A legal and public relations fight over switching New Mexico's primaries to vote-by-mail is quickly becoming the hottest new partisan standoff over elections during the deadly spread of Covid-19.
The state's balance of political power is the opposite of Wisconsin, where citizens donned masks and rubber gloves to protect them from the coronavirus and went to their polling places this week at the insistence of the Republicans in charge of both the courts and the state capital.
Now, law firms aligned with national Republicans have joined the state GOP in suing to stop plans to send absentee ballots to almost 1 million New Mexicans in time for the June 2 election. The Democrats who control the government are fighting back at the state Supreme Court, and their chances look decent because it too is dominated by liberals.
With Joe Biden now unopposed, the fight is no longer important in the Democratic presidential contest. But the outcome will influence turnout in dozens of races for both parties' nominees for the Legislature and Congress, particularly a hard-fought contest for the open House seat centered on Santa Fe.
Moreover, it will help decide which side gets momentum in the suddenly pitched battle over expanding the use of absentee ballots to make voting safer during the pandemic.
Democracy reformers, voting rights groups and their Democratic allies in Congress thought they had gained an edge in the public health emergency's early going, confident they could secure more after winning $400 million for states to expand vote-by-mail in last month's economic rescue package.
But President Trump, even though he voted absentee in both 2016 and 2018, has come out vigorously this week against any broad expansion of the practice, labeling it "very dangerous," "corrupt" and an invitation to help "cheaters" without offering evidence.
Universal mail voting "shouldn't be allowed!" he tweeted Wednesday evening, as both sides in the New Mexico dispute filed legal briefs and took to the microphones to make their cases
Clerks for 27 of the state's 33 counties have asked for permission to hold the primaries by sending absentee ballots to all voters registered with a political party and then restricting in-person voting locations to the disabled and non-English speakers. (Independents may not vote in the state's partian contests.)
Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver backs the plan, but the GOP wants to keep 100 polling places open across the state and limit the clerks to sending vote-by-mail request forms that would need to be submitted a week before the primary.
"Well, if you have bothered to go to the Walmart or the supermarket during these times, I suspect that the crowd there is just as dense as it would be at any single polling place," GOP Chairman Steve Pearce, a former congressman, t old the Santa Fe New Mexican.
"By trying to block us from doing the right thing for the voting public, they are basically saying it's better to put people's lives at risk than to do it a different way, and I think that's shameful," Toulouse Oliver replied.
Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union and other voting rights groups filed briefs by Wednesday's deadline supporting the mail-in plan. The Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court will hear arguments by teleconference Tuesday.
One question is whether the switch would require approval of the solidly Democratic Legislature. While such an outcome would be assured politically, it could be extremely difficult to achieve in time, practically, because the lawmakers' annual session has ended and they don't have clear permission under state law to cast votes for legislation without being in the capital.
Two years ago Democrats won back the governor's office, secured all statewide elected offices and reinforced their majorities at the statehouse and Supreme Court. They also took a seat in Congress away from the GOP, so all five members of the state's delegation are now Democrats.,
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.