Gifford is the founder and chief operating officer of ActiVote, which works to increase voter participation and civic engagement. ActiVote is partnering with the National Vote at Home Institute on a week-long event to highlight bills that affect voting in your state.
Voting rights bills are in the spotlight. Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law, live on Fox & Friends, joining Georgia, Arkansas, Iowa and Utah in a post-2020 frenzy to change rules and procedures surrounding voting.
More than 1,000 bills have been introduced in state legislatures around the country this year, touching all aspects of the way we cast votes. Some are restricting voting rights; others are expanding them. Some voters may have heard about the bills that get national attention, such as the controversial new law in Georgia, but most have little idea what is happening in their own state legislature.
Helping voters cut through the noise and know exactly what is happening in their state and in Congress is the core mission of ActiVote. Our nonpartisan app ensures that every voter can see all bills that affect them personally, see the candidates that they can vote for, and see where their candidates and legislators stand on the political spectrum.
This week ActiVote is teaming up with National Vote at Home Institute to spotlight all aspects of mail voting. The institute has catalogued and summarized all voting bills and offers the advice that we should be "alert not anxious." In the event, we feature educational summaries from NVHI explaining voting by mail, including signature verification, ballot drop boxes, risk-limiting audits, preprocessing of ballots, ballot tracking and curing, permanent absentee voter lists, prepaid postage and voter data integrity. Everyone can weigh in on where they stand on each of these topics by answering the survey.
Previous studies have shown that voting at home is not a partisan issue: Many people across the political spectrum prefer to have the time to sit down to study their ballot and the candidates for all the various races when they make their choices. At the same time, people want to make sure that their ballot arrives on time, is counted and, of course, that our elections are safe and secure. Many are uncertain about how to ensure that convenience for the voter and security of our elections can go hand in hand.
We believe that this week's event is an excellent opportunity for everyone supportive of convenient and secure elections to learn more about everything related to voting at home, see which bills are going through their state's legislature and to let their voices be heard in the event surveys.
Share your opinion on the various components of the bills in ActiVote surveys.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.