Nsé Ufot is executive director of the New Georgia Project and its political arm, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a voter registration organization founded by Stacey Abrams when she was a Democratic leader in the state House. Ufot emigrated from Nigeria to Atlanta as kid, graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Dayton Law School and was previously an executive at Canada's largest faculty union and a lobbyist for the American Association of University Professors. Her answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
What's the tweet-length description of your group?
A nonpartisan civic engagement organization that has helped more than 400,000 Georgians register to vote since its 2014 launch.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
At 14, I served as a page in the Georgia House of Representatives. I shuffled notes between professional and grassroots lobbyists and the legislators I was tasked with supporting.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Expanding the Georgia electorate by building a team and a program that has helped 400,000 young, black, Latino, Asian American and women voters register to vote.
And your most disappointing setback?
I don't have any. I count them all as learning opportunities.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
I'm a naturalized citizen and a fierce patriot. I took an oath of allegiance to the United States of America and promised to defend its Constitution and its laws against foreign and domestic enemies to the best of my ability. Each day, I work to make sure that a government of, for, and by the people is the reality of folks like me from historically underserved and underrepresented communities.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
What Jay Z said: "A wise man once told me don't argue with fools, 'cause people from a distance can't tell who is who." There's also Proverbs 26:4: Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
Georgia On My Mind: chocolate ice cream with peaches and peanuts. (I should crowd-source a better name.)
West Wing or Veep?
Both! I re-watch West Wing to remind me what is possible when smart, decent humans commit to working for the public good. Veep is hilarious and paints a sometimes uncomfortably accurate picture of the cast of characters that roams the halls of power.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Set the timer on whatever podcast I'm listening to for 20 minutes. I'm always asleep before it cuts off.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
As a kid, I would cry if my sandwich had the thick, end piece of bread. As an adult that makes her own sandwiches, I throw the end pieces out without a second thought.
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.