Why did Gary Click leave so quietly?

Click says he stopped serving as lead pastor at the end of March 2025 and became pastor emeritus, an honorary position that freed him from the church’s day-to-day responsibilities.

But there was no publicly identified announcement of the change at the time. Click’s constituents were not told through his legislative office or campaign that the pastor-turned-lawmaker had left the position that had been central to his public identity for nearly two decades.

And Fremont Baptist Temple’s own website continued presenting Click as its pastor for nearly 11 months after he says he stepped down.

When TiffinOhio.net first reported the departure in February, Click disputed the characterization that he had left quietly.

“Actually, it was very public. You just missed it,” Click wrote on X after the story was shared by Ohio political blog Plunderbund.

But when Plunderbund asked Click to identify the public announcement, no response pointing to one was identified.

Seven months later, no contemporaneous public announcement from March 2025 has surfaced.

A 19-year tenure ended with little public notice

Click became pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple in 2006 and remained there while launching his political career.

His ministry was not a peripheral part of the biography he presented to voters.

When Click entered the Ohio House in January 2021, his official legislative announcement highlighted his position as pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple, his more than 30 years in ministry and his work lobbying Congress on behalf of churches and Christian schools.

Click also delivered the opening prayer during the House session on the day he was sworn in.

His current Ohio House biography now says he served Fremont Baptist Temple “through 2025” before stepping down and assuming the honorary title of pastor emeritus.

But when that transition actually occurred in March 2025, there was little outward indication that Click’s 19-year tenure running the church had ended.

TiffinOhio.net discovered the change nearly a year later after Click’s Ohio House biography had been revised. At that point, Fremont Baptist Temple’s website was still listing Click in active pastoral leadership.

Church members knew. The broader public apparently did not.

Click later discussed the transition in an interview with the Advertiser-Tribune after TiffinOhio.net’s report.

Rick Ash, who succeeded Click as pastor, told the newspaper that the change had been discussed with the church’s deacons and advisory council before being presented to the congregation, which overwhelmingly approved the transition.

That establishes that the change was known and handled internally at Fremont Baptist Temple.

It does not explain Click’s assertion that the transition had been “very public.”

No public announcement from Click, his campaign or his legislative office has been identified from the time of the transition. No contemporaneous church announcement circulated outside the congregation has surfaced either.

And even the church’s website did not reflect the change for months.

Fremont Baptist Temple updated its public leadership page only after TiffinOhio.net reported the discrepancy in February, changing the site to identify Ash as pastor and Click as pastor emeritus.

Click says the change gave him freedom to travel

Click has explained what the new arrangement allowed him to do.

In his February interview, Click said relinquishing day-to-day responsibility for Fremont Baptist Temple gave him greater freedom to travel and preach elsewhere.

He said he had spoken in California, Colorado and Alabama, as well as communities throughout Ohio, on what he described as the “justice and biblical role of Christians in civil government.”

Click also said he had filed paperwork to create a nonprofit ministry called “We the Church.”

His travel and involvement with Christian political organizations have since become a more visible part of his public profile. TiffinOhio.net reported in August that Click had been building an increasingly national political and religious network while retaining the honorary pastor emeritus title at Fremont Baptist Temple.

That provides an explanation for what Click wanted to do once he was no longer responsible for running the church.

It leaves a different question unresolved: why a major change in the life of a politician who had repeatedly presented himself to voters as a working pastor received so little public notice when it happened.

The question follows Click into the fall campaign

The issue is resurfacing at a politically consequential moment for Click.

The three-term Republican represents all of Seneca and Sandusky counties in Ohio House District 88 and is seeking a fourth term this November.

Click narrowly survived a Republican primary challenge from Eric Watson in May, winning 6,859 votes to Watson’s 6,260 — a margin of 599 votes. Watson carried Seneca County while Click’s advantage in Sandusky County supplied his districtwide victory.

Click now faces Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin in the Nov. 3 general election.

As campaigning intensifies across the district, Click’s departure from Fremont Baptist Temple stands apart from an ordinary career change because of how closely he has tied his religious identity to his political career.

His official biographies emphasized his ministry. He has chaired the Ohio Christian Legislators Caucus. Religion has figured prominently in his legislative work on education, abortion, gender and the role of Christianity in government.

Click himself continues to use the honorific “Pastor” and remains pastor emeritus at Fremont Baptist Temple.

There is no public evidence that Click was removed by the church or forced to resign, and the available record does not establish misconduct as the reason for his departure.

But the public record does establish an unusual sequence.

Click says he stepped down at the end of March 2025 after 19 years as pastor. No contemporaneous public announcement has been identified. The church’s website continued presenting him as pastor for nearly another year. When the departure was reported, Click insisted it had been “very public.” He did not identify the announcement when challenged to do so. The church website was then updated.

Click has since explained why his new pastor emeritus role benefits his broader ministry.

What remains unclear is why the end of his 19-year tenure leading Fremont Baptist Temple was handled so quietly in the first place.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Acton issued the challenge Tuesday as Ohio’s rapidly expanding data-center industry becomes an increasingly central issue in the governor’s race.

“I will not allow special interests, corporations, or billionaires to buy my state,” Acton said. “I am calling on Vivek Ramaswamy to sell his individual stock and commit to not investing in data centers.”

