Wisconsin's Democratic governor has an idea — at once innovative and as old as time — for combating the gerrymandering he expects next year from the Republicans running the Legislature: He hopes to embarrass them to do the right thing.
On Monday he ordered the creation of an independent commission to show how the state's political lines could be drawn to promote political competition and minimize ridiculous contours. Once that work is done, Gov. Tony Evers said, he'll dare the GOP powers in Madison to spurn those nonpartisan maps in favor of their own.
The Republicans were quick to answer that the shaming strategy won't work, because on the pretty safe bet they win continued control in November they'll feel no restraint in drawing boundaries that keep it that way for another 10 years.
Evers had been calling for legislation turning over the next decade's redistricting to a panel of citizens, and leaders of the Republican majorities at the capital had been laughing at the idea.
So, in last week's State of the State speech, he vowed to act on his own by creating a nonpartisan panel he dubbed "The People's Maps Commission," which will travel the state taking testimony and then come up with "fair, impartial maps for the Legislature to take up next year" after the census provides the required data about population shifts.
He signed an executive order fulfilling that promise Monday, decreeing the members will come from all eight of the state's congressional districts and have expertise in redistricting but have no connection to lobbying or partisan politics.
"People should be able to choose their elected officials, not the other way around," Evers said at a news conference in his Capitol office. Of the Republicans, he said: "Certainly I would hope that they see the light and adopt our maps."
GOP leaders were plain in the message that they won't take the bait. "He can form whatever fake, phony, partisan process he wants to create, but I have no doubt in the end we will do it the way we always have, which is to follow the constitution," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Wisconsin State Journal.
State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said he thought the governor's plan would violate the state constitution. Democratic state Attorney General Josh Kaul said the commission would be perfectly legal.
Wisconsin stands as one of the best remaining examples of GOP power-play mapmaking in the country during the 2010s, now that the party's efforts in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been struck down as violating those state constitutions. After Republicans took total control of state government away from the Democrats a decade ago, they made sure all the new maps were colored assertively in red, by packing as many Democrat as possible into districts in Milwaukee and Madison.
The approach worked as designed in four straight elections – culminating in the 2018 midterm, when Republicans won 63 of the 99 state House seats with just 45 percent of the overall legislative vote and five of the eight U.S. House seats with just 46 percent of the overall congressional vote.
Under current law, congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn by the courts if the governor ends up successfully vetoing maps proposed by the Legislature. So the Democrats, with Evers in office until 2022, already have more power than they had last time – and they could have more if the governor persuades the courts to consider the alternative maps his new commission produces.
"When the governor vetoes their maps and they go to court, they'll have to make an argument for why the court should accept their rigged maps," Sachin Chheda, who runs the Fair Elections Project, an advocacy group that promoted the Evers idea. "If the Republicans choose not to use the people's maps, then that will be their choice, but we're all going to know what we're dealing with."
A Marquette University Law School poll a year ago that asked about redistricting showed that 72 percent of Wisconsinites favored giving the job to a nonpartisan commission and just 18 percent wanting the job to remain with the Legislature.
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.