The pace of the drive to curb voting across the country is surging, despite the polarizing reaction to the sweeping election restrictions just enacted in Georgia.
The numbers so frequently cited with alarm by voting rights advocates in recent weeks — 253 bills proposed to make it tougher to participate in democracy in 43 states — were calculated by the Brennan Center for Justice. But the progressive think tank reported Thursday that those metrics have become woefully outdated:
In little more than a month, it calculated, the amount of restrictive legislation has soared 43 percent — to 361 bills now pending in 47 legislatures, almost all proposed by Republicans.
Many of the measures stand no chance of enactment, especially those proposed in Democratic-run capitals. And the number of measures proposed to enhance voting rights has also gone up in the past month, while Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Montana have all enacted laws to ease ballot access to various degrees.
But democracy reform advocates generally see the legislative activity as a cause for much more pessimism than optimism, especially because momentum for restrictive bills has been growing in Republican-run states that are electoral battlegrounds and have large shares of Black and Latino voters.
Just this week, bills to limit voting by mail, intensify voter ID requirements and otherwise complicate access to the ballot box have advanced in Texas, Arizona, Michigan, Tennessee and Kansas.
Their authors all say their motive is to boost election security and prevent cheating, even though an exhaustive search for evidence of fraud in 2020 turned up nothing of consequence after President Donald Trump claimed he'd been robbed of re-election.
Democrats say the effort is really about suppressing turnout in order to boost GOP prospects at the polls. They say the only silver lining is to underscore the urgency of creating comprehensive federal rules making it easy to register and vote nationwide.
That's the core goal of the party's good-governance package — dubbed the For the People Act, and labeled HR 1 and S 1 in the respective chambers — which has passed the House but faces a blockade in the Senate so long as the filibuster remains in full force.
Enactment would supersede most election rules in the states — including the bulk of the multifaceted package enacted last week in newly purple Georgia, much of a similarly sweeping law that went on the books last month in Iowa, the fresh voter ID laws in Arkansas and a new law making it easier to purge voter rolls in Utah.
If Congress deadlocks on its bill, the future of voting rights will be fought entirely in state capitals. Fearing that outcome, the UCLA Voting Rights Project this week released model legislation for progressive lawmakers to propose to bolster access to the ballot.
And iVote, a liberal advocacy group that's spent generously in recent campaign years, announced plans to raise and spend $10 million in 2022 to defeat state legislators behind restrictive legislation.
"Legislators in Georgia and across the country should know that if you use the power of your office to make it harder for people to vote, we'll make sure you no longer hold office," said the group's president, Ellen Kurz.
Although Biden last fall became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in seven elections, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in January took both the state's Senate seats from the GOP, Republicans still have solid control of the General Assembly.
Many of Georgia's most prominent companies stayed on the sidelines as the voting curbs measure advanced. But under pressure from their customers, a coalition of powerful Black executives and civil rights groups — who have already filed three different federal lawsuits against the law — both Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines on Wednesday denounced the new rules.
"The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections," said Delta CEO Ed Bastian. "This is simply not true. Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights."
President Biden on Wednesday said he would "strongly support" Major League Baseball moving its All-Star Game from Atlanta this summer to protest the new law. On Thursday GOP Gov. Brain Kemp called that idea "ridiculous."
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.