Two extreme long-shot lawsuits are still sitting at the Supreme Court, a day after it waited just minutes before dismissing the first challenge to the presidential election it looked at.
There was not a word of dissent, from President Trump's three nominees or any of the other justices, as the court declined Tuesday evening to consider a bid by Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn Joe Biden's clear victory in the state.
Hours later came the deadline set by federal law for states to lock down their election results, and their assignments to the Electoral College, and make them almost totally immune from further challenges. While that essentially locked in Biden's election as the 46th president, it did nothing to stop Trump from continuing to falsely claim he won another term — or to prevent almost all his fellow Republicans in authority from appeasing the unprecedented effort by a president to delegitimize democracy with baseless conspiracy theories about voting fraud.
All but one state appears to have entered the so-called safe harbor on time, which means Congress must accept the electoral votes cast next week when they arrive for tabulating at a rare joint meeting of the House and Senate, to be held Jan 6.
The exception is Wisconsin, which has seen as much election turmoil as any since the pandemic upended voting and spurred a wave of litigation starting this spring. The state has been delayed because lawsuits by Trump allies, in several ways similar to the one from Pennsylvania that got spurned Tuesday, are on appeal to the Supreme Court and in the state courts.
The other suit before the justices, filed only Tuesday, is a claim by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas that the state's citizens' political rights were unconstitutionally limited when rules for mail-in voting were relaxed in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and two other battlegrounds Biden carried, Georgia and Michigan. All of them have Republican-majority legislatures. They account for 62 of the 306 electoral votes Biden can legitimately claim, but Texas says all those votes should be disallowed.
The high court has the power, but is not required, to decide lawsuits one state brings against another.
Attorneys general from the defendant states dismissed the Texas case with an array of colorful language.
But Trump on Wednesday said he would put lawyers to work arguing the Texas side of the case, declaring on Twitter: "We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!"
He offered no other details, such as whether he would ask his campaign attorneys or the Justice Department to get involved.
A Wisconsin appeals court will hear arguments Thursday on a long-odds suit alleging the state Elections Board permitted the finalizing of election results despite claims of irregularities in Milwaukee and Madison — and that as a result the statewide result should be tossed and the GOP Legislature should get to pick the electors.
Missing the safe harbor deadline does not nullify Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes, but it will make them slightly more vulnerable in Congress, where GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama says he will mount a challenge he has not detailed. Still, it's essentially inconceivable the Democratic-majority House would vote to throw out any slate of Biden electors.
Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, which Biden carried by 80,000 votes, were locked down Tuesday by a single, 18-word sentence ending with the word "denied."
The appeal, by Republicans led by Rep. Mike Kelly, argued that a state law enacted last year (with just one GOP "no" vote) allowing all Pennsylavnians to vote by mail without an excuse violated the state Constitution — and so all 2.5 million mailed ballots, mainly cast by Democrats, should be thrown out. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, argued in his brief to the justices that their getting involved in such a purely state matter would be "one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the republic."
Meanwhile, almost all GOP members of Congress are declining to commit themselves publicly to the correct answer to the question: Has Biden won the election? Some say they may do so after the electors meet across the country Monday, while others say they will wait until Congress counts their votes in four weeks.
Meantime, their refusal to agree on the facts is furthering the undermining of voter confidence and putting a cloud over the peaceful transfer of power and the onset of the Biden administration.
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.