“Gotta be blunt: Vivek is a terrible candidate to have at the top of the ticket. He’s dragging down the Senate candidate. I think Vivek’s down by 5 or 6 points and he’ll lose by more if he continues with what he’s been saying on the campaign trail,” Bannon said.

U.S. Sen. Jon Husted is the Republican nominee in Ohio’s Senate race, running against Democrat Sherrod Brown. Ramaswamy faces Democrat Dr. Amy Acton for governor. Both contests are on the November ballot, and the Senate seat is one of a handful that will decide control of the chamber.

The criticism lands on a candidate President Donald Trump endorsed within hours of his campaign launch, and whose bid is bankrolled by a super PAC that has raised roughly $42 million — more than 88% of it from five billionaires who do not live in Ohio, including Elon Musk, Jeff Yass and Bill Ackman.

Bannon’s number is worse than the public polling

Bannon put Ramaswamy down 5 or 6 points. Recent public surveys show a tighter race.

A bipartisan AARP poll of 800 likely Ohio voters conducted June 14 through 16 by Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research found Acton ahead 47% to 44%, with Brown leading Husted 48% to 45%. A New York Times/Siena survey released in early July had the governor’s race tied at 47%, with Acton leading among independents. In February, an EMC Research poll commissioned by the Ohio Environment Council found Acton ahead by 10 points and Ramaswamy drawing only 65% support from Republicans.

On July 10, Cook Political Report analyst Jessica Taylor moved the race from Lean Republican to Toss Up, citing a favorable national climate for Democrats despite Ramaswamy’s spending advantage. It was the first time the contest had carried that rating since 2018.

Bannon has been writing off Ohio since June

This is not Bannon’s first shot at the state’s Republican ticket. On a Thursday, June 4, episode of War Room, he predicted the party would lose its Senate majority outright, telling listeners grassroots volunteers had gone flat.

“Here’s the reason: We’re going to lose the Senate in the fall anyway,” he said then. He named Ohio directly in a list of states where he said the movement should stop working: “We’re telling everybody to put their freaking pencils down in North Carolina, in Maine, in Ohio, all of it.”

Husted, appointed to the seat by Gov. Mike DeWine in January 2025 and running for the first time to finish Vice President JD Vance’s unexpired term, was outraised roughly 2-to-1 by Brown in the second quarter.

A pattern of hostile receptions on the right

Bannon’s complaint about what Ramaswamy has been “saying on the campaign trail” follows a run of rough audiences among conservatives and libertarians.

On Wednesday, July 29, Ramaswamy left the stage roughly 16 minutes early at the Young Americans for Liberty convention at Xavier University in Cincinnati, the city where he was born, after attendees booed him for saying his generation had already made it while theirs would pay the price. He was scheduled for 30 minutes and used 14.

In the May 5 primary, Ramaswamy took 82.5% against Casey Putsch, a car designer who runs the Genius Garage nonprofit, lives in Perrysburg and describes himself as a Tiffin native. Putsch spent almost nothing and still drew 17.5%. Cook Political Report later pointed to that near-20% protest vote as a measure of Ramaswamy’s weakness inside his own party.

A report released in July found Ramaswamy had spent 79 days outside Ohio this year, including 14 international travel legs.

What it means for northwest Ohio

Bannon’s argument is a turnout argument, and turnout arguments hit hardest in counties where Republican margins are built. Seneca, Sandusky and surrounding counties supply the volunteer base and the raw vote totals that statewide Republicans depend on. If the movement’s most-followed strategist is telling that base to put its pencils down, the effect is felt first in places like Tiffin and Fostoria — and it is felt by every Republican on the ballot, from the Senate race down to the statewide executive offices and two Ohio Supreme Court seats also up this November.

Ohio voters go to the polls Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The note came due Dec. 31, 2024. It was not paid. To collect, the Kergs sued twice, and when a magistrate ordered Windsor to appear and answer questions under oath about his property, Windsor filed for federal bankruptcy protection 24 days before the scheduled examination.

Under the repayment plan he has proposed, Kerg would recover about 5 cents on the dollar.

The case is a public accounting of one Ohio media venture — who financed it, the debt that followed, and what its owner reported owning once collection began. Windsor markets himself as an investigative reporter. His initial bankruptcy filing runs 94 pages.

Two lawsuits to collect one debt

The Kergs sued Windsor personally in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in September 2025, seeking $185,457.60. Certified mail sent to the address listed for him in that complaint came back in January marked not deliverable as addressed, and the case stalled.

Eight days later they filed again, this time against both Windsor and his company, and invoked a clause Windsor had signed in 2022. The note was a cognovit instrument — a commercial agreement in which the borrower waives the right to advance notice and a trial and consents in advance to judgment being entered against him. Ohio voids such clauses in consumer transactions. In commercial transactions they can be enforced if statutory requirements are met.

Judge Sheryl Munson entered judgment nine days after that second case was filed, finding that the requirements for a cognovit judgment were met and that the note did not arise from a consumer transaction. Windsor and Media Dynamics Group were held jointly and severally liable for $185,457.60, plus post-judgment interest and collection costs. The Kergs then dismissed their original lawsuit.

With judgment in hand, they moved to collect. In March, a magistrate ordered Windsor to appear at 9 a.m. on April 24 to answer under oath concerning his property.

On March 31, Windsor filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in Columbus. The automatic stay that accompanies a bankruptcy filing halted further collection activity before that examination could take place.

A company with $4 in the bank

Windsor’s petition identifies four business or trade names: Media Dynamics Group, Red Straw Marketing, Windsor Brands, and his own name. He reported that Media Dynamics Group — the company the Kergs financed — had taken in no income and paid no expenses over the previous six months. He valued his ownership interest in it at $1,750 and reported that its bank account held $4.

He scheduled more than $305,000 in debts. Beyond the Kergs, they include roughly $69,800 owed to the U.S. Department of Education, $30,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, and several thousand dollars across credit cards and collection accounts. He also listed $4,100 owed to Gongwer News Service, the subscription state-government news service that has covered the Ohio Statehouse since 1906. Windsor is a Statehouse correspondent for a Cleveland radio station.

It is his second known bankruptcy. A court-generated notice of prior filings shows he filed a Chapter 7 case in northern Ohio in October 2005 and received a discharge in February 2006 — far outside the four-year window that can bar a debtor from receiving a Chapter 13 discharge after a Chapter 7 discharge.

Five cents on the dollar

As of Aug. 3, five creditors had filed six claims totaling $216,037.05. Kerg’s claim, filed in his name alone for $189,197.41, is roughly 88 percent of that. Gongwer did not file. The Department of Education has not filed either, but as a federal agency it has until Sept. 28, the later deadline that applies to government creditors.

A creditor that neither files a claim nor has one filed on its behalf — the debtor or trustee may do so after the creditor’s deadline passes — generally receives nothing through the plan. But failing to file does not by itself erase a debt. Most federal student-loan debt survives a Chapter 13 discharge no matter what the lender collects, unless the borrower wins a separate court finding of undue hardship.

The plan Windsor filed in April proposes paying $890 a month for five years, with general unsecured creditors receiving 5 percent of their allowed claims. If Kerg’s $189,197.41 claim is allowed in full, the plan is approved on those terms and Windsor completes it, Kerg would collect about $9,460 — five cents for every dollar. The 5 percent applies only to general unsecured claims; the plan must separately provide for full payment of allowed priority debts, including allowed priority tax claims, unless those creditors agree otherwise, and must account for trustee compensation and any allowed attorney fees.

If Windsor finishes a confirmed plan, the unpaid portions of dischargeable debts covered by it could be wiped out. Statutory exceptions, including most student loans and certain taxes, can survive.

Nothing has been approved. Chapter 13 trustee Faye D. English objected to confirmation in May, seeking tax returns, profit-and-loss statements and business bank records, and asking the court to deny confirmation and dismiss or convert the case if the gaps were not filled. She filed a second objection in June challenging property Windsor claimed as exempt from creditors, including his interests in Media Dynamics Group and Red Straw Marketing. Windsor amended two schedules on July 17. No order resolving either objection appeared on the docket as of Aug. 3.

Confirmation hearings set for June and July were each continued. The matter now goes before Judge Tiffany Strelow Cobb on Aug. 18.

As of Aug. 3, no adversary complaint had been filed seeking to keep the Kerg debt out of a completed Chapter 13 discharge. The July 13 deadline for complaints under the potentially relevant fraud and fiduciary-misconduct provisions passed without a filing. The state pleadings alleged breach and default, not fraud. Whether Kerg ultimately collects 5 percent or something else depends on the confirmation ruling, the trustee’s objections, any amended plan, allowance of his claim and whether Windsor completes the case.

Windsor was sent 14 written questions about the note, the judgment and his bankruptcy filings, with a deadline of 5 p.m. Aug. 3. He responded twice without answering any of them — first asking to schedule a phone call, and then, an hour before the deadline, asking that it be extended and posing his own questions about TiffinOhio.net’s ownership, funding and staffing. Marczewski and Garvine did not respond to requests for comment.

The men involved

Windsor is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Ohio Press Network and hosts a weekday program on a Columbus talk radio station. He gained a following in conservative media during the COVID-19 pandemic, pressing Gov. Mike DeWine, then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and former state health director Dr. Amy Acton over the state’s response, and he previously served as managing editor of The Ohio Star. His Facebook page, titled “Jack Windsor – Investigative Reporter,” had more than 41,000 followers as of Aug. 2.

Media Bias/Fact Check, which rates news outlets for political lean and reliability, classifies the Ohio Press Network as right-biased with mixed factual reporting. That rating rests on one-sided framing and a lack of transparency rather than on any false report; the group lists no failed fact checks for the outlet and said it found no explicit evidence of misinformation in the articles it reviewed. In its March 2025 assessment, it noted the site disclosed neither its ownership nor its funding, which it said raised the possibility of “an undisclosed ideological affiliation or external funding influence.” The court records in Windsor’s bankruptcy identify one source of that financing. The Ohio Star, where Windsor was managing editor, carries the same right-biased, mixed rating; it is owned by Star News Digital Media, not by Windsor.

Kerg is a longtime Republican strategist and fundraiser. According to his biography on the Ohio Value Voters website, he has advised state legislative and congressional campaigns for more than three decades and has owned and run an Ohio aerospace-components manufacturer since 1990. He sits on the group’s board; Ohio Value Voters endorses candidates and campaigns on social-conservative issues. Kerg served on the Shelby County Board of Elections from 2019 until 2023, including a term as its chairman, and was a member of that board when he and his wife financed Windsor’s company.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Fremont Prosecuting Attorney and Law Director Jim Melle moved to dismiss the charge against Ronald E. Callahan, 69, on Wednesday, July 29. Judge Daniel L. Brudzinski granted the motion the following day. The dismissal is without prejudice, meaning the state may refile the charge. Costs were assessed to the state, and the $5,000 surety bond Callahan posted in March was released Friday, July 31.

The judgment entry gives no reasoning beyond the standard formulation that the case was dismissed “for good cause shown and upon motion of the state.” Neither the motion nor the entry states why the state sought dismissal.

On Tuesday, July 21, Melle and defense attorney John M. Kahler II filed a joint set of stipulations alongside a defense motion to compel compliance. The court took up that filing a week later.

In a journal entry dated Tuesday, July 28, the court wrote that the parties represented “that the group Dads Against Predators (DAP) destroyed evidence for use by prosecuting attorney & material to preparation of defense.”

The wording is significant in both directions. The evidence the parties described as destroyed was material to the state’s ability to prove the charge and to Callahan’s ability to defend against it. The court record does not describe what the evidence was, when it was destroyed, or under what circumstances.

Based on those stipulations, the court denied Callahan’s motion to compel — the only evidentiary ruling issued in the case, and one that went against him. The same day, Kahler withdrew a motion to suppress evidence and a motion in limine he had filed June 1, and a suppression hearing scheduled for that afternoon was vacated. The state’s dismissal motion followed the next day.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/dads-against-predators-case-dismissed-destroyed-evidence/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Electric bills will likely hit record highs for millions of Ohioans when July bills go out this month, driven by rising rates, new systemic demand and a heat dome that lingered over much of the Midwest. 

New data from the Ohio Utility Rate Survey – a state publication based on cost data from utilities – shows the electric bill for a residential electric customer using an average amount of power hit record levels in Cleveland ($189), Dayton ($188) and Akron ($184) in July. 

It’s not much better elsewhere. Columbus’ July ($198.53) is $1 from the high watermark in May 2024. Toledo ($175) was about $6 off from its June 2023 record. Cincinnati’s July bill ($171) is just $1 short of the local record set last June.

On a statewide basis, that means July bills are 12% higher than last year and a whopping 62% higher than they were a decade ago. 

“Is this a new normal? Probably, at least for the near future,” said Tom Bullock, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, a nonprofit that advocates for lower electric rates for residential customers. 

These figures assume what the federal government considers to be an average household’s use of 900 kilowatt-hours. Real consumption will vary based on different factors like efficiency and household size, but a stretch of intense heat early in the month spurred heavy demand on electricity-intensive air conditioners. 

Experts said a complex mix of factors are pushing prices upward. Hot weather means more demand all at the same time. A development boom for data centers, the energy-intensive megafacilities serving the artificial intelligence sector, adds to that demand systemically. Coal-fired power plants have gone offline. Grid operators have been slow to allow new power producers into the system. And some have accused utilities of either inflating or at least relying on speculative assumptions of data center building to boost their own bottom lines. 

Whatever the cause, the effect is palpable on the monthly bills. For a Columbus household, in American Electric Power Ohio’s service territory, 900 kilowatt-hours in July 2016 cost $118. Today, that’s about $199. That’s a difference of $81 more for the month. The 10-year spike is similarly seen across the state. 

Three components drive electric bills: generation costs (the power you use), transmission costs (sending huge amounts of power across long distances from the power plant), and distribution costs (the last poles and wires before the end user). The data show that while transmission and distribution costs, both of which are set by regulators, have increased modestly, generation charges are behind most of the cost increase. 

There are some limits to the data. It only goes back to 2015. And it doesn’t reflect rates paid by those who have chosen their own electricity supplier, or those on a municipal aggregation program. 

Why are Ohio electric costs increasing?

Signal Statewide asked a variety of industry players the same basic question: why have electric bills gotten so out of control?

None offered simple answers. All blamed a mix of culprits.

Several singled out PJM, which operates the regional electric grid, spanning 13 states including Ohio. PJM hosts capacity auctions, where a price is set for a reserve of power to ensure reliability when demand hits its highest. Those auctions have seen massive price spikes year over year since 2024. 

Among the biggest causes is the failure of PJM and state regulators to quickly let new electrons into the system, said Nolan Rutschilling, the managing director of energy policy at the Ohio Environmental Council.  

Besides a queue backlog, he said natural gas has gotten preferential regulatory treatment in terms of navigating the permitting bureaucracy. But gas turbines are in short supply these days, meaning new plants can take five to seven years to get to the market. Renewable energy sources can be built much faster, but are subjected to far more regulatory scrutiny in Ohio. 

This supply crunch, coupled with the new demand from more than 200 operational or planned data centers and huge industrial projects like Intel’s $28 billion chip fabrication plant or Anduril’s $1 billion advanced weapons factory in central Ohio, means higher costs. 

“We’ve got really high prices because we aren’t bringing enough energy online,” Rutschilling said. 

Bullock, from Citizens Utility Board, said President Donald Trump’s administration’s tariffs have worsened the effect, hiking the costs of steel that make up much of the physical power grid. And that grid, he said, has lacked proper maintenance, causing inefficient performance and likely warranting an expensive upgrade sometime in the future. 

He lives in Lakewood, Ohio, and has personally seen the effects of an under-maintained electric grid and the unusually high rate and duration of the blackouts that come from it. 

There’s also a U.S. war against Iran driving up the cost of raw fuels, an effect that tends to spill into electricity markets. And PJM, Bullock said, has been slow-footed allowing new generators – especially renewables – onto the grid. 

That pressure is all mounting cumulatively, and there’s no obvious dynamic that would change things in the near term. 

“You could easily see prices not letting up for the next five years,” he said. 

There’s reason for more scrutiny, if not skepticism, around some of the finger pointing at data centers, said John Seryak, an engineer who works as a technical consultant to the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association. In an interview, he said utilities are making speculative and rosy assumptions about how likely a planned data center is to come to fruition. But they’re treating those assumptions as fact when making grid investment decisions. 

And on the supply side, he said some technocratic changes have left PJM overestimating the impact of several coal-fired power plants during the 2010s. This would mean PJM is overestimating the drop in supply, which produces a price increase. 

Ohio can make policy changes to mitigate the damage in the medium- to long term. But until then, he said people should expect higher bills, seek energy efficiencies where possible, and budget accordingly. 

“I think right now, between transmission and capacity, I wouldn’t count on prices to come down between now and 2030,” he said.

Transmission costs are rising too, another trend driven by data centers, said Jon Blackwood, a spokesperson for the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. And part of the problem is the murkiness around what costs can be shifted to customers.

“Forecasting issues include lack of transparency, potential double counting, and accuracy,” he said.

What do the utilities say?

Signal Statewide reached out to Ohio’s major, investor-owned electric utility companies that own utilities in Ohio: American Electric Power, FirstEnergy, AES, and Duke Energy. 

By AEP’s own calculations, its distribution rates have increased 36%, the company said in a statement. Those increases are primarily tied to the increased cost for equipment, gas and labor flowing into the grid.

The company emphasized that the price hikes stem from the generation side of the ledger, and Ohio laws don’t allow distribution utilities like AEP Ohio to own power plants. And the company noted its recent regulatory effort to force data centers to absorb more risk in grid investments.

“Generation costs are the primary reason electric bills have increased in Ohio, and in Ohio, utilities like AEP Ohio are not permitted to own generation,” the company said.

“The average AEP Ohio customer’s generation bill has increased 103% in the last five years. That is material for Ohioans, and we are very concerned by it … In the PJM territory, there is an imbalance between the supply of electrons on the grid and demand for them. And since we cannot own generation, we are with our customers, waiting for the market to respond.”

FirstEnergy responded as well, noting – as have its competitors in the past – that utilities don’t set unit prices for electricity. However, utilities do set, pending regulatory approval, the transmission and distribution costs, which have increased over the decade. 

Will Boye, a FirstEnergy spokesperson, said the company understands that even small cost increases can have big impacts in an inflationary economy.

“We must continue investing in our system in order to provide the safe, reliable service our customers count on,” he said. “We know that costs matter, which is why these investments are carefully planned and focused on delivering real, lasting value for the communities we serve.”

Signal Ohio is a nonprofit news organization covering government, education, health, economy and public safety.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde used a baseball metaphor to describe the scenario facing Democrats this November.

Addressing attendees at the state party’s annual fundraising dinner in Columbus Saturday night, she said the upcoming election is like a Cleveland Guardians player stepping up to the plate in the ninth inning with a chance to be a hero.

“We haven’t won yet. But we’re at bat and the bases are loaded,” Clyde said, addressing hundreds who filled a ballroom in the Columbus Convention Center. “Let’s hit a grand slam.”

Like the long-suffering Guardians, Ohio Democrats are in the midst of a prolonged period without much success. Unfortunately for the metaphor’s sake, the Guardians also have a long history of falling short in the biggest moments. Still, the notes Clyde and other Democrats sounded Saturday night were the most convincingly optimistic the party has sounded in years as they hope to benefit from voter dissatisfaction over the rising cost of living and the traditional mid-term backlash against Republican President Donald Trump.

Democrats are trying to rebound from their lowest point: the 2024 presidential election. Longtime party standard-bearer Sherrod Brown lost his U.S. Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno that year as Donald Trump was reelected to the White House while winning by double digits in Ohio. Brown’s the party’s Senate nominee again this year, and was among the speakers Saturday night.

“There’s so much excitement in this room tonight,” Brown said to cheers from the audience. “I feel the same enthusiasm in our cities. I feel the same enthusiasm in our suburbs. I feel it in farm country, and we see people showing up like never before.” 

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner is the only remaining Democrat to hold a statewide office. Serving as a warm-up speaker Saturday, she described her lonely status on the court. 

“I have been holding my finger in the dike,” said Brunner, “and I’m waiting for my colleagues to get here.”

Brunner is being challenged this November by Republican Colleen O’Donnell, while Democratic appellate judge Marilyn Zayas is challenging Republican Justice Dan Hawkins.

Ohio Democrats digging out of a hole

Since Trump emerged as the country’s dominant political force a decade ago, Ohio has shifted from the quintessential presidential swing state to a Republican stronghold. 

But polling shows Brown and governor nominee Amy Acton running head-to-head with their Republican opponents this year. Even though political polls have consistently undermeasured Republican support in Ohio over the past decade, Democrats have been encouraged nonetheless, especially as nonpartisan analysts have reassessed Ohio’s governor and U.S. Senate races as toss-ups rather than likely Republican wins.

In her own speech Saturday, Acton, the former state health director under outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, said Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and his allies have spent tens of millions of dollars on attack ads targeting her since March. 

They “haven’t moved the needle,” Acton said, alluding to polls that suggest the race is tied. 

“It’s actually driven his negatives up more,” Acton said, using political polling jargon that references how positively or negatively voters view a political candidate. “And right now guys, the gloves are definitely off.”

Acton went on to rip Ramaswamy as a self-interested billionaire, criticizing him for spending tens of millions of his own money on his campaign and referencing the tens of millions a pro-Ramaswamy political action committee has raised from Elon Musk and other billionaires. 

“All of us in this room, and everyone we know, we’re linking arms. We’re pushing back. And we are going to tell Mr. Ramaswamy in no uncertain terms: You cannot buy this state,” Acton said.

The pro-Ramaswamy ads have portrayed Acton as erratic and unqualified, saying she made incorrect statements about the COVID-19 pandemic during the early months of the 2020 pandemic as DeWine’s health director. DeWine, who has endorsed Ramaswamy, has said Acton provided him with good advice, and that he alone is responsible for his administration’s decisions.

In line with the attacks, Ramaswamy’s campaign manager, Jonathan Ewing, mocked Acton on social media Saturday night over a photo that showed her reading off a teleprompter. In another post, he referenced a 2019 incident in which police were called to Acton’s home after she got in an argument with her husband, an episode that has been a staple of the anti-Acton attack ads this year. The Ohio Republican Party chimed in: “Wow. Amy Acton won’t take public questions and can’t speak without a teleprompter.”

Possible 2028 contender stumps for Brown

The headlining speaker on Saturday was Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, who spent the weekend campaigning with Brown. Kelly, a former NASA astronaut and Navy pilot who was reelected in 2024, has expanded his national profile since Trump called for his arrest and execution over a post in which Kelly encouraged military members not to follow “illegal orders” – which the president and his allies viewed as treasonous.

“Donald Trump said I should be hanged, executed, prosecuted,” Kelly said. “I mean, this guy can’t even get the order right. And then, and then he tried to indict me and put me in jail. But really, all of the bull—t was not about me. It’s about silencing people who are willing to speak out.”

Kelly appeared with Brown in Cincinnati and Cleveland over the weekend, and told the audience he hopes his “friend” will return to the Senate. 

“He’s always fought for better health care, for fair wages, and protections for Ohio families with courage and conviction. God knows we need more of that in Washington right now,” Kelly said.

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Nick Puglia issued a statement about Kelly’s visit:  “Sherrod Brown fought for open borders alongside radical leftists like Mark Kelly for 32 years in Washington, and now they want to raise Ohioans’ taxes to give free healthcare to illegal aliens.”

Signal Ohio is a nonprofit news organization covering government, education, health, economy and public safety.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Over roughly the same stretch, the oil giant put $200,000 into a super PAC that exists for one purpose: reelecting Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

And across 2026, Husted has voted 13 times against measures that would have directed the removal of U.S. forces from the war — every such vote the Senate has taken, according to a review of federal roll call records by TiffinOhio.net.

There is no evidence in the public record that the contributions influenced how Husted voted. The donations are legal, publicly disclosed, and of a kind that flows routinely to senators in competitive races from industries with business before Congress. Husted has said repeatedly that he wants the conflict finished. Speaking to reporters in Dayton on March 6, eight days into the fighting, he said his goal for the operation “is that it should be brief and successful,” adding: “We don’t want to have hostilities linger on any longer than they need to, but if we’re going to undertake this, let’s finish it.” He has since acknowledged that the war’s end is not clear.

What the records do establish is the scale of the oil industry’s financial stake in keeping him in office, and the consistency of his voting record on the war that has enriched it.

Thirteen votes, thirteen times no

The Senate has taken 13 roll call votes in 2026 on resolutions directing the president to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran that Congress never authorized. Husted voted against every one.

The most recent came on Thursday, July 30, when the Senate rejected a motion to discharge Senate Joint Resolution 181 from committee, 49 to 50. Husted voted no. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky crossed over to support it, and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against.

The pattern runs back to the war’s early weeks. Husted voted no on March 4, March 18 and March 24; on April 15, April 22 and April 30; on May 13 and May 19; on June 16, June 23 and June 24; and on July 23 and July 30. Two of those measures cleared anyway without him — a May 19 discharge motion that passed 50 to 47 and a June 23 concurrent resolution that passed 50 to 48.

Husted’s July 23 vote came a day after he told CNN he wanted the war over. That measure failed 47 to 49.

Where the oil money went

Federal Election Commission filings show three separate streams of oil industry money supporting Husted’s campaign. It is not the first industry to concentrate money on his race: insurers and their executives have given his campaigns more than $679,000 over his career, and he voted in June against two amendments directing federal investigations into insurance denials.

The largest by far is a single $200,000 contribution from Chevron Corporation, recorded on Monday, June 1, to Ohio Flyer PAC. The committee is registered with the FEC as an independent-expenditure-only super PAC and is dedicated solely to supporting Husted’s election. Super PACs face no contribution limits and may accept corporate treasury money directly, but are barred from coordinating with the candidate’s campaign. Chevron’s gift was the fourth-largest the committee reported this cycle.

Separately, two corporate PACs gave the maximum allowed to Husted’s campaign committee itself. Chevron Employees Political Action Committee gave Husted for Senate $5,000 in March 2025 and another $5,000 in February 2026. ExxonMobil’s PAC gave $10,000 across four contributions between May and October 2025. Both totals represent the ceiling a multicandidate PAC may give a Senate candidate for a primary and general election combined.

Taken together, Chevron-affiliated money supporting Husted’s reelection totals $210,000. Adding ExxonMobil’s contributions brings the figure from the two companies to $220,000.

A record quarter, built on a war

Both companies reported second-quarter results on Friday, July 31, and both credited the market disruption the war produced.

Chevron told the Securities and Exchange Commission it earned $12.1 billion, or $6.11 per diluted share, compared with $2.5 billion in the same quarter of 2025. The company reported record U.S. production, worldwide output up 20 percent, and U.S. refinery crude unit utilization above 97 percent.

ExxonMobil reported earnings of $14.5 billion, or $3.48 per share, roughly double its year-earlier result and its strongest quarter since 2022. Chairman and chief executive Darren Woods said the quarter “was shaped by disruption, but defined by execution.”

What Ohio drivers are actually paying

The pain at the pump is real, though the Ohio picture is more moderate than the national one.

Ohio’s average price for a gallon of regular was $3.86 on Tuesday, July 28, up from $3.07 a year earlier — an increase of 79 cents, according to AAA. The national average that day stood at $4.09, having risen 15 cents in a week from $3.16 a year earlier. Ohio drivers are paying less than the national average, not more.

