Voting rights advocates have scored back-to-back victories in New Hampshire, the smallest but among the hardest fought of the presidential battleground states.
Gov. Chris Sununu, breaking from the resistance of many of his fellow Republican leaders nationwide, announced Thursday the state will give voters open-ended permission to vote by mail in November if the coronavirus pandemic has not abated.
Hours later a judge struck down a state law toughening requirements for signing up to vote — especially for the state's large, pivotal and liberal-leaning collegiate electorate.
The decision in the registration case is sure to be appealed. But the governor sounded firm in his decision abandoning his past opposition to widespread absentee voting.
"Basically if you feel more comfortable voting absentee because of the outbreak, or your inability or nervousness about just appearing in person to vote, you can vote absentee and obtain an absentee ballot," he said at a news conference.
Just seven states require all applicants for absentee ballots to cite an excuse preventing them from voting in person on Election Day. New Hampshire is the only swing state on the roster, and the only permissible excuses are religious, work or travel obligations — not illness or public safety. It was unclear how the governor's declaration would be carried out.
Sununu said officials in Concord are considering other ways to make voting easier and less subject to health risks this year, among them systems for completing ballots from inside a car at drive-through voting sites.
Good governance groups have rallied behind Democratic efforts in Congress to authorize no-excuse absentee voting nationwide this fall, saying that's the best way to assure full turnout no matter the state of the public health emergency.
Republicans have resisted such a mandate and have been vociferously backed by President Trump, who has asserted without evidence that widespread fraud comes with widespread voting by mail, making Sununu's break from his party's position all the more notable.
And just last year, he vetoed a measure passed by the Democratic-majority Legislature that would have permitted the sort of no-excuse absentee voting available in 27 states.
New Hampshire's four electoral votes have been closely contested in most elections for the past three decades. Hillary Clinton carried them in 2016 by 2,700 votes, the second-narrowest presidential margin of any state, and that year's Senate race was the closest in the country, won by just 1,017 votes by Democrat Maggie Hassan.
After Trump asserted without evidence that fraud denied him victory in the state, a Legislature then in Republican hands added several complex steps to the voter registration process and set criminal penalties and civil fines for those who did not produce certain proof-of-residence documents.
The state Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters sued, arguing the new rules were confusing and created an impermissible two-tier system by adding extra requirements for students and people signing up within a month of an election or on Election Day
Superior Court Judge David Anderson agreed. He declared the statute "unconstitutional," "discriminatory" and "unreasonable" and said its implementation would suppress turnout, especially by younger and poorer people, without deterring the minimal amount of fraud in the state over the past two decades — which both sides in the case agreed to at trial.
The law falls "disproportionately on groups of individuals who use same-day registration more frequently than others," he wrote. "Young, mobile, low-income and homeless voters will all encounter SB 3 and be exposed to its penalties at a higher rate than other voters."
Solicitor General Daniel Will vowed an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Litigation continues over a second law enacted in 2017 that limited access to the ballot box. It requires having a New Hampshire driver's license and registering cars in the state in order to vote, which civil rights groups and lawyers for out-of-state students deride as a de facto poll tax designed to suppress the mostly Democratic vote on college campuses.
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.