Acton added that she does not own individual stocks and pledged not to “invest in or possess individual stocks” while serving as governor.

She then took direct aim at Ramaswamy’s extensive investment portfolio.

“Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy has personally invested millions of dollars in data centers,” Acton said. “If elected, he would continue to sell Ohio out. Ohioans deserve a governor who cares about making their lives better, not a billionaire who is only out for himself.”

The attack comes just days after News 5 Cleveland examined both candidates’ financial disclosures and asked whether they would divest from investments connected to the data-center industry.

Ramaswamy did not respond to the station’s divestment question before its story was published. Acton’s campaign responded after the television report aired, saying she did not own individual stocks and would not invest in or possess them as governor.

Ramaswamy’s holdings reach across the data-center economy

Ramaswamy’s financial exposure to the industry is substantially broader.

TiffinOhio.net reported in May that Ramaswamy’s financial disclosures include investments throughout the data-center supply chain, including NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon, along with industrial real estate companies and an infrastructure fund with exposure to digital infrastructure.

Ramaswamy has held NVIDIA stock directly and through the Strive U.S. Semiconductor ETF, a fund he helped launch through the asset-management company he founded. His 2023 federal financial disclosure valued his stake in that semiconductor fund at between $1 million and $5 million.

Microsoft and Amazon are among the largest cloud-computing and data-center operators in the world, while NVIDIA produces the chips powering the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom.

Ramaswamy has also disclosed investments in Prologis, Plymouth Industrial REIT, Rexford Industrial Realty and Terreno Realty, as well as a global infrastructure fund with exposure to digital infrastructure.

Those disclosures establish millions of dollars in investments connected to the broader data-center economy, although Acton’s description of Ramaswamy as having personally invested “millions of dollars in data centers” is broader than what the disclosures themselves show. The records document investments in companies and funds tied to the industry, rather than millions of dollars directly invested in individual Ohio data-center projects.

The next governor will have enormous influence over the industry

The financial question matters because Ohio’s next governor will wield significant power over how the data-center boom develops.

The governor appoints all nine members of the JobsOhio board, which plays a central role in negotiating economic-development incentives. The governor also appoints members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which regulates electric utilities and has already adopted special rules governing massive data-center electricity loads.

The administration also has influence over the Ohio Tax Credit Authority, which administers economic-development incentives at a time when lawmakers are reconsidering the enormous cost of tax breaks granted to data centers.

Ramaswamy has repeatedly supported continued data-center development in Ohio.

As TiffinOhio.net reported last week, he was recorded at least 10 times in 2025 calling Ohio’s emerging data-center boom good, great or something the state should welcome.

“We’ve got AI data centers moving to our state. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing,” Ramaswamy said during one March 2025 appearance.

At another event, he said AI data centers and Bitcoin mining firms were industries “all of which I want in the state.”

Ramaswamy has since adopted a more restrictive position as opposition to hyperscale data centers has spread across Ohio. His current plan would temporarily stop new projects until lawmakers enact rules requiring developers to provide electricity or compensation to nearby residents, pay full property taxes and meet environmental and farmland protections.

Projects meeting those requirements would still be permitted to move forward.

Acton turns the conflict-of-interest question directly on Ramaswamy

Acton has also called for conditions on new data centers, arguing developers should bear the infrastructure costs associated with their enormous electricity demand rather than shifting those expenses onto residential customers.

Her newest pledge goes further by making personal financial interests part of the argument.

Instead of simply promising restrictions on the companies seeking approval from state government, Acton is now arguing that the governor should not personally own individual stocks that could rise or fall based on decisions made by the administration.

Ramaswamy has not publicly committed to divesting from his data-center-related holdings.

The issue is likely to remain prominent through the Nov. 3 election as Ohio faces a historic wave of proposed data-center construction and an escalating fight over who pays for the electricity, transmission infrastructure, tax incentives and other costs that come with it.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The court on Monday placed the case on an expedited election schedule, ordering the respondents to answer the complaint by 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, and barring requests for extensions.

The case, State ex rel. Koebel v. Erie County Board of Elections, was filed by former Ottawa County Commissioner Carl Koebel and asks the state’s highest court to overturn the certification that put Stidham on the Nov. 3 ballot.

The lawsuit puts before the Supreme Court the same dispute that deadlocked the Erie County Board of Elections 2-2 in August: whether the Republican committee that selected Stidham could legally conduct the selection behind closed doors and whether Stidham could participate in deliberations and vote in a process in which he was himself a candidate.

Stidham, the Erie County treasurer and chairman of the Erie County Republican Party, was one of three Republicans seeking the nomination after state Rep. D.J. Swearingen withdrew from the ballot Aug. 4.

He was also one of just six people empowered by state law to choose Swearingen’s replacement.

Under Ohio Revised Code 3513.31, a vacancy involving a legislative district spanning multiple counties is filled by a district committee consisting of the chairperson and secretary of each county party organization within the district. House District 89 includes Erie and Ottawa counties and part of Huron County, giving the committee six members.

The committee met Aug. 10 and selected Stidham by a 4-2 vote.

As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, Stidham left the room while competing candidates made their presentations but returned for the committee’s deliberations and participated in the vote.

Ottawa County Republican Party Secretary Toni DeLuca, one of the six committee members, publicly criticized the process afterward.

