After 15 years in Democratic politics, Dave Griggs has turned his focus to nonpartisan efforts to help more people gain access to the ballot box. VoteRiders works to educate citizens about voter ID laws and helps them acquire the identification necessary to register and then cast ballots. Griggs had worked to elect to Congress several of the most high-profile Democrats from his native Minnesota in recent years: presidential aspirant Amy Klobuchar, her previous fellow senators Paul Wellstone and Al Franken, and Keith Ellison, now state attorney general. Before joining VoteRiders as CEO in January 2018, he held a series of senior titles at the Democrat's campaign operation for state legislators. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
Guaranteeing democracy through voter ID education and assistance.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
I voted absentee for Al Gore when I was in college at NYU. I wasn't political growing up but was entirely sucked into that 2000 election and the aftermath. Hooked from there.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
The 2002 Minnesota Senate race. Got my start on this race as a field organizer for Paul Wellstone and loved every part of it. This was how I learned to work hard. Surrounded by incredible, passionate people who turned into lifetime friends.
And your most disappointing setback?
The 2002 Minnesota Senate race. The senator died in a plane crash 11 days before Election Day. That was how I learned to take pain and disappointment and use it to fuel the hard work needed to succeed in the future.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
My mother was a nurse, my father was a minister. I grew up with Midwestern values — work hard, treat people the right way, get ahead. A healthy democracy is crucial to that way of life and when people don't have the ability to have their say in their communities, it makes me angry. VoteRiders' mission is to create and implement identification tools and services that ensure voters are guaranteed their right to vote.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Show up on time, admit mistakes and speak when it's your turn.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
Burnt popcorn.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
All the President's Men.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Candy Crush.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
Sour cream is disgusting.
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.