The population in every state is near-evenly split among men and women. But the same cannot be said of most state legislatures.
Only five state houses have a gender balance within 10 percent of the population – which is better than state senates, where just three are within that margin, according to research conducted by Vote Run Lead, which trains women to run for office.
“The state of our democracy – especially at the state level – is not of and by the people. Women are remarkably underrepresented in our state legislatures,” said Erin Vilardi, founder and CEO of Vote Run Lead. “Without a serious intervention it will be decades to hundreds of years before we reach gender parity.”
Nevada is the clear outlier among the 50 states, as it is the only place where women are over-represented in a chamber, with women holding 68.3 percent of the seats in the state Assembly while being 49.9 percent of the population. It is the only one near the top of the list for both chambers.
The Nevada Senate has a negative 4.9 percentage point gap between women in office and women in the population, trailing just Arizona (+3.3 points) and Rhode Island (-3.9 points).
Vilardi identified three reasons Nevada elects such a high rate of women to legislative offices: a strong network of women recruiting and supporting other women, a smaller legislature than most states (it has the third fewest seats, after Alaska and Delaware), strong role models in U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Mastro and Jacky Rosen. Minnesota and New Hampshire are the only other states with two women senators.
“Obviously, overall there is a readiness and willingness of voters to vote for women,” Vilardi said.
Among the five “close to equal representation” states on the house side, three are have a slightly higher share of women in office compared to the general population:
- Nevada at +2.1 points.
- New Mexico at +1.7 points.
- Colorado at +1.2 points.
The are two are slightly below even: Maine (-3.4 points) and Maryland (-4.1 points),
Vilardi explained that Democratic-leaning states tend to have more women in office, but party is not the only reason some states are closer to parity than others.
“Another trend is that in some states, like Colorado, there is a long history of deep organizing by women’s groups – including Vote Run Lead, as well as center-left infrastructure like Emerge America – that have prioritized women and people of color over the last decade,” she said.
At the other end of the spectrum, women are “severely underrepresented” in 18 states with South Carolina the furthest from equal. Just 10.8 percent of legislators are women, even though women make up 51.6 percent of the population. South Carolina does slightly better on the House side, with a gap of 32.2 points.
Tennessee has the biggest gap on that side, with a 40-point gap.
Overall, 31 percent of state legislators are women.
“Recruiting, training and candidate support are necessary to achieve a better balance and we can go even further. That means examine the systemic changes that would propel more women forward,” said Vilardi, who identified specific ways to closing the gap. “This includes more ranked-choice voting elections, where we see more women run and more women win, as well as changes to campaign finance laws that would support women’s often small fundraising networks (as well as candidates of color and working class candidates who tend to have smaller dollar donors, too).”
When drilling down, even fewer states have women of color in office at a rate anywhere near the states’ breakdowns. Not one state senate reaches the “close to equal” range and six states – Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Pennsylvania – do not have any women of color working in that chamber.
Hawaii has the highest percentage of women of color (four in 10) and the most in the state Senate (32 percent). It’s state House ranks fourth (21.6 percent).
Four states ranked as equal or nearly equal on the House side: Nevada, Washington, Oreon and Wisconsin.
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.