each county at least 10 days before an election and limits the sharing of voter lists received through public records requests.
And in April 2022, the governor signed a wide-ranging election reform bill. Its provisions include:
- Allowing emergency responders to request absentee ballots when serving outside their country of residence.
- Making it easier for National Guard members to apply for a mail-in ballot.
- Setting new security standards for ballot drop boxes, requiring the boxes to be accessible until the deadline for returning ballots, and sets electioneering boundaries around drop boxes.
- Banning the use of private funds for election administration.
- Banning foreign nationals from funding ballot initiatives.
- Alternatives for providing signatures for voters with disabilities to provide.
West Virginia
For the past four years, lawmakers have been making changes that make it easier for people to vote, although some recent actions tighten the rules.
In 2019, the state made it easier for people with disabilities, illnesses or injuries to vote by absentee ballot. The following year, with the country facing the height of the pandemic, lawmakers allowed anyone to vote by mail although that permission did not extend beyond the 2020 election.
Last year, military and overseas voters as well as people with disabilities were granted additional options for returning their ballots.
The state enacted a number of election-related bills in 2022.
- First responders assigned outside their home counties may vote by electronic absentee ballot.
- Local officials have more flexibility in hiring election workers.
- Election officials may not accept private funding.
- The list of election crimes includes newly defined misdemeanors and felonies.
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.