“The Chair of Erie County, Caleb Stidham, was asked to leave when other candidates spoke,” DeLuca wrote. “However, he joined the committee for deliberations. I found it odd that a candidate for a position was given the right to deliberate on other candidates.”

DeLuca described it as “a flawed process that allows a candidate to vote for himself on a committee of 6 people.”

Meeting was closed to the public

The Aug. 10 selection meeting was not open to the public.

MaryAnn Groot, a Democratic member of the Erie County Board of Elections, said in an affidavit submitted during the subsequent certification dispute that she went to the building where the selection was taking place and told Republican elections board members there that she believed the meeting was required to be public.

Groot said she was told it was a closed meeting and was directed to wait elsewhere.

When the nomination later came before the Erie County Board of Elections for certification, Democratic members Edward J. Leonard and Groot voted against putting Stidham on the ballot. Republicans John C. Adams and Gary L. Smith voted to certify him.

Leonard argued that the committee was not merely conducting internal Republican Party business because Ohio law had given it the power to determine who would replace a candidate previously nominated by voters and whose name would appear on the general election ballot.

“After reviewing the circumstances of the Republican District Committee meeting at which Caleb Stidham was selected, I have concluded that the meeting was not conducted in accordance with Ohio law,” Leonard wrote in a statement before the Aug. 14 vote.

He argued the meeting should have been public and that Stidham should not have participated in the deliberations or vote involving his own candidacy.

The 2-2 split sent the dispute to LaRose under state law.

LaRose certified Stidham

LaRose broke the tie Aug. 20 in Stidham’s favor, clearing the way for him to appear on the November ballot.

LaRose rejected the argument that the closed meeting prevented Stidham from being certified.

“Respectfully, this certification vote is not the proper forum for an extra-judicial expansion of Ohio’s open meetings laws beyond their established statutory application,” LaRose wrote in his decision.

Stidham has also rejected accusations that his participation presented a conflict of interest.

“There seems to be some confusion; there is no conflict of interest because I did not lead or chair the meeting that selected me as the candidate,” Stidham told NBC4 in August.

Huron County Republican Chairman Sven Stahl chaired the selection meeting because Stidham was a candidate. Stidham nevertheless participated in the committee’s deliberations and vote.

Ohio’s vacancy statute does not expressly require a committee member who is seeking the nomination to abstain, and it does not expressly state that the committee’s meeting must be open to the public. Whether other provisions of Ohio law required an open meeting is now part of the dispute before the Supreme Court.

Lawsuit asks court to block certification

Koebel’s lawsuit argues that the Republican district committee was exercising authority created by state law that directly determined whose name would appear on an election ballot and therefore could not carry out that function through closed deliberations.

The petition further argues that election officials should not certify a replacement nominee when there is evidence that the process used to make the selection failed to comply with Ohio law.

“This case is not about who the Republican Party should have selected as its nominee. It is about whether the process required by Ohio law was followed,” attorney Gina R. Grandillo, who represents Koebel, said in a statement.

“When a political committee is exercising statutory authority that determines whose name will appear on the ballot, the public has a legitimate interest in ensuring that process is lawful and transparent,” Grandillo said. “We are asking the Supreme Court to review what occurred and determine whether this certification can legally stand.”

Christopher E. Liebold, who is representing Koebel with Grandillo, said the approaching election makes a quick decision necessary.

“Ohio’s election laws establish a process for filling a vacancy on the ballot, and those requirements matter,” Liebold said. “Voters deserve confidence that candidates are placed on the ballot through a process that complies with the law.”

The lawsuit asks the Supreme Court to order LaRose to deny Stidham’s certification and direct the Erie County Board of Elections not to place him on the ballot.

Alternatively, Koebel asks the court to return the matter to the elections board with instructions to investigate whether the replacement selection complied with Ohio law.

Supreme Court accelerates case

The Supreme Court’s Sept. 14 order makes clear that the dispute will move quickly.

The court ordered the Erie County Board of Elections and LaRose to answer by 4 p.m. Thursday and directed all remaining filings to proceed under the court’s expedited election-case rules.

It also prohibited either side from requesting additional time, directing the clerk not to accept requests or agreements seeking extensions.

The court has not ruled on Koebel’s claims or determined that the Republican committee’s selection of Stidham violated Ohio law.

Stidham is currently the Republican nominee against Democrat Easton Retzke in the Nov. 3 election. Former Republican state Rep. Steve Kraus is also running as a write-in candidate.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

When the purple lights turn on, the robots have taken the big rig’s wheel. 

Over flat highways and rolling rural hills, a small fleet of passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers have been learning to drive on Ohio’s roads for years now. But for the first time this summer – though on semi-private roads – some don’t have human drivers present. 

These first deployments of autonomous trucks and cars, backed by artificial intelligence and a suite of lidar (similar to radar, but using light instead of radio waves) and camera technology, are limited in scope. The trucks are festooned with purple lights, which the truck’s operators say will send a clear signal of an autonomous driving mode to law enforcement without advertising their status to anyone looking to stress test it. 

Ohioans are unlikely to see them in the wild just yet. But they could be early indications of a significant shift away from human beings controlling our cars. 

The state currently only allows fully self-driving cars on the road for testing and research. In most self-driving deployments in Ohio, a human sits behind the wheel ready to take over, especially in more complicated driving environments such as construction zones or during bad weather.  

