South Carolina has agreed to drop its requirement that people registering to vote disclose their full Social Security number, Democratic campaign leaders announced Tuesday.
They hailed the agreement — in response to a lawsuitfiled by the state's Democratic Party and the party's Senate and House campaign arms — as one of the most important victories yet for one of their major 2020 strategies: filing voting rights lawsuits in many competitive states, hoping the courts will strike down an array of election regulations in time to help boost the party's turnout this fall.
"This is a massive early win," said Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
One million eligible South Carolinians are not registered, Bustos said, claiming the state's unusual Social Security requirement was part of a successful effort by Republicans to hold down those numbers among African-Americans. Three in 10 people in the state are black and they vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
"These things are still lingering in South Carolina and across the South," the most prominent elected black Democrat in the country, House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, said of the history of voter suppression of African-Americans.
Clyburn said black people, especially, are uncomfortable giving out their full Social Security numbers and so the change announced Tuesday should prove a boon to his party. He said state Democrats have a plan in place to begin registering and turning out voters. While the party's chances of coloring the state blue on the presidential map this fall are slim, it is fighting intensely to hold on to one of the party's two House seats and is making a spirited run to unseat GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.
State Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, wrote federal Judge J. Michelle Childs that he was modifying the original 1967 attorney general's opinion backing the requirement of a full Social Security number. While that opinion was still "technically correct," Wilson said, the more modern practice used in millions of commercial and governmental transactions is to require just the last four digits.
Wilson also told the judge his office's views were also changing based on one of his predecessor's formal opinions, which said all doubts on such issues should be resolved "in favor of the right to vote, which is a fundamental right."
Childs has yet to agree to the proposed settlement.
The plaintiffs maintained the rules violate both the First Amendment's rights of speech and political association and the Civil Rights Act, because the requirement creates an unnecessary obstacle to voting.
South Carolina is one of just three states that require full Social Security numbers be included on voter registration forms. The others are Virginia and Tennessee. While federal law has prohibited requiring people to disclose their whole Social Security number since 1974, the states were grandfathered in because their requirements predated that law.
Bustos said the victory shows the value of the strategy put forth by the two campaign committees, which are spending tens of millions of dollars on voting rights lawsuits this election cycle. So far more than a dozen have been filed. "The work is long term; it's a major investment," she said.
According to Bustos, legal victories had already have been achieved in three other states, all of which will be intensely contested this fall after President Trump carried them narrowly last time:
- In North Carolina, the General Assembly has reversed the elimination of early voting on the last Saturday before Election Day. Bustos said African-Americans are most likely to vote on that day. State and national Democrats had filed a lawsuit over the issue.
- In Michigan, the settlement last summer of a lawsuit funded by the DCCC will make it easier for students on college campuses to register. Changes approved in a ballot initiative in 2018, including no-excuses absentee voting, same-day registration and on-line registration, will make it easier for those students to cast their ballots.
- In Florida, a federal judge in November ruled unconstitutional a requirement that all candidates of the party that holds the governor's office be listed first on the ballot. The judge said the requirement had given Florida Republicans an advantage of 5 percentage points in elections over the past two decades.
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.