The persistence of the pandemic is not a sufficient rationale for allowing everyone in Tennessee to vote by mail this fall, the state's top court has ruled, putting the state back on the otherwise shrinking roster of places with excuse requirements for getting an absentee ballot.
Wednesday's 4-1 decision by the state Supreme Court overturned a lower court's declaration two months ago that all eligible voters be permitted to use the mail this year in order to avoid Covid-19 exposure. It stands as the first time a state's top court has used an appeal to make absentee voting in November more restrictive.
As a result, there are now eight states where a reason beyond fear of the coronavirus will be needed to vote for president. Other than New York and Indiana, the rest are spread across the South; of those, all but emerging battleground Texas are reliably Republican red: Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana now joined again by Tennessee.
Eight other states have effectively dropped their excuse requirements for this year, one of the reasons why voting from home is destined to surge — maybe accounting for more than half of all votes cast, double the usual share, despite President Trump's efforts to discredit the practice with unfounded claims it produces fraud.
The Tennessee justices did not alter the rules for the record number of absentee ballots already cast for the primary Thursday. But their decision came just in time to govern the entire period for applying to vote by mail in the general election, which also began Thursday.
The state initially wanted the court to block any expansion of mail voting in light of the coronavirus, arguing local election officials could not accommodate, logistically or budgetarily, the subsequent avalanche of ballots. They also cited the risk of election fraud.
But at oral arguments, government lawyers said that being quarantined as a precaution, caring for someone with the virus or having an "underlying health condition" — which voters were free to decide for themselves — allows voters to check the "illness" box on their application forms.
"The state's interests in the efficacy and integrity of the election process are sufficient to justify the moderate burden placed on the right to vote" for people not covered by the newly promised easements, Justice Cornelia Clark wrote for the court.
She also told Tennessee officials to quickly detail for the public the state's new view of Covid-19 and mail voting.
That prompted a qualified embrace of the decision from the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped sue over the expansion.
"The court should have gone further, however, and ruled that all eligible voters have a right to vote safely by mail," said the ACLU's top voting rights attorney, Dale Ho. "But this ruling remains an important victory for many Tennessee voters."
The General Assembly also returns next week for a special session, where minority Democrats are expected to take another run at legislation expanding the excuse rules. Republican Gov. Bill Lee has vowed to veto such a measure, though.
Fewer than 3 percent of the state's votes have arrived in envelopes in recent elections, one of the smallest shares in the nation. Even before the court's decision, Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett was preparing for that percentage to soar — because 1.4 million voters, more than a third of those registered, are automatically eligible to vote absentee because they've had their 60th birthdays.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Campaign Legal Center have filed a federal lawsuit seeking unfettered mail voting and also challenging three other curbs on the practice. One is an unusual rule preventing the newly registered from casting their first votes by mail unless they apply for the ballot in person and show proof of identity.
Trump can count on the state's 11 electoral votes, which he won last time by 26 points. Turnout in the 2016 election was 62 percent, but it may be less this year because of a lack of any competitive statewide races.
The winner of Thursday's hotly contested GOP primary for the Senate seat held by Republican Lamar Alexander, who's retiring, is a near shoe-in come November. That race is between Bill Hagerty, who was Trump's ambassador to Japan, and Manny Sethi, an orthopedic trauma surgeon running as a conservative outsider ready to take on the "establishment" while still supporting the president.
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.