A full rollout of self-driving cars and trucks would require a change in state law. But at least one company trying to build out a self-driving workforce says its products are ready and they’re only waiting on the law and the public to catch up. 

Driverless truck technology ‘ready,’ says one Ohio company

Autonomous vehicle testing is led by DriveOhio, an office in the Ohio Department of Transportation. Gov. John Kasich created the office via executive order in 2018, and it has carried on since. 

Farthest along in the local automation race is Ease Logistics, a Dublin, Ohio, company that’s mostly an old fashioned freight brokerage that’s dabbling in autonomous trucking. Over the past few years, the company has tested “platooning” mode in its trucks, with the underlying technology coming from Kratos Defense of California. The term refers to one platooned vehicle following another and mimicing its behavior while analyzing its own camera and lidar feeds to maneuver. 

In 2022, a fleet of both trucks and cars spanned thousands of miles of rural and windy roads in Vinton and Athens counties with both automated and platooning technologies. A state report of company data noted more success with the trucks than cars, which required more frequent driver engagements and struggled to predict other drivers’ behavior. 

More recently, Ease trucks accrued 3,000 miles in platooning mode with a human backup driver present, according to data submitted to DriveOhio this summer, not counting the human-engaged miles on the interstate. 

While there were a handful of what are known as “excessive braking events” – the company and DriveOhio haven’t yet analyzed all the data – there were no crashes in platooning mode on I-70, and Chief Administrative Officer Abbi Fallia is bullish on the future. 

“The Kratos technology could be ready. It is ready. It could be automated,” she said in an interview. “We could automate that and take the second driver out of the cab. So we’re there. It’s more of a regulation thing than a capability thing.”

And at the company’s warehouses in Marysville, the trucks drive themselves, by themselves – with tech from Einride, a Swedish company. 

Rather than tractor-trailers, Ease’s fully self-driving vehicles look more like shoeboxes than trucks. At modest speeds of 15 mph, the all-electric haulers shuttle a short loop on quasi-private roads within a corporate park. But they carry real cargo. And Falli is eager to expand its testing onto a nearby 45 mph roadway, or even U.S. 33. 

Truckers have fought autonomous driving in other states

The self-driving truck industry is most developed in mild weather states in the Southwest. But Ease is hoping its technology can learn the nuances of driving in variable midwestern weather like hail or heavy rain. 

Company data indicates the platooning mode is making its trucks more fuel efficient. Down the line, Fallia thinks the trucks could produce “efficiencies” for truckers. For instance, two drivers could tag-team a route hauling two trucks, one leading and the other napping or doing administrative work while platoon mode handles the driving.

There’s also a reasonable risk of eliminating at least some trucking jobs. Self-driving technology doesn’t need sleep, meals or pay and will happily drive at night when the roads are less crowded. 

The Teamsters union, which represents truck drivers, last month sued to block a California law allowing self-driving trucks on roadways. The union has fought permissive laws in other states. 

“Self-driving trucks are an existential threat to the livelihoods of Teamsters members in California who deliver food and other essentials and are a crucial economic engine for the state,” the union said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 

Hurdles remain, according to Breanna Badanes, a spokeswoman for DriveOhio in an interview. Some systems struggled with work zones, which aren’t always marked in a standardized way with signage positioned for cameras to read. And spotty cell or satellite signals can cause platooning to disengage. 

“We’re still a ways off from being able to remove that second driver from the driver’s seat,” she said. “The technology is getting there, but it’s not there yet.”

Other companies are testing in Ohio as well. Kodiak AI, a California company, says it’s planning its “driverless launch” in Texas by the end of the year. And this spring, the company put on a demonstration for DriveOhio with Level 4 autonomy, meaning no driver present. 

Scenarios demonstrated included navigating construction zones, merging onto highways, passing slower vehicles, yielding to disabled vehicles, and responding to unexpected pedestrian crossings.

“We do envision our driverless technology scaling broadly in the years ahead,” said Kodiak spokesman Pete Bigelow. “We believe it will bring improved safety to roads across the United States and keep freight moving reliably and efficiently.”

There are no autonomous passenger vehicles currently on the road, but Waymo, which has robotaxis on the streets in several Southwestern states, recently told Cincinnati news outlets that it has begun high definition mapping of some of the roadways there. 

Are driverless vehicles safe?

No crashes have been reported in any DriveOhio deployments, according to Badanes. 

A final report on Ease’s Southeast Ohio deployments notes six “excess braking” events. And Fallia estimated a similar amount for the I-70 deployment. 

Companies are hoping computers will mitigate human errors in driving like distraction or dozing off.

It’s unclear for now whether the automated trucks are any safer than the human-driven ones, according to David Kidd, a Vice President for Vehicle Research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit funded by insurers that evaluates vehicle and roadway policy.

Preliminary research is starting to show that robo-taxis are crashing less than human drivers in the same area, he said. For instance, using self-reported data from Waymo of its self-driving, IIHS analysis found they crashed at a 68% lower rate. 

That said, it’s too soon to tell with trucks. And just because autonomous cars are safer doesn’t mean trucks are. Truck drivers’ working hours are limited and must undergo higher training requirements than regular drivers. And large trucks can do far more damage than much lighter cars at the same speeds. 

Kidd pointed out there’s an important check in the system. Widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles requires both political and public support. The industry, he said, will need to prove itself to succeed. 