AAA attributed the increase to the war. Prices in the United States are set on a global market, which is why a blocked shipping lane 7,000 miles away shows up at Ohio pumps. “Volatility along the Strait of Hormuz and instability in the region have pushed crude oil prices into the $90 per barrel range and could continue driving up costs during the second half of summer,” the association said.

Ohio prices climbed considerably higher earlier in the conflict, reaching $4.78 a gallon in May. It was at that level that Husted, asked on the Northeast Ohio podcast “Strictly Speaking Unfiltered” on Tuesday, May 19, what he was doing about gas prices, replied: “What do you want me to do?” Hours later he voted against the war powers resolution that passed anyway, 50 to 47.

The race

Husted was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 by Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. The former Ohio lieutenant governor and secretary of state now faces Democrat Sherrod Brown, a three-term former senator, in a special election on Tuesday, Nov. 3. The Cook Political Report rates the contest a toss-up.

Brown has made the war central to his comeback bid, echoing the anti-Iraq-war message that first sent him to the Senate in 2006. He raised $14.1 million in direct contributions from April through June, more than double Husted’s $3.4 million, though Husted’s campaign said the figure was the largest second-quarter total ever posted by an Ohio Republican Senate candidate. Outside groups have committed more than $174 million to the race.

The Ohio Democratic Party seized on the oil contributions. In a statement, Senior Communications Advisor Tony Wen said:

“As Jon Husted votes time and time again to continue the war in Iran, massive oil companies are making billions in profit while Ohio families get crushed by skyrocketing gas prices. Husted has taken maximum contributions from both Chevron and Exxon corporate PACs, and Ohioans deserve to know why he keeps siding with his billionaire donors instead of fighting to lower costs at home.”

The party’s statement did not mention the $200,000 Chevron gave to the super PAC backing Husted, which dwarfs the direct PAC contributions it cited.

Why it matters here

Northwest Ohio households and farm operations absorb fuel costs directly, through commuting, freight, diesel and fertilizer. Regular gas in Tiffin ran as high as $4.99 a gallon at the peak in May. When a senator casts the same vote 13 times on a conflict that moves those prices, the public has a straightforward interest in knowing who is financing his campaign and what they stand to gain — regardless of whether any connection between the two can be drawn.

Those disclosures are the mechanism the public has. The next federal campaign finance reports are due Oct. 15, three weeks before the election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Miller’s legal team distributed it as evidence in his own defense, and Miller directed viewers to the files himself during his livestream.

On the recording, he laughs at the accusation, repeatedly denies it and offers to be tested.

“Okay. Go for it,” he says. “Test for me whatever you would like.”

Miller has not been publicly charged with possessing or distributing illegal drugs. He was charged with operating a vehicle impaired after a 2011 crash into a light pole while a student at Miami University, and has long maintained he was not impaired; Mother Jones reported last month that newly obtained toxicology records from that crash showed MDMA and Klonopin in his system. Mother Jones reported that Miller’s spokesperson did not answer its questions about those findings.

TiffinOhio.net found no drug-test result in the 67-file package or in the public court records it reviewed, and no photograph of a needle appears in the files distributed Sunday. The recordings do not establish what Moreno photographed, who placed it there, or whether Miller used illegal drugs.

What is on the recording

TiffinOhio.net is not publishing the package or the audio. The quotations below come from transcripts TiffinOhio.net produced from the recordings Miller released.

The exchange begins as an argument about privacy. Miller says he has never gone into Emily Moreno’s phone, computer or bag. She cuts in.

“I have gone into your backpack because I truly do believe you have a drug problem,” she says.

“Okay. What drugs?” Miller answers.

“Uh, well, first it was weed, and then I found needles next to your bed,” she says.

“You found needles?”

“Yes, I did. And I took a picture of it. You can try to deny it to me.”

Miller laughs. “Okay.”

“I don’t know why that’s funny,” Moreno says. “That’s actually really fuckin’ scary.”

What follows is a sustained denial. Miller tells her the needle was not his and was not by his bed. She asks whose it was, then, if it was in the bedroom drawer.

“No idea, but I can tell you 1,000%, I’ve never had a needle in my bedroom drawer, 1,000%,” Miller says. Moments later: “I have never had a needle in my bedroom drawer and that is not a lie.”

“Well, then where are they, Max? Because that’s where I found it,” Moreno says.

“Nope. I don’t have needles in the house. You can come check,” he says.

She says she will send him a photograph. “Please, do,” Miller says. “I would love to see what this looks like.”

A few minutes later in the same conversation, in a second excerpt Miller also released, he goes further.

“I am super happy to go take any drug test, and to take any type of test that you would like me to take, uh, in or out of court,” he says.

“I don’t know why you’d be thrilled with that, Max,” Moreno replies. “I’m not tryin’ to screw you. I’m honest to God scared.”

Why Miller released it

The summary his lawyers wrote to guide reporters through the exhibits presents the recording as evidence that Moreno manufactures allegations against him on a schedule set by money and custody rather than by events.

The packet says the needle claim surfaced one day after Miller told Moreno, in another recorded conversation, that he would stop paying her car insurance and condominium fees. It says Moreno later acknowledged in a September 2024 recording that she had already decided to leave the marriage before the needle claim, that she told no one about it except her attorney, and that she had known for months there was an innocent explanation — prescribed testosterone-replacement therapy.

Two of those three claims hold up against the recording. The third does not.

Moreno does say she had already decided to leave, and she gives that as her reason for not raising the needle with him at the time. “That freaked me out, but I had already made that decision that I was going, which is why I didn’t bring it up to you,” she says. She also says she told only her attorney, sent no photograph and tried to research it herself online.

But on the innocent explanation, the recording does not support what the summary says it does.

Miller raises the therapy himself, telling Moreno he had disclosed it to her eight months earlier and that she had acknowledged it. “I told you I was doing TRT and that I had stopped,” he says.

“What’s TRT?” Moreno asks.

Miller explains that it stands for testosterone replacement therapy. Moreno tells him what she understood at the time: “What you told me was you did it several times, and that was it.”

“Correct,” Miller says.

“Right, so when I found a needle, I had no idea what the fuck it was,” she says. “I also asked you several times if you were still doing it, and you said no.”

The recording establishes that Miller raised the therapy as context. It does not establish that anything Moreno says she found was connected to it.

Miller’s account also shifts between the two recordings. On Aug. 20 he denied having needles in the house: “Nope. I don’t have needles in the house. You can come check.” By Sept. 2 he no longer disputed that Moreno may have found something, but denied putting it there.

“I didn’t put that in there, okay?” he says. “I’m telling the honest to God truth. That shocked the fuck outta me.”

He also tells her he had prepared for the question: “I already have a test for everything that you guys are gonna ask for.” No such test result appears in the package.

Drug allegations have followed Miller through this case. Mother Jones reported last month, based on more than 2,000 pages of court filings and police records obtained through public-records requests, that the file includes allegations of drug use alongside allegations of violence against multiple women. Miller has strenuously denied all of it. In court papers, Miller alleged that Moreno used drug-use claims to limit his time alone with their daughter.

Where this fits

The recording is one of 22 audio and video files in a 199-megabyte package that Miller’s side distributed on Sunday, the same morning he went live on X for roughly 20 minutes to deny abusing his ex-wife or their 2-year-old daughter and to say he would not leave his re-election race.

Within the hour, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno — Miller’s former father-in-law — said Miller is a danger to his daughter and should not serve in the House. Miller replied on X that Moreno was hiding from his own media circus and that the statement was “all political.”

A TiffinOhio.net review of all 67 files found several defects. The summary written for reporters cites Exhibit 517, but no file corresponding to that exhibit appears in the package. In the section on the hot-water allegation, a citation ends with the apparent drafting note “with exhibit cite]” where the reference should be. The package states that personal identifiers including home addresses and dates of birth have been removed; TiffinOhio.net found dates of birth in seven files and residential addresses, phone numbers and email addresses in ten.

Republican officials cannot remove Miller from the ballot themselves. Under Ohio law, a nominee for Congress must withdraw before the 90th day ahead of the general election to create a vacancy; county boards of elections in the district then hold a special election on a date set by the secretary of state, or, if only one candidate files, the secretary certifies that person as the party’s nominee. The 90th day before the Nov. 3 general election is Wednesday, Aug. 5.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that the fund, in exchange for him dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, would not benefit him, but rather “the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration” after they participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On the first day of his second term, Trump commuted the prison sentences of 14 of the attack’s ringleaders and members of the paramilitary groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The president granted a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to all others charged with crimes after the attack.

“Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” Trump continued in a 254-word post.

He also attacked Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn and said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche should be “immediately approved” as attorney general.

Cornyn and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, both members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, have refused to advance Blanche’s nomination from committee to the full Senate until Blanche, also Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, formally ends the “anti-weaponization” fund in writing. 

Blanche, of Florida, maintains his comments before a House Appropriations subcommittee in June prove the administration ended the fund.

‘Legal and political albatross’

In a late morning statement on X, Tillis said Trump “made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it.”

“While I never disagreed that the Biden Administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation’s Capitol are not ‘great American patriots’ who are ‘victims of government abuse.’ Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government,” Tillis wrote.

He added he and Cornyn are working with Blanche, whom he described as “forthright, thoughtful and patient,” on ending the fund. 

“It’s a shame his confirmation has hit a snag only because an incompetent personal advisor to the President refuses to amend the bogus settlement. I will continue working in good faith to put an end this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars,” Tillis wrote.

Tillis’ office did not respond to a question about the identity of the adviser the senator mentioned in the statement.

When being questioned by reporters at the Cabinet meeting at Camp David just over an hour later, Trump said Blanche should be confirmed as attorney general “forthwith” and that the fund is “dead.”

“But you know, I wish it weren’t. To be honest with you, I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused. … and I’d like to see them compensated for the pain.”

The White House press office on Friday issued a press release linking to statements and quotes in support of Blanche from dozens of law enforcement associations, former Justice Department officials and Republican lawmakers.

Trump, Cornyn and Tillis

On Thursday, Trump threatened to pull Blanche’s nomination and leave him in an acting capacity until both Cornyn and Tillis leave office at year’s end.

Cornyn’s career in the Senate is ending after he lost in a runoff election in May to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump endorsed.

Tillis announced last year he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to find primary opponents to challenge the North Carolina Republican after he refused to support Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had scheduled a committee vote on Blanche’s nomination for Thursday morning, but postponed the vote late Wednesday when it was clear Cornyn and Tillis were not yet satisfied.

The Judiciary Committee is split between 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All Democrats are expected to oppose Blanche, and a majority vote is required to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

Judge slammed Trump settlement

Trump’s settlement with the IRS faced opposition on multiple fronts, including in court.

In a July 13 order, the Florida federal judge in Trump’s IRS case slammed the president’s settlement with his own administration as using the presidency to “manipulate” the courts.

Lawyers for Trump, his two sons and the Trump Organization made public in a federal court filing Friday their plans to appeal a lower court order that bars them “from referring to the purported ‘settlement agreement’ … as evidence of a ‘settlement’ reached in this matter.”

The Justice Department’s announcement of the “anti-weaponization” fund in May immediately drew scrutiny from both sides of the aisle for the possibility that Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers could reap a reward.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. and Frank Bisignano, the Internal Revenue Service’s chief executive officer, a position created by Trump, signed the settlement that Trump negotiated with his own administration officials for himself, his sons and the private Trump Organization.

Like Blanche, Woodward also had ties to Trump’s criminal cases prior to the president’s second term. Woodward represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the government’s 2023 case regarding classified material found at Mar-a-Lago.

Opposition to the “anti-weaponization” fund among Republicans snarled quick passage of an immigration enforcement package to fund Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term.

The settlement deal also includes immunity for Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization from tax audits and enforcement connected to any tax information leaked by a government contractor in 2019. The contractor was prosecuted and sentenced to jail time in 2024.

Cornyn pressed Blanche on the tax immunity portion of the deal during a July 15 confirmation hearing. Blanche defended the terms as “typical” of settlements with the IRS.

Cornyn wrote on social media Thursday the president is “mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis.”

Former Department of Justice officials told committee Democrats the IRS settlement language was “mind-boggling,” during a July 22 forum hosted by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. 

Amelia Twyman contributed to this report.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In 2017, immigration officials separated him from his mother and brother at the southern border, as they were caught up in the family separation policy of the first Trump administration. 

The 15-year-old remained in a detention center for children, knowing that if he were sent back to Mexico, he would likely die at the hands of the cartel who threatened to kill him, his brother and father. 

“Everything changed when attorneys from (the Immigration Defenders Law Center) arrived,” he told reporters during a press conference Friday. “For the first time, someone explained what was happening. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I was being separated from my mother.”

Chavez, who is now a case worker at the same center that provided him legal services as an unaccompanied minor, worries about what will happen to the thousands of immigrant children who are set to lose their legal representation at midnight Saturday. 

That’s because the Trump administration declined to renew a federal contract with nonprofits that provide legal aid services to more than 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children. 

Chavez, along with a handful of advocates and attorneys for immigrant children, detailed their concerns during a virtual press conference about the end of the contract. 

They warned that it will lead to children being quickly deported, because without a lawyer, fewer than 10% of immigrant children win the right to remain in the United States while their case goes through immigration court. 

“For many of them, an attorney can be the difference between fear and hope, separation and reunification, or even life and death,” Chavez said. “I came to this country asking for help. The children I work with today are asking for the same thing.”

No reimbursements to lawyers

For more than six months, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has not reimbursed $65 million to the Acacia Center for Justice, which distributes the federal funding to roughly 100 organizations across the country who provide legal representation to unaccompanied children in immigration cases. 

The Acacia Center for Justice has said those funds are being withheld because attorneys refused to hand over to the Trump administration sensitive case data from the unaccompanied children, such as medical records and the types of legal relief the minors are seeking. 

“For months, Acacia has been negotiating in good faith with the government to find a way to continue representing unaccompanied children who would be left without their trusted lawyers, and at the whims of an administration that seems intent on finding new and crueler ways to target and deport them as quickly as possible,” said Bilal Askaryar, communications director at the Acacia Center for Justice.

HHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

‘A lot of uncertainty’

The Acacia Center for Justice’s chief of staff, Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel, said that on Wednesday, government officials submitted a solicitation notice giving the Acacia Center for Justice time to transition legal services to another provider. 

Rodriguez Schlegel said she doesn’t know for sure to whom the Trump administration will contract legal services, but the administration is eyeing a small Texas state commission that aids low-income people with criminal defense representation. 

“What will happen on Monday morning when kids go to court?” she asked. “There remains a lot of uncertainty and a great deal of concern.”

Sensitive job

Additionally, with the contract ending, children who have experienced trauma will have to recount painful experiences to attorneys who might not have the proper training. That can cause more anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress for kids, said Dr. C. Nicholas Cuneo.

Cuneo is an assistant professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the executive director at HEAL Refugee Health and Asylum Collaborative, which provides trauma-informed healthcare services to immigrants.

“A trusted attorney can buffer that harm, explaining an incomprehensible process, providing consistency and safety, protecting a child’s interests, and connecting them to healthcare, school, housing, and other essential support,” he said. “Abruptly severing that relationship can not only reactivate the abandonment and powerlessness from which children are trying to recover, but really cause direct physical and mental health injury.”

Cuneo said Congress recognized those consequences, and created the Unaccompanied Children Program to provide funding for legal representation of migrant children. 

Erin Maxwell, a social worker at Legal Services for Children in California, said so much of their training is in providing trauma-informed legal services.

“I’m afraid that if a group of attorneys that were not trained on working with children, were not trained on providing trauma-informed legal services, that children wouldn’t be able to fully participate in their cases (to share their stories),” she said. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Pirro had charged David Hearn, of Bethesda, Maryland, with destruction of property of more than $1,000 for allegedly vandalizing the newly refinished Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 19. President Donald Trump, who has overseen the multi-million-dollar renovation of the Reflecting Pool, blamed vandals for damage to it.

But in a 20-page motion to dismiss filed by the U.S. attorney’s office, Pirro said her office wouldn’t have sought charges if the Interior Department, which manages the Lincoln Memorial, had initially shared more information about repair work on the Reflecting Pool.

Instead, the department only recently disclosed findings that Pirro said “strongly suggest that a rushed and botched installation by (Atlantic Industrial Coatings), the primary contractor, led to the damage to the lining of the Reflecting Pool.” 

That information was not known by prosecutors or the grand jury that returned an indictment of Hearn, she said.

Information withheld

She said it was not until her office “reached out to DOI dozens and dozens of times that DOI slowly started trickling information to USAO-DC. Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”

Pirro related: “Specifically, the newly released documents reveal that work on installing the lining almost immediately fell behind, due to a combination of very rainy and windy weather, repeated failures of testing on the sealing of the expansion joints, and delays in obtaining sealing product at the worksite. The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed.”

Pirro said that “almost immediately after work was initially completed, peeling was observed along the pool perimeter.” 

A National Park Service engineer’s June 11, 2026, email “stated that the cause of the damage was contractor error via ‘overspray’; that the peeled lining would not float; and that the peeling would ‘not impact the strength of the liner,’” she said.

“Moreover, the July 20, 2026, inspection by contractors confirmed that overspray and delamination had occurred, again pointing to contractor error,” Pirro said. “Finally, a recent visual inspection showed damage throughout the Reflecting Pool, even in the middle of the pool, where a vandal would not likely attempt to peel the lining. Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Apology owed?

Hearn on July 9 pleaded not guilty during a brief court hearing and was released on his own recognizance. 

His lawyers, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund, Mary Dohrmann of the Washington Litigation Group and Steve Levin of Steptoe LLP, said in a statement on Friday night that the government owes Hearn an apology for pursuing the case. 

“The Trump administration’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought,” they said. “Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”

Hearn’s lawyers earlier this week had asked the judge in the case to release more information from the grand jury. 

They wrote in a motion that “the Government’s sole grand-jury witness on damages testified that the property was already damaged before Mr. Hearn allegedly touched it; that the same repairs would have been required regardless of Mr. Hearn’s conduct; and that he could not quantify any loss attributable to that conduct.” 

In a June 21 statement on its website, Atlantic Industrial Coatings defended its work on the Reflecting Pool.

“Atlantic Industrial Coatings in conjunction with the US Park Service has identified some areas in the Reflecting Pool that require repairs. These areas are a very small part of the massive 7 acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” it said.

“These repairs can not be made until the pool is drained. As soon as its feasible for the Park, the pool will be drained and AIC will be back to make those needed repairs as part of the warranty.”

The company did not immediately return a request for comment. The Department of Interior also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Law enforcement authorities allegedly found 16 children in a Hamden house when conducting a search warrant for a parallel investigation on June 30. The Vinton County Sheriff said livestock were kept in better conditions than the children. 

Elizabeth Siders, the now 33-year-old mother of all 16 children who range in age from 18 months to 18 years, married Gary Siders Jr., when she was 15 years old in West Virginia. Siders Jr., is now 36, and was 18 at the time they wed. 

“At that age you’re very impressionable,” said Ohio state Sen. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp.

The Siders’ eldest child was born two months after they got married. 

“The Vinton County thing just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that marriage under the age of 18 is bad, is wrong, and leads to dire consequences,” said Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus. 

“We need to put an end to this and there’s no legitimate reason why anybody should get married under the age of 18. … It’s just ludicrous.” 

DeMora and Blessing introduced Ohio Senate Bill 341 earlier this year, which would require Ohioans to be at least 18 to get married.

Under Ohio’s current law, 17-year-olds are able to marry someone up to four years older than them, as long as a juvenile court signs off on it. 

“Eighteen is a magic number,” Blessing said. “You’re truly an adult at that point. You can vote. You can buy cigarettes. You can do a whole host of other things that adults can do.”

The bill passed out of the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee in June, but did not go to a full Senate vote before lawmakers went home for summer break. It has received only supporter testimony. 

Gary Siders Sr., 73, Catherine Siders, 67, Gary Siders Jr., 36, and Elizabeth Siders, 33, are each facing 16 counts of felony endangering children in Vinton County Common Pleas Court. They have all pleaded not guilty.

West Virginia lawmakers passed a bill in 2023 that set the minimum age to get married at 16. 

“Child marriage not only brings no benefit, but it also destroys girls’ lives, and it often leads to devastating outcomes,” said Fraidy Reiss, Unchained At Last founder and executive director. 

“This unfortunate story that has gotten these headlines is just one more reminder — child marriage is dangerous.”

More than 5,000 Ohio children have been married as minors since 2000 and nearly 300,000 minors nationally were married between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last, an organization dedicated to ending underage marriage. 

Seventeen states have a law banning child marriage, according to Unchained At Last. 

Michigan and Pennsylvania have banned child marriage, making it all the more important for Ohio to follow suit, Reiss said.  

“When one state bans child marriage, what we see is parents taking their kids to the neighboring state to marry them off there instead,” she said. 

California, Mississippi, and New Mexico have no age minimum to get married, according to Unchained At Last.

“If we can (pass the Ohio bill), that sends a strong message to California or some of these other states that have no minimum to get your act together and do this,” Blessing said. 

Ohio lawmakers will come back after the November election. Any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered.

Blessing is confident the bill will pass during lame duck, likely as part of an omnibus bill, meaning two or more bills combined into one. 

“I’m upbeat about it,” he said. 

“There might be members who would in a vacuum vote no, but to some degree, doing it in an omnibus bill gives them cover to vote for something like this, even if they don’t like Senate Bill 341.”

DeMora said he will offer up S.B. 341 as an amendment for bills that are voted on during lame duck session.  

“It’s too important not to vote on this thing,” he said. 

Reiss said she is hopeful, but not confident Ohio lawmakers will pass the bill. 

“Banning child marriage — a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for them — banning this human rights abuse costs nothing,” she said. 

“It has a zero-dollar price tag. Why have legislators not yet passed this?”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Justice Jennifer Brunner has been on the state supreme court since 2021**,** after serving as the state’s secretary of state, working in private practice, and doing international work with the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Throughout her career, and especially now, she has seen changes happen to the democratic system that she said need to be the focus of voters when they head to the ballot box on Nov. 3.

“Democracy and the rule of law have to be working together, and the democracy piece is clearly being pummeled right now, and there are many courts who are shoring that up,” Brunner said.

On the national level, the judicial branch is “holding the line” in requiring the other two branches to work with each other, and in order for the country to continue to trust the justice system, that has to continue, even if the Trump administration slow-walks actions on court decisions, according to Brunner.

“It’s like the teenage kid that you say ‘you have to clean up your room,’ and they shove a bunch of things under their bed, and it just depends on how tough the judge is going to be,” she said.

“The public is watching what that judge does, because if the judge doesn’t hold the line, the public’s going to lose the confidence in the judiciary.”

In 2023, Brunner filed a federal suit trying to get rid of the 2021 state law passed to require supreme court races to include partisan labels on the ballot. The lawsuit, which is still active in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, cites the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct, which bars judicial candidates from participating in political or campaign activity that conflicts with judicial independence and impartiality.

More than that, Brunner sees the label as a marker that automatically places an image of her and any other candidate in voters’ heads, based on the partisan identification.

“It’s a First Amendment issue where I’m a partisan candidate, and everyone assumes that my thinking is … what’s on the Democratic platform,” she told the Capital Journal. “And I’m not in a position to say, ‘well, it’s more nuanced here,’ or ‘no, it’s not the same here,’ or even ‘yes, it is the same,’ because I’ve got the code of judicial conduct.”

Since the law was passed, the Ohio Supreme Court decided a case that also allows judges to endorse political candidates. Five justices on the bench stood in favor of the decision, with Justice Patrick Fischer dissenting. Brunner did not participate in the ruling.

Court decisions have long-ranging impacts, along with the messaging of any justice and judge outside of the courtroom. For Brunner, the work judges do needs to be separated from partisanship and labels, even when it’s clear from a judges background and judicial philosophy where they stand.

“I think every judge knows from whence they came … and those things may cross your mind, but you end up saying, ‘well, I understand that people think I should do that, but I need to follow the law and do whatever it is,’” she said.

On the bench

Since Brunner has been on the supreme court, the panel has heard high-profile cases on topics such as redistricting maps, gender-affirming care, energy, education, constitutional amendment ballot language on abortion, and crime victims’ rights.

Brunner stood with the majority on many cases, such as the striking down of legislative redistricting maps five times over. She has also written many a dissent, including when the court upheld an appellate court decision in a case that denied a transgender woman’s application to amend her birth certificate to include the gender to which she identifies.

“First, framing the issue as whether (state law) may be used by persons who are transgender to apply to correct the sex markers on their birth certificates has the effect of discriminating without a rational basis between cisgender and transgender persons,” Brunner wrote. “…Prohibiting only persons who are transgender from using the statute to correct the sex marker on their birth certificates is unconstitutional.”

She holds the role of dissenter up as an important part of that work, a role that “makes a decision more robust because it shows the public that you considered both sides.”

“A dissenting opinion … shows a little different path to get there, which from a social standpoint may not be the majority social outlook now, but as society changes, it might actually provide a pathway that’s more workable in the future,” she said.

Of the current court makeup, Brunner said she is working with a group that is “very restrained in interpreting anything, but the problem is there’s not always a consistency of that stance.”

While the justice said she hasn’t had trouble working within a supreme court that is now 6-1 Republican, at the Ohio Democratic Party’s primary night event in May, she said she “sure would like a little more company.”

The justice told the crowd of Democratic supporters that she plans to be “part of the foundation and the strong shoulders that people like (governor candidate Dr.) Amy Acton can stand on.”

With a conservative movement toward “originalism” – that is, aiming to interpret the constitution as the founders intended it – Brunner said she sees a “schism” between the demand for more judges on the bench with an originalism method, and the supporters of that method who claim they don’t “legislate from the bench.”

Brunner acknowledged that the goal of originalism is meant to refer back to the time when a particular law was passed using texts from that time to determine the intended meaning. The problem Brunner sees with that is the idea that supporters of originalism can just “cherry-pick the texts that they use,” leading to a “results-oriented” judicial method.

“I have repeatedly criticized originalism just for that reason, because the very people that are saying ‘we won’t legislate from the bench’ are doing exactly that,” she said. “When a judge is too tied to feeling really great about the results of the decision, there’s a big problem there, because what we need to be tied to is the law.”

The justice’s challenger in the November general election, former Franklin County judge Colleen O’Donnell, has made it clear she believes in originalism, and plans to “give (laws) the meaning that they had at the time that they were enacted,” she told the Capital Journal in May.

According to Brunner, judges should think of themselves as “reflecting the conscience of the community,” using their opportunity to serve as time to focus on public service.

“We’re in a job where our only tools are our words, and our words have to be so well expressed, and also the courage behind it executed, or we won’t have that much meaning in people’s lives,” the justice said.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Just northeast of Columbus, Ohio, the leafy Main Street of New Albany gives way to lush green fields and agrarian ponds — but soon the countryside transitions into mile after mile of enormous white boxes that emit a low hum. This patch of former farmland has become one of the densest clusters of AI computing in the nation, recently joined by Intel, which is constructing a $28 billion computer-chip factory at the northern end of the industrial bloc.

All of this requires a tremendous amount of electricity, but the area falls within the multistate market managed by PJM Interconnection, which has consistently struggled to bring new power plants online even as demand booms. The resulting power price spike has drawn the ire of both Republican and Democratic governors, who are demanding that PJM and tech giants figure out how to stop data centers from driving up costs for everybody around them. No less than the White House is pushing AI companies to ​“build, bring, or buy new power supply.”

