Basketball superstar LeBron James' new voting rights group is donating $100,000 to help pay fines and fees for ex-felons in Florida so they can register and vote.
More Than a Vote was founded in June by the Los Angeles Lakers' small forward and other current and past basketball stars including: former NBA player Jalen Rose; Sklyar Diggins-Smith of the WNBA; and young NBA phenom Trae Young.
In 2018, voters in Florida overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative restoring voting rights to convicted felons who had served their terms. But the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, that required ex-felons to pay all of their outstanding fines and fees before being allowed to vote. They argued that paying these fees and fines constituted completion of their sentences.
Opponents said requiring people to pay fees and fines was equivalent to the poll taxes that had been used to block Blacks from voting in the South after the Civil War.
Udonis Haslem, a former teammate of James' and a member of More Than a Vote, said the fees and fines are "a barrier we all have to come together and break down together" in a video posted on the More Than a Vote Facebook page.
The group is calling on others to donate to pay the fees and fines through the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
A federal district judge in May struck down the law requiring fees and fines be paid before voting rights would be restored. The state appealed and earlier this month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request from DeSantis to put the trial judge's decision on hold until the full appeals court could hear arguments on Aug. 18.
An estimated 1.4 million Floridians could be eligible to have their voting rights restored. There are no hard numbers, but ex-felons in Florida owe upward of hundreds of millions dollars in fines and fees.
In announcing the donation, a news release from More Than a Vote indicated that more announcements about the group's partnership with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition would occur in the coming weeks.
One already announced: James' group will host public screenings of "John Lewis: Good Trouble," with the proceeds going to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition fund.
The coalition already has raised a total of $1.8 million toward a goal of $3 million.
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.