The second-guessing has not ended about the integrity of the vote in Wisconsin, where President Biden secured one of his narrowest victories last fall.
Republicans in charge at the state capital ordered the Legislature's auditing arm on Thursday to begin a comprehensive, monthslong review of almost the entire election system.
Democrats voted against the review as totally unnecessary, noting how Donald Trump's loss of the state — albeit by fewer than 21,000 votes out of 3.2 million cast — had been affirmed after a partial recount and following the flat-out rejection of an array of lawsuits alleging wrongdoing from Trump and his allies.
Rep. Samantha Kerkman, the GOP chairwoman of the panel that controls the auditors, said their work was needed to make sure the state's deeply divided electorate gains confidence in the fairness of elections, "the cornerstone of our government," before the 2022 midterm and gubernatorial contests.
"Divisions are more pronounced now than ever and my fear is — and I hope it's just a fear — that this audit will be a vehicle for more distrust and more misinformation," countered Democratic Sen. Melissa Agard.
State Auditor Joe Chrisman was ordered to examine issues including how the bipartisan Elections Commission and municipal clerks maintain the voter rolls, how they handle complaints, compliance with rules for assisting voters complete vote-by-mail forms, the security of voting equipment, the use of drop boxes, and whether there has been abuse of the exceptions for the elderly and disabled to obtain absentee ballots without showing identification,
Almost all these matters were raised in the barrage of election lawsuits that have flooded Wisconsin in the past year.
The state Supreme Court ruled against Trump in a series of 4-3 decisions that his side's suits lacked merit or evidence or were filed too late. But the high court is still considering a lawsuit that predated the election, filed by conservatives who want to make the Elections Commission move faster to remove people from the rolls after notifying them it believes they have moved or died. An appeals court last year found the commission has used a proper timetable for such purges.
No significant problems were found with the state's voting machines after audits and recounts in both 2016 and last fall. Both times, Wisconsin had the third-closest presidential margin in the nation. Trump carried its 10 electoral votes by a single point, or 27,000 votes, the first time. Last year, the margins were closer than Wisconsin's six-tenths of a point only in Arizona and Georgia, where Biden also prevailed.
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.