This year's most prominent and consequential fight over voter registration — whether Wisconsin's rolls need to be "maintained" better or are at risk of being "purged" unfairly — is approaching a climactic moment.
The state Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide the dispute, setting up a final resolution to a legal donnybrook that has transfixed good-government groups and political strategists since the fall.
The court's timetable leaves unclear whether its decision will come before November, however, when Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes will be central to the presidential outcome. The dispute is over the fate of 129,000 people whose whereabouts are in doubt. And President Trump carried the state last time by just 23,000 votes, breaking a seven-election Democratic run.
Beyond the consequence for another razor-thin election in the state, the case also raises central issues about the fairness of electoral democracy nationwide. Conservative groups say the system only works, free of fraud, if rosters of eligible voters and their addresses are kept up to date. Civil rights groups say overly aggressive culling of lists is part of a longstanding history of voter suppression.
The lawsuit was filed in November by a conservative think tank and law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, alleging the Wisconsin Elections Commission was ignoring a state law requiring the removal of individuals who don't answer a so-called "movers mailing" within a month. The panel now allows people to stay on the rolls for two years after such a postcard gets sent.
A mailing was sent in October to 232,000 people identified by the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group that many states use for maintaining registration lists. ERIC keeps track of such government paperwork as death certificates, felony sentencings, change-of-address forms and drivers' licenses.
That prompted 5,000 people to prove they were still at the address on file, 57,000 to re-register at their new homes and 42,000 to get dropped because they'd moved out of state, died, gone to prison or decided they didn't want to vote anymore.
So the heart of the dispute is now about the remaining 129,000 voters who had not been heard from as of this month. They live disproportionately in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison.
A trial court judge ordered the rosters culled in December and weeks later ordered elections commissioners held in contempt for not complying while they pursued their appeal. An appeals court unanimously overturned the judge in February and said the rolls should stay untouched until after the August primaries and the November election.
The state Supreme Court declined to intervene this winter, deadlocking 3-3. The seventh justice, conservative Daniel Kelly, recused himself because he was seeking re-election in April. He lost, and on Monday he was part of the majority deciding the court should now get involved.
Once his term ends in August, he will be replaced by liberal Jill Karofsky, narrowing the court's rightward tilt to 4-3. It's not clear when oral arguments or a decision will come, though, because lawyers have two months to file briefs and the court is usually in recess most of the summer.
But in a separate order, the justices declined Monday to immediately take voters off the rolls. And voters who are kicked off the rolls may re-register, in person or online, as late as Election Day.
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.