UPDATE, Aug. 19: The state Supreme Court and a federal judge issued separate rulings Wednesday that will keep Green candidates off the ballot.
The Green Party is suing to keep itself on the ballot in Montana this fall, the latest testing of the limits of efforts to tamp down the small but persistent power of such minor political parties.
A state judge last week ordered five Green challengers removed from general election ballots on the grounds their candidacies had not been properly certified. The longshot lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court seeks to overturn the judge's decision, arguing it violates the voting rights of, and effectively disenfranchises, approximately 800 Montanans who cast Green Party ballots in the June 3 primary.
This dispute is another example of the barriers third-party candidates face because of the American political duopoly. Many in the world of democracy reform argue that a baseline way to make the system work better is opening elections wider to candidates who don't identify within the increasingly polarized Republicans and Democrats.
Green candidates were initially allowed on the ballot in March, but only after the state Republican Party spent $100,000 to gather signatures on their putative rival's ballot petitions. The effort was not sanctioned, or appreciated, by the Greens.
Democrats then launched a campaign to convince voters who had signed the petitions to withdraw their support — arguing the GOP effort was an improper ploy to prop up the super-liberal Greens so they could peel away some votes that would normally be colored blue.
GOP Secretary of State Corey Stapleton blocked that effort, saying the Democrats had missed a deadline. State District Judge James Reynolds said no such deadline existed and allowed the withdrawals. This left the Green Party without the signatures needed to be on the ballot for any contests besides president — and its candidates were dropped from races for the Senate, the state's single House seat, governor, attorney general and a legislative seat in Helena..
The new suit argues the Green primary votes were cast lawfully and removing the party's candidates is unconstitutional and violates federal voting rights law.
"The buyer's remorse suffered by some of the Green Party petition signers well after the party qualified for the ballot — and well after many of the Green Party voters had cast ballots — did not justify the state court's cavalier disenfranchisement," the suit says.
Time is not on the plaintiffs' side. State law requires the names and party designations of candidates on the general election ballot be certified eight days from now.
Stapleton has also persuaded the state Supreme Court to rule in the dispute by next week's deadline.
The Greens — who advocate for social justice, environmental and economics policies way left of the Democrats — have fielded almost 100 other candidates in 22 states for congressional, legislative and local offices.
Their presidential nominee, 67-year-old retired UPS laborer Howie Hawkins from upstate New York, is already on the ballot in two dozen states including Montana, and has a chance to be on every ballot in the country because the process is different. The 2016 Green nominee, Jill Stein, came in fourth in the popular vote with 1.5 million, or 1 percent of the nationwide total.
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.