Tennessee's unique restrictions on first-time voters wanting to cast an absentee ballot have been blocked by a federal judge.
State law requires new voters to show up at their local boards of elections and present a photo identification in order to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot — a cumbersome process even without the discouraging of travel during the coronavirus pandemic. Covid-19 has made the system unconstitutional, at least temporarily, Judge Eli Richardson of Nashville ruled Wednesday.
The law made exercising the franchise more difficult for the 128,000 Tennesseans who first signed up to vote in the two years before the 2018 midterm, about 3 percent of the state's electorate.
That number of new registrations is likely to be exceeded in the runup to November's presidential race, even though President Trump is the prohibitive favorite for the state's 11 electoral votes and there are no hotly contested statewide or congressional contests.
Keeping the rule in effect this fall "likely would be a violation of the First Amendment right to vote enjoyed by the American citizenry," the judge wrote.
Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett has not said if it will appeal. If he does not, the judge says he must publicize the easement on state government websites.
The decision is another twist in Tennessee's hard-fought battles over voting rights just in the last year.
This spring the Republican-majority General Assembly repealed regulations on voter registration drives that were on the books less than a year. Cited as the strictest such rules in the country, they included criminal penalties for overzealous canvassers. Civil rights groups sued, saying the law set unconstitutional limits on political behavior and were illegally designed to suppress the votes of Black people and college students, and legislators abandoned the statute in the face of setbacks in federal court.
Republicans won an even more consequential courthouse battle over voting rules this summer, however.
A state judge in June ordered that all voters must be allowed to vote by mail during the public health crisis, including the August primary. But the state Supreme Court then overturned the absentee expansion, restoring the normally strict excuse requirements after the state promised that underlying health conditions would qualify someone to lawfully get a mail ballot.
It's unclear how many people will take advantage of that limited easement. Only 2 percent of Tennesseans voted remotely two years ago, one of the smallest numbers in the country.
Richardson, who was named to the bench by Trump, had earlier ruled against two other demands from plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit: to change the state's signature-matching rules for absentee envelopes and to strike down the state's law saying only election officials may distribute absentee ballot applications.
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.