Kevin Frazier will join the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University as an Assistant Professor starting this Fall. He currently is a clerk on the Montana Supreme Court.
My fiancé and I were exhausted when the movers told us that, upon further review, it would actually cost twice their initial estimate to move our stuff from Helena to Miami.
The number shocked us and our bank accounts. But we were captive customers. The moving crew had already sealed, wrapped, and trapped everything we counted on joining us in Florida. With those pieces of our lives held hostage, we lacked any option other than to acquiesce.
This expense, though unwelcome and undergoing a challenge (I’m a lawyer, after all), caught us off guard but didn’t sink our finances.
Others wouldn’t be so lucky. These sorts of financial tsunamis can appear out of nowhere and unmoor the 22 percent of Americans with no emergency savings—detaching them from whatever had previously provided stability in their lives. Unexpected financial swells don’t just disturb those furthest from the shore. About 30 percent of Americans might be able to withstand the first waves of financial instability, but only have enough savings to stay afloat for three months, according to a June survey by Bankrate.
More Americans need access to the financial anchor required to survive a calamity. Specifically, every American undergoing a period of financial instability should have access to a one-time, no-questions-asked grant of $5,000—to be deducted from any future Social Security earnings or donated by an individual with more financial stability (more on this in a second). The cruel irony is that though some would denounce this as a politically unacceptable “gift,” a one-time grant would actually save society money and act as an investment in those most in need of a heavier anchor.
When individuals become financially adrift, society pays a hefty and, at least in some cases, avoidable cost of trying to bring them back to shore. For example, according to the Urban Institute, the Miami community collectively paid $6 million to $14 million in 2019 as a result of the costs incurred by residents with unstable finances being evicted, and failing to pay their property taxes and utility bills.
Consider that in some cases a few hundred dollars would have allowed individuals to stay in their homes and retain all of the security, stability, and opportunity that comes with it. That’s precisely why Miami created the Eviction Prevention Program. Qualifying residents could receive up to $7,000 (one-time) towards the rental arrears. Established in response to COVID-19, the program demonstrated the community’s interest in preventing any resident from getting too far from the shores of financial stability as well as the value of early and low-cost interventions. Funding for the program has since dried up, though the need for financial assistance remains.
Now’s the time for the community to fill the gap left by governments that, due to crass politics or leaky budgets, refuse to lend the bootstraps folks need to regain their financial footing. For the Warren Buffets of the world—those who claim that they’d welcome paying higher taxes—the creation of a No Questions Asked (NQA) fund is akin to getting into pickleball because it would require little work and only a basic understanding of the rules.
Emergency relief funds such as the NQA fund succeed because they don’t get mired in the costly, biased, and bureaucratized process of trying to decide who is worthy of relief. Eligibility for such funds should hinge on two factors: any demonstration of financial instability and evidence that the recipient experienced an unexpected financial calamity.
Think back to a time when you felt the surge of panic brought on by a swell of financial instability—did it seem like you could wait for relief? Did you consider drastic and potentially dangerous ways to rebuild your financial foundation? Did the panic and anxiety impact your mental and physical health? My hunch is that the answer is yes to each of those questions. My expectation is that if such a fund existed then people would donate—as the tangibility of an “ask” goes up, so does the willingness of someone to give. There are few asks more tangible than helping a family stay in their apartment, a parent cover their child’s medical expenses, or a neighbor recovering from being duped by a deceptive company.
I know that versions of No Questions Asked funds exist around the country. If you know of one, tell me about it and let’s spread the word. Few things are more fundamental to the American ethos than encouraging people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but let’s not forget that sometimes even bootstraps are unaffordable—that’s a problem we can collectively solve.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.