A huge battery that just began construction in the heart of the New Albany computing cluster could model a way to accomplish that task.

Developer Eolian announced on Wednesday that it’s broken ground on its Flint Grid battery project. The first phase is due online by June of 2027, and will be able to inject 200 megawatts for up to five hours straight into an electrical substation that serves the computing hub. With 1 gigawatt-hour of storage capacity, this battery won’t just be the biggest on the 13-state PJM market; it’ll be the biggest battery east of the Mississippi.

The system will help lower electricity prices by charging up when energy is cheap and abundant and dispatching that stored power onto the grid at times of peak demand — exactly what big batteries have been doing for years in places like California and Texas.

“There are things that have been in progress for a long time, designed to solve these very problems,” said Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty, in response to the ​“snowballing narrative” that the grid can’t keep up with demand.

Batteries have set new installation records in the U.S. year after year, swiftly becoming the nation’s top pick for on-demand capacity and beating out new gas plant construction. But construction has clustered in the West, and developers have struggled to make inroads in the Midwest or the densely populated Eastern Seaboard. However, now that those areas face tremendous AI data center growth, they could use the instantaneous power that massive batteries provide.

Eolian can deliver that in New Albany because the firm got started a decade ago, taking calculated risks that seem to have paid off.

“This isn’t just some random 200 megawatts,” Zubaty said. ​“This is 200 megawatts at the epicenter of one of the largest industrial buildouts ever seen in our country, and by putting it at this spot, it will actually allow more stuff to get built.”

From farmland to data center hub

Zubaty didn’t originally have Ohio top of mind for his clean energy ambitions. By the early 2010s, northern Virginia led the nation in data center density, and Zubaty wanted to develop solar farms near those major energy consumers. But he ran into obstacles finding enough land. Solar development had to contend with northern Virginia’s horse farms and suburban subdivisions, and further west from Dulles airport, you hit the Appalachian Mountains.

“Where do the mountains end? A little bit east of Columbus,” Zubaty said.

Central Ohio was already growing in population and economic vitality, Zubaty noted, anchored by a skilled workforce and The Ohio State University. And it had a lot of open space that could accommodate new growth if the titans of the internet wanted to branch out from northern Virginia.

“We started doing land research, looking at where we could build solar in proximity to the Columbus metro area,” Zubaty recalled. ​“Lo and behold, we stumbled upon a couple obscurely named LLCs that were buying up a bunch of land at substations, and it was Amazon.”

Amazon Web Services opened its first data center outside New Albany in 2016. That kicked off a frenzy of tech companies buying the larger parcels of land nearby. One smaller tract — with an old house, lots of foliage, and a small pond — got left behind in the land race as data center companies bought all the property around it. The owners agreed to sell to Eolian, which considered the acreage well suited for a battery plant.

Today, that house is gone, and the once-peaceful parcel is fully surrounded by looming warehouses filled with servers. Crucially, it abuts a substation owned by utility AEP that receives power from a high-voltage transmission line and feeds it to a lower-voltage line that loops through the data center region. That potent grid backbone is what makes it possible for the area to host so much computing — and gives the battery a means of charging up.

Battery ready to go as PJM capacity crunch becomes clear

After securing the land, Eolian got to work on permits, interconnection to the grid, and approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board. At the time, PJM’s power prices were quite low, offering little incentive for companies to build new power plants, even as ​“we were watching this massive amount of data center development unfold at a really epic scale,” Zubaty said.

By 2025, Eolian was ordering transformers and other long-lead-time equipment, even though it lacked a deal to sell power to one of the many corporate customers operating nearby. In December, Zubaty had sufficient confidence in the project to bid it into PJM’s capacity auction, which would award contracts for power delivered for one year starting on June 1, 2027. The auction hit the maximum possible price, signalling that long-simmering demand had unquestionably outstripped supply in PJM.

That win started a clock ticking to build out the site, because ​“there’s a massive financial penalty to bidding and then not showing up,” Zubaty said. (Eolian also plans to add a second phase of the same size by 2029.)

Typically, power plant investors want to see decades of revenue commitments in order to finance construction. PJM, though, only offers one year of certainty for that capacity payment.

Eolian took the risk of building in the hopes that further contracts will materialize.

Now, it looks increasingly likely that one of the many hyperscalers in the area could sign a deal that lets it take credit for the battery project’s contributions to PJM capacity. This could offset that customer’s need to buy power at sky-high market rates, but it also may become necessary to operate at all.

Tech giants are under tremendous political pressure to figure out how to meet their electricity needs without burdening the power system overall, especially in PJM territory. The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge has pushed leading AI companies to say they will cover their own energy costs. New York state recently froze data center construction for a year, giving itself time to make rules to prevent the development from driving up electricity costs, and other liberal states are considering similar measures.

Should hyperscalers look for a well-situated battery to help meet their needs, they won’t find many. PJM can’t wind back the clock and ask for more developers to have applied for grid connection and secured land near future AI hubs eight years ago. Nor is there any indication PJM will soon refine its rules to allow the kind of flourishing of batteries seen in Texas’ competitive wholesale market.

But once one developer shows it’s both possible and valuable to build big batteries in the region, the sheer pressure to meet the AI moment may carry more batteries through the impasse.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Prediction market platforms say they are like commodity markets that offer contracts to speculate on the future price of corn or oil — not sportsbooks that allow gamblers to place bets. But many states reject those justifications, arguing the platforms are a backdoor to skirt state gambling regulations, particularly on sports.

The issue has sparked action from state regulators, new legislation, and a flurry of lawsuits from states, prediction markets, and the Trump administration, which has sought to sideline state oversight.

During a sometimes-heated panel discussion at the annual gathering of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Chicago, Iowa Republican state Sen. Dan Dawson told the audience that a group of students at his son’s high school recently enrolled in Kalshi to bet on World Cup matches. In Iowa, people must be at least 21 to participate in legal online sports betting.

“States are the ones that pick up the pieces,” Dawson said as a Kalshi executive looked on.

Dawson has previously raised concerns about the public health consequences of prediction markets. While an industry representative pledged to work with states, Dawson said a legislative subcommittee that recently studied the issue could not get even basic information from the prediction markets about their reach in Iowa.

“We couldn’t get one answer,” he said.

In March, Kalshi preemptively sued to block Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, a Republican, from taking civil or criminal enforcement action against it. In its suit, Kalshi claimed there was “a substantial risk that the attorney general of Iowa will bring an enforcement action.”

Regulation of prediction markets

Sara Slane, Head of Corporate Development at Kalshi, told lawmakers in Chicago that the company was committed to building relationships with the states. But she said the prediction markets are not subject to state oversight, as they are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives such as futures contracts on stocks.

She said prediction markets require a national standard rather than a “state-by-state regulatory patchwork.”

“This was exactly what the commodity exchange was set up for,” she said.

The five-member, presidentially appointed CFTC currently has four vacancies. But it has aggressively sought to exclude states from overseeing prediction markets, suing red and blue states alike to maintain its jurisdiction over the markets.

Earlier this week, a coalition of 44 state attorneys general wrote to the agency, arguing it does not have the power to regulate sports-related event contracts, which they say are subject to state gambling regulations.

In addition to encroaching on state-regulated and state-taxed sports gambling, states argue that prediction markets are subject to potential insider trading, lack consumer oversight and can fuel problem gambling.

Slane said her firm works to prevent money laundering and allows people who have problems with gaming to block themselves from the site. She said Kalshi also works with major sports leagues to prevent athletes and referees from trading on sports events.

“We take this very seriously,” she said. “We want to promote integrity around our exchange.”

But prediction markets continue to gain national attention for allowing people to unfairly bet on the outcome of events by leveraging nonpublic information.

This week, the White House announced the president’s teleprompter operator was no longer on staff after he was accused of using inside knowledge to make bets about presidential speeches on Kalshi.

Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday signed an executive order prohibiting state employees from using inside information to bet on prediction markets. At least eight states, including Arizona, California, Maryland and Wisconsin, have implemented similar restrictions.

Mick Mulvaney, executive director of the Gambling is Not Investing Coalition, said he was sympathetic to the argument that prediction markets want to avoid a regulatory patchwork across the states.

“That being said, there’ve been two areas where the states have almost always been entirely sovereign: That’s on booze and gambling,” he said.

Mulvaney, a Republican, represented South Carolina in the U.S. House and served as acting White House chief of staff during President Donald Trump’s first term. His organization argues that prediction markets should be subject to the same state and tribal regulations as other forms of gambling.

With litigation flying, he said there’s no question the debate is heading toward the U.S. Supreme Court. Mulvaney said it’s unclear how the conservative court will rule, given its recent decisions. Some of those rulings have allowed the expansion of federal executive power, while others have tilted toward the states.

“So that will be fascinating to see how it shakes out at the Supreme Court,” he told Stateline. “But I have every expectation that this is going all the way up.”

Threat to tribal casinos 

Casino gambling has been the sole economic engine for many Native American tribes for years, said Michael Hoenig, vice president and associate general counsel for gaming at the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation in Southern California.

He said tribes have built up the gambling industry over the last 40 years — sometimes in cooperation with states, other times “in friction with the states.”

“This is just a profound affront to tribal sovereignty, tribal self-government,” he said. “Tribes are supposed to have the sovereign right to decide who gets to operate gaming on their lands and who doesn’t.”

Aside from regulatory concerns, state leaders worry about how the rise of prediction markets may impact the financial and mental health of their residents. Since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the door for states to legalize sports gambling, 39 states and the District of Columbia have done so.

Advocates, researchers and lawmakers are already raising alarms about how the burgeoning market could fuel gambling addiction and hurt household finances. 

Aside from regulation, there is little difference between the potential impacts of prediction markets and online sports betting, said Rachel Volberg, a professor emerita of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Volberg, who has studied gambling addiction for 40 years, told lawmakers in a separate presentation that the research is clear about how over involvement in gambling can hurt individuals and families. However, she told Stateline that legal sports gambling is too new for researchers to fully measure how much the high-speed and accessible world of online gaming has changed the dynamics.

In North Carolina, a new poll found that most people generally approve of sports betting, but a majority wants the state to ban prediction markets.

In the Meredith College poll released Tuesday, 51% of registered voters said they were satisfied with state regulation of sports gambling. Only 11% said they were dissatisfied, while 38% said they didn’t know.

In that poll, two-thirds of registered voters said they would support state legislation banning prediction markets, while 24% said they should be legal.

Though sports fans, policymakers and the researchers continue to grapple with the quickly evolving landscape, experts gathered in Chicago were clear that this industry is here to stay.

“It’s not going anywhere,” said Anthony D’Angelo, who leads responsible gaming efforts at Fanatics Betting & Gaming.

D’Angelo said his company’s sportsbook invests heavily in providing assistance for problem gamblers, flags potentially problematic transactions and incentivizes customers to set and stick to betting limits.

He said lawmakers can help keep people away from illegal and offshore betting platforms that have no oversight or consumer protections.

“We all want the same things to happen,” he said. “I think we want a sustainable, long-term industry where customers are protected.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives,” Moreno wrote on X, according to ABC News. He added that Miller “needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake” and “should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.” Moreno wrote that he had hoped to keep the matter private, but that Miller’s “increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible.”

Miller answered within hours. “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable,” he wrote. “You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”

Miller, a Republican serving his second term in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, has not been criminally charged in connection with the allegations. He denies all of them and is suing his ex-wife for defamation. In a roughly 17-minute livestream Sunday morning he went through the accusations one by one and said he is not leaving the race: “I’m not getting out of this race, and I’m winning in November.”

What Ohio law actually allows this week

That last point controls what can happen this week, because Ohio Republicans cannot resolve the nomination themselves.

Under section 3513.312 of the Ohio Revised Code, a vacancy in a party’s congressional nomination arises only if the nominee withdraws or dies before the 90th day preceding the general election. Party leaders have no power to install a replacement. Were Miller to withdraw in time, the law directs the county boards of elections within the district to hold a special election on a date set by the secretary of state. If only one candidate filed for it, no election would be held and the secretary of state would issue that person a certificate of nomination.

That cutoff is Wednesday, Aug. 5. The decision whether to withdraw is Miller’s alone; Republican leaders cannot take him off the ballot themselves, and he has said he will not go.

The allegations, and Miller’s answers

The accusations come from Emily Moreno, Miller’s ex-wife and the senator’s daughter. The two married in 2022 and had a daughter in 2023. Miller filed for divorce in August 2024, and the divorce was finalized in 2025. The custody fight has continued since.

In police reports obtained by ABC News, Emily Moreno told officers that Miller threw her against a wall during a February custody exchange, leaving a grab mark on her upper arm, and that he had previously held a gun to her head and thrown hot water on her. Court filings from her legal team place the hot-water incident in June 2024, after she told Miller she planned to leave him.

The same report says Emily Moreno told officers that after a stay at Miller’s home, the couple’s 2-year-old daughter said to her, “Daddy kill you.” When she emailed Miller asking about it, the report says, he denied that the child would have heard anything like that from him.

Miller rejects all of it and has given his own account of each episode. He told his livestream audience that the water incident was “horseplay” in their kitchen: “I sprayed water at her from the sprayer attached to our kitchen sink tap water, which does not reach boiling temperature or scalding,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner. He has also questioned his ex-wife’s mental health and cited it as part of his explanation for the allegations. He posted court records he says clear him to a public file-sharing folder, and his office pointed ABC News to a statement noting that the courts have continued to permit him joint custody, arguing credible evidence would have changed that.

Two facts weigh in Miller’s favor and belong high in any fair account. Prosecutors filed no criminal charges. And the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services did not substantiate allegations that he abused his daughter, according to records filed in court.

The February police investigation that produced those interviews began after the couple’s 2-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a fractured collarbone. Emily Moreno alleges Miller caused the injury. Miller denies it. The parents gave investigators conflicting accounts, prosecutors filed no charges, and child-welfare investigators did not substantiate the allegation. Mother Jones, which obtained roughly 2,000 pages of filings and police reports, first reported the competing explanations. CNN obtained recordings of Emily Moreno’s police interview through a public records request and published them in June; TiffinOhio.net reported on those recordings last week.

The litigation now runs in several directions. Emily Moreno has moved to dismiss Miller’s defamation suit under Ohio’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, commonly called an anti-SLAPP law, which creates an expedited process for challenging certain suits arising from protected speech on matters of public concern. Miller brought a separate case against her in February and voluntarily dropped it in May, saying he acted in the child’s best interests.

He has been accused once before. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote in her 2021 memoir, and in a Washington Post opinion piece, that a partner had physically abused her while she worked at the White House; she later identified Miller. Miller sued her for defamation in October 2021, then voluntarily dismissed the suit with prejudice in August 2023, weeks before it was set for trial, as part of a confidential settlement carrying non-disparagement terms. In July, Grisham sued him again, alleging he breached those terms while denying Emily Moreno’s allegations.

How Ohio Republicans responded in other cases

Sunday is notable less because one Ohio Republican criticized another than because the party’s recent record on these questions has run the other way.

In 2023, a minor relative accused state Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria) of climbing into bed and under the covers with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech told investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations, including that he touched her more than once. BCI did not open the case until late 2023, months after the alleged incident, because of conflicts of interest between Creech and several local sheriffs.

Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll declined in October 2024 to take it further, writing to BCI that Creech’s “behavior during the time of the investigation was concerning” but that he was closing the case. Creech was never charged and has called the claims “demonstrably false.”

When the allegations became public in May 2025, House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) stripped Creech of four committee assignments, removed him as chair of House Agriculture and asked him to consider resigning. “I told him that this, on its face, was very serious,” Huffman said.

Creech did not resign. Nine months later Huffman restored his committee seats, telling reporters that “none of that came to bear” and that no authorities had acted. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed him. He won his May 5 primary and is the party’s nominee in House District 40 on Nov. 3. TiffinOhio.net has tracked that reversal since February.

The local connection

That unresolved standard reaches into the campaign organization of Ohio’s other Republican senator. State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s Sandusky County campaign chair, serves alongside Creech in the Ohio House. The two are cosponsors of House Bill 249, the Indecent Exposure Modernization Act, which House Republicans promoted as a measure protecting children from obscene adult performances and preserving privacy in restrooms and locker rooms.

The bill’s text is more specific than that description suggests. It rewrites Ohio’s definition of an “adult cabaret performance” to list, alongside topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers and strippers, “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s biological sex using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers.” It defines biological sex “without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.” Staging such a performance outside a licensed adult cabaret, where minors may be present and where the performance is found obscene or harmful to juveniles, would become a first-degree misdemeanor, or a felony if a court finds the performance obscene. News coverage and opponents have described the measure as a drag ban. The House passed it in March, and it is pending in the Ohio Senate.

Click has made children and families central to his own political identity, giving another measure he introduced with Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania Twp.) the title Affirming Families First Act.

Huffman publicly asked Creech to consider resigning. A review of legislative records, campaign materials and public reporting found no public statement from Click joining that call, objecting when Creech’s committee assignments were restored, or saying whether Creech should remain on the November ballot. More than 14 months after the allegations became public, Click’s position remains publicly unknown.

One case moved differently. Andrew Havas, whom Husted’s campaign named its Franklin County chair in December, resigned in July after NBC News asked the campaign about a 2009 guilty plea in Mahoning County. Havas, then 22, was originally charged with sexual misconduct with a minor in a case involving a 15-year-old. That charge was reduced to a single count of misdemeanor assault, and it was to the assault count that he pleaded guilty, NBC reported. He served 90 days in jail. Husted spokesperson Amy Natoce said Havas had not disclosed the case and that the campaign accepted his resignation on learning of it. That resignation stood. Campaign-finance records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net show Havas gave $24,250.79 to Husted and DeWine committees since 2018.

What happens next

Ohio’s 7th District leans Republican, and Miller won it two years ago with just over 51 percent. He faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker and five-term local councilman, on Nov. 3. Democratic members of Congress have called for a House ethics investigation.

Republican leaders can pressure Miller to leave. They cannot remove him. Whether another Republican appears on the November ballot depends on a withdrawal he has publicly ruled out.

“I’m not getting out of this race,” he said Sunday.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Kaptur, 80, was a passenger in a car headed to a church service when it was hit, her office said in a statement Sunday afternoon.

“This morning Congresswoman Kaptur was a passenger in a vehicle on her way to a church service when the car she was traveling in was struck. She is active, alert, and being treated for non-life threatening injuries,” the statement said.

Officers responded to the two-vehicle crash about 10:48 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 2, in the 3200 block of N. Detroit Avenue near Central Avenue, according to the Toledo Police Department. Two people were taken to a hospital with injuries police described as non‑life‑threatening.

A witness told WTOL 11 that the driver of the other vehicle was picked up by another car and left the scene shortly after the crash. It is not clear whether that driver has been located.

Toledo police said the investigation is active, ongoing and in its early stages, and that more information will be released as it becomes available. N. Detroit Avenue was closed from Arcadia Avenue to the Berdan Avenue and Cherry Street roundabout while officers investigated and crews cleared the scene.

Kaptur’s office said it expects to learn more from investigators. “We look forward to additional information from Toledo Police as they investigate the accident,” the statement said. Her office also thanked Toledo police and fire crews who responded and the medical staff treating those involved, and said Kaptur is grateful to the hundreds of constituents who have contacted her and expects to return to a full schedule soon.

The crash was also reported by WTVG, which said officials at the scene identified Kaptur as one of the two people injured, and by Fox News.

Why northwest Ohio is watching

Kaptur has represented Ohio’s 9th Congressional District since 1983 and is the longest‑serving woman in congressional history. She is seeking a 23rd term this fall in one of the most closely watched U.S. House races in the country.

She ran unopposed in the May 5 Democratic primary and faces Republican Derek Merrin, a former state representative from Lucas County, in the Nov. 3 general election, Roll Call reported. It is a rematch of 2024, when Kaptur beat Merrin by less than a percentage point.

The district she is defending is not the one she won two years ago. Under the map the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved last fall, President Donald Trump would have carried the redrawn 9th District by 11 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales cited by Roll Call. Inside Elections rates the fall contest Tilt Republican.

The 9th District covers Toledo and runs west along Lake Erie. Seneca County is outside its lines, but the seat is one of a small number nationally that could decide control of the U.S. House.

This is a developing story.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Both men are listed as endorsers on Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign website.

As of Sunday afternoon, Miller’s name appeared under “Ohio Congressional Delegation” on the official endorsements page for Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign, alongside U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan, Dave Taylor, Michael Rulli and Warren Davidson. Moreno is listed a few sections above, under “National Leaders Who Love Ohio.” So is Gov. Mike DeWine, who called the allegations against Miller “troubling” four days earlier.

Miller has denied every allegation of abuse raised by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and has never been criminally charged. He said Sunday in a livestream on X that he is staying in his re-election race.

Miller is not the first

Since April, Ramaswamy’s campaign has faced questions at least four times about backing from people accused of or convicted in cases involving misconduct. The campaign has responded differently each time.

In April, TiffinOhio.net reported that the campaign was promoting the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech, who was accused by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents. Creech denied wrongdoing and was not charged.

Two days later, on April 11, Creech’s name disappeared from the page, along with that of state Rep. Gary Click. Web Archive snapshots captured both removals. The campaign made no announcement. Click’s name reappeared roughly two hours after TiffinOhio.net documented the change. Creech’s did not, and he remains absent today.

In July, the scrutiny moved from endorsements to money.

The campaign accepted $10,000 from Cincinnati private equity founder Mark Hauser, who served two months in federal prison for paying $40,000 to rig his daughter’s ACT score in the Operation Varsity Blues admissions scandal.

Days later, the campaign was reported to have accepted more than $10,102 from Andrew Havas, a Statehouse lobbyist who served 90 days in jail after a 2009 guilty plea. Havas was originally charged with sexual misconduct with a minor in a case involving a 15-year-old when he was 22; the charge was reduced to misdemeanor assault.

Havas had resigned as U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s Franklin County campaign chair over that same case, after NBC News asked Husted’s campaign about it. Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to TiffinOhio.net’s questions about whether it knew of the history or planned to return the money. No campaign-finance violation has been alleged in connection with either donation.

Miller is the fourth. His name is still on the page.

What DeWine actually said

DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy and appears on the same page, was asked about Miller at the Ohio State Fair on Wednesday, July 29.

“The accusations are certainly very serious and certainly troubling,” the governor said.

He did not withdraw support from Miller. Asked whether he had endorsed him, DeWine said he had never made an endorsement in that race. In the same exchange he praised the congressman, saying their professional relationship “has been very good” and that Miller has “done a good job.”

Pressed on whether the accusations troubled him, DeWine said they did but that the decision belongs to the district. “People of the district are having to weigh the facts,” he said. “They are the ultimate people who decide; They’re the ones who decide who they want to represent.”

Asked whether he would want Miller representing him if he lived in the district, DeWine did not answer. “I’m done,” he said semi-jokingly.

Ramaswamy has not addressed it

TiffinOhio.net located no public statement from Ramaswamy about the allegations against Miller.

Miller endorsed Ramaswamy in a Facebook post, writing that he was proud to do so. Both men were in President Donald Trump’s orbit before running statewide in Ohio, and Trump has endorsed each of them.

Ramaswamy has been asked before how he handles allegations of sexual misconduct in his political orbit. In April, after his allies circulated Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s disclosure that she had sought therapy for childhood sexual abuse, Ramaswamy posted a video saying she had no vision for the state “other than to complain about what someone else did to her.” Acton has spoken publicly for years about being molested between the ages of 9 and 12 by her mother’s husband.

Acton campaign manager Phil Stein called the remark “shameful” and said Ramaswamy should apologize. Ramaswamy has also declined for months to call for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

A toss-up race

The Cook Political Report moved the Ohio governor’s race from Lean Republican to Toss Up in July, citing polling showing Acton narrowly ahead of or tied with Ramaswamy despite his spending advantage. Sabato’s Crystal Ball still rates the race Lean Republican.

Ohioans vote Tuesday, Nov. 3. Republicans have until Wednesday, Aug. 5, to replace a candidate on the November ballot — a deadline that applies to Miller’s congressional race, not the governor’s.

An endorsements page is among the cheapest things a campaign can change. Ramaswamy’s changed his in April, within two days of a news report, and left one name off permanently. Whether Miller’s is still there Monday morning is a decision the campaign will make, or decline to make, in public view.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Within the hour, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno — Miller’s former father-in-law, a fellow Ohio Republican, and a man who had declined for months to say anything publicly about the allegations — said Miller should not be in Congress.

“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Moreno wrote in a statement posted to social media. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

“He should not serve in the House of Representatives,” Moreno said.

Moreno breaks a months-long silence

Moreno’s statement is a reversal of the posture his office held through the spring and summer. As recently as Friday, July 31, he told the outlet NOTUS he did not know whether Republicans should replace Miller on the ticket, and his spokesperson said he would not speak on active litigation involving his family.

On Sunday he spoke at length.

“As a father and husband, I can tell you the last two years have been pure hell for my wife Bridget, our daughter Emily, me, and our entire family in the aftermath of Emily’s divorce,” Moreno wrote. He said it had been “horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two-year-old girl is caught in the middle.”

“Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible,” he continued.

“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Moreno wrote. “I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”

Moreno’s assertion that Miller “admitted privately” to needing help is his own characterization and is not supported by any public document. Miller has consistently denied every allegation of abuse and has never been criminally charged in connection with any of them.

Miller answered him directly on X, replying to Moreno’s post by name.

“If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable,” Miller wrote. “You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”

Moreno represents every county in Ohio, including Seneca and Sandusky, through January 2031. He was a significant backer of Miller’s first congressional campaign in 2022, the year Miller married his daughter at Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club.

What Miller said

Miller opened the livestream by apologizing for technical problems and noting it was his first attempt at the format. He said he was speaking “as a father, trying to protect our daughter,” and that he had turned down dozens of interview requests because he had concluded from two earlier interviews that reporters would not carry his account accurately.

“They frame me as an abuser,” Miller said, arguing there is no evidence against him.

“No court or agency has even substantiated any allegation against me,” he said. “Every single one of these allegations were already investigated.”

“I had nothing to hide and I have nothing to hide now,” he said.

Miller argued that the allegations track his custody dispute rather than the underlying facts, saying each surfaced at a moment when the stakes in that case shifted. He said his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, stated under oath in October 2024 that he had never harmed their daughter, and he described text messages and recordings he says show the two on friendly terms in the days after an incident she has described as an assault.

“My former wife is engaging in a pattern of reporting incredibly serious and destructive allegations with absolutely no evidence,” Miller said.

He closed by saying he would not leave the race: “I’m not getting out of this race and I’m winning in November.”

Miller also raised his ex-wife’s mental health on the livestream, saying he did so “with great sadness and not anger” and that he hoped she received care. Emily Moreno’s attorneys have previously denied she is mentally ill and have questioned why Miller agreed to give her primary custody of their daughter if he believed she was unstable. TiffinOhio.net is not reporting the specific medical claims Miller made about a private citizen.

Emily Moreno’s spokesman, Stefan Mychajliw, responded in a statement issued after the livestream.

“It is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career,” Mychajliw said. “There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that. It is despicable and abhorrent that Miller lied on an unhinged and humiliating video for their daughter to watch one day. No loving parent would have ever used their daughter as a PR pawn to save their own political career. Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law. We are confident that justice will prevail in court.”

