Hundreds of young progressives from across the country are coming together in downtown Washington this week, hoping to energize youth advocacy on the left in the 2020 campaign and beyond.
The first-ever Youth Action Summit 2020 — fittingly pronounced as "Yas"— kicked off Tuesday with a call for youth involvement in politics from Florida's Andrew Gillum, one of the nation's most prominent Democratic figures from Generation X.
At 23, while still a student at Florida A&M, Gillum became the youngest person ever elected to the Tallahassee city commission. He was elected mayor in 2014 when he was 35 and four years later lost the governorship by less than half a percentage point.
Gillum said he found a silver lining in his defeat: his contribution to boosting youth voter engagement. Three out every eight Floridians 18 to 29 voted in 2018, a whopping 15 percentage pointincrease from the previous gubernatorial election.
"The reason why we have chosen to invest so deeply in young people and the youth of our country is because for some reason y'all happen to be less encumbered," Gillum said. "You actually take time to say, 'If we had a couple of moments to dream, what would it look like?'"
He reminded the audience that two icons of the civil rights movement, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Martin Luther King Jr., were much younger than Gillum is now when they rose to national prominence in the 1960s.
"We are all benefactors of their sacrifice. My hope is that my children are going to be the benefactors of your sacrifice," Gillum said.
More than 200 young people involved in grassroots movements for electoral or issue-based reform attended the conference. Many of the groups these delegates represent are making a priority in the coming year of registering more young people and pushing legislation to expand access to the ballot box.
The two-day conference was put together by several progressive advocacy groups including the Alliance for Youth Action, NAACP Youth and College, NextGen America, Planned Parenthood Generation Action, Student Power, United We Dream and the Alliance for Youth Organizing.
Workshops are designed to promote best-practices for the progressive movements. For three panels on Tuesday, for example, activists divided up to learn different grassroots strategies for advancing their causes in statehouses under Republican, Democratic or split partisan control.
Other scheduled speakers included D.C.'s long-serving but nonvoting House delegate, Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, whose first political appointment came at age 33, when she was tapped to head the New York City Human Rights Commission in the early 1970s; 31-year-old actor Kendrick Sampson; transgender activist Riley Knoxx; and Bruce Franks Jr., who turned a career as a rapper into a seat representing St. Louis in the statehouse.
The purpose of the inaugural Youth Action Summit is not to have each group compete for funds or attention, but rather to form a unique model for leadership and gathering, said Sarah Audelo, executive director of the Alliance for Youth Action.
"This is a space of leaders and visionaries," she said. "We will also work to make sure that each and every one of the elected on our ballot — whether it's for city council or attorney general or Senate — will uphold our values and vision for this country."
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.