“It may feel like the wild, wild west when it comes to regulation, the types of information these companies have to report, or the extent to which they have to prove themselves,” he said. “But you have to remember that these companies, if they don’t earn the trust of the public or demonstrate safe driving behavior or a safety-first attitude, then they’re not going to survive.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trevor Martin is hearing one thing come up again and again as he talks with students across Ohio’s college campuses ahead of November’s election. 

It has to do with a long-established and well-managed part of Ohio’s elections: voting by mail. 

“A big question this year is about mail-in voting and absentees, more than past years,” said Martin, program coordinator with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Ohio. “There’s a lot of confusion.”

He said that could be due to a flurry of related news. At the federal level, the Trump administration is trying to assert some control over voting, though the U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected its plans to put restrictions on mail-in voting through the U.S. Postal Service.

And, among other state-level changes, Martin said, some students are questioning the validity of absentee ballot request forms they received in the mail (the documents, sent by state election officials during presidential and midterm election years, are legit).

But, before students can mail in a ballot or vote by any other method, they must first register to vote – and the clock is ticking to get that done. 

Here are a few things college students should know ahead of Ohio’s Oct. 5 voter registration deadline.  

Can college students register to vote using a campus address?

Yes. The Ohio Secretary of State’s office explicitly says college students can use their campus address when registering to vote – with a few caveats. 

First, make sure that location falls within the state’s definition of a permanent residence. State law says this is a “permanent, fixed home,” or the place a resident plans to return to after being away. This address determines the races and issues a voter will ultimately vote on.    

If a campus home fits that bill, students can list it on their registration form (more information on these forms is below). Addresses must be linked to a physical place, not a P.O. box or mailbox somewhere on campus. 

Students – along with all voters – must meet all of the state’s eligibility requirements, too. 

Ohio’s voting requirements, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office:

• You are a U.S. citizen.

• You have been an Ohio resident for at least 30 days immediately before the election.

• You are 18 years old on or before the next general election.

• If you are 17, you may vote in a primary election if you will be 18 by the general election, but you cannot vote on issues or party central committees.

• You are not currently incarcerated for a felony conviction under state or federal law.

• You have not been permanently disqualified from voting for election-law violations.

• You have not been declared incompetent to vote by a probate court.

Once approved, your new campus address becomes your official voting residence. It replaces any previous locations. This means you can’t vote from anywhere else. 

I attend an in-state school but still want to vote on my hometown’s issues and races. How do I do that?

Confirm your hometown address still fits the definition of a “permanent home,” and then use that address to complete your registration forms. 

What if I move out of state for college but still want to vote in Ohio’s elections?

That’s an option as long as your Ohio address remains your permanent address. If that’s true, list that location on your registration forms. 

Keep in mind that if you later register to vote in a different state, that place then becomes your new voting residence. You would then lose your right to vote in Ohio. 

If that happens, election officials recommend canceling your Ohio voter registration by contacting the local elections board in the county where you originally registered.  

I’m an out-of-state student attending college in Ohio. Can I vote here?

Yes, provided you meet general eligibility requirements and your campus address in Ohio is your permanent residence. Becoming an Ohio voter means you can’t vote in elections in any other state. 

If you plan to eventually vote in-person, you’ll need to show current photo identification such as a U.S. passport, military ID or Ohio-issued identification card (such as a driver’s license). 

Ohio no longer allows voters to use a utility bill or bank statement with a current Ohio address as a form of ID. Critics said that could add another hurdle to getting more college students to vote. 

I’ve confirmed my address. How do I actually submit my registration?

You can fill out and submit your registration online here if you have an Ohio driver’s license or other Ohio-issued identification card. You’ll have to share that information, along with the last four digits of your Social Security number. 

If you don’t have one of those Ohio ID cards, you can print a hard copy of the form and mail it to your local county board of elections. You will have to submit the last four digits of your Social Security number. Make sure the documents will be postmarked or received by the Oct. 5 deadline. 

Once the documents are approved, voters will receive a notice from their county board of elections. 

I moved. How do I update my Ohio voter registration?

Voters have until the Oct. 5 deadline to make any changes. Use the same forms provided above and submit them by the deadline. 

OK, I registered! How do I actually vote in Ohio’s elections?

Show up in-person on Election Day at your designated polling location. Find that information online here.

You can also vote early at your county board of elections. That window opens about a month before Election Day. Specific times vary, so check to make sure your local board is open before making a trip. Contact information and locations of all 88 boards in Ohio is online here. 

Both of those in-person options require some form of valid photo IDs, such as a U.S. passport, military ID or Ohio-issued identification card (such as a driver’s license). 

Voters can also request an absentee ballot to vote by mail. Photo IDs are not required to submit this form, but you will need to provide the last four digits of your Social Security number. 

This year, mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted. Ohio lawmakers got rid of a four-day grace period in December of 2025.

I need registration help. Where can I go on campus?

Many colleges promote voter registration assistance as one of the many nonpartisan election resources offered as an election approaches. 

A good starting point is to do an online search for a college’s name coupled with terms such as  “civic engagement” or “votes.” That should lead to a school’s website, where most  share information such as answers to frequently asked voting questions or calendars of upcoming election-related events. 

At Ohio State University, trained students are popping up on campus on a near-daily basis to help their peers complete the registration process and provide additional information. 

