Powley is CEO and co-founder of Team Democracy. Powley lives in Mountain Top, PA. He retired from a 46-year career at the helm of his whitewater rafting company, to found Team Democracy with his brother-in-law Chris.
The Carter Center and Team Democracy recently announced a new partnership to promote transparent and trustworthy electoral processes in the United States.
Team Democracy is a grassroots initiative dedicated to fostering transparent and trustworthy electoral processes in the United States and has successfully mobilized candidates nationwide to commit to core democratic values of accountability and transparency in the electoral process.
The Carter Center founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1982, in partnership with Emory University, is a not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization by has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care.
This important strategic alliance aims to strengthen the core values of democracy and electoral integrity defined in the Candidate Principles for Trusted Elections, a national, cross-partisan effort co-led by The Carter Center and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and supported by over 70 organizations across the country.
The Candidate Principles for Trusted Elections promote the essential cornerstones necessary for a healthy constitutional democracy, including integrity, nonviolence, security, oversight, and the peaceful transfer of power. Through their collaboration, The Carter Center and Team Democracy will work to advance these principles, foster dialogue among candidates and stakeholders, and create a more transparent and trustworthy electoral landscape.
"We're excited to work alongside Team Democracy,” said Jason Carter, chair of The Carter Center Board of Trustees. “This partnership underscores our commitment to ensuring that elections are conducted in a way that upholds the core values of democracy. Thanks to their work, more than 775 candidates committed to their Safe and Fair Elections Pledge in 2022, demonstrating Team Democracy’s unwavering dedication to strengthening our democratic institutions. And we're delighted to have Team Democracy Chair General Hayden as a Candidate Principles Steering Committee member."
"Many of us in the national security community share a profound, nonpartisan commitment to our democratic institutions and norms,” said General Michael Hayden. “Our team is thrilled to join the Candidate Principles project. Team Democracy's 2022 Safe and Fair Election Pledge was crafted with the support of The Carter Center and other nonpartisan democracy experts, and it mirrored the essential elements of the Candidate Principles for Trusted Elections. Our hope is that every American who cherishes our constitutional democracy will endorse these principles and urge their candidates and elected representatives to do the same."
The new partnership will afford us the opportunity to engage more directly with all Americans. Strengthening our democracy can never be exclusively a top-down initiative but instead requires the active participation of 'we the people.' The Candidate Principles provide an important, nonpartisan piece of common ground around which all Americans, and their elected representatives, can rally.
The Candidate Principles for Trusted Elections is advised by a steering committee co-chaired by Jason Carter and Michael Ford. Michael Hayden, Margaret Hoover, Sam Donaldson, Nick Troiano, and Danielle Allen are also part of the committee. Visit principledcandidates.org to learn more and support the principles.
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.