A 199-megabyte package sent to newsrooms

Alongside the livestream, Miller’s side distributed a document package to news organizations, including TiffinOhio.net. It runs to 199 megabytes across 67 files — 45 documents and 22 audio and video files — and its opening page identifies the source as the office of Rep. Max Miller, legal counsel. It includes child-services and police records, court filings, private co-parenting messages, recorded telephone calls, exterior doorbell-camera footage and a prewritten summary telling reporters what to conclude from each exhibit.

TiffinOhio.net is not publishing this material and will not link to it. The package states that the couple’s 2-year-old daughter is identified only by initials and that home addresses have been removed. Neither is consistently true in the files as received. The archive also contains recordings involving the child herself.

Portions of the underlying records do support parts of Miller’s account. That is a different thing from the package proving what its summary says it proves, and several of its central claims are narrower than presented.

The Dropbox link Miller directed reporters and viewers to went offline Sunday. “Apparently, there are people who don’t want this information out. Strange,” Miller wrote on X. “Don’t worry, Dropbox will be back up momentarily.” He did not say who he was referring to. TiffinOhio.net could not determine why the link stopped working.

What the livestream left out

Miller addressed the allegation that he threw hot water on his ex-wife by describing horseplay at his kitchen sink — a sprayer, tap water, and text messages he says show her laughing.

That is not the allegation at the center of his own defamation lawsuit. Court filings from Moreno’s legal team state that in 2024 Miller “threw onto Ms. Moreno hot water from a pan of eggs he’d just cooked” after she told him she planned to leave him. A court-appointed parenting coordinator testified in a May deposition that Miller confirmed the sprayer incident. The pan remains disputed. On Sunday, Miller answered the one he has acknowledged.

Miller also told viewers that on Feb. 27 a court found his sworn testimony credible and granted him a domestic violence protection order against his ex-wife. That order was issued ex parte, meaning it was based on his presentation before Moreno had an opportunity to contest it. Miller later moved to dismiss the case himself. A judge signed off on that dismissal within the past week, finding that Miller “was not under any apparent infirmity and did not appear to have been threatened by or in fear of” Moreno.

Two points Miller raised are accurate and belong in any fair account. Child-protective investigators did not substantiate the allegations against him, and prosecutors declined to bring charges. The police material indicates prosecution was declined for insufficient admissible evidence — a determination that the available case could not be tried, which is not the same as a finding that nothing occurred.

Where the case stands

Miller and Emily Moreno married in August 2022 and divorced in 2025. They share a young daughter and are each seeking sole custody. Emily Moreno has alleged in sworn court filings that Miller scalded her, held a gun to her head, threw her against a wall and caused a fracture to their daughter’s collarbone. Miller denies all of it.

On Thursday, July 30, Emily Moreno asked a Cuyahoga County judge to bar Miller from contacting her attorneys directly, swearing that he had harassed her legal team and physically touched attorney Andrew Zashin without consent. Miller sued Emily Moreno for defamation in May; she has moved to dismiss that suit under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP statute. He is also accused of violating a mutual restraining order that has been in place since June 1.

Emily Moreno is not the first woman to accuse Miller of abuse. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham described physical abuse in a 2021 memoir and a Washington Post opinion piece. Miller sued her for defamation and dismissed that case with prejudice in August 2023, shortly before it was set for trial. Grisham brought new litigation against Miller in July, claiming he violated a settlement in which the two agreed not to disparage each other. Miller did not address the Grisham allegations in Sunday’s livestream.

Three days to the deadline

Republicans have until Wednesday, Aug. 5, to replace a candidate on the November ballot. Miller’s livestream was, in effect, an announcement that they will not be replacing him.

He faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker and Brook Park city councilman, on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Miller won the district with just over 51% of the vote in 2024.

Poindexter said Sunday that the allegations deserve the attention of law enforcement.

“No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power,” he wrote in a statement after the livestream.

Democrats have spent the past week calling for Miller’s resignation and a House Ethics Committee investigation, and have signaled that more fall resources could flow to Poindexter. U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, has said Miller should resign. Trump endorsed Miller again in May.

Ohio Republican leaders have largely declined to withdraw their support. As of Sunday afternoon, the most forceful public call for Miller to leave Congress had come not from a Democrat, and not from a House colleague, but from the Republican senator whose daughter made the allegations.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Republican nominee for Ohio governor walked off the stage Wednesday night at Xavier University in Cincinnati — the city where he was born — after a hall full of young conservative and libertarian activists booed, heckled and talked over him for most of the time he spoke.

The event was the 17th annual Young Americans for Liberty national convention, held July 28 through 30 on Xavier’s campus. Ramaswamy was booked from 8:20 to 8:50 p.m., ahead of YouTube firearms manufacturer Brandon Herrera.

The booing started before he finished his opening thought, according to the Daily Beast, which reviewed video of the full speech. He was heckled over Israel. He told the room the real divide in America was not between Republicans and Democrats but between people who want to win and people who want to whine. When one attendee kept interrupting, Ramaswamy shot back: “You want to give a speech…? Well, you can get on when they give you a slot, alright? So, until they do, can sit down.”

MUST WATCH: "Scammer" Vivek Ramaswamy gets absolutely humiliated by Ohio young conservatives at a Young Americans for Liberty event in his hometown of Cincinnati, walks off stage as crowd boos!

This is Ramaswamy's own base continuing to turn against him in real time. pic.twitter.com/jL9lC5GQww

— TiffinOhio.net (@TiffinOhioNews) July 31, 2026

Then came the line that emptied whatever patience the room had left.

“The truth of the matter is, you know, no matter what happens in whichever direction we go, people in my generation have already made it,” Ramaswamy said. “We’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be your generation…that pays the price.”

The room erupted. “We don’t want to hear your bulls–t talking points,” one person shouted. “You’re a political cretin and you need to get the f— outta here!”

Ramaswamy tried to push through, asking whether anyone still believed in free enterprise, capitalism and “actual liberty.” Some cheered. He told them they would be carrying the rest of the room on their backs. Then he signed off — “Peace out, see you guys” — and left to another wave of boos, roughly 16 minutes ahead of schedule. Video of the exit had drawn more than 2.7 million views by Friday, Mediaite reported.

The Daily Beast said it contacted Ramaswamy’s office and Young Americans for Liberty for comment. Cincinnati public radio station WVXU reported earlier this month that the campaign had not responded to its own request for an interview with the candidate.

Not a hostile room, on paper

What makes the reception notable is who was in the seats.

Young Americans for Liberty grew out of the Ron Paul movement and calls itself the largest pro-liberty student organization in the country. Its members are not Democrats. They are, by the group’s own description, exactly the constituency Ramaswamy has spent three years courting: free markets, limited government, individual rights. Ramaswamy has repeatedly described himself as the most pro-enterprise and pro-freedom governor Ohio would ever have.

Several national outlets placed the convention in Cleveland. It was not. Young Americans for Liberty’s own convention materials put the event on Xavier’s campus in Cincinnati — the metro area where Ramaswamy grew up, and where he launched his campaign for governor in February 2025.

The fourth time, at least

Wednesday was not new territory. It was the latest entry in a pattern that now stretches back three years, and every audience in it leaned right.

December 2023. At the fourth Republican presidential primary debate, Ramaswamy was booed at least four separate times after going after rivals Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, calling Haley “the only person more fascist” than the Biden administration. Christie’s reply — that Ramaswamy was “the most obnoxious blowhard in America” — drew cheers.

May 2024. At the Libertarian National Convention at the Washington Hilton, Ramaswamy was booed simply for mentioning Donald Trump, who was scheduled to speak the following night. He tried to recover: “You all get to speak your mind, I respect that.” The crowd shouted “no” when he asked whether they agreed with Trump on everything, and booed him again when he suggested only a major-party nominee could win the White House.

December 2024. While co-chairing the Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy posted a lengthy defense of tech companies hiring foreign-born engineers, arguing that American culture had “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” The response from the right was immediate. Haley answered that there is “nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.” Steve Bannon called the pro-H-1B argument a scam on his podcast. Axios described the fight as a MAGA-world civil war. Newsweek catalogued the blowback from Trump supporters and unlikely critics alike. Ramaswamy was out of DOGE on Inauguration Day. TiffinOhio.net later reported that his own former company, Roivant Sciences, filed 29 H-1B petitions, and that he now backs expanding Ohio subsidies to some of the country’s largest H-1B sponsors.

October 2025. Headlining a Turning Point USA event at Montana State University alongside Gov. Greg Gianforte, Ramaswamy took roughly 30 minutes of audience questions. Several challenged his Hindu faith. One student said, “Jesus Christ is God, and there is no other God,” then asked how Ramaswamy could represent a state that is 64% Christian. Another asked why he would “masquerade as a Christian.” Ramaswamy confirmed his faith and pointed the room to the Constitution and the First Amendment.

TiffinOhio.net examined that longer pattern earlier this month: a candidate who built a national brand attacking identity politics, now facing identity-based attacks almost entirely from his own side.

The primary that mostly did not happen

Some of the resentment traces to how Ramaswamy became the nominee.

He launched in February 2025. Trump endorsed him almost immediately. Three months later, on Friday, May 9, 2025, the Ohio Republican Party’s state central committee endorsed him for governor — nearly a year before Ohioans would vote, and while the field was still forming. The vote, taken by secret ballot behind closed doors, was 60 to 3. The three went to Attorney General Dave Yost, the first Republican in the race, who dropped out shortly after.

Yost’s parting shot — that Ramaswamy had quit on Trump, quit on Ohio and quit his presidential campaign — has followed the nominee all year. Gov. Mike DeWine, who is term-limited, added his endorsement on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. NBC News reported that DeWine had worked behind the scenes to block the early party endorsement in the first place.

What was left of the primary fell to Casey Putsch, a car designer who runs the Genius Garage nonprofit, lives in Perrysburg and describes himself as a Tiffin native. Putsch spent almost nothing and took 17.5% of the vote on May 5, against Ramaswamy’s 82.5%, according to unofficial results. Cook Political Report later pointed to that near-20% protest vote as a measure of Ramaswamy’s weakness inside his own party.

Putsch’s campaign was frequently ugly, including a video in which he fired a rifle while directing racist language at Ramaswamy, and Ramaswamy has publicly called on his own supporters to reject racism and bigotry. But on the question of the coronation itself, Putsch put words to something a good many Ohio Republicans have said more quietly. Asked in January whether it was fair that voters effectively did not get a primary before the endorsements landed, he told News 5 Cleveland it was “not fair at all” and that it undermined the system.

What the numbers say

Three weeks before Xavier, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved Ohio’s governor race from Lean Republican to Toss Up. Editor Jessica Taylor wrote that “Ohio Republicans we talked to are not optimistic about Ramaswamy and believe it’s a very tight race,” and quoted an unnamed GOP source: “This was the wrong guy to roll the dice with in this political environment.”

The polling has tracked with that. A New York Times/Siena poll of 601 likely voters taken June 15 through 28 found Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton tied at 47%, with Acton leading independents by 28 points and pulling 6% of Republicans and 8% of Trump voters. A bipartisan AARP survey of 800 likely voters taken June 14 through 16 gave Acton a 47%–44% edge. TiffinOhio.net reported in March on an EMC Research survey that found Ramaswamy drawing only 65% support from Ohio Republicans while Acton had consolidated 82% of Democrats.

David B. Cohen, who directs the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, offered WVXU a blunter read: “He’s super arrogant. He thinks he knows best. He thinks Ohio voters are stupid.”

The campaign’s answer

Ramaswamy and his team have dismissed the polling and the narrative around it.

In a recent appearance on the show of northeast Ohio conservative Hugh Hewitt, Ramaswamy said good public polling had dried up, said he did not mind Republicans feeling a sense of urgency, and said he would be “the most conservative, the most pro-enterprise, most pro-freedom governor this state has ever had.” He also said he had campaigned in all 88 Ohio counties.

Campaign spokesman Evan Machan was sharper, telling the Tribune Chronicle: “The media writes the same story every July in Ohio. Then they are surprised in November. The fact remains that the media has no idea how to read a poll.”

The northwest Ohio stakes

This corner of the state has been unusually central to a race otherwise decided in Columbus and on television. Ramaswamy’s running mate is Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, a Napoleon-area Republican who represents the 1st Senate District across northwest Ohio. His primary challenger was a Tiffin native. And the issue Putsch hammered hardest — data centers and the tax breaks and electricity costs that come with them — is one where local opposition has come from conservatives as often as anyone else.

The money has not been local. Ramaswamy has loaned his own campaign $25 million, and a supporting super PAC has taken in roughly $42 million, most of it from a handful of out-of-state billionaires including Elon Musk, Jeff Yass and Bill Ackman. On July 4, hours after working a parade in Lancaster, Ramaswamy boarded a private jet to Paris — his fifth international trip of the year.

Wednesday night in Cincinnati, in front of a room of people who came to hear about liberty and free enterprise, he told them his generation had already made it.

Ohio votes Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Husted, who is now running for his first full term to the U.S. Senate, has come under fire recently for accepting donations from a Jeffrey Epstein associate and having a county campaign chair who served jail time for alleged misconduct with a minor. Each of these stories has fueled a narrative that Husted is tolerant and even protective of sexual abusers.

The Ohio Senate passed SB 17, known as the clergy abuse bill, in March 2006. The legislation was led by Democratic state Sen. Teresa Fedor as a response to the Catholic clergy abuse scandal. It sought to enact several reforms, including requiring clergy (of all religions) to report child abuse committed by their colleagues, expanding the legal definition of sexual battery to cover clergy who sexually exploit minors in their congregations, and creating a one-year civil window for victims to seek damages for offenses that happened outside the 35-year statute of limitations.

The Catholic Conference of Ohio, which represents the state’s bishops, lobbied the state House to water down the bill. The group specifically took issue with the one-year civil window provision, arguing that the church could not reasonably defend itself against older allegations.

Husted, who is a Roman Catholic, was serving as House speaker at the time. He oversaw a process by which the civil window provision was stripped from the bill and replaced with a plan to create an online registry of clergy members found liable of sexual abuse in civil court.

Barbara Blaine, who started an advocacy group for survivors of priest abuse, told the Columbus Dispatch that she felt betrayed by Husted and accused him of caving to pressure from the Catholic Conference of Ohio.

On the day the House voted on the weakened SB 17, survivors lined the halls of the state Capitol, each one holding an image of themselves at the age when they were abused. Several Republican lawmakers reportedly entered the chamber through side doors to avoid confronting the angry victims.

The legislation passed with near-unanimous support.

This was not the first time Husted used his position to limit the ability of abuse survivors to seek justice. In 2004, he voted for a tort reform law that capped noneconomic damages for sexual abuse plaintiffs at $250,000.

The Ohio Capital Journal wrote 2021 that the law had the effect of “stripping child rape victims of millions of dollars in legal damages.”

Husted was appointed to the U.S. Senate last year to fill the seat vacated by Vice President J.D. Vance. He will face former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in the general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The vote breakdown, 49-50, fell along familiar lines as previous War Powers votes, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine supporting the measure. 

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted no, as he’s done in just over a dozen similar measures.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., continues to be absent while in medical rehab.

A similar War Powers Resolution to rein in Trump’s military conflict in Iran passed in the U.S. House on July 23, but failed in the Senate — both led by Republican majorities.

War heats up

The regional war reignited yet again this week after Trump ordered retaliatory strikes Tuesday, along with Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, on Iran-backed militias in eastern Iraq. The strikes on “multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites” were in response to Iranian drone attacks on U.S. forces in the region, according to U.S. Central Command.

Trump told Fox News on Wednesday, “We are going to beat the f—– s—- out of them.”

The United States launched a “heavy wave” of strikes on Iranian military sites beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern Wednesday “in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on U.S. forces,” according to U.S. Central Command.

The cost of oil jumped to just over $90 a barrel Wednesday in response to renewed fighting and a continued chokehold on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum traveled prior to the U.S. and Israel launching the war in late February. 

This means Americans are again paying more for fuel. According to AAA, the U.S. national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $4.09 Thursday.

Before the volley of strikes began again, Trump had announced a pause, after the U.S. and Iran traded rocket fire for nearly two weeks following the collapse of ceasefire talks. 

Service members killed

The president on July 22 attended the dignified transfer, in which the remains of soldiers are transferred from an aircraft arriving from the theater of operations back to the United States, for four U.S. service members killed as a result of the conflict with Iran.

Three of the service members were killed July 17 and July 18 in an Iranian strike at a U.S. airbase in Jordan, and a fourth was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone July 19 at a U.S. base in Iraq. 

The most recent deaths of U.S. soldiers in the conflict bring the total killed to 18, while the number of injured increased to 653.

But the Pentagon does not recognize the four most recent deaths among those in the Iran war, dubbed by the administration as Operation Epic Fury. 

Instead, the Pentagon is categorizing the latest deaths and injuries as casualties of “overseas operations starting July 7, 2026.”

The administration is asking Congress for an additional $67 billion for the war in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Senate appropriators July 21 that the war has already cost $37.5 billion.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time. However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting,” Trump wrote Thursday morning on Truth Social in his signature style of mixed capitalization. 

“Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention. I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he continued on the social media platform that he owns.

One problem for Trump in a postponement is that the Senate is currently controlled 53-47 by Republicans but could shift to Democrats in the November midterm elections. Both senators’ seats could be filled by Democrats.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, postponed a committee vote that was scheduled for Thursday morning to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate.

Cornyn responded to Trump’s statement on X: “POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis.”

Tillis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s latest statement.

Already on the outs

Both Cornyn and Tillis do not risk losing Trump’s favor or hurting their Republican Senate careers. Before deciding to retire, Trump subjected Tillis to intense criticism for opposing the Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 and said he would find candidates to oppose Tillis in his primary.

Cornyn was knocked out of the Republican primary in a runoff election in May after Trump endorsed his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The Judiciary Committee is split between 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All Democrats are expected to oppose Blanche, and a majority vote is required to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

A spokesperson for Grassley said in a statement Wednesday night that the chair “works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure” and that Cornyn and Tillis had not yet received written assurances from Blanche on the department’s formal end to Trump’s IRS settlement deal.

The two-part settlement that Trump’s own Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service negotiated with the president to drop the $10 billion lawsuit established a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, and a tax enforcement immunity deal for Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and their private Trump Organization.

Blanche, during his July 15 confirmation hearing before the committee, defended the tax immunity deal as “typical” of IRS settlements. He also maintained the “anti-weaponization” fund portion of the deal had been completely scrapped, citing his comments during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in June. 

Former Department of Justice officials told committee Democrats the IRS settlement language was “mind-boggling,” during a July 22 forum hosted by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. 

In a July 13 order, the Florida federal judge in the IRS case slammed Trump’s settlement with his own administration as using the presidency to “manipulate” the courts.

Prior to Trump appointing him, and to Senate Republicans confirming him, as deputy attorney general in March 2025, Blanche, of Florida, previously worked as Trump’s personal defense lawyer on three criminal cases, according to his own bio on the DOJ website. 

Cornyn and Tillis were among the 52 Senate Republicans who voted along party lines to install Blanche among Justice Department leadership.

Blanche represented Trump in a New York state case on which the president was convicted of 34 felonies of falsifying business records.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

ICE, an agency within DHS that has sustained intense criticism since the start of the second Trump administration for its aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics, has no plans to target polling sites in November, a DHS official told States Newsroom in an email. 

The official left open the possibility, though, that the agency’s plans could change based on available intelligence.

“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the DHS official said. “ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

The email came from a general DHS media account and did not name the official. The statement did not specify anything about DHS agencies other than ICE.

While DHS made similar statements earlier this year, this one responded to a request for comment about a letter this week from a dozen U.S. Senate Democrats to three Cabinet members demanding to know more about the administration’s possible plans to send federal law enforcement officers to polling places across the country. 

The group, led by Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, sent a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in which the lawmakers asked whether armed federal agents would be deployed at election sites, which they said would be prohibited under federal law. 

“Congress has enacted longstanding criminal prohibitions against sending federal personnel to polling places and using federal power to interfere with elections,” they wrote. “Americans should never have to wonder whether the federal government intends to police the ballot box with armed agents.” 

Democrats have voiced increasing worries that President Donald Trump is seeking to control elements of election administration, which is a state responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. 

The issue is at the center of lawsuits brought by Democratic campaign and nonpartisan voting-rights groups challenging an executive order restricting mail-in voting. And U.S. House Democrats say the administration is withholding disaster relief funds as leverage to force states to change their election laws.

“The letter reflects my and my Senate colleagues’ deep concerns that Donald Trump appears to be planning to steal the upcoming election, which Republicans cannot win on the merits,” Markey said in a Thursday statement to States Newsroom. “We know that no unlawful, illegal, and unconstitutional act is beyond him and we must be ready for it.”

Joining Markey on the Tuesday letter were Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

Growing concern 

The senators’ concerns, they said, arise partly from findings revealed earlier this month that came out of an investigation launched in 2025 by the Democratic National Committee. 

Last October, the committee sought records regarding the possible deployment of federal law enforcement officers to polling stations, ballot-drop sites and election offices. The departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense initially did not produce any documents, and during ensuing litigation, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement represented it had found “no responsive records,” according to the July 28 letter. 

But after the DNC challenged the search results, ICE admitted to finding “more than 11,000 potentially responsive pages,” while U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, said it located nearly 117,000, lawmakers wrote. 

The Department of Defense declined to comment Thursday on the senators’ letter, telling States Newsroom that it will instead follow its typical protocol of responding directly to the authors themselves. 

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s focus on elections  

Democrats’ inquiries into the administration’s plans also stem from comments President Donald Trump has made in recent months about election integrity.

When a PBS Newshour correspondent asked Trump in May if he would send ICE agents or National Guard troops to polling sites for the midterms, he said he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”  

And earlier this month, during a nationwide primetime address, he again reiterated claims about the country’s voting systems being vulnerable to hacking and disputed his 2020 presidential loss, sowing doubts about the entire election process despite having a lack of evidence to back up his words.  

“President Trump’s statements, coupled with his repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act — which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence — only heighten concerns,” the senators added in their letter. 

“The Administration now has a choice,” they wrote. “It can continue to fuel the appearance that it is laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal intrusion into state-run elections, or it can finally provide Congress and the American people with the transparency they deserve.”

The lawmakers requested that Blanche, Mullin and Hegseth provide details about any possible plans to deploy federal troops at election sites in November and identify who may have authorized such deployments, setting a deadline of August 11. 

They also asked that the federal agency leaders produce records “concerning the possible deployment of federal law enforcement personnel or troops to polling places or other election sites.” 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“The radical left wants more jobs for illegal aliens and more migrants (in) 18-wheelers, and (the) Trump administration wants safer roads and more jobs for the American veteran,” Trump said. 

The policy builds on a program that allows veterans to automatically obtain a  commercial driver’s license if their service included operating heavy vehicles by expanding the waiver from 12 months since military service to 24 months.  

The initiative also creates a fast-track program for veterans without experience. The Veterans Affairs Department will cover the costs of the program, and will launch a campaign to inform veterans of the opportunity. 

“Any veteran with heavy vehicle experience from the military will now be eligible to skip redundant road tests to obtain a commercial driver’s license,” Trump said. “If they didn’t drive a truck in the military,… they’re going to learn, and they’re going to learn very quickly and they’ll be licensed in a matter of a few weeks.”

As part of Trump’s broad immigration crackdown, his administration has aimed to curtail the number of foreign-born truck drivers, who make up about 18% of truckers nationwide, through several federal regulations. 

A March Department of Transportation rule to limit the types of visas that make someone eligible for a commercial driver’s license is expected to push out of the industry about 200,000 immigrant truck drivers, the administration has said.

The rule applied to immigrants with several forms of legal status, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Temporary Protected Status, asylum seekers and refugees. Those who were exempt from the rule included lawful permanent residents and some immigrants with H-2A and E-2 visas.

So far, about 28,000 licenses from foreign-born truck drivers have been canceled, Trump said. 

He added that industry giant Werner Trucking has hired 1,400 veterans as drivers.

Trucker shortage

The industry has a shortage of roughly 60,000 to 80,000 drivers, according to the American Trucking Associations, the industry’s largest national advocacy group. 

“As we get illegal aliens off the roads today, we’re also taking action to replace these unqualified migrant truck drivers with highly qualified American veterans,” Trump said.

The president has said, without evidence, that immigrants driving commercial vehicles pose a safety threat and has accused them of not knowing English. 

Trump issued an executive order last year that required truck drivers to be proficient in English, which he said has resulted in 24,000 commercial licenses being removed. And last year, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to pull federal highway funding from several states for not enforcing the president’s executive order that required commercial truck drivers to be proficient in English. 

Growing list of states

Trump said that he hopes more states partake in the waiver program, known as the Even Exchange Program that allows qualified military drivers to be exempt from taking a test to obtain a commercial driver’s license. 

To qualify, a veteran needs a related speciality, including motor transport operator, fueler, equipment operator, or pavement and construction equipment operator.

Dozens of states already participate in the waiver program. Trump announced two more Thursday: Indiana and Wyoming. 

The states already in the program are Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, North Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Missouri, South Carolina, Idaho, Georgia, New Mexico, West Virginia, California, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Ohio, Maine, Utah, Washington, Mississippi, Tennessee, Michigan, Montana, South Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Maryland, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida and Alabama have committed to implementing the program.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church, said he recently heard of a new tactic ICE is using in Springfield. 

“I received a call from a leader in our community who said that what’s happening is Haitians in Springfield are getting letters asking them to report to Homeland Security and ICE down in Cincinnati,” he said. 

“They’re asked to report in, and what I was told is that once they get there, they are asked to wear an ankle bracelet and report back in a month.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that President Donald Trump can end legal status for Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.

About 330,000 Haitians are living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that allows people from specific countries in conflict or facing natural disasters the chance to live and work in the United States for a set period of time.

About 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio and 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.

“The federal officials are now telling us that they do not have any plans,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield, told reporters on Wednesday. 

“They’ve received no instructions to have any kind of raids in Springfield. Now that can change, but they did tell us they’ve heard nothing.” 

Mike and his wife Fran DeWine help support the Becky DeWine School in Haiti, named after their late daughter, but the school had to close due to gang activity in 2024.

“It’s a mistake to say that (Haitians) can no longer stay in this country,” DeWine said.

“I think that the people who have come here to work, the Haitians who came to Springfield, were filling jobs that had not been filled before. They are part of the resurgence of Springfield.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said he has not received information from ICE about enforcement operations. 

“I hope Congress will seize this opportunity to modernize our immigration system in a way that upholds the rule of law, strengthens our economy and reflects the values that have long made the United States strong,” he said in a statement. 

Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin, anticipates an uptick of ICE activity as a result of TPS ending.

ICE detained more than 280 people in Columbus in December during Operation Buckeye. 

“I’m afraid it might turn into that, but I hope not,” Eldredge said.

“We might see some large numbers, but it wouldn’t be as public as it was in December.”

She said ICE has changed their tactics from detaining people in public spaces like courthouses and in the streets to instead knocking on people’s doors and detaining people where they live. 

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther called forcing Haitians back to Haiti “irresponsible and inhumane.”

“Our immigrant and refugee neighbors make positive contributions to our community through their unique perspectives, workplace contributions and participation in our economy,” he said in a statement. 

“We cannot prevent federal operations from happening in our city, and federal officers do not communicate their plans with us.”

Ruby is asking ICE not to come to Springfield.