Cuyahoga Community College is hosting student-led events across its four Northeast Ohio campuses this month that aim to help explain how the voting process works. 

And Martin and his group are visiting more than 40 campuses across the state to help students register before the Oct. 5 deadline.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Meanwhile, an aid organization, the International Rescue Committee, reports that attacks are spreading in Haiti. 

Gangs already rule most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. And they’re expanding their influence into the rest of the country using murder, kidnapping and sexual violence — including against children — to do so.

Now the violence has devastated Kenscoff, a farming community about 12 miles south of Port-au-Prince, the International Rescue Committee said last week. 

Recent violence there caused 50 kidnappings and at least 47 deaths, the aid group reported.

It “reflects an escalating, deadly pattern for civilians as gangs continue to expand their territory outside of the capital and destabilize surrounding areas, the International Rescue Committee is warning,” the group said in a written statement. “The IRC is working with our local partner Organisation Féministe Marijàn to scale up critical protection services and cash assistance for communities affected by the latest violence.”

The violence and displacement come in a country where more than half the people can’t get enough to eat, Allie Pasieka, the International Rescue Committee’s Deputy Director of Programs in Haiti, told the Capital Journal last month.

And the additional violence makes it even more difficult to address such problems.

As it occurs, Haitians in Springfield and elsewhere have begun to be deported after losing temporary protected status on July 27.

“There have been at least three deportation flights of Haitian nationals who had TPS so far,” International Rescue Committee spokesperson Sylvan Foley said in an email. “From what our team has seen, they’re arriving in Cap-Haïtien in the north of the country, which is a relatively stable area compared to Port-Au-Prince, so we don’t have programs there. However, we’re closely monitoring as many of the people who fled were originally from (Port-au-Prince) and other highly insecure areas so we are waiting to see if they try to go back to reconnect with family or a sense of home.”

Haitians in Ohio and elsewhere received protected status after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and conditions in their home country have only deteriorated since.

The incoming Trump administration canceled most aid to Haiti in January 2025.

Then it terminated Haitians’ protected status without making a determination that it’s safe for people to return. The law creating protected status requires such a determination, but the U.S. Supreme Court in June said in a split decision that the courts can’t review such actions.

Since August, former holders of protected status have been called in by immigration officials and fitted with electronic ankle monitors — sometimes with tragic results.

Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Wright State University student, walked in front of a tractor trailer on Interstate 70 on Aug. 31. His family said he had been harassed by other students about his ankle monitor.

In addition to the humiliation of wearing such a device, the prospect of going back to a place as dangerous and dysfunctional as Haiti is causing terror, immigrant advocates say. 

The recent events in Kenscoff only add to such fears.

“People in Kenscoff are facing a cycle of unimaginable violence — something all too common for many communities in Haiti,” Mwiti Mungania, the Internal Rescue Committee’s Country Director for Haiti, said in a written statement. “The toll of losing your home, loved ones, your sense of safety, over and over again is hard to overstate. This compounding burden of repeated displacement not only makes it harder for humanitarian workers to reach those in need, it creates an atmosphere of fear that remains long after the attack ends. Every day our staff and partners hear reports of kidnapping, forced recruitment and sexual violence. This is why our protection interventions are essential, supporting people on the path back to psychological safety and stability.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In contrast to most of the state’s solar permitting cases, no parties in the case opposed the project, proposed by developer Recurrent Energy, at the Ohio Power Siting Board — largely because it will be built on reclaimed coal mine land.

“Developing a solar project on reclaimed land is an excellent opportunity to harvest another one of the area’s abundant resources to power Ohio while providing supplemental tax revenue to support a legacy energy community,” said Ali Trunzo, a senior development manager for Recurrent Energy.

Like much of the rest of Appalachian Ohio, Vinton County has a history of hosting extractive industries — particularly coal, iron, and clay — whose production has plummeted over the last century. Although its economy has grown over the past 20 years, roughly 19% of the county’s residents live in poverty.

The county’s board of commissioners did not block the project, which they could have done under a 2021 law that erected extra hurdles for solar and wind power, but not fossil fuel generation.

Opponents of other solar farms in Ohio have frequently raised concerns about projects taking farmland out of use, although solar occupies less land than golf courses in the state and can coexist with some farming practices.

Projects on former mine lands and industrial brownfields, like Recurrent’s, tend to draw less opposition, although they have their trade-offs. Namely, they can be more expensive to develop than greenfields because of conditions at the location and the need to accommodate remediation, according to RMI, a clean energy think tank.

Trunzo declined to provide cost information about Recurrent’s Hamden Energy project, although she noted that specialized methods and equipment may need to be used to adapt to the site’s soils and terrain.

The roughly 25 people who commented in the case docket or spoke at a June 10 local hearing voiced mixed opinions. The most common concern was whether ongoing reclamation would be finished before construction started on the solar and battery project.

That remediation work is the responsibility of Cheyenne Resources, which holds the surface mining permit for the property, confirmed Andy Chow, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Recurrent Energy has agreed to begin construction only after reclamation is done.

The Recurrent project is not the first coal-to-solar farm greenlit by the state. Regulators approved the Vinton Solar Energy Center in 2018, and the project remains under construction by developer Invenergy. Other states are siting solar at former mine lands as well.

