The pitched battle over the voter list in one of the nation's most important 2020 battlegrounds is only growing more intense.
A group of conservative voters on Thursday asked a judge to hold the Wisconsin Elections Commission in contempt of court and fine the panel $12,000 every day until it removes 209,000 names from registration rosters. Democrats are fighting to keep those people on the rolls.
The fight is particularly important for two reasons. The size of the potential purge is nine times bigger than Donald Trump's margin of victory in the state (23,000 votes) four years ago. And the effort to cull the lists represents one of the right's most aggressive legal challenges to voting rights ahead of this year's presidential election.
Two weeks ago the judge in the case, Paul Malloy of Ozaukee County in the Milwaukee suburbs, ordered deactivation of the registrations of those who did not answer a notice the election commission sent in October to people suspected of moving out of state. The mailing told those people that state law required them to confirm their addresses within 30 days as a condition for staying on the rolls. Otherwise, they would have to reregister.
The panel, with three members from each party, has since deadlocked on attempts by the Republicans to carry out the purge immediately while an appeal is pending.
"Court orders are not suggestions and they're not rendered inoperative by the fact that you've filed an appeal," Rick Esenberg of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which brought the lawsuitand asked for the commission to be penalized, said on WISN.
"This case should not effectively be ended before the appeals process plays out," replied Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is representing the elections commission.
Trump is counting on the state's 10 electoral votes again this fall, but Democrats are intent on winning the state for what would be the eighth time in nine elections.
Doing that, however, will require a strong turnout from urban areas that are home to most of the people on the potential purge list.
Esenberg's group wants the state Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, to hear the commission's appeal. The commission wants an intermediate appeals court to take the next step and to put the judge's ruling on hold in the meantime. And the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has sued in federal court to stop the purge, arguing the state's system violates the due process rights of voters.
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.