“We will encourage people to protest peacefully,” he said. “There are many who are willing to place themselves between ICE and people who are targets for detainment and deportation.” 

Haitians were initially granted temporary protected status after Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 killed 222,570 people. The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in 2021 after the assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moïse. 

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” according to the state department. A top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped last month. 

“I’ve talked to families who are so afraid of going back to Haiti,” Ruby said. 

“Rape is endemic in Haiti right now, and if all of the Haitians who are in Springfield who have been on TPS were sent back to Haiti, some of the teenage girls who have sat in our city schools next to our own children are probably going to be subject to that.” 

Springfield experienced a shrinking population for decades as manufacturing jobs disappeared, but Haitian immigrants have grown Clark County’s workforce by more than 10,000 workers. 

The Clark County city became a flashpoint in the 2024 Election when Trump and JD Vance spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants there.

Rev. Michelle Boomgaard of Christ Episcopal Church talked about the growth Springfield had because of the Haitians. 

“We are seeing buildings long shuttered now open,” she said. “We are seeing new vibrancy in our communities.”

Deporting Haitians in Springfield would eliminate roughly $300 million in annual spending from Clark County, with an estimated economic loss projected to exceed $400 million.

Haitians also contribute millions of dollars in Columbus, said Yola Lamarre, an advocate with the Haitian Community Network.

“We’re going to see that impact because of this job loss,” she said. “We’re going to see the shortages in the healthcare industry and other industries that Haitians mostly populate.” 

Haitians in Ohio lost their work permits when TPS expired on Monday.

More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. 

“I think that many of them are planning on taking their children with them, even if (the children) are U.S. citizens and have the protection,” Ruby said. 

Haitian parents are now faced with the choice of leaving their children or taking them back to Haiti “where they could be kidnapped, raped, or murdered,” Ruby said. 

“Imagine the dilemma that that is for mom and dad who love their kids, and that’s the situation that we have created for Haitian families right now, and it’s completely unnecessary.”

The Ohio Department of Children and Youth gave a grant to the Nehemiah Foundation and the Department of Jobs and Family Services to create a respite care network, said Tim Voltz of Champion City Church in Springfield. 

“There would be temporary places for those children to go, so they wouldn’t end up in a facility or detained somewhere,” he said. 

At least 18 families are part of the network, which can host children for up to 14 days at a time, Voltz said. 

“It is not a permanent solution,” he said. 

“It is only meant to provide a place for them while the state and the parents themselves and everyone tries to figure out how to reunite the parents of their children, or place them with kin. … The goal was to keep children from being shipped all over the state to foster care placements.” 

The emotional burden is overwhelming for Haitian families, said Jimmy Pierre of Gospel Grace Baptist Church in Springfield.

“Parents worry about what the future holds,” he said. 

“Some are having difficulty sleeping because they fear separation from their spouses or children. Many are dealing with anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion as they try to care for their families while living with uncertainty.”

Haitians can apply for asylum, but the Trump administration put an indefinite freeze on processing all asylum applications at the end of 2025.

About 4% of asylum cases are being approved, Ruby said. 

“Applying for asylum isn’t really a realistic option,” he said. 

At the federal level, the U.S. House voted in April to extend TPS for Haitians through 2029. The bill is now in the U.S. Senate, but the White House said President Donald Trump would veto the bill. 

U.S. Senators introduced an identical bill last month. 

“It’s time to put our ideology aside and focus on saving the lives of families,” Ruby said. 

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner won her seat in 2020. Ohio Republican lawmakers made the races for the state’s highest court openly partisan starting in 2022 with the addition of party labels. Since then, Republicans have defeated two other incumbent Democrats to take 6-1 control over the court, with only Brunner remaining. Brunner has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the politicization of the court.

If elected, O’Donnell has pledged to maintain “judicial restraint” while interpreting the law based on what she interprets as the meaning the law writers intended at the time.

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document, and so I honor both substantive and procedural judicial restraint,” O’Donnell said in a May interview.

The Capital Journal reached out to the O’Donnell campaign multiple times requesting a post-primary interview, but the campaign refused. A spokesperson for the O’Donnell campaign referred to comments made in a previous interview O’Donnell did with the Capital Journal prior to the May primary, but follow-up requests with specific questions did not receive a response.

The former judge, and daughter of retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell, beat out a crowded field filled with appellate court judges. She took 32% of the vote, more than 280,000 votes in total, according to official results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office. The May primary election had a 22.68% voter turnout rate.

O’Donnell’s first job out of law school was serving with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, before she clerked for a federal judge, spent time in private practice, and landed as a judge in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where she appointed to serve after a retirement in May 2013. She served in the role until 2023, before being defeated in a re-election effort.

A new opportunity came about in the summer of that year, when she began presiding over asylum cases as a federal immigration judge, assigned to serve in Laredo, Texas.

“While I honored my oath and obligation to interpret the law with integrity and to approach every case with an open mind, I never granted asylum a single time,” O’Donnell told the Capital Journal in May.

In a post to her official campaign Facebook page, O’Donnell said she served as an immigration judge during what she called the “Biden border crisis,” in which she “enforced federal law precisely as written, finding zero cases to meet the necessarily high bar for asylum, and consistently ordering removals of illegal aliens.”

O’Donnell has said she has “always been interested and motivated by public service, particularly through the judiciary,” and she thinks “partisan politics really has no place in the courthouse.”

“Regardless of my personal, emotional feelings about what I think the law should say, or what might make it better, or what might make it worse, I’m quite comfortable with how to compartmentalize, how to honor the oath that any judge should take to simply interpret the law, rather than rewrite the law,” she said in a May interview.

Endorsements are a source of pride for O’Donnell, who told the Capital Journal before the primary that “endorsements can speak to the values of the candidate and of the endorsing agents.”

Recently on social media, she touted endorsements from Ohio’s Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, U.S. Rep. Dave Taylor, and U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson.

The voter registration deadline for Ohio’s Nov. 3 election is Oct. 5, and requests for absentee ballots must be received by the boards of elections by Oct. 27.

Absentee ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 2, received in a dropbox by Nov. 3, or received by the boards of elections by Nov. 7. Early voting occurs from Oct. 6 to Nov. 1.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The companies at the top of that industry are also the largest importers of foreign white-collar labor in the United States. In fiscal year 2025, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google held the top four spots for new H-1B approvals — the first time American technology firms swept all four, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of federal data reported by Forbes. Counting renewals, Newsweek’s review of the same federal data put Amazon at 10,044 approvals in 2025 and Microsoft at 5,189.

Amazon has held a 100% Ohio sales-tax exemption since the Tax Credit Authority approved it in 2014. Intel, whose New Albany semiconductor campus anchors Ramaswamy’s pitch for Ohio’s future, took $150 million in JobsOhio grants on top of federal money.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to expand that program. And in December 2024 he told the country that when American engineers lose out to foreign-born ones, the explanation is American culture.

What he said

On Dec. 26, 2024, while co-chairing the federal Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk, Ramaswamy posted a long defense of technology companies that hire foreign-born engineers over Americans. The cause was not intelligence, he wrote, but culture. American culture “has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” and a country that celebrates “the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ” would not produce the best engineers, CNN reported at the time.

He wrote it down deliberately, at length, while holding federal office. It was aimed at the whole country, which includes Ohio.

Federal records show the pharmaceutical company Ramaswamy founded, Roivant Sciences, had 29 H-1B applications approved between 2018 and 2023, Politico reported during his presidential campaign.

Nikki Haley, his rival at the time, answered publicly that there was nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. Ramaswamy was out of DOGE by Inauguration Day.

He has not withdrawn the premise. In October 2025, weeks after President Donald Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions, Ramaswamy posted that 75% of American eighth graders were not proficient in math and that the average Chinese student was four years ahead, according to The American Bazaar. The lesson he drew was about American schools, not about the employers doing the hiring.

Amy Acton has made certain Ohio voters have heard the December post. She has featured it extensively in ads and speeches, ABC News reported.

The boards he would appoint

A governor does not issue visas. A governor does decide which employers the state pays to come here, and on what conditions.

As governor, Ramaswamy would appoint all nine members of the JobsOhio board, the private development arm that assembles incentive packages; control appointments to the five-member Ohio Tax Credit Authority, which grants the industry’s sales-tax exemptions; and oversee the Ohio Power Siting Board and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which decide where large energy projects go and how grid-upgrade costs are split among ratepayers, as TiffinOhio.net has reported. JobsOhio also runs a Talent Acquisition Services program whose stated purpose is helping companies find workers.

Those exemptions are not one-time awards. Policy Matters Ohio found that the largest operators can keep extending the break as they expand without returning for further public scrutiny — Amazon, on its existing and announced investments, qualifies through 2055 under a 2014 agreement originally estimated to cost $77 million.

Ramaswamy’s platform promises to “attract the industries of the future with low-cost, dependable energy,” and he has been specific about which industries: data centers, artificial intelligence and chip manufacturing. He has not proposed attaching Ohio-hiring conditions to any of it.

Acton has taken the opposite position, backing a moratorium and conditions requiring data centers to cover their own infrastructure costs and use union labor. Ramaswamy opposes those conditions. Union leaders and former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper have criticized his jobs and cost-of-living record in Lima.

What Ohio has riding on the federal fight

The program is in the most unstable moment of its 36-year history, and Ohio institutions are exposed either way it breaks.

Trump signed a proclamation on Sept. 19, 2025 imposing a $100,000 payment on certain new H-1B petitions, where employers had been paying roughly $2,000 to $5,000. On June 8, 2026, a federal judge in Massachusetts vacated it as an unconstitutional tax. The administration appealed three days later, and the fee is still being collected while the case moves.

All 20 states that brought that challenge had Democratic attorneys general. Ohio, whose attorney general is Republican Dave Yost, did not join. Their argument was that the fee falls hardest on public employers — universities, hospitals, school systems — that Congress deliberately exempted from the visa cap.

Ohio has those. KFF’s analysis of federal data found Cleveland Clinic among the three largest H-1B employers in health care in the country in fiscal 2025, and Ohio responsible for roughly 5% of all such approvals nationally. Physicians account for nearly half of H-1B approvals in medical occupations, and the sponsored workforce skews toward higher-poverty and rural counties — the parts of Ohio with the fewest doctors to begin with.

So the state is positioned to keep subsidizing the corporations that use the program most, while staying out of the fight over the fee that hits its own hospitals. Ramaswamy has not said whether he would change either half of that.

What the campaign says

Ramaswamy has answers, and on the visa question they are more substantial than his critics usually allow.

The first is jurisdictional. Visas are federal. No governor issues one, denies one, or sets the cap, and nothing in the office would give him authority over the H-1B program.

The second is that he is not a defender of the program. He has attacked it, repeatedly, from the right. During his presidential campaign he told Politico the lottery needed to be replaced by “actual meritocratic admission,” called the program “a form of indentured servitude” that benefits only the sponsoring company, and said, “I’ll gut it.” He has held that position since, arguing a merit-based system is what American competitiveness against China requires.

The third is that his platform does contain a workforce answer, and it is domestic. His published plan promises to raise academic standards, pay the best teachers more, and “expand career-technical education and apprenticeships to create real pathways to good-paying jobs.”

Taken together, those answers describe a coherent position: fewer visas by lottery, more by merit, and Ohio schools eventually producing the workers themselves.

They also leave the December post standing. Nothing in the jurisdictional argument, the reform proposal or the education plank retracts the claim that when American firms pass over American engineers, the fault lies with the culture the Americans grew up in. And the plan, which runs to four pillars and several dozen bullet points, contains neither the word “visa” nor the word “immigration.” The generation of Ohio students it promises to prepare will not graduate before the incentive packages are signed.

Four questions he has not answered

Each is within a governor’s power to act on.

Would he attach Ohio-resident hiring conditions to JobsOhio awards and Tax Credit Authority exemptions? Does he support the $100,000 fee now that it is before a federal appeals court, and would he want Ohio to take a position? Should the state advocate for its own cap-exempt universities and hospitals, whose costs rise sharply if that fee survives? And does he stand by the December 2024 post as a description of Ohio workers, or only of a national culture he says the schools can repair?

He has answered none of them since winning the May 5 primary. Ohio votes Nov. 3.

Related: Ramaswamy blamed American ‘mediocrity’ for tech firms hiring foreigners. His own company filed 29 H-1B visas.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Miller has denied every allegation of abuse his ex-wife has raised over the past year. He has never been charged with a crime in connection with any of them. And earlier this week, his own domestic violence petition against Emily Moreno was dismissed after a judge found he had not been harmed or made to fear for his safety.

The affidavit, signed by Emily Moreno and notarized Thursday, was filed as Exhibit A to a motion in the couple’s long-running domestic relations case in Cuyahoga County. It is a request for court-ordered restraint on contact with counsel — not a domestic violence protection order, and not the first restraining order to surface in the case.

What the affidavit alleges

In six numbered paragraphs, Moreno swears that Miller “has harassed, threatened, and communicated directly” with her current counsel at Zashin Law LLC as well as with two previous attorneys, Vince Stafford and Jill Helfman.

She further swears that Miller “physically touched my counsel without consent,” and describes her own response after he allegedly placed his hands on attorney Andrew Zashin: “Get your hands off of him.”

The affidavit does not state when that contact is alleged to have occurred.

Moreno also attributes a statement to Miller’s own attorney. She swears that at a July 28 hearing, Miller’s counsel said the congressman “just can’t control himself.”

“Unless restrained,” the affidavit concludes, “Plaintiff will continue to harass, threaten, and communicate with my counsel directly.”

The allegations are Moreno’s sworn account and have not been tested in court. Miller is the plaintiff in the domestic relations case, having filed for divorce in August 2024.

Friction with Zashin is not new

Zashin has been a recurring target. Miller named him and his firm as defendants in the defamation lawsuit he filed in May, and Miller’s legal team separately moved to disqualify Zashin from the custody case, arguing that his status as a co-defendant created a conflict. In May, the New York Post reported that Miller had attempted to goad Zashin into a physical confrontation after a court hearing.

A mutual restraining order has been in place since June 1, barring both Miller and Moreno from threatening, abusing, annoying or interfering with each other. Moreno’s team filed a contempt motion days later, arguing Miller violated that order by giving media interviews hours after the judge issued it. Miller’s lawyers denied any violation, saying he has the right to defend himself publicly.

Miller’s own case collapsed this week

Miller filed a domestic violence petition against Moreno on Feb. 27, seeking an order that she stay away from him and their 2-year-old daughter. It was formally dismissed this week after a judge concluded he had not been harmed or placed in fear for his safety.

During those proceedings, Miller testified that doorbell camera footage would corroborate his account that his girlfriend was present during a Feb. 1 custody exchange. His attorneys later informed Moreno’s lawyers that she had not, in fact, likely been there. Miller has said he made an honest mistake and was confused about timing.

The underlying allegations

Moreno has alleged in sworn filings and in a police interview that Miller scalded her with hot water from a pan in June 2024 after she told him she planned to leave the marriage, held a gun to her head, and pushed her against a wall. She has also raised questions about a broken collarbone their daughter sustained in February.

Miller has rejected all of it. In a June interview with Spectrum News, he said he never did any of those things. His office has produced county documentation showing that child abuse allegations involving his daughter were investigated and deemed unsubstantiated. He has called his ex-wife mentally ill, a liar and a stalker; her attorney has said she has no bipolar diagnosis and does not own the handgun Miller claims she has.

Miller sued Moreno and Zashin for defamation in May. She has moved to dismiss that suit under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP statute, arguing that allegations against a sitting congressman on the ballot are protected speech on a matter of public concern.

A ballot deadline is five days out

The timing matters. According to reporting by The New York Times, Republicans have until Aug. 5 to replace a candidate on the ballot, and Democrats say their internal polling shows Miller just 1 point ahead of Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker, in a district President Donald Trump carried by 11 points in 2024.

The Cook Political Report moved Ohio’s 7th District from Solid Republican to Likely Republican on June 18. Miller campaign spokesperson Abigail Angelos told the Times that the court has continued to permit Miller joint custody, and said he would keep defending his reputation against what she called false and reckless allegations.

Ohio’s senior senator stays quiet

Bernie Moreno represents every county in Ohio, including Seneca and Sandusky, until January 2031. He has not called on Miller to resign, has not asked him to leave the race, and has not publicly weighed in on his own daughter’s sworn account.

Asked about the case, his spokesperson, Reagan McCarthy, told the Times that “Senator Moreno’s top priority is the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter.” She added: “While he will not litigate these matters in the media or respond to baseless public attacks, he will do whatever it takes to ensure a just outcome for his family.”

That silence has begun drawing criticism from inside Ohio. This week, state Sen. Casey Weinstein, a Hudson Democrat, contrasted Moreno’s profanity-laced confrontation with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing against months of public quiet on Miller. House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked July 21 why Republicans have kept Miller in their conference, said: “The key word there is allegation.”

No prominent Ohio Republican has called for Miller to step aside.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Help is available 24/7.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Investors from Omaha to Chicago last year bought tens of millions of dollars worth of delinquent property tax debts from Ohio county treasurers, setting new records in several counties. 

This gives those institutional investors the right to collect on liens, plus up to 18% interest, from Ohioans who are buckling under the weight of post-pandemic leaps on their property tax bills.

State lawmakers in 1998 legalized the sale of delinquent tax debt, joining roughly half of U.S. states that do so. 

Several of Ohio’s biggest counties are now selling record levels of certificates, according to data provided by their treasurers’ offices. Cuyahoga County in June sold off $18 million worth of debt, higher than any year on record. Franklin County last year sold $10 million, double the size of most years’ sales. In the Cincinnati area, both Hamilton and Warren counties sold off more debt in 2025 and 2026 than any year over the past decade. Lucas County is planning its first tax lien sale since 2008. 

The system rewards companies as property owners accrue more debt. Buyers of the initial liens also give investors the right to purchase all “subs” – subsequent lien certificates that counties sell off when a property once again falls behind on its taxes. Those certificates require by law an 18% interest rate atop the principal. In rare cases, the investors can pursue foreclosure if debtors fail to pay. 

County treasurers say the lien certificate sales are a critical enforcement tool. In most cases, the repeated letters warning property owners of a looming sale spur them to settle their debt or enter a payment plan. And the tax liens that are sold, they say, make an efficient means for counties to collect what they’re owed. The entire system acts as a deterrent, ensuring people pay in full and trust that their neighbors aren’t freeloading. 

Plus, several treasurers negotiate different kinds of consumer protections into the sales, like limiting interest rates or screening out certain low-income households or small-dollar debtors from sales. 

‘Profit from displacement’

Endgames from lien sales can be devastating. Last year, Ashtabula County’s treasurer wrote a letter to Tax Ease Ohio – an affiliate of PVOne Capital, of Chicago – asking for debt forgiveness for a 73-year-old widower. The county sold Tax Ease five certificates for the man’s debt in 2014 and 2015 worth nearly $21,000. A decade later, he had already paid $40,500, and still owed another $21,600.

“It is never the goal of this office to see members of our community lose their homes, particularly elderly residents who have worked diligently to meet their obligations,” wrote treasurer Angie Maki-Cliff in a letter to the company. 

Interest in eliminating these sales has gained traction in Columbus. Bipartisan lawmakers have proposed legislation that would prohibit the sales of these liens on residential and agricultural properties. The effort is backed by mortgage lenders, who say the debts resemble predatory loans in that the interest rates trap borrowers in a debt cycle that ends with crippling payments far beyond the original bill. 

The lawmakers also criticized county treasurers for what they described as outsourcing their work enforcing Ohio’s tax laws. 

“Property owners should not be subject to a predatory lien sale without their consent,” said Daniel Broering, CEO of the People’s Bank Co., to state lawmakers. “It is a business model built around profit from displacement.”

Amy Acton, a former physician and state health official running for governor as a Democrat, recently proposed a crackdown on county lien certificate sales. In a statement, her campaign said the lien sales can be appropriate, especially against “corporate bad actors.” The statement also called for cracking down on “predatory” collections practices against vulnerable homeowners who are struggling to pay after a hike in their tax bill.

The political pressure comes as new assessments on homes have triggered leaps in biannual tax bills for homeowners. More than 320,000 Ohioans have signed a petition to constitutionally abolish property taxes in Ohio, a radical shift that would knock out a central pillar of the state’s revenue. Lawmakers have since passed legislation expected to reduce property tax bills by billions over the next three years, and the issue could play a central role in an unexpectedly close gubernatorial race. 

Some counties are selling record levels of property tax debt

The state doesn’t track county-by-county sale data. The County Treasurers Association of Ohio has declined to provide it to Signal Statewide, or to state lawmakers who have requested it. 

Signal Statewide reached out to treasurers of Ohio’s 10 most populous counties. Nine provided data – Montgomery declined, stating it would need two weeks to do so. 

In June, Cuyahoga County sold $18 million worth of debt in a negotiated sale to Nar Solutions, a lender with a listed address above a retail pharmacy in Omaha, Nebraska. 

County Treasurer Brad Cromes said the county took steps to protect residents beforehand. The office excluded from the sale properties with delinquencies less than $1,000, those worth less than $100,000, owner-occupied units in designated impoverished or marginalized communities, or those that claim the homestead exemption. Interest rates were also capped at 6% (down from 12% in pre-pandemic years), although subsequent sales are legally required to be sold at 18% interest. 

Data Cromes provided shows most of the tax debts from the most recent sale came from 2024 ($4.7 million), 2023 ($3.2 million) and 2022 ($3.5 million). 

For Franklin County, including Columbus, investors bought $10 million in delinquent property taxes last year, compared to a 10-year average of about $3 million annually on such sales. PVOne Capital bought it, with a 14% interest rate attached.

In Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, the county sold $4.5 million in 2025, more than any year over the past decade. 

Nearby Warren County sold off nearly $1 million in debts earlier this year at 17.5% interest to PVOne Capital. That’s about twice the amount as the last time the county executed a full sale in 2019, according to County Treasurer Randy Kuvin. 

Summit County sold about $4.5 million worth of its residents’ debt last November. Adair Asset Management, of Omaha, bought it, plus a 5.75% interest rate. The company also bought about $1.4 million in subs, at 18% interest. 

Banks, lawmakers say the loans are predatory

Two Northeast Ohio lawmakers – Democratic Rep. Dan Troy and GOP Rep. Dave Thomas – introduced legislation to eliminate lien certificate sales for agricultural and residential property. 

Troy referred to the investors as “headhunters” doing the counties’ “dirty work” of pressuring people in financial hardship for cash. Thomas said county treasurers need to do their job and work with taxpayers locally, not farm hometown problems to out-of-state corporations. 

**“**You have no idea who these people are, where they are,” he said of the investors. “But you know who your county treasurer is.”

Small banks take issue with the sales as well. Some lenders told lawmakers that they don’t always know when their mortgage customers’ debts are sold, which raises two problems. For one, it impacts the underlying investments like a residential home; and the sale could be avoided by the bank acquiring the debt and working with the property owner to resolve it. This, they say, produces a better outcome for all parties – bank, debtor and county – besides the outside investors. 

Several owners offered stories of how the lien sales went sideways. 

Broering, the People’s Bank Co. CEO, offered lawmakers several horror stories. In one, he said a borrower, without the bank’s knowledge, accrued about $26,500 in tax debts over several years. But he kept up with his mortgage payments in the meantime. The bank only learned about the liens after two had been sold, at 17.5% and 18% interest. 

Repayment cost nearly $40,000, 

“By the time we find out that there is a problem, a third-party purchaser has already moved in, assumed first lien priority, and began charging interest at rates between 17.5% and 18% per year,” he said. “We are left to deal with the wreckage.”

Brett Hillyer, an attorney and former lawmaker, offered another example from one of his clients. He said Tax Ease foreclosed on the property of a homeowner who died, before the property could be sold. The $4,000 in debt, Hillyer said, cost $13,191 after interest and fees to resolve. 

Ohio treasurers say they need the cash

In interviews and legislative testimony, treasurers defended their practice. They said lien certificate sales are a last resort, not a knee-jerk reaction. They’re a byproduct of growing delinquent tax debts. In most cases, taxpayers settle up before their liens are sold. And most of them require consumer protections in their debt sales. 

Kuvin, the Warren County treasurer, said the certificates are an “efficient” answer to the county’s problems of collecting a large volume of relatively small-scale individual debts.

Cromes, the Cuyahoga County treasurer, echoed the idea. He said the county has capacity to pursue about 2,000 foreclosures per year. The lien sales effectively double that capacity, allowing more enforcement on more debts. 

“We’re using them for the most part to pursue scofflaws and irresponsible out-of-town investors – freeing up our staff to manage higher sensitivity cases (and assist homeowners who are struggling and truly making an attempt to connect with resources that will keep them in their homes),” he said in an email. 

Jill Schiller, the Hamilton County Treasurer, said she’s open to Acton’s proposal to codify consumer protections into state law, like excluding homestead exemption recipients or capping interest rates. But she noted some pluses for consumers – a lien sale is a fresh start for a payment plan or 18 months’ runway before a foreclosure. 

And the sales have other uses, she said. Ohio’s land banks rely on them to acquire dilapidated properties. And Hamilton County uses some of their proceeds to fund a delinquent tax forgiveness fund. 

“It’s a really important tool for us,” she said.  

Without the sales, treasurers have two options when residents fail to pay their taxes: absorb the lost revenue, which is supposed to fund schools, police and fire departments; or begin the slower and more costly route of foreclosure through the court system. 

“There will be consequences for taxpayers when others stop paying because of a lost enforcement tool,” said Stark County Treasurer Alex Zumbar.

Signal Ohio is a nonprofit news organization covering government, education, health, economy and public safety.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The documents, collected by the government accountability organization American Oversight, show for the first time a formal data-sharing agreement since May 2025 between TSA and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The agreement contradicts congressional testimony from a TSA official who told lawmakers that passenger data was not being collected for the purpose of immigration enforcement. 

American Oversight obtained the records in a federal lawsuit to compel their release through a Freedom of Information Act request. The group posted the documents online Tuesday with a cover letter showing they were obtained July 23.

The New York Times was the first to report on the agreement between TSA and ICE.

As the Trump administration continues its aggressive deportation campaign in the interior of the country, the access to passenger information opens a larger group to immigration enforcement. It is unclear from the documents how many deportations or other immigration enforcement actions the agreement has generated.

Any noncitizen who has an expired visa, is waiting for a legal status renewal or is not authorized to be in the country could have their passenger information handed over to immigration officials, based on the agreement. 

American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu, said in a statement that the agreement sets “a dangerous precedent with consequences far beyond immigration.”

“Americans provide their personal information to board a plane safely, not to become part of an immigration enforcement system or a government surveillance network,” Chukwu said. “Once the government begins expanding how it uses Americans’ personal information, it raises profound concerns about privacy, civil liberties, and public trust.”

TSA and ICE are both within the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement between the agencies will remain in effect until officials terminate the contract, which will be reviewed every five years to determine if it shall continue, according to the agreement. 

Testimony to Congress

In January, TSA acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeil told lawmakers on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee that the agency shares some information with ICE, but does not “send the information to ICE.”

New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman asked McNeill about an agreement with ICE to share information for the purpose of checking if passengers have a deportation order. 

“That is not what is occurring,” she said. “We don’t send the information to ICE, we help ICE check against information.” 

New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver also asked McNeill what passenger information TSA was sharing with ICE.