More projects will likely follow in Ohio because of recent policy changes.

Under a 2025 law, House Bill 15, former mine lands and industrial brownfields are eligible for treatment as priority investment areas. Ohio has more than 70,000 acres that might fit that definition, RMI data shows. Rules from the Ohio Department of Development for designating such places took effect two months ago. Agency spokesperson Brian Bohnert told Canary Media the state has started to identify its first areas under the program. One of the two sites designated through late August includes both former coal mine land and an industrial site.

“The reuse of former mining land for new energy production is a win-win for Ohio consumers and the environment,” said Rebecca Mellino, associate director of climate and energy policy for The Nature Conservancy.

The Nature Conservancy’s view, Mellino said, is that HB 15 not only creates priority areas but also lets counties host solar on former mine sites and brownfields despite exclusions that might otherwise apply under Senate Bill 52, the 2021 enactment that added hurdles for renewable energy developments.

In many cases, solar energy is cheaper and can come online quicker than natural gas generation. Yet as projections call for the state’s electricity demand to grow, clean energy developers continue to face bans or project vetoes under SB 52. Beyond the statute’s terms, state regulators have often blocked projects on the basis of unanimous local government opposition, regardless of whether opponents’ arguments were based on opinion or grounded in fact.

A bill passed by the Ohio Senate this spring could make it even harder, if not impossible, for many solar and wind projects to get built. SB 294 is now in the Ohio House of Representatives.

“Projects like Hamden Energy are vital to bringing sustainable, affordable, and dependable energy online,” said Chris Tavenor, general counsel for the Ohio Environmental Council, which was a party in the case.

But, Tavenor cautioned, ​“without reform to the energy siting process, energy costs will remain high, and we will continue to see energy prices rise along with demand. We acknowledge this win, while also recognizing that we have much more work ahead.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Five companion bills took effect between December 2025 and March 2026, adjusting how fast valuations can grow, how the twenty-mill floor gets calculated, and who qualifies for a homestead exemption. Lawmakers called it historic.

A separate citizen campaign is pushing to put outright abolition of property taxes on the ballot this year. Both efforts are responding to the same anger, and neither one asks where a meaningful share of the money has been going for years.

That anger has a much older root than either effort acknowledges. Ohio has been running an unconstitutional school funding system for twenty-nine years, and it has trained its citizens to be angry at the wrong thing.

Start with the ruling nobody talks about.

In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court found the state’s school funding system unconstitutional. It said so again in 2000. Again in 2001. Again in 2002.

Four times, the state’s highest court told the legislature that leaning on local property taxes to fund a supposedly public, supposedly universal system was against the state’s own constitution.

Four times, the legislature did nothing. By 2003 the court gave up enforcing its own decision, which is a genteel way of saying the state got away with it.

Imagine any other actor in Ohio life ignoring the Supreme Court four times running. A company. A union. A private citizen. There would be contempt findings, seized assets, people in handcuffs.

Instead, the state simply continued operating the system the court had condemned, and nearly thirty years later, Ohioans are furious about their property tax bills without fully knowing why, or who built them this way on purpose.

That is not an accident of complexity. It is the product of it.

Who paid, and who got paid

Here is where the anger actually belongs, and it is not aimed at homeowners writing checks to fund the school down the street.

Ohio hands out Tax Increment Financing deals and Enterprise Zone and Community Reinvestment Area abatements the way a casino hands out chips.

A TIF freezes a property’s taxable value at its pre-development level, in some cases for thirty years, so that when the property’s value rises, the new revenue funds the development itself instead of the schools, libraries, and parks that would otherwise receive it.

An abatement simply tells a company: build here, and we will not tax you on it, sometimes for a decade or more.

Both are legal and common, and both are functionally the same maneuver: let growth happen inside a school district’s boundaries while making sure the district’s schools see as little benefit from that growth as possible.

Somebody has to make up the difference, and it is not the corporation that got the abatement. It is the family down the street, voting yes on the next operating levy because the last one already expired.

Teachers absorbed it in crowded classrooms and cut programs. Communities absorbed it in school buildings closing with a dumpster parked out front. The companies did not.

That is not conspiracy. It is public record, and the trail is specific: county auditors publish annual reports listing TIF and CRA abated value district by district, the Ohio Department of Taxation’s biennial Tax Expenditure Report totals abatement activity statewide, and some school district five-year forecasts list foregone abatement revenue as a line item.

Almost nobody reads any of it, not because it is hidden, but because almost nobody is told to look.

Multiply that pattern across eighty-eight counties and thirty years, and the number gets very large, very fast.

Nobody has added it up statewide, or weighed it against the opportunity cost, what a properly funded public education system might have meant for Ohio’s children, families, and economy. That accounting is worth someone doing.

The backlash is aimed at the wrong villain

A grassroots movement is gathering to abolish property taxes outright, and the anger fueling it is not irrational. People sense, correctly, that the system is not fair.

What they have not been told is why it is not fair, or that the unfairness runs in a specific, traceable direction: toward whoever can afford a lobbyist and away from whoever cannot.

Abolishing property taxes without a replacement mechanism would not touch the TIFs or the abatements. Those survive because they are development tools, not levy revenue.

What abolition would touch is everything currently funded by the same property tax base that levies fund: libraries, parks, fire departments, and what remains of public schools after thirty years of underfunding.

