Pressure is building for Gov. Kim Reynolds to quickly fulfill her promise to restore voting rights to Iowa's convicted felons in time for the general election.
On Thursday, one month after the Republican governor promised such an executive order, county election administrators urged her to hurry up — because otherwise it might not be possible to make the bureaucratic changes before the November vote.
The details of her proclamation could shape the civic future of as many of 60,000 Iowans who have finished prison terms for felonies. The state is the only one that permanently denies the franchise to all felons, at a time when expanding their political rights has been a top cause of civil rights groups.
"These changes cannot happen overnight," said the letter to the governor from Roxanna Moritz, the president of the state Association of County Auditors, the officials who run elections in Iowa.
Not only will mailings, instructions to poll workers and government websites need to be altered, she said, but "this policy should be supported by outreach and education to inform potential voters of their eligibility" so they can register by the Oct. 24 deadline, 10 days before Election Day.
"It will be out in plenty of time prior to the election," Reynolds vowed in a radio interview Wednesday, saying her staff and state attorneys are meeting with various groups to gather input.
She also signaled she would take victims into account by keeping the lifetime ban on voting for those convicted of murderer, rape and other violent crimes.
The county officials said they favored a blanket decision, because administering registration based on criminal statutes would be too difficult.
They also asked Reynolds to not require felons to repay any fines or restitution before voting again. The auditors said figuring out how much the ex-felons owe and collecting that money would be too complicated and time consuming.
That echoes arguments central to the most prominent felon voting move in the country, in Florida, where the restoration of rights for several hundred thousand ex-convicts has been halted by a state law requiring them to make good on all their financial obligations to the government. Critics say that amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax, but this week the Supreme Court decided not to intervene — at least not before the state's August primary.
Reynolds had supported a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights, but that proposal stalled last month in the GOP-controlled General Assembly. Legislators did pass and the governor signed, however, a bill to require felons to pay restitution to victims if they ever get their voting rights back. A payment plan would still be allowed for fines and court costs and would not delay voting rights restoration.
But it's not clear if that law would apply to changes made through executive order. The law specifically states its requirements kick in only upon passage by the voters of a constitutional amendment restoring felon voting rights.
The issue has gained fresh attention during this summer's national reckoning with racism, in particular the racial inequities in law enforcement. A disproportionate share of the nation's prisoners are Black and Latino, and allowing them to fully re-enter society after their release is being hailed as an overdue step toward justice.
During a rally in June at the Capitol in Des Moines, Black Lives Matter activists presented a list of five demands, one of which was the executive order the governor then promised. Members of the group have pressed her for quick action ever since.
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.