McNeill did not detail the information TSA shares with ICE, but said her agency was “within our authorities to share information within the Department of Homeland Security to further the national security mission.”

In the newly released documents, TSA cites the 2008 Secure Flight Final Rule as its authority to share data with ICE. The TSA regulation lays out federal procedures for using passenger information for aviation safety.  

David Cummins, President Donald Trump’s pick to be TSA administrator, at a Senate confirmation hearing this month did not detail information that ICE and TSA share when pressed by Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

Cummins said he would “try to provide as much as we can within our bounds,” but said he could not commit to sharing details.

TSA and DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement the vote had been postponed.

“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure,” said the spokesperson, who was not identified. “Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement. Tomorrow’s markup is postponed as work continues to secure sufficient support in committee to favorably report Attorney General-nominee Todd Blanche, who is highly qualified for the job.”

A scheduled meeting between Blanche and Cornyn, a member of Judiciary, fell through Wednesday morning. Cornyn said he did not receive requested documentation that President Donald Trump’s tax settlement deal with the IRS was fundamentally changed.

In exchange for Trump voluntarily dropping in May his $10 billion suit against the IRS over leaked tax documents, Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service officials signed a settlement absolving the president, his sons Eric and Don Jr., and the Trump Organization from future tax enforcement in the matter.

Blanche, during his confirmation hearing before the committee, defended the tax deal for Trump, his sons and their private organization, as “typical” of IRS settlements. He also maintained the “anti-weaponization” fund portion of the deal had been completely scrapped. 

Before being appointed as the deputy attorney general, and then acting AG, Blanche worked as Trump’s personal defense lawyer on multiple criminal cases.

“The meeting with Todd Blanche is off,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday morning, according to comments shared by his office. 

“We made clear from the outset that we expected some written proposals to modify the release that was signed in the tax dispute with President Trump and his organization,” he said, adding this is the second scheduled meeting with DOJ officials that had fallen through.

The Judiciary Committee had held over Blanche’s nomination vote on July 23 until July 30, “per standard committee practice,” according to a spokesperson for Grassley.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters he “would encourage them to sit down, which I think they are, and try to come to a resolution there.”

A Department of Justice official said Wednesday in a statement, “The DOJ provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office. We look forward to further discussion around any outstanding concerns.”  

‘Maybe John Cornyn is upset with me’

When asked about opposition to Blanche’s nomination, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday that Blanche is “outstanding.”

“Maybe John Cornyn is upset with me because I didn’t endorse him, I don’t know what it is. But I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard he’s going through quite nicely,” Trump said.

Cornyn, who criticized the Trump settlement Wednesday, faces little consequence to his Republican Senate career. Cornyn was knocked out of the Republican primary in a runoff election in May after Trump endorsed his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The Judiciary Committee is split between 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All Democrats are expected to oppose Blanche, and a majority vote is required to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate for final approval.

Tillis also grilled Blanche during his July 15 confirmation hearing about the administration’s establishment of a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Upon announcing the fund, Blanche described the pot of money as financial relief for “victims of lawfare” of any political ideology.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle quickly criticized the fund and its potential to reward pardoned Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who assaulted police officers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Tillis said during the hearing he wanted to see the Justice Department “stick a fork” in the fund once and for all.

Blanche maintained he had already clarified the fund would not move forward when he said as much during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in June. 

Tillis’ office did not respond to a request for comment about whether he would support Blanche’s nomination.

Tillis, who is retiring, also faces little risk of losing favor with Trump if he opposes Blanche. Trump subjected Tillis to intense criticism for opposing the Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 and said he would find candidates to oppose Tillis in his primary.

Former Department of Justice officials told committee Democrats the IRS settlement language was “mind-boggling,” during a July 22 forum hosted by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. 

In a July 13 order, the Florida federal judge in the IRS case slammed Trump’s settlement with his own administration as using the presidency to “manipulate” the courts.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Without legal status, their work permits become invalid. They also face being forced to return to a nation that the International Rescue Committee says is “in the grip of an overwhelming humanitarian crisis.”

Right now, gangs control Haiti. Kidnapping, murder, and rape are rampant. And the pastor, Carl Ruby, said one Springfield 12-year-old faces having to return to a place where he saw animals feeding on murdered corpses when he was just five.

“They’re just terrified for their physical safety,” Ruby said during a virtual press conference. “Many of them have already been traumatized… Some of them have been in prison. Some of them have been tortured. Some have been beaten. Some had been raped. Nearly all of them have seen friends or family members killed.”

And some of those families — those who have had children since coming to the United States — face an excruciating choice: whether to take their children with them into the violent chaos that is Haiti or leave them behind in a relatively peaceful, prosperous place where their children’s citizenship gives them the right to stay.

More than 330,000 Haitians have received temporary-protected status since an earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean country in 2010. Once in the United States, their status has been renewed as conditions in Haiti continued to deteriorate.

Early last year, Ohio’s then-Attorney General Dave Yost and 27 other Republican state AGs wrote a letter to the Trump administration stressing the word “temporary” in temporary protected status.

They claimed without evidence that it was safe for some with protected status to return to those home countries and urged a review.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in November announced that she was terminating protected status for Haitians who had qualified, including about 45,000 in Ohio and roughly 15,000 in Springfield.

Lawyers for the Haitians sued, arguing that Noem had failed to follow the 1990 law creating temporary protected status. It requires that the government conduct a mandatory review of conditions in a group’s home country to certify that it’s safe to return before forcing them to go.

Lower courts blocked the termination. 

But in June, in a 6-3 ruling the U.S. Supreme Court reversed them, ruling that the TPS law itself barred most court challenges to the way its provisions were or were not applied.

The court didn’t bar constitutional challenges, however, and SCOTUS Blog on Tuesday reported that some of those are in the works.

But for Haitians in Ohio, that might seem a thin reed on which to lean. They and many others are bracing for a mass-deportation such as those conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in other regions.

Ruby, the Springfield pastor, said no such operation has happened yet. 

“It could happen as soon as this week,” he said. “What we’re hearing from other reporting is that they’re planning on deporting them directly back to Haiti. There have been cases in the community where they have been picked up one day. Sent to a detention center the next day. And on the third or the fourth day they’re back in Haiti. It’s obviously not safe for them to go there.” 

The pastor added that jobs and support services are almost nonexistent when deportees get to Haiti.

In addition to terror over what might happen in Haiti are worries about what’s next for Springfield.

Ruby said that he and his colleagues have been working for the past 18 months to build “a very large coalition of faith leaders not only here in Springfield, but across the state of Ohio and across the nation who will stand with us if we have anything like what took place in Minneapolis.”

He was referring to a mass-enforcement operation last winter in which masked ICE officers shot and killed two protestors, both of them citizens. Analysis of videos taken at the scene showed that neither protester posed the threat that Trump administration officials claimed after the shootings.

Ruby stressed that he and other faith leaders want any protests of ICE enforcement actions to be peaceful, and that protesters have to be ready for the possible consequences of civil disobedience, such as going to jail.

Gov. Mike DeWine has criticized some of his Republican colleagues for falsely demonizing Springfield’s Haitian immigrants.

On Tuesday, his spokesman reiterated a statement DeWine issued last month when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling that effectively revoked their protected status.

“Today’s decision is a legal decision,” DeWine said. “As I have stated in the past, the policy to remove these individuals from this country is a mistake.”

DeWine later added, “The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles.”

Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, questioned whether DeWine would instruct the Ohio Highway Patrol not to assist ICE in enforcement operations.

In the past, the Highway Patrol has worked with U.S. Border Patrol to apprehend undocumented immigrants, the American Immigration Council reports.

Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, didn’t answer directly when asked if the Highway Patrol would assist ICE with enforcement operations in Springfield.

Tramonte said DeWine could do more to help Haitians who suddenly find themselves without status.

“The governor might claim he is powerless to do anything in the face of federal agents invading our state to take our people, but here are two things he can do,” Tramonte said in a text message.

“He can instruct the Highway Patrol not to assist ICE in the enforcement of civil immigration laws. That’s not their job and they shouldn’t have to get involved. He can also underscore the same point for local police who often seem to think they should be on the hunt for immigrants instead of focusing on crime.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Bureau of Land Management announced 41 parcels totaling 2,840 acres in Wayne National Forest will go up for a bid on Sept. 15. The announcement was made earlier this month and these parcels are in Monroe and Washington counties. 

“Leasing is the first step in the process to develop federal oil and gas resources. Before development operations can begin, an operator must submit an application for permit to drill detailing development plans,” the Bureau of Land Management said in a statement.

“The BLM reviews applications for permits to drill, posts them for public review, conducts an environmental analysis and coordinates with state partners and stakeholders.”

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas.

There were approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio from 2015-2023, according to FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. 

Evidence shows increased exposure to fracking impacts health, in particular children’s health, including low birth weight, preterm births, congenital anomalies, and asthma, according to Yale School of Medicine. 

The Ohio Capital Journal recently published a story about how Washington County residents are concerned injection wells leaking brine waste could contaminate Marietta’s drinking water. 

Ohio Environmental Council Senior Attorney for Land and Water Nathan Johnson said putting out bids to frack Wayne National Forest is concerning. 

“It’s unfortunate that the feds keep trying to push this,” he said. “We really need to take good care of our public lands.”

The BLM’s overall plan is to lease out 40,000 acres for fracking in Wayne National Forest, Johnson said. 

 “That’s a huge amount of land for Ohio,” he said. “That’s more than 30,000 football fields.”

As required by law, the BLM is currently in the middle of a 30-day public protest to receive additional comments which will end Aug. 17. The BLM scoped out the 41 parcels in January.

Ohio state Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, urged people to post comments.  

“This is just continued exploitation of the people and resources of Ohio by large corporations,” Rader said in a statement. “For generations, the people of this region and this state have been sidelined by the interest of extractive industries.” 

The Wayne National Forest was established in 1935 and comprises 244,000 acres spanning 12 counties with three units in Athens, Ironton, and Marietta in Southeast Ohio.

More than 200,000 people annually visit Wayne National Forest, which is known for its hiking, biking, horseback riding trails, and off-road vehicle trails. 

“If development occurs on this scale … you’re going to have heavy truck traffic,” Johnson said.

“You’re going to see well paths. One of the the major concerns if you’re visiting the area is health, safety, truck traffic, but the air pollution is just always a constant. It does not respect boundaries.”

There are already 1,200 conventional wells operating in Wayne National Forest, Ohio Oil and Gas Association spokesperson Mike Chadsey noted.

But Johnson said there are very big differences between the two.

“This project, it’s all shale development with these huge, massive well pads, massive pipeline developments,” Johnson said. “So totally different ball game than what the Wayne has seen in the past with these much smaller operations.”

A national forest is managed by the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture and blends conservation with public service and resource extraction like logging and mining. 

A national park is managed by the National Park Service under the U.S. Department of Interior and the goal is to protect and preserve natural lands in their natural state.

Ohio has one national park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Northeast Ohio. 

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“From homes to hospitals to businesses, Oregon’s data centers are unlocking a smarter power grid for our communities,” a female voice reads over a montage that includes a few aerial shots of downtown Portland and the Oregon Coast. “They’re investing billions in clean energy, creating good-paying jobs, driving innovation and building a better energy future.”

The 30-second ads, which feature B-roll of a family cooking together, a nurse and a business owner, are a near-carbon copy of ads playing across TV and social media in at least six other states. They all attempt to counter common critiques of data centers, including their enormous demand for water, energy, land and relatively low levels of job creation compared to the tax breaks they receive to spur economic development. And they end with a similar line: “Oregon’s data centers: committed to paying their costs, so Oregon families don’t.”

Oregon Connects paid for the Oregon ads, while similar promotional campaigns in other states are sponsored by Indiana Connects, Connected Ohio, North Carolina Connects, Pennsylvania Connects, Texas Connects and Virginia Connects.

They’re all part of a network of groups created by the nonprofit Data Center Coalition, an industry group hoping to improve public opinion of data centers as pushback grows. In each of these states, a growing number of local governments and legislatures are considering and passing policies meant to slow data center growth.

The coalition counts among its members leaders from Microsoft, Google, Meta, QTS and Equinix — all companies that collectively have built dozens of data centers in Oregon during the last decade due to the state’s lack of sales tax, generous property tax incentives and relatively inexpensive electricity, saving the companies hundreds of millions a year.

But in recent years, the data center companies have been criticized for driving up regional energy demand, leading Oregon lawmakers and regulators to demand electric utilities create a new customer class for data centers so they don’t contribute to residential electricity costs. There have also been growing calls to revisit the state’s industrial tax incentive programs.

‘Committed to paying’

Oregon Connects filed business registration paperwork with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office on March 4 as a “social welfare organization that promotes data centers,” the same day that the Oregon House voted to pass a bill that included a one-year moratorium on Standard Enterprise Zone tax abatements for data centers. The tax incentive is the smallest of Oregon’s three major industrial tax breaks, and data center companies building facilities in Hillsboro and Forest Grove have used it.

The bill, sponsored by Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, originally would have expanded the Standard Enterprise Zone tax program and another, the Longterm Enterprise Zone program, leading to a potential boon for data centers. But Kotek backed down after reporting from The Oregonian/OregonLive revealed that most of the programs’ benefits in recent years have been flowing to data centers, and the top 11 tech-company-owned data centers in Hillsboro will receive an average of $294,000 in property tax breaks for each full-time employee on their payrolls this tax year.

Even with the one-year pause, data centers will this year save $85 million in Oregon property taxes from the Standard Enterprise Zone program, according to reporting in The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Juan Carlos Ordóñez, communications director of the left-leaning nonprofit Oregon Center for Public Policy, criticized the Oregon Connects ad campaign for making it seem like tech companies give more than they get from the state.

“If data centers were truly ‘committed to paying their costs, so Oregon families don’t,’ then they wouldn’t be taking hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax abatements each year,” he said in an email. “Oregonians should be able to see for themselves how much Amazon, Meta and the other owners of data centers actually contribute in taxes, which is why it’s time the state enacted corporate tax transparency.”

Josh Levi, the Data Center Coalition president who registered Oregon Connects, said transparency is the campaign’s purpose.

“Through Oregon Connects, the industry seeks to better explain the role of data centers to the public — including how they operate, why they are important to our daily lives and the 21st-century economy, as well as information about the industry’s responsible usage of water and its commitment to paying for the energy it uses,” he said in an email.

But who exactly is footing the bill for the ads is unclear. Spokespersons for Oregon Connects declined to answer questions about who funds the ads.

The Data Center Coalition had about $4.6 million in operating revenue in 2024, according to its most recent tax filing in November 2025. It spent more than $250,000 on advertising in 2024. Tax-exempt social advocacy organizations are not required to publicly disclose the names or addresses of contributors on annual tax forms.

Federal Communications Commission data shows Virginia Connects, Pennsylvania Connects and North Carolina Connects spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads in recent months. North Carolina Connects spent nearly $370,000 on more than 740 ads across 189 channels in the past month alone. FCC data does not yet reflect any television spending in Oregon, Ohio or Indiana.

Community and corporate campaigns

Jenni Denekas, a spokesperson for the environmental advocacy group 1000 Friends of Oregon, said the ads are a response to Oregonians organizing and unifying around “very real concerns about data center development.”

The group recently joined a lawsuit with local leaders, businesses and farmers in Hillsboro against the city government over its recent flurry of approvals for tax breaks to data centers that, in some cases, offer them 25 years of back-to-back waivers from paying property taxes.

“If Oregonians were getting such a great deal from data centers, we wouldn’t be seeing so many people expressing concerns about the costs to our communities, including higher energy and water bills to subsidize all the new build-outs required to support this water- and energy-intensive industry,” Denekas said.

On Monday afternoon, the Hillsboro City Council unanimously agreed to a 120-day moratorium on approvals of any new data center and battery energy storage systems in the city.

Dirk Knudsen, a community leader and editor of the Hillsboro Herald community newspaper, has advocated for more transparency around data centers. He said the moratorium was the result of “hundreds of residents coming forward, giving up their evenings and workdays to come and speak their truths.”

That’s the opposite of what he sees from Oregon Connects.

“We are not looking at a spontaneous, homegrown community campaign,” he said. “We are looking at a highly sophisticated, out-of-state public affairs blitz designed to build public consent before Oregonians can fully deliberate the real impacts on our power grid, water resources and tax structure.”

This story was originally produced by Oregon Capital Chronicle, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ritz Teen Thespian Guild performed a 30-minute excerpt of Dracula: The Vampire Play, Tim Kelly’s stage adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, at the 17th annual Ohio Community Theatre Association Jr. Festival on July 25 at the Bellevue Society for the Arts, 205 Maple St. in Bellevue.

OCTA designated the Tiffin production its invitee to the association’s state conference, held Sept. 4 through 6 at the Veterans Memorial Civic and Convention Center in Lima. Amil Tellers of Dramatics/Encore Theatre’s 8 Minutes Left was named alternate. Fremont Community Teen Theatre also performed at the festival, presenting Guys & Dolls. The Ritz Theatre announced the result as the 2026 OCTA Jr. State Champion.

Adjudicators recognized seven awards tied to the Tiffin production:

• Excellence in Ensemble — the cast

• Excellence in Direction — Jeff Stockner

• Excellence in Set Design — Jim Cook

• Outstanding in Acting — Esme Hummel-Sass as Dracula

• Excellence in Acting — CoryAnna Martin as Professor Van Helsing

• Excellence in Acting — Silas Newland as Renfield

• Merit in Acting — Remington Donna as Grimm

Eve Knisely of the Tiffin cast received the festival’s Outstanding Ensemblist award. Hummel-Sass and Newland were also named to the six-member all-star cast drawn from across the festival.

“The Ritz Theatre is incredibly proud of this talented group of students and the dedicated production team,” Executive Director Michael Strong said in the announcement. “Their commitment, creativity and countless hours of hard work resulted in an outstanding performance that represented our community with excellence on the state stage. This championship is a testament to what these young artists can accomplish when given the opportunity to learn, collaborate and shine.”

The guild began in 2004 as the Tiffin Area High School Players, formed as school districts trimmed arts funding and non-musical productions in particular. Membership has since grown to more than 50 area high school students each year. The group is autonomous — students choose the play, circulate audition notices and select a director — and is advised by Ritz Education Director Mika Gibson. It stages one production each fall; the full run of Dracula: The Vampire Play played the Ritz on Nov. 21, 22 and 23, 2025.

The cast included CoryAnna Martin as Professor Van Helsing, Cooper Ganni as Dr. Quincy, Esme Hummel-Sass as Dracula, Lily Hutchinson as Mrs. Fern, Tyson McCullar as Arthur Holmwood, Ruby Maynard as Mrs. Westenra, Kirsten King as Lucy Westenra, Alivia Miller as Mina, Bryleigh Carter as Flora, Eve Knisely as Miss Anya, Mariah White as Nurse Cassidy, Remington Donna as Grimm, Silas Newland as Renfield, and Brayden Miklovic, Kay Carter Banks and Hailey Work as the vampire wives.

Jeff Stockner directed, with Mika Gibson as assistant director and costume and makeup designer, Brady King as stage manager, and Jim Cook and Gibson on set design.

OCTA, formed in 1953, serves more than 100 member theatres across eight Ohio regions and holds regional excerpt festivals each summer leading into its Labor Day weekend state conference. The Jr. festival is open to performers 18 and younger.

The Ritz, at 30 S. Washington St. in downtown Tiffin, hosts more than 60 events a year. The theatre launched a $1 million capital campaign in May ahead of its December 2028 centennial and released its 2026–27 season lineup in June.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

State Sen. Casey Weinstein, a Hudson Democrat who represents Ohio’s 28th Senate District, wrote on his Facebook page Wednesday:

“My GOD watching bernie moreno embarrass himself and our entire state while acting like a tough guy on tv today while COMPLETELY failing to call out max miller - the MAGA Congressman who his daughter says abused her and his grandchild - is maybe the weakest and most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen in politics. And that’s saying a lot.”

Weinstein is an Air Force Academy graduate and Air Force veteran who serves as ranking member of the Ohio Senate’s Armed Services, Veterans Affairs and Public Safety Committee and its Government Oversight and Reform Committee. He is among the first Ohio elected officials to state the contrast publicly and by name.

U.S. Rep. Max Miller, the Rocky River Republican who represents Ohio’s 7th District, denies every allegation against him. “They’re false allegations,” he told Spectrum News in a June interview, adding that no police reports were ever filed. Miller’s legal team has said he has never had criminal charges filed against him, according to the Ohio Capital Journal, and he has accused his ex-wife and her attorney of running a smear campaign. He has attributed her allegations to untreated bipolar disorder; her attorney, Subodh Chandra, says she has no such diagnosis.

What happened at the hearing

Fauci appeared Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under a subpoena from its chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to testify about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal response to it. The retired former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases read an opening statement and then invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer questions, telling the panel that Paul has an “unhinged obsession” with him.

Moreno used his questioning time to demand an apology. He said an Ohio mother’s September 2020 arrest at a middle school football game over a mask policy was what pushed him to run for the Senate.

“Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, who the f— do you think you were for doing that?” Moreno said, according to Spectrum News. He told Fauci there was no defense for what he had done and that a five-decade career in public service was ending in disgrace. Fauci declined to respond and declined Moreno’s request to turn and face audience members.

Moreno also described part of the purpose of the exchange. He said he hoped voters would watch clips of Democratic senators “doting on a guy who was more interested in being a celebrity than saving American people” — an acknowledgment that the confrontation was built partly for the November midterms.

What Moreno has said about Miller

Miller was married to Emily Moreno, the senator’s daughter, in August 2022. Miller filed for divorce two years later, and the two have remained in a custody dispute over their young daughter.

In a May 26 affidavit filed in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, Emily Moreno swore that Miller threw hot water at her on Saturday, June 8, 2024, after she told him she intended to leave the marriage. She has also alleged in the custody case that he held a gun to her head and pushed her into a wall. Bay Village police opened an investigation in February into how the couple’s daughter suffered a broken collarbone. Miller has denied causing any of it, and no charges have been brought.

Miller sued Emily Moreno for defamation in May. She has moved to dismiss that suit under Ohio’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, the state’s anti-SLAPP statute. Separately, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham sued Miller this month, arguing he violated a nondisparagement agreement the two signed after he dropped an earlier defamation case against her. Miller has denied Grisham’s allegations as well.

Sen. Moreno’s public comment on any of it amounts to a single statement from May, when he told reporters his only remark would be that he loves his daughter and that her safety and his granddaughter’s are his priority. He has not asked Miller to resign, has not asked the House to act, and has not publicly endorsed or disputed his daughter’s account. His office declined to comment to Spectrum News in June and did not respond to the Ohio Capital Journal in July.

The pressure is building anyway

Giffords, the gun violence prevention group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, called Wednesday for Miller to resign, citing the allegations. Asked on Tuesday, July 21 why House Republicans have kept Miller in their conference while Democrats forced a Senate candidate out of a race over an assault allegation, House Speaker Mike Johnson offered one line: “The key word there is allegation.” No prominent Ohio Republican has called for Miller to step aside.

The politics have moved regardless. The Cook Political Report shifted Ohio’s 7th District from Solid Republican to Likely Republican on June 18, one of seven House races it moved toward Democrats that day. Miller faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker, in a district President Donald Trump carried by 11 points in 2024.

Moreno is not on the ballot this year. He represents every county in Ohio, including Seneca and Sandusky, until January 2031. Weinstein’s complaint is not about a vote or a bill; it is about which Ohioans a sitting U.S. senator is willing to raise his voice for, and which ones he is not.

TiffinOhio.net has covered this case since spring, including the gun and hot-water allegations and the Republican silence around them, Emily Moreno’s anti-SLAPP motion, and the contempt motion filed after Miller gave a media interview hours after a judge issued a restraining order.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Help is available 24/7.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

However, his request for unanimous consent, a way to expedite legislation in the chamber, was blocked by Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt. 

Van Hollen said the bill, S. 2106, is in response to the Supreme Court’s decision last month to allow the Trump administration to continue with its efforts to strip legal status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians with TPS. They are bracing to lose their deportation protections this week. 

“That decision puts them and other TPS holders at risk of deportation to countries where violence, instability, and humanitarian crises continue to threaten their lives,” Van Hollen said. 

TPS is a form of legal status given to nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return, and protections can last anywhere from six to 18 months. Immigrants must be vetted during each renewal cycle to keep their work authorization and deportation protections in place. 

Before the second Trump administration came into office, more than 1 million immigrants hailing from 17 countries had temporary protections. 

“There are already reports that ICE is planning to target Haitian TPS holders for deportation as soon as this week, which would force hundreds of thousands of people to return to a country that our State Department warns is unsafe for travel,” Van Hollen said. 

The State Department advises against any travel to Haiti, citing kidnapping and gang violence. 

“In other words, the Trump administration would force people back to a country where the State Department says, ‘Don’t go there because it’s unsafe,’” Van Hollen said. 

In a United Nations security meeting this month, senior officials gave a briefing on conditions in Haiti, citing that millions of Haitians “remain displaced or food insecure, while women and children bear the brunt of the violence.”

Van Hollen added that the bill is needed because the Trump administration’s actions to end TPS circumvent Congress’ original intent when it created the program in the 1990s. 

“The Supreme Court decision does not have to be the end of the story,” Van Hollen said. “We can write the end of the story, and it’s our responsibility as a Congress to preserve that bipartisan congressional intent from back in 1990, and we must provide that certainty that these individuals deserve.”

GOP objection

Schmitt argued a pathway for citizenship for TPS holders harmed U.S. citizens, such as immigrants holding jobs that he said should go to Americans. 

“There is nothing compassionate about flooding the labor market with more foreign workers while Americans struggle for a decent wage,” Schmitt said.

Many Haitian TPS holders work in the healthcare industry, providing care to thousands of Americans, and contribute $5.9 billion in taxes each year. 

Business leaders have warned about the economic consequences of thousands of workers suddenly pulled out of the labor market. There are roughly 330,000 to 350,000 Haitians with TPS. 

Schmitt added that Americans elected President Donald Trump on the promise of an immigration crackdown, including ending TPS. While on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, Trump vowed to end TPS for Haitians and made false statements that Haitians were eating house pets. 

“There is nothing compassionate about betraying your own citizens,” Schmitt said. “Foreign nationals do not have a right to permanent settlement here. We had an election on this issue.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The July 27 letter from the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, an affiliated office of the Supreme Court of Ohio, is the first official account of the matter. It is also the first time a dollar figure has been attached to it publicly.

Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Karen H. Osmond wrote that the office had decided to exercise its prosecutorial discretion and not pursue further disciplinary action. She described what the office found: Smith’s campaign sent an email indicating that campaign contributions could be made to his personal Venmo account, and four of his friends contributed a combined $650 through it. Those contributions, the letter states, were not used and were ultimately returned — a step Smith took, in the office’s words, “once Judge Smith became aware of the article alleging improper conduct.”

TiffinOhio.net reported on May 1 that public transaction records showed a Venmo account under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith receiving payments explicitly labeled as campaign contributions, alongside personal transactions. Smith did not answer written questions submitted before that story published.

The disciplinary office was pointed about the conduct even as it declined to act on it. “We do not condone Judge Smith’s conduct,” Osmond wrote, adding that the office did not believe it warranted formal discipline. “Mistakes and misunderstandings occur.” The letter says the office wished Smith had been more vigilant and had ensured the email was never sent, and closed by expressing trust that his campaign will comply with the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct going forward.

