The end of a week that brought the country within 40 days of the election included a smorgasbord of legal developments underscoring how the rules governing the coming surge of mailed votes are far from finalized.
The Republican lieutenant governor asked the Justice Department to investigate North Carolina's brand new easements on absentee voting. A federal appeals court revived witness requirements on ballots mailed in South Carolina. Philadelphia's top election official asked Pennsylvania to scratch at the last minute a requirement for returning such ballots inside secrecy envelopes. And Michigan decided to give local clerks a small head start on processing absentee ballots.
The series of moves Thursday were the latest in the pitched partisan battle over mail-in voting. The first two reflect the Republican effort to make the rules tougher, while the other two reflect the Democratic view that those rules should be simpler.
These are the details:
North Carolina
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest's appeal to Attorney General William Barr is the latest development in a controversy that's swirled since the state Board of Elections signed off Tuesday on the settlement of a lawsuit filed by progressive groups attempting to lessen the burden on voters.
The agreement, which still must be approved by a judge, would give voters in the swing state the chance to fix errors in absentee ballots that would otherwise cause them to be rejected. It also would allow mail ballots that were postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within nine days.
The next day, the two GOP members of the election board resigned, claiming they were deceived about the details of the settlement agreement, which had been endorsed by the board unanimously. The lieutenant governor's letter accuses the Democratic members of the panel, and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, of colluding to subvert the intent of the General Assembly and asks Barr to investigate whether any federal laws have been violated.
The battle for the state's 15 electoral votes and the outcome of a GOP-held Senate seat are too close to call.
Pennsylvania
The Democratic chairwoman of Philadelpia's election board warned in a letter to leaders of the GOP-controlled General Assembly that as many as 100,000 votes across the battleground state could be rejected in November. Lisa Deely cited a sweeping state Supreme Court decision about election rules from last week that requires absentee ballots to be placed in an internal secrecy envelope before going into the outer envelope used to return them.
Deely wrote that she fears voters will forget to use the internal envelope, leaving these so-called "naked ballots" to be rejected by election officials and disenfranchising enough voters to decide the presidential race. President Trump carried the state's 20 electoral votes last time by just 44,000 votes but former Vice President Joe Biden has been narrowly ahead in most recent polls.
Deely asked legislators to pass an emergency bill dropping the requirement, which is not likely to happen.
Nationwide, record numbers of absentee ballots are expected to be mailed in or dropped off, many by first-time voters unfamiliar with the system. About a third of the states mandate secrecy envelopes.
Election officials across the country are expressing worry that voters will not correctly follow the rules that apply in their own state. Thousands of ballots in the primary elections did not count because of missing signatures and other defects.
South Carolina
The vote was 2-1 at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block a lower court ruling against the state's witness requirement. Judge Michelle Childs had declared earlier in the week that the mandate violated citizens' right to vote and had little impact on preventing election fraud.
The appeals decision puts a hold on that ruling while the legal challenge to it is reviewed. That means a witness signature will likely be needed for voting by mail in the general election. Trump is a lock to carry the state but Republican Lindsey Graham's bid for reelection has become one of the hottest Senate races in the country.
Several voters and Democratic organizations had filed a lawsuit challenging the signature requirement.
Michigan
The bill passeed by the GOP Legislature gives clerks an extra 10 hours, on the day before Election Day, to begin processing absentee ballots.
Election officials had been asking for the change because of the huge number of absentee ballots that are expected in one of the premier presidential battlegrounds, with 16 electoral votes on the line.
The legislation also requires election officials to contact voters if their ballot has been rejected because the signature on it does not match the one on file. And it increases security around the drop boxes where people can deposit mail-in ballots.
About 2.4 million voters have requested absentee ballots so far in Michigan, and officials expect a record number of mailed-in ballots will be cast. The extension is important for Democrats because Trump has signaled he plans to rely on the results available election night to decide whether to claim victory.
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.