Returning the money may not resolve the underlying question

The grievance that prompted the review was filed May 1 by Charles Tingler of Defiance, who also filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission the same day. Tingler filed the grievance with the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee, which he said informed him it had transferred the matter to the disciplinary counsel for administrative reasons. Both filings attached Ohio Elections Commission Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued in December 2021.

That opinion addresses this exact arrangement. It permits campaign committees to use peer-to-peer payment systems such as Venmo, but only through an account established specifically for the committee and kept separate from any personal account of anyone who benefits from campaign funds. Routing contributions through a candidate’s personal account before moving them to the campaign account is, the opinion states, “not acceptable under Ohio’s campaign finance laws.”

The opinion also anticipates the defense that the money did not stay put. Even where funds are transferred out in quick succession, it says, the initial deposit into a personal account cannot be permitted. State law requires campaign committees to deposit all monetary contributions into an account separate from a candidate’s personal or business account.

The disciplinary counsel’s letter treats the return of the $650 as corrective action. It does not address whether returning contributions resolves the deposit requirement, and the office does not enforce campaign finance law.

The letter is narrower than the grievance

Tingler’s grievance asked the reviewing body to determine twelve specific things: whether @BuckeyeBradSmith was a personal or committee account, whether campaign funds were commingled with personal funds, whether all Venmo contributions were deposited into a separate campaign account, whether the campaign treasurer kept strict accounts as state law requires, whether every contribution was timely and accurately reported, and whether any campaign finance report contained false or incomplete information.

The closing letter answers none of those questions. It describes the email, the $650, and the return, and closes the file.

The grievance itself did not mention any campaign email, and Tingler said no news article was among the materials he submitted with it. His filing was built entirely on the publicly visible Venmo transaction history — payments from Charles Yamarone and Adam Greenslade on April 8, 2026, one from Stacey Gibson on March 25, and unrelated personal transactions on the same account. The disciplinary office identified four contributors, one more than the grievance described. Venmo’s public feed displays payment descriptions but not amounts.

TiffinOhio.net reported the existence of the email on May 12, six weeks before the disciplinary office closed its file. Sent April 7 under the subject line “Asking for some quick help… Much Thanks!” it asked supporters for “$10 - $15 grand” to defend against a possible “Independent challenger” who never filed to run, used the official Sandusky County Juvenile and Probate Court logo as its first attachment, listed Smith’s government email address and the court’s direct office line in the signature block, and directed donors to the Venmo account. Smith was unopposed in the May 5 Republican primary.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel did not respond by deadline to questions about the disposition or the scope of its review.

A second complaint is still outstanding

The complaint Tingler filed with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which operates under the Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division, remains a separate matter. It sets out seven counts and asks the commission to order amended campaign finance reports, impose any fines authorized by law, and refer the matter for criminal investigation if evidence shows knowing concealment or misrepresentation. Its final count raises a possible violation of the state’s election falsification statute, a fifth-degree felony.

Nothing in the disciplinary counsel’s letter addresses that complaint. Tingler said he has heard nothing from the Secretary of State’s office since filing in May. That office did not respond by deadline to questions about the complaint’s status.

Smith has not addressed the Venmo matter publicly. He was represented before the disciplinary office by Lisa M. Zaring, a partner at Montgomery Jonson LLP in Cincinnati, who is copied on the closing letter. TiffinOhio.net submitted written questions to Smith through Zaring on July 27, asking whether he disputes any of the letter’s findings, on what date and by what method the $650 was returned, whether the contributions and the refunds appear on any campaign finance report filed with the Sandusky County Board of Elections, and whether his committee now maintains a separate campaign payment account. Neither responded by deadline.

Zaring’s firm biography says she devotes a significant portion of her practice to responding to disciplinary grievances received by attorneys and judges and regularly defends judges before the Supreme Court of Ohio’s Board of Professional Conduct. She chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s Ethics Committee from 2022 to 2024. Her firm maintains a practice area dedicated to representing Ohio judges.

The disciplinary track ends here

Tingler had 14 days from receipt of the letter to ask the director of the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct to review the decision. He said he will not seek review, which closes the disciplinary matter.

“The only reaction I have is that attorney disciplinary authorities are basically just self-regulating rubber stamps and there needs to be reform to allow non-attorneys to review grievances against the judicial branch,” Tingler said.

Smith has held the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division seat since 2009 and is serving his third six-year term. He is the subject of prior TiffinOhio.net reporting on a $33,300 state audit finding that Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler formally abated in 2023 with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

None of that cost him the nomination. Click, a three-term Republican from Vickery, finished with 6,859 votes to Eric Watson’s 6,260 — 52.28% to 47.72%, a margin of 599 out of 13,119 cast across Sandusky and Seneca counties. He is on the November 3 ballot. His opponent is Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin.

It also has not obviously cost him the seat. District 88 has not been close in a general election in more than a decade. Click carried it by 25.8 points in 2020, by 35.6 in 2022, and by 33.2 in 2024, when he beat Democrat Dianne Selvey 35,367 to 17,762. Republican primary turnout this May was more than twice the Democratic turnout — 13,119 ballots to 4,893 for Jones, who ran unopposed. On the district’s recent history alone, Click is the favorite.

What is different this year is the shape of the coalition underneath him.

A year of subtraction

The erosion started with the movement groups.

Ohio Gun Owners rated Click a C-minus in late March, citing his refusal to complete the organization’s candidate survey in 2024 and 2026 and his December 2024 vote against advancing the Second Amendment Preservation Act. Five days before the primary, the group cut him to an F, alleging he had accepted and refused to return campaign money from gun-control lobbyists. Ohio Gun Owners did not name the contributors it was describing. Click has rejected the group’s account and called its executive director, Chris Dorr, a “fraud.” The Buckeye Firearms Association, meanwhile, gave Click an A and endorsed him. Watson held Ohio Gun Owners’ “Aq” rating — its top grade for non-incumbents — and Buckeye’s survey-only “Aq.”

End Abortion Ohio endorsed Watson after he scored 100% on its survey. Click declined to take it, and called the group “clowns” in a Facebook post, saying he would refuse its endorsement “under any condition.” The comment thread that followed was filled with people who identified themselves as fellow conservatives and Christians telling Click he was wrong.

Watson also collected endorsements from former Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, the Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio, and secretary of state candidate Marcell Strbich — a coalition spanning guns, abortion and election administration, each of which used its announcement to criticize Click directly.

The subtraction was not only from the grassroots. Sen. Bernie Moreno was dropped from the promotion for Click’s March 28 campaign kickoff. Click’s name disappeared from Vivek Ramaswamy’s endorsements page in April, as Web Archive snapshots show, and was restored within hours of this outlet’s reporting. Click told followers reports of the removal were “greatly exaggerated.”

And his own political brand did not travel well. All three down-ticket candidates Click endorsed lost their primaries the same night he survived his: Andrew King for Ohio Supreme Court, Kristina Roegner for treasurer, and Josh Williams in the 9th Congressional District.

What the grassroots actually objects to

The complaints from Watson’s side of the party were specific, and they were mostly about direction rather than personality.

Watson attacked Click for co-authoring House Bill 646, which would create a 13-member data center study commission rather than impose the moratorium Watson wanted, saying Click had “gone completely establishment.” He campaigned on abolishing property taxes, opposing digital identification legislation, and on Click’s fundraising: a TiffinOhio.net review of Click’s contributions from 2020 through 2025 found less than 14% came from individual donors inside Sandusky and Seneca counties. Click ran on his legislative record, his chairmanship of the House Community Revitalization Committee, his sponsorship of House Bill 68, and his relationships with House Republican leadership — the same relationships Watson used against him.

Click’s answer to the challenge was largely to dismiss it. He told the Fremont News-Messenger that Watson’s campaign was “in the ditch” — “You move to the right of Gary Click and you’re in the ditch” — and closed the race branding Watson “the Arizona Kid.” Watson’s family has been in Seneca County for generations; Click moved to Ohio from Indiana in 2006.

The break has not healed

Two developments since the primary suggest the fracture is still open.

On July 23, Watson said he will not endorse Click and does not expect to, describing a private post-primary meeting that left him unpersuaded on data centers and digital ID. In the same statement, Watson said he and his wife are moving to Wayne County, outside the district.

Two days later, Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner said Click’s campaign had portrayed him as a supporter when he is not one. Roessner said he wore a campaign-supplied shirt at an America 250 event, that he keeps his voting choices private, and that he has not endorsed anyone. The campaign post remained online, unedited, three weeks later.

What the numbers do and do not say

The temptation is to read 6,260 Watson votes as 6,260 potential Jones votes. The arithmetic does not support that, and nothing in the record does either.

Watson ran to Click’s right. His platform — abolishing property taxes, opposing digital ID, expanding gun rights, ending abortion without exception — is not one Jones is running on. Watson has declined to endorse Click; he has not endorsed Jones, and there is no indication he intends to. Voters who reject an incumbent in a closed primary routinely come home in November, and there is no public polling in District 88 to suggest otherwise.

What the primary does establish is narrower, and still meaningful. It shows that roughly 6,000 District 88 Republicans were willing to fire a sitting member of their own party, that the organized conservative infrastructure in this district worked against him rather than for him, and that he lost Seneca County — where Jones lives, works and holds elected office — by about 8 points. It also shows that the general electorate here is roughly four times the size of the Republican primary electorate: 53,129 people voted in this district in 2024, against 13,119 Republicans in May.

That gap cuts both ways. It means Watson’s 6,260 is a small share of a November electorate. It also means Click’s November coalition has to include tens of thousands of voters who were not part of the primary at all, at a moment when the volunteers, group endorsements and door-knockers who normally supply a Republican incumbent’s ground game spent the spring working against him.

Jones has been building the other side of that equation. He has picked up endorsements from the UAW, the Ohio Federation of Teachers and VoteVets. He is a 1991 Clyde High School graduate, a four-year Army veteran who served with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, a production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die with more than 20 years at the plant, and a Tiffin City Council member representing the city’s 1st Ward. He is running on utility bills, property taxes and jobs.

The measurable test is not rhetorical. It is financial. Whether the Ohio Republican Party and leadership-aligned PACs put money into District 88 this fall, and whether Jones can raise enough to be competitive on a map this red, will say more about the state of Click’s support than any endorsement list. Those numbers arrive with the next round of campaign finance filings.

Click is seeking his fourth and final consecutive term; Ohio limits House members to eight consecutive years.

The general election is Tuesday, November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Fauci said during a brief opening statement he believed Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., was trying to get him to make statements under oath that would lead to criminal charges. 

“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” he said.  

Fauci added that “any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.” 

“Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, to refrain from answering your questions,” he said. 

Fauci was a member of the coronavirus task force during President Donald Trump’s first administration and a chief medical adviser on COVID-19 during President Joe Biden’s term. 

Repeated testimony

Fauci has testified publicly 13 times before Senate committees and 11 times before House committees since January 2020. This was the first time he declined to answer any questions from lawmakers.

Paul noted that former President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for any actions he might have taken from Jan. 1, 2014 through Jan. 20, 2025. But he said that doesn’t cover any actions since then, including any statements to Congress that may not have been entirely accurate.  

“A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution. It doesn’t rewrite history,” Paul said. “It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one.”

Paul said the committee will hold a vote next week to hold Fauci in contempt for declining to answer questions under a subpoena. 

“There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” he said. 

A member of Fauci’s legal team, seated beside him at the witness table, tried to speak several times but Paul refused to recognize him before having U.S. Capitol Police remove that lawyer from the room. 

Paul then said for the record that Fauci would “still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today.”

Origins of COVID-19

Paul alleged during his opening statement that Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases when the pandemic began, didn’t give enough credit to theories the COVID-19 virus may have been created in a laboratory in China. 

He asked Fauci a series of questions about the pandemic and the types of research the federal government funded leading up to the outbreak. Each time, Fauci responded, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., sought to remind his Republican colleagues that when he ran the panel, there was a bipartisan effort to look into the origins of the pandemic.  

“Rather than building on that work to strengthen our preparedness against future disasters, we are instead relitigating the past,” he said. 

Peters raised concerns that the country would likely face another pandemic at some point and that lawmakers should focus their efforts on the future, making sure public health agencies have the staff and funding they need. 

“COVID-19 exposed serious deficiencies in our nation’s public health infrastructure. We know that. More than one million Americans lost their lives and this committee should absolutely continue to examine how we can better prepare our nation against future biological threats,” he said. “Those are the kinds of forward-looking, life-saving questions that will help our nation be better prepared to protect the health and the safety of Americans when the next emergency occurs.”

Peters then sharply criticized the Trump administration, saying officials’ decisions on funding and staff have eroded the country’s safety net, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

“The administration has hollowed out the public health workforce,” he said. “They have fired, pushed out and cut funding for public health personnel, shrinking the CDC workforce by a quarter.” 

Fauci’s decision not to answer questions didn’t stop Republicans and Democrats on the committee from asking him questions and making lengthy statements throughout the three-hour hearing. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“When we look in the mirror, we are the problem,” Husted said in the shocking interview.

Asked about data centers, Husted said in full:

“But we just have to realize, you know, we’re in this world in which we-we’ve created the demand. We, the people, have created the demand for these data centers because we use all of these digital products that it processes, and if we don’t want them, then don’t use them. I mean, you can go back to the bunny ear antenna on your TV — you don’t need a data center. But if you’re connected to a wire, you’re using the data center. So, understand, like, when we look in the mirror, we are the problem.”

The remarks came in an interview Friday on Strictly Speaking with Bob Frantz.

Husted’s office and campaign have consistently claimed he is working to keep data center costs off household bills. On Thursday, July 16, he introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, S. 5028, which would push states to consider requiring large electricity users to cover the full cost of the generation and transmission built to serve them. Announcing the bill, Husted said the country must expand energy infrastructure “without passing the costs on to working families and small businesses.” The measure was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A House companion, H.R. 9340, cleared the Energy and Commerce Committee 52-0.

Husted has also said repeatedly that siting decisions belong to communities, telling the Washington Examiner this month that data centers “should remain a local decision.” He joined President Donald Trump at the White House in March for a roundtable on the administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which several technology companies committed to fund the power and infrastructure for new facilities.

The record behind the remark

Husted did not create Ohio’s data center incentive. The state’s sales tax exemption for data center equipment dates to the Kasich administration’s first budget in 2013, when Husted was secretary of state. But as lieutenant governor from January 2019 to January 2025, he became the state’s most visible salesman for the industry, and the incentive’s cost exploded on his watch.

TiffinOhio.net reported this week that Husted’s campaign has collected roughly $69,750 from political action committees and employees tied to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, American Electric Power, Duke Energy and Vistra, according to federal filings through June 30. Husted publicly defended a $43.5 million tax break for Google’s New Albany campus in 2019.

Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown has built a series of television ads around that history, labeling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio” — a phrase the campaign attributes to The Plain Dealer. Brown, who won the Democratic primary in May, has called for eliminating Ohio’s data center tax break outright, a position that puts him at odds with building trades unions that have backed Husted.

What the numbers show

Ohio now has more than 200 data centers, the fifth-highest total of any state, according to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. Companies plan to invest up to $40 billion more in Ohio facilities by 2030.

The state’s sales tax exemption for those facilities cost Ohio about $1.6 billion in 2025, roughly 11 times the Department of Taxation’s $136 million forecast, and about $555 million in 2024. The disclosure prompted Gov. Mike DeWine to pause new exemption requests while a legislative select committee reviews the industry. State Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, sits on that panel.

Household bills have climbed alongside the buildout. In testimony to the Ohio House Energy Committee, Policy Matters Ohio researcher Molly Bryden reported that the average Ohio residential electric bill in July 2025 was $214, a 25.7% increase over the prior year and the third-largest increase in the country, citing federal Energy Information Administration data. Average monthly residential electricity costs in Ohio have risen 34.9% over the past decade even as residential demand fell 9.3%. Bryden noted that data centers are not solely responsible for rising costs, but that the pace and scale of their growth carries serious consequences without stronger ratepayer protections.

What it means in Tiffin

Tiffin is served by AEP Ohio, the utility whose rates and data center policies have been reworked repeatedly by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio over the past year. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the typical Ohio household will spend about $745 on electricity from June through September, up 7.8% from $691 a year ago.

More households are falling behind. AEP Ohio’s disconnection rate reached 15%, roughly four times FirstEnergy’s, as bills climbed 53% since 2021. Ohio has no summer shut-off protections comparable to its winter disconnection safeguards. Households earning under $57,750 for a family of four may qualify for help through the state’s Summer Crisis Program, which runs through Sept. 30.

The political response

Ohio Democratic Party Senior Communications Advisor Tony Wen said in a statement:

“It’s absolutely disgraceful that Jon Husted is blaming hardworking Ohioans for their skyrocketing electricity bills caused by the record number of data centers that he helped bring to the state. Jon Husted could not be more out of touch with the people of Ohio, and they will hold him accountable in November.”

Husted, appointed by DeWine in January 2025 to fill the seat JD Vance vacated to become vice president, faces Brown in a Nov. 3 special election for the remainder of that term. The race is among the most closely watched in the country and could determine control of the Senate.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The conflict appeared to make it even more clear the issue will have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has been asked for its opinion on Trump’s sweeping order that would have a huge impact on states just a little more than three months before the midterm elections.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Tuesday the executive order, which directs the U.S. Postal Service to collect from states lists of eligible voters who intend to vote by mail at least two months before an election and the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state, can proceed because the agencies have not yet written rules implementing the order.

A D.C. trial judge in May denied several voting rights groups’ request to block the order, saying the groups had not yet been harmed.

Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, who were appointed by President Barack Obama, and Gregory Katsas, whom Trump appointed, affirmed the decision.

They wrote that the executive order, which Trump signed March 31, is not self-executing and specifically tells the USPS and DHS to write the prescribed rules in a way that is consistent with the federal laws the groups say the order violates.

“We affirm because, while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture,” they wrote.

Their order directly contradicts a ruling the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals published Saturday in a case brought by Democratic officials from 23 states and the District of Columbia. 

That opinion held that states would be harmed if the order was allowed to proceed because state elections officials would immediately have to shift significant resources to prepare to meet the order’s requirements, even without final rules from USPS or DHS.

The Trump administration appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice assigned to the 1st Circuit, requested briefs on whether the court should hear the case by Aug. 3. 

In a social media post, the voting rights legal group Democracy Docket, which is not affiliated with the case, called Tuesday’s ruling “a loss for voters” and said the administration under it could build a citizenship roster and withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not share citizenship data.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But look more closely. Congressional lawmakers and independent experts said this week none of those disclosures are enough to give a meaningful boost to the Trump administration’s relentless quest to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

New Jersey found 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2023 and 2024, with less than 400 actually voting. Alaska officials are raising questions about a few thousand voters, though it hasn’t proven they were not entitled to vote. President Donald Trump won Alaska in 2024 by 44,000 votes.

“The answer is no,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, when asked if the news would boost support for the SAVE America Act.

“They simply don’t have the votes in the Senate,” Becker said. “Even if it did pass,  we’re less than three months from the election.”

The House passed the SAVE America Act in April, and last week it approved legislation that would give states $10 billion to tighten election laws. 

But any effort to advance those measures is stuck in the Senate, where most measures will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate has 53 Republicans, but not all support the Trump plan.

Majority Leader John Thune saw a difficult path forward.

The South Dakota Republican said Monday it was up to Trump to persuade wavering senators to go along. “If he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators from nos to yeses, then we’ll have a different conversation. It’s just the reality,” Thune told reporters.

The SAVE America Act, arguably Trump’s top legislative priority this year, would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections.

New Jersey, Alaska problems

What triggered the latest Republican drive was New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote in the state because of a software problem with the state Motor Vehicle Commission automatic voter registration system.

About 400 actually voted. Sherrill said the mistake began in 2023 and took a year to fix. She said there was no evidence it affected election results. Sherrill took office in January 2026.

“It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one, in the previous administration, brought this to light, demanded accountability,” she said, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Alaska last week also reported problems with its Division of Motor Vehicles registration. Officials said the state has removed 3,048 people from its voter rolls, saying they may not be citizens.

Carol Beecher, Division of Elections director, told state lawmakers that someone identified as a noncitizen should contact her agency and say whether or not they are a citizen, the Alaska Beacon reported.

“It is not an onerous request from the division to simply contact us and confirm, and that is what we have asked them to do. We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she said.

Motor voter law

The federal motor voter law of 1993 had largely been regarded as a bipartisan success, a way of making it easier for people to register to vote. 

It requires that states offer registration at their motor vehicle agencies, including by mail. Applications for registration must be included in renewals and new applications for a drivers’ license.

The 1993 law applies to 44 states and Washington, D.C. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are exempt because when the law took effect, they had no registration requirements or had same-day election registration at polling places. 

A 2002 law requires voters to show identification, usually a driver’s’ license, before they can register. 

Noncitizens cannot vote in federal or state elections, but they can apply for driver’s licenses. 

It’s unclear exactly why noncitizens showed up on New Jersey and possibly Alaska vote lists. Was it a software glitch? Were officials lax? Is there a problem other states should be aware of?

“We don’t know a lot about this yet,” said Becker.

Proof of fraud?

The Trump administration claimed earlier this month that as many as 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said as many as 35,152 “potential noncitizens” may be registered to vote in New Jersey.

No concrete evidence supporting that number has surfaced, and voting rights analysts have raised questions about how that number was calculated.

To SAVE Act supporters, the New Jersey and Alaska disclosures last week were — finally — solid proof things were going wrong. Since the disclosures, there have been these developments:

• The Justice Department wants the names and other information for those improperly registered. Sherrill said she won’t release the data.

• U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who heads a House Judiciary subcommittee, and 18 other House Republicans sent a letter to Sherrill demanding details about what happened.  They want to know by Aug. 21 why the state failed to identify the error, and why it took so long. “New Jersey should end automatic voter registration at the Motor Vehicle Commission, clean up its voter rolls, and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. These are basic safeguards that should already be in place,” Van Drew said in a statement. 

• Trump and some Republicans called for the Senate to stay in session. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to keep senators in Washington past the start of their summer recess late next week so they can work on election reform. “The Senate doesn’t need a summer vacation as much as the country needs the SAVE America Act. Let’s cancel recess,” he tweeted Sunday. Joining him was Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind.

• Republicans blamed Democrats. On the Senate floor, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tied the mess to Democratic views on undocumented immigrants. “Democrats can’t throw open the borders, hand illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and then pretend to be shocked–shocked (as)  Democrats claim to be when these illegal immigrants end up voting.  Illegal immigrants must not be allowed to vote in American elections,” he said.

Democrats scoffed at such rhetoric.

“Give it up, Donald. The SAVE Act ain’t going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a floor speech this week aimed at Trump.

To Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior Senate Judiciary Committee member, the situation is tinged with sadness.

“It all creates more suspicion there are problems with the voting rolls. I’m sure there are on an anecdotal basis,” he said of the New Jersey news. “The more you cast the validity of the voting system in doubt it discourages more people from participating.”

Asked if the revelations changed any Senate votes on the SAVE America Act, he said flatly, “No.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The rule, which takes effect immediately, will allow USCIS, a Department of Homeland Security agency, to refer directly to immigration judges certain asylum cases — such as noncitizens who are not yet in deportation proceedings and are proactively seeking asylum — without first conducting an interview or including a referral letter to the judge regarding the applicant’s credibility.

The interim final rule will be in effect while the agency collects public comments and finalizes the rule’s language.

The move is a departure from how USCIS handles asylum cases. It could create weakened asylum claims before immigration judges, resulting in quick denials and orders of removal. 

In order to apply for asylum, a noncitizen has to detail to an asylum officer a fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 

Asylum officers can use the new rule when USCIS determines that an applicant is barred from applying for asylum, barred from receiving asylum, does not merit a grant of asylum and is not eligible for asylum based on merits of their claim. 

The rule also removes language that asylum seekers have the “right” to an interview. 

USCIS estimates more than 444,000 pending asylum applicants could be affected by the rule. The agency also estimates that about 132,000 future applications for asylum could be impacted. 

The rule could also affect hundreds of thousands of Haitians, who are set to lose their legal protections as the Trump administration plans to revoke Temporary Protected Status. When that status is gone, some could try to apply for asylum but not all would meet the specific standards for persecution laid out in asylum law.

Speeding hearings

Trump officials argued the rule will help backlogs in immigration court. 

“This rule will shorten the total time that it takes asylum officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate asylum applications,” a DHS press release said. 

USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a statement the rule would make sure asylum officers only consider “legitimate” applicants.

“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” he said. “America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole.”

Officers quicker than judges

But an immigration law expert said the policy may actually slow the asylum claim system.

The executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Ben Johnson, said in a statement that the rule will only worsen the 1.4-million-case backlog in immigration courts because judges can take longer to hear a case than an asylum officer.

“Not only will this rule throw sand into the gears of the immigration courts, it will stack the scales of justice against vulnerable people fleeing torture and persecution by putting them into adversarial court hearings and likely also into detention,” Johnson said. 

“Instead of wasting court resources and depriving asylum seekers of due process, more cases should be directed to asylum officers who can do a thorough review of their case far more quickly than judges,” he continued.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, introduced a bill last week that would create a cross-party body of experts to “advise Congress on the ethical and policy implications of emerging technologies” such as artificial intelligence. 

According to a summary of the bill, titled the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, the federal government lacks an institution dedicated to studying the deeper ethics of AI and the threats it poses to human dignity.

“Emerging technologies have the potential to improve everyday life and strengthen America’s position on the global stage,” Cruz said in a joint press release announcing the bill’s introduction. “But as these technologies continue to evolve, we should carefully consider the ethical questions they raise and ensure human dignity remains at the center of our policymaking.”

The commission would inform “both Congress and the American people on the best path forward,” Warnock added.

“As artificial intelligence continues to become a larger part of our society, we need to be clear eyed about addressing the potential problems and perils of this technology,” Warnock said.

The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which Cruz chairs.

The proposed commission would have a wide focus but a narrow function, largely serving as a researcher and advisor for lawmakers. The legislation would authorize $2 million per year to the commission for the next five fiscal years. The panel would sunset in 2032, according to the bill summary, allowing Congress to reconsider its function and effectiveness.

AI bioethics

The proposed commission would focus on examining AI advancement as it relates to bioethics, a decades-old area of research that considers the ethical questions raised by emerging technologies. 

Vardit Ravitsky, president and CEO of the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a nonpartisan think tank, said bioethics is an effective foundation for AI policy. It can help shape a regulatory structure from the outset of a developing technology, giving regulators and courts guiding principles.

“When we do the thinking ahead of time, and we have principles to guide the implementation, the rollout of the technology works better, more responsibly, more wisely, and then we can reap the benefits without running into so many problems,” she said in an interview.

Ravitsky said she is “fully in favor” of the commission outlined in the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, especially because such a body could help address high-stakes concerns related to AI use in the medical field. 

Ravitsky teaches bioethics at Harvard Medical School, where she specializes in emerging technologies including genomics, reproductive technologies and health AI. 

Ethical questions in medicine include the level of disclosure owed to patients when AI is involved with their care and what to do about people treating chatbots like their personal therapists. 

“You quickly understand why this has to do with humanity, because we need to ask ourselves: ‘Are we going to allow AI to take over any kind of role in the health context, or do we want to limit AI to roles that don’t involve care,’” she said. 

Developers needed

The Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act outlines four main features for its proposed ethics commission. 

First, according to the bill summary, the committee would be bipartisan, consisting of 17 experts in fields including philosophy, ethics, religion, civil rights, social sciences, medicine, technology and science. Members would be appointed by “the President, congressional leaders and relevant congressional committees.”

Ravitsky said she is in favor of having ethicists on the commission and believes maintaining bipartisanship is key. But she also recommends inviting AI developers and some representatives from the private sector to participate, given how quickly artificial intelligence is evolving. 

Without them, she said, “the conversation is very limited” because those involved “need some understanding of the technology.”

Julian Jonker, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has his own concerns about the way in which the proposed commission’s members would be chosen. 

Although the process laid out in the bill represents “an attempt for bipartisan nomination,” because one party currently controls all three branches of U.S. government, there is still a chance the commission could end up “fairly partisan,” Jonker said.

Opportunity to expand  

Along with detailing plans for composition, the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act directs its ethics commission to hold public hearings, issue reports and advise Congress and other relevant stakeholders on “AI, robotics, biotechnology, neurotechnology, emerging clinical technologies and other science or tech developments.” 

The commission would inform lawmakers about possible threats to human dignity posed by federal science and tech policy, and other congressional committees could call on the body to evaluate related programs. 

Jonker said it’s “really laudable” that the bill is “tuned into the intersection of several technologies,” but he also pointed out that it seems to exclude some important social concerns surrounding AI by focusing mainly on bioethics.

He identified issues such as labor displacement, deepfakes and the widespread use of online bots as among those the average American thinks about when considering AI’s impact on human dignity. 

The proposal also does not cover anything having to do with the environmental and economic consequences of AI buildup or data centers, he added. 

“I’m not saying that the commission has to cover everything,” he said. “But if this is the main way in which deliberation around the social impact of AI appears in Sen. Cruz’s framework, then we must note that it leaves out those things that I think are very prominent in most people’s minds right now.” 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Congressional candidates must file several financial disclosures throughout the year of their election. Reports for the second quarter of 2026 were due July 15.

Brown’s campaign announced $14.1 million in direct second-quarter donations, with an added $3 million coming from an affiliated PAC. Husted’s campaign reported $3.4 million in direct donations and $4.3 million from three affiliated PACs.

“Ohioans across the state are fed up with Jon Husted, who repeatedly puts corporations, billionaires, and special interests first at the expense of hard working families,” said Patrick Eisenhauer, Brown’s campaign manager.

In a press release, the Husted campaign touted its performance as the largest second-quarter fundraising total ever posted by an Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate.

This is the third straight U.S. Senate election in Ohio where the Democratic nominee’s early summer fundraising haul was significantly larger than his Republican opponent. Former Ohio U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan outraised now-Vice President J.D. Vance by $6.8 million from April to June 2022, and Brown outraised now-U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno by $6 million from April to June 2024.

Both elections ended in Democratic losses at the ballot box. The 2024 race became the most expensive non-presidential election in American history, and while Brown more than tripled Moreno’s campaign spending, Republican groups still outspent Democratic groups by over $75 million.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision will also strengthen the role of political parties to help campaigns this election cycle. Ruling on a case out of Ohio brought by Vance, in a 6-3 decision the court struck down limits on how much political parties could spend in coordination with specific candidates.

Spending

This time around, Brown spent over $11.5 million on advertising in the second quarter. Some in-house ads touted his positions on healthcare and Congressional stock trading, and three ads sought to tie Husted to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Brown also released a trio of ads on data centers in July.

While Brown raised about $4.3 million more than he did in the second quarter of 2024, he was also more frugal, spending over $2.5 million less on advertising. The former three-term senator reported $16.2 million cash on hand at the end of June.

Meanwhile, Husted’s campaign bought more than five times Moreno’s ad spending over the same period in 2024. His principal committee, Husted for Senate, paid for his first television ad of the cycle in late April. A pair of May ads attacking Brown’s Congressional record came from Husted Victory, a secondary committee.

His campaign reported over $11 million cash on hand, more than double Moreno’s cash balance in June 2024.

The two campaigns are far from the only groups with money in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race. Outside groups have already committed to spend over $174 million in the race, and AdImpact projects total spending to reach $749 million by Election Day.

The Republican-backed Senate Leadership Fund has already spent $700,000 in the race this year, and it plans to spend $79 million in total. Democratic-backed Senate Majority PAC has committed $64 million to the race.

Most of the outside spending in the second quarter came from two Republican super PACs. Americans for Prosperity Action, Inc., a super PAC bankrolled by Republican megadonor Charles Koch, spent over $3.1 million starting in April.

Ohio Flyer PAC paid over $445,000 for its April “Party’s Over” ad targeting Brown’s Congressional record, part of over $1.6 million in second-quarter ad spending. The super PAC is solely dedicated to supporting Husted’s election bid, and its name references Husted’s time on the University of Dayton’s football team.

Fundraising

Ohio Flyer PAC received its largest donation of the second quarter from A Public Voice, Inc., a Virginia-based dark money group that has given millions to Republican super PACs in past elections.

Nonprofits like A Public Voice, Inc., do not have to disclose their donors. A Public Voice, Inc. has history in Ohio U.S. Senate races: It gave $315,000 to a super PAC that opposed Brown in 2018, and it donated $850,000 to a super PAC backing Republican state Sen. Jane Timken’s primary run in 2022.

Brian Colleran, the CEO of an Ohio nursing home chain, and Chevron also gave Ohio Flyer PAC six-figure donations. A super PAC can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but it cannot directly coordinate with a candidate’s campaign committee.

Husted’s campaign received its largest donations of the second quarter, including a combined $637,200 from two Jane Street Capital executives, through Husted Victory. Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm, has made a recent push into artificial intelligence and data centers.

His campaign also accepted a total of $69,750 in smaller donations from the political action committees of utility companies like American Electric Power and Duke Energy, as well as tech companies like Oracle and Meta.

Other prominent Husted donors include Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who regularly donate to Republican campaigns. Cleveland Browns executives and members of the Haslam family gave Husted a combined $292,000 in the second quarter.

Only one person gave more than $50,000 to a committee affiliated with Brown’s campaign in the second quarter: Joe Kanfer, the former CEO of an Akron-based company that produces Purell hand sanitizer. Brown received most of his largest individual donations through Ohio Grassroots Victory Fund, an affiliated committee.

James McClave, another Jane Street trader who gave millions to a dark money group that supported former President Joe Biden in 2024, donated $7,000 to Brown’s campaign committee.

McClave was also an early investor in artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, which is spending millions in favor of AI regulation. Anthropic’s general legal counsel, Jeff Bleich, gave $20,500 to Brown’s campaign committees in the second quarter.

Brown reported over $5.1 million in donations through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, and Husted reported $500,000 from the Republican equivalent WinRed. The former senator had over 135,000 donors in Q2, including nearly 70,000 first-time donors, according to a press release.

The next campaign finance reporting deadline for Congressional candidates will be Oct. 15.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a recent decision, the state’s highest court upheld an appellate court decision related to Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment approved by Ohio voters that allows crime victims to appeal court rulings that denied them restitution.

The amendment was approved by 83% of voters in 2017, and implemented in Ohio House Bill 343 in 2023.

The amendment changed the Ohio Revised Code to do things such as redact victim names and identifying information from public records, allow victims to be heard and present in public proceedings, and authorize victims and victim’s advocates to argue for restitution based on the convictions.

Even more recently, the state supreme court ruled that police officers can be considered victims and be protected under Marsy’s Law privacy clauses.

The constitutional amendment notes that victim’s rights “shall be upheld in a manner no less vigorous than the rights of the accused.”

The supreme court case stems from an Eighth District Court of Appeals decision related to a Cuyahoga County woman identified as “M.S.” in the court records.

The woman asked to file a delayed appeal to seek restitution after a 2017 incident in which a man broke into her office, stealing a pistol and a nail gun.

A delayed appeal occurs as a second attempt after an initial appeal has already occurred.

Delayed appeals are allowed for those convicted of crimes, but not victims, according to the supreme court’s decision.

The man involved in the crime pleaded guilty to breaking and entering, as well as petty theft, but while the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office requested restitution for M.S. when the man was sentenced, his attorney argued the issue should be dealt with separately from his sentencing hearing. The trial judge didn’t include restitution in sentencing documents, according to court records.

Marsy’s Law went into effect in February 2018, and the woman appealed for restitution in December 2018, citing the constitutional amendment.

But, at the time of her appeal, “the legislature had not yet enacted legislation implementing the constitutional amendment and there was some uncertainty as to the proper manner for a victim to enforce the rights guaranteed under Marsy’s Law,” Justice Patrick DeWine wrote in the July 22 supreme court decision.

With confusion over what she could and couldn’t legally do, M.S. requested a voluntary dismissal of her appeal, instead asking the Eighth District Court of Appeals to order that the Cuyahoga County court decide whether she was owed restitution, and if so, how much.

As the case went on, the Ohio Supreme Court decided in a separate case that a direct appeal — an appeal made within 30 days of a conviction or case decision — “is the appropriate remedy for a victim to challenge a trial court’s failure to award restitution under Marsy’s Law.”

Because of that decision, the man convicted of stealing the woman’s pistol and nail gun argued she had “forfeited her right to challenge” when she voluntarily dismissed her first appeal. The appellate court agreed.

In appealing to the state supreme court, M.S. argued that victims should have the constitutional right to delayed appeals.

To enact a change in the way the law works, the legislature and the supreme court would have to look into changing the rules of procedure, the high court stated in its July decision.

“We have no authority to bypass this constitutional procedure and simply amend those rules by judicial decision in an individual case,” DeWine wrote in the majority opinion.

“While there may be good reasons to allow a victim to request leave to file a delayed appeal in at least some situations, that matter must be left to the rulemaking process.”

While the supreme court said it can “prescribe rules governing practice and procedure in all courts of the state,” the constitution requires the rules to be filed with the General Assembly, which has the ability to adopt a “resolution of disapproval” to stop them from going into effect.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But there are also plenty of examples of people who give enough of a damn to battle bureaucracy, to push back because they must.

They make calls, send letters, show up. They challenge “city hall” and rules too hard to change even if they cannot win. Because sometimes they do.

Thousands of Ohioans took on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency over a quality-of-life threat. They won. For now.

In December enraged citizens got wind of the Ohio EPA’s outrageous proposal to make it easier for massive data centers to pollute local waterways with impunity and they mobilized to table the blanket approach under consideration. 

The Ohio EPA confirmed that public comments against its proposed statewide data center wastewater permit exceeded 7,000.

Last Tuesday the agency announced it had scrapped the general permit drafted to help data centers release wastewater into Ohio’s lakes, rivers, and streams with heavily reduced review and analysis by the state.

“After carefully reviewing the significant volume of public comments received on the draft National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) general permit for data centers, Ohio EPA has decided not to move forward with finalizing the general permit.”

Would that have happened without 7,000 voices raised in opposition?

If not for the public outcry would the Ohio EPA have handed Big Tech everything it wanted — a quick, one-size-fits-all permitting process that cut meaningful agency review, on-site scrutiny of data center wastewater discharges, dropped notice and comment opportunities for local communities?

Ohio already provides massive sales tax exemptions for data centers (costing the state nearly $1.6 billion in 2025) and the state environmental agency was advancing an industry-friendly plan. 

In January, Ohio EPA director John Logue admitted the decision to propose a general permit (as opposed to individual, case-by-case authorization) was motivated in part by President Trump’s call to expedite the process for approving data centers.

Getting an environmental permit to satisfy clean water requirements took too long.

But as developers raced to build a wave of “hyperscale” data centers around Ohio — which hosts more than any other Great Lakes state at over 200-and-counting — controversy grew over wastewater generated by some of those facilities winding up in Lake Erie and its tributaries.

The expedited permit proposal could have wrapped up the process in a month compared to as many as six for an on-site specific permit.

Incredible as it sounds, the now defunct agency plan would have allowed all data centers, (regardless of size, location, or type) to discharge untreated waste and storm water directly into local waterways under certain conditions not subject to individual inspection. 

A single statewide blanket permit would cover an entire industry.

When the Ohio EPA informed Ohioans that such a deal was in the works at the end of 2025, one phrase from the proposed change ignited alarm.

“It has been determined that a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state associated with granting coverage under this permit is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.”

In other words, indulging the fast-track agenda of the artificial intelligence industry —  valued at hundreds of billions in direct market size with multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure spending and record-breaking personal wealth creation — is worth the price of polluting some Ohio lakes and streams??

The broadly ambiguous language in the agency’s drafted proposal underscored that tradeoff to Big Tech.

It acknowledged a “decline in water quality” as an acceptable business proposition as long as data center wastewater isn’t “discharged within 500 yards upstream from a public water supply intake” or dumped “in a lake other than Lake Erie, or groundwater supplies” or “exhibits the reasonable potential” to break Ohio’s minimum water quality standards.

All wording a major tech or AI company lawyer could drive a bus through without breaking a sweat.

One provision of the streamlined permit did exhort data centers to “evaluate potential prevention methods and install the latest pollution prevention technology if it is economically feasible.” Another revision to exploit.

The overwhelming takeaway from incensed Ohioans was that the state was giving AI data centers a pass on polluting surface water in Ohio with weakened safeguards for local communities.

The Ohio EPA appeared to sanction the necessary release of unknown contaminants from cooling-component water and other runoff from data centers into natural waterways to get operations up and running faster.

An accommodation to AI barons regardless of the cost to Ohioans stuck with polluted water.

Data centers consume massive amounts of water to cool servers and prevent overheating of equipment.

Discharge from those water-cooling methods can contain hazardous forever chemicals (PFAS) — toxic compounds that break down slowly in nature and in the human body and are linked to serious health risks.

While most data center wastewater in Ohio goes to municipal systems (treatment plants and sanitary sewers) instead of being dumped directly into lakes and streams, the Ohio EPA was prepared to approve that option for some data centers without requiring chemical measurements from the water prior to discharge and with limited public input. 

But the agency shelved the idea, thanks to more than 7,000 Ohioans who objected. Loudly. Who says you can’t fight city hall?

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

For months, Marie’s 11-year-old daughter wasn’t acting like herself. The fifth grader was often fatigued, sleeping more. She wasn’t eating enough, and spent more time alone.

“She wasn’t really motivated to do things with her friends,” Marie said.

The Chicago girl had been overwhelmed with worry for her father, who was recovering from diabetes complications after a serious infection. She also felt intense pressure at school, aiming for straight As.

“Ever since Dad went to the hospital, it just made it more intense,” she told her mom in a written note. “I don’t know how to feel. I’m having thoughts about hurting myself. I’m tired, and afraid of death.”

Earlier this year, she told her mom she’d tried to cut herself in the bathroom, and said she was hurting herself at school. Stateline is withholding Marie’s full name to protect her daughter’s privacy.

Marie took her to the emergency room. The ER staff tried to transfer the girl to a psychiatric facility, but several refused to take her. Most only served teenagers, while others didn’t accept her insurance plan. The emergency department team finally found a place for her at a child psychiatric facility nearly an hour away.

Marie’s daughter recently finished an intensive outpatient therapy program, and is seeing a therapist regularly. 

“We were able to get her the help that she needed,” Marie said. “But a lot of the times, there’s kids that struggle and unfortunately, do end up taking their life.” 

In the past several years, numerous studies have pointed to a mental health crisis among America’s youth. Much of the attention has focused on teenagers, who have higher suicide rates. 

But preteens are struggling, too.

The number of preteens — ages 8 to 12 — who die by suicide in the United States each year is relatively small. But the total in 2025 was 194 — the most since at least 2001, according to preliminary data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since 2008, the rate of preteen suicide has increased by an average of 8.2% annually, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Their analysis, published in 2024, found that Black preteens had the highest overall suicide rate, while girls and Hispanic preteens had the greatest percentage increase. Native American preteens also saw some of the most pronounced increases.

Suicide is complex and is often the result of a combination of factors. Talking with trusted adults and connecting kids with help can aid in prevention, and research shows most who have suicidal thoughts do not carry through with them. Mental health experts and advocates are calling for more mental health check-ins with preteens, earlier screenings and tailored interventions for Native, Black and LGBTQ+ preteens.

Jenny Britton, chief clinical officer at the Washburn Center for Children in Minneapolis, a nonprofit mental health practice, has noticed the long-term trend during her 25-year career.

“I’ve watched the age of kids who struggle with suicidal ideation and suicidality get younger and younger over that time,” she said. “Now, we’re seeing even as young as our 7- and 8-year-olds.”

Last year, the overall suicide rate in Minnesota increased by 4% compared with the year before, according to preliminary state data. But the suicide rate among children ages 10 to 14, the youngest age group included in the state’s report, more than doubled compared with the five years prior, from 2.2 per 100,000 people to 5.8.

Kids are feeling unsupported. They have more alone time. They’re more isolated. People aren’t really picking up on some of the clues of depression as early.

– Dr. Prachi “PJ” Striker, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, Children’s Minnesota

Four years ago, when the inpatient mental health unit opened at Children’s Minnesota, a Minneapolis-based health system, providers mostly saw teenagers, said Dr. Prachi “PJ” Striker, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. That’s still true, but over the past year-and-half, the unit has seen more 10- to 12-year-olds who have harmed themselves, attempted suicide or said they’ve considered it.

“(We’re) seeing more of the younger age group coming in,” Striker said. “Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed, suicidal thoughts.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that pediatricians start screening all patients starting at age 12 for suicidal thoughts. But for preteens ages 8 to 11, the academy only recommends a suicide screening if the child is coming to the doctor for behavioral health concerns or has a history of suicidal thoughts.

But Striker said screening as early as age 8 can prevent kids from slipping under the radar.

“How do we start identifying kids who are in trouble faster?” Striker said. “Kids are feeling unsupported. They have more alone time. They’re more isolated. People aren’t really picking up on some of the clues of depression as early.”

Stressors

Many mental health experts point to COVID-19 as a major factor that harmed the mental health of kids who are now preteens. 

“You have to remember these kids who are like 10 to 12, their early elementary years were COVID years, and so kindergarten, first grade, second grade were often at home. They didn’t have those normal experiences of going to school, starting to socialize,” Striker said. “They’re going into third, fourth, fifth grade, having been home and quarantined for the first few years of their school lives.”

Thousands of kids lost loved ones to COVID-19, including their parents. Children of color make up a disproportionate number of those whose caregivers were killed by the virus. 

“I was hopeful that as people were able to get back to their friends and school and normalize, that that would get better, but it really hasn’t,” said Dr. Maria Hughes Rahmandar, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Adolescents and Young Adults and an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Preteens and teens are really continuing to struggle with more and more mental health concerns.” 

Experts also point to other stressors for preteens, including social media use, lack of sleep, bullying both online and in person, and policies restricting gender-affirming care for trans kids that have created fear for some LGBTQ+ youth.

Jeremy Pettit, a professor of psychology at Florida International University who specializes in depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors in children and adolescents, is studying how sleep – and screen time right before bed – relates to kids’ mental health.

“When (sleep is) disrupted, it’s bad for everything – physical health and mental health. The data are pretty clear that our kids are not getting enough sleep at night,” said Pettit, who directs FIU’s Center for Children and Families. 

“We’ve got early school times in most of the country, even though the data, the research is pretty clear, it would be healthier for our kids not to have them go to school at 7 every morning,” he said.

Peter Gray, a researcher and emeritus professor of psychology at Boston College, contends that changes in schooling in recent decades, such as the standardization of curriculum, created “a new source of anxiety and depression on top of everything else.” He also pointed to a trend of less unstructured playtime outside.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has resources for parents or others who frequently interact with children, including a toolkit called “Talk Saves Lives” that offers guidelines and tips for steering conversations.

“That’s normal childhood,” Gray said of unstructured play. “This is how children learn to take charge of their own lives. It’s how children learn to negotiate differences with other people. It’s how children learn that they can solve their own problems. 

“We have been gradually, over time, taking that away from children,” he said.

Unlike many other child development experts, Gray argues that computers and smartphones have actually helped children by re-creating some of the social networking that used to happen outside. 

But a 2024 analysis by the CDC found that frequent social media use was associated with bullying at school, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and some suicide risk among students. More than 40 states have sued social media companies over mental health concerns among kids.

Other experts say too much exposure to media of all kinds may also be causing kids stress. 

“I think about my childhood in the ’70s and ’80s. I didn’t know all the details of shootings or a bomb going off, or you had to read about it in the newspaper or watch the news,” said Britton, of the Washburn Center for Children. 

“Kids are wrestling with things differently than I wrestled with things. They know more, so they’re thinking about more.”

Talking with kids

Experts say parents, teachers, coaches, clergy — anyone who interacts with kids — shouldn’t fear talking to them about suicide and mental health, especially if they notice withdrawal, sadness or stress.

Jamie Freeny, who was the director of the Center for School Behavioral Health at Mental Health America of Greater Houston until earlier this year, said that more elementary schools have started to ask for suicide prevention training.

“If the elementary schools are asking for it, that lets me know that there’s a reason,” said Freeny, who now works as a mental health consultant. “It’s very, very sad.”

There’s this myth that if you talk to kids about suicide, you’re going to put the idea in their head.

– Lisa Horowitz, visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has resources for parents or others who frequently interact with kids, including a toolkit called “Talk Saves Lives” that offers guidelines and tips for steering such conversations.

Lisa Horowitz, a visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine and who conducts research for the National Institutes of Health, said many parents tell her they’re afraid to bring the topic up with their kids.

“There’s this myth that if you talk to kids about suicide, you’re going to put the idea in their head,” Horowitz said, adding that research shows talking about it can actually help. 

“If you can detect suicide risk early, like in preteens or even even younger, then you can intervene early, and and then you can prevent a lot of psychiatric disorders that occur in adulthood.” 

Kids may tell their friends and may not necessarily come to their trusted adult first, making proactive conversations important, added Horowitz, who co-authored the study on the annual increase in preteen suicide and has developed screening tools.

“Most parents are surprised by a suicide attempt, and it’s not because they’re a bad parent, and it’s not because they’re not paying attention. It’s because kids keep these thoughts to themselves,” she said. 

“It’s an awkward but critical conversation to start. … So even if you say to a kid, ‘OK, this is really awkward, and I’m not even sure how to ask about this, but I care about your life. So, do you ever think about killing yourself?’”

Britton said even just asking about a change in a child’s mood can help.

“Work hard to figure out how to engage with your kids around really hard topics,” said Britton. “It does something so innate within the human experience if another person can say, ‘Today you looked really sad. Is there anything you want to share with me about that?’”

In Chicago, Marie and her husband have started fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As they’ve shared their story, other parents have opened up to them about the struggles of their own preteen kids.

“My husband and I want to be our daughter’s voice,” Marie said. “To help somebody else — even if it’s one person.”

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

More than a dozen states this year have passed laws creating new criminal offenses, increasing penalties and establishing specialized task forces and advisory boards designed to better investigate and prosecute organized theft rings.

While organized retail theft has been a growing focus for state lawmakers in recent years, this year’s legislation reflects how the crime has evolved beyond traditional shoplifting. Many of the new laws target fraud schemes that authorities say are increasingly tied to organized criminal groups, including cargo theft, gift card scams and identity theft used to steal freight or merchandise.

In April, the Los Angeles Police Department announced the seizure of about $1 million in stolen merchandise, including products from brands such as ALO, SKIMS, Edikted, Ariat, Milwaukee, Ninja, Dyson and Duracell. 

Investigators recovered 55 pallets of stolen commercial and train cargo from a Van Nuys warehouse, according to a news release. The stolen merchandise was tied to an e-commerce scheme involving the resale of stolen goods through the livestream shopping platform Whatnot.

Reported shoplifting increased 4% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, according to the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice’s latest crime trends report. Across the 18 cities included in the analysis, shoplifting rates were about 5% higher than in 2019 and reached their highest level in the nine-year period tracked by the group. 

Still, monthly rates were mostly similar to 2025, with the largest year-over-year increases occurring in February and April. This data only captures incidents reported to police and likely undercount the overall level of shoplifting.

“The number of shoplifting incidents has been declining in the last several years, but the amount stolen per incident has been increasing,” said Marc Levin, the council’s chief policy counsel. 

“Shoplifting rings have gotten more and more sophisticated,” he said, adding that some operations have reportedly hacked into the computer systems that dispatch trucks carrying merchandise to retailers, redirecting the shipments to steal the goods before they are delivered.

Harsher penalties

Several states expanded criminal penalties or gave prosecutors new tools to pursue organized retail theft cases this year.

In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee in May signed into law a measure creating a registry of people convicted of retail theft or organized retail crime, including attempted offenses and conspiracies. The registry is only available to law enforcement.

The new law, which took effect earlier this month, also increases penalties for offenders who commit retail theft while carrying a firearm, ammunition or a firearm accessory, possess anti-theft jamming devices or use disguises or fake license plates during a theft. Certain violations now carry mandatory minimum jail sentences.

A new Wisconsin law allows prosecutors to aggregate multiple retail theft offenses when determining criminal penalties and increasing sanctions for repeat offenders.

Two new laws in Wyoming, both of which went into effect this month, increased penalties for repeat theft offenders and created the new offense of absconding for criminal purposes, aimed at people who cross county or state lines to commit additional crimes or conceal stolen property. 

In Oklahoma, a new law broadens the state’s organized retail crime and identity theft statutes by expanding the types of fraud covered and closing loopholes involving elderly people and minors.

Cargo theft

Lawmakers also turned their attention to cargo theft as freight theft has become increasingly sophisticated and costly for retailers and supply chains.

In April, Lee, of Tennessee, signed another piece of legislation creating a legal definition for fraudulent freight theft. The law, which is already in effect, covers schemes involving fake identities used to obtain shipments, illegally rerouted freight and unauthorized transfers of cargo. It also requires local law enforcement agencies to investigate those reports as theft crimes, even if the offense originated elsewhere.

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation in March creating sentence enhancements of up to 10 years for organized cargo theft, with offenders ineligible for early release on the enhanced portion of their sentence.

Arizona created a cargo theft task force within the state attorney general’s office under legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in June.

California lawmakers are still considering legislation that would establish a statewide cargo theft task force within the state attorney general’s office. The bill is still under consideration in the Senate, but lawmakers have until November to act.

State officials last month announced that previous investments, including funding for local law enforcement agencies and legislation aimed at strengthening the state’s response to organized retail theft, have resulted in more than 32,000 arrests and nearly $260 million in recovered stolen goods since October 2023.

Michigan lawmakers also are still considering two pieces of legislation that would increase penalties for cargo theft. The bills cleared the House earlier this year. The legislature adjourns in December. 

Gift card fraud

Gift card fraud also emerged as a growing concern this year as lawmakers responded to scams involving tampered cards and stolen account information.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation in May creating new crimes for gift card theft, forgery and fraud. The law took effect this month. New laws in Virginia and West Virginia also established gift card fraud as a criminal offense.

Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation in June creating the Retail Theft Prevention Advisory Board within the Department of Public Safety. The board will oversee grant funding, collect statewide data on organized retail theft and gift card fraud, and develop policy recommendations in coordination with state and federal partners.

In Maryland, a new law going into effect in October will prohibit people from altering or tampering with gift cards or their packaging with intent to defraud. The law also establishes how gift cards are valued when determining theft charges.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed legislation in February that allows prosecutors to charge people under the state’s financial card crime laws for illegally obtaining or using gift cards to acquire money, goods or services.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.