This would not be unprecedented. Ohio already narrowed its options once: in 2025, the legislature eliminated emergency and substitute levies, two of the few tools that let districts raise money outside House Bill 920’s limits.

When Ohio decides its property tax system needs fixing, its instinct so far has been to remove options, not add fairer ones.

Burn down the field to kill one patch of weeds, and the crop goes with it.

The people who built the abatement deals do not just avoid the loss. They gain: the tax relief goes straight to their bottom line.

The rest of Ohio does not just lose what little is left. It pays for the loss twice, once in reduced services, and again in the higher levy asked to cover what the abatement never contributed in the first place.

What Ohio taught its citizens, and what it did not

There is a particular cruelty in cutting education funding for thirty years, then acting surprised that its citizens cannot trace their own tax bill back to its source.

An educated public asks harder questions; an underfunded one has fewer tools to ask them. That is not a side effect. In a system this convenient for the people writing the rules, it starts to look like the design.

The committee that spent 2025 rewriting Ohio’s property tax rules was tasked, by its own mandate, with reviewing every aspect of the system.

TIFs and abatements are an aspect. They came out the other end of that process exactly as they went in, governed by nothing stronger than the same threshold-and-negotiate model already on the books before the rewrite began.

Maybe that is an oversight. Thirty years into a funding structure the state’s own court called unconstitutional, oversight and design get harder to tell apart.

This is not a partisan complaint, though it will be filed as one by whoever prefers things as they are.

A taxpayer who thinks government spends too freely and a taxpayer who thinks government should do more for its citizens can agree on this much: money collected for a common purpose should fund that purpose, not disappear into a development deal negotiated behind closed doors.

Corporate welfare is not a phrase the political left invented. Some of its sharpest critics call themselves conservative, and they are right to ask why a company gets thirty years of tax relief while a family down the street gets a levy renewal notice.

House Bill 920 was sold as protection for homeowners against unvoted tax increases, and on that narrow promise it delivers.

What it also does, paired with TIFs and abatements, is lock public revenue out on both ends at once. Voted levies cannot grow with inflation. Development cannot grow the tax base.

A school district in Ohio is one of the few institutions structurally forbidden from benefiting when the value of what surrounds it goes up, whether that increase comes from the housing market or from the warehouse a mile down the road.

There is already a fix sitting inside Ohio law, and almost nobody uses it. School boards can negotiate compensation agreements as a condition of approving a TIF or abatement, so the district is held harmless even while the company pays reduced or no property tax.

Some do. Most do not, either because nobody thought to ask or nobody wanted to look unfriendly to the deal. That is not inevitable. It is a negotiating failure taxpayers can demand their own school boards answer for directly.

That negotiating right, though, only exists above a threshold. Ohio law requires school board approval, and opens the door to a compensation agreement, only when an exemption runs longer than ten years or exceeds 75% of the improvement’s value. Below that line, no vote, nothing to negotiate.

A developer’s counsel who knows the statute can structure a deal to stay just under it.

The fix that matters most is not asking school boards to negotiate harder. It is closing the threshold that lets deals skip it entirely.

Ohio already has a version of an automatic fix, and it shows how easily “automatic” can be engineered around.

For large TIF projects in municipalities with their own income tax, state law requires the municipality to negotiate revenue sharing with the school board once new annual payroll hits one million dollars, and if no agreement is reached within six months, the municipality must split the new income tax revenue with the district automatically.

On paper, that is the protection schools need. In practice, it is a bright line in a public statute, and a well-lawyered development deal can be built around it: structure the payroll projections to land just under a million, phase the hiring, split the project into pieces.

The fix that works cannot be a number a good attorney can engineer beneath. It has to apply regardless of size.

The state was told four times that its funding system was unconstitutional. It kept going anyway. In 2025 it rewrote nearly everything except the one problem the courts named.

That gap doesn’t stay contained to schools: libraries, parks, and fire departments sit on the same ground now, ground that was never repaired, and it behaves like quicksand the moment anyone leans on it hard.

Meanwhile the state keeps pointing at the curtain: look at the mill floor, look at the homestead exemption, look at the school down the street. Pay no attention to what the county auditors have been filing in public the whole time.

The trail runs from 1997 to the county auditor’s report filed last year, and following it isn’t a partisan act.

The homeowner pays every year. The corporations granted the abatements do not.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sherrod Brown got none of it.

A review of Federal Election Commission records for Husted’s campaign found $538,800 in individual contributions earmarked for Husted through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee between November 2025 and June 2026.

AIPAC PAC separately contributed $5,000 directly to Husted for Senate on April 22, according to a federal lobbying disclosure filed by AIPAC.

That puts at least $543,800 in AIPAC-connected campaign money behind Husted through June — and AIPAC was still raising money for him in September.

Federal records reviewed for Brown’s campaign committees show no contributions from AIPAC PAC and no individual donations earmarked to Brown through AIPAC.

More than half a million dollars routed to Husted

The vast majority of the AIPAC-connected money flowing to Husted did not come directly from the PAC’s treasury.

Instead, individual donors gave money to Husted through AIPAC, which acted as the conduit between the donors and his campaign.

The FEC defines an earmarked contribution as money a contributor directs to a specific candidate or campaign through an intermediary or conduit. Candidate committees are required to identify both the original donor and the conduit in their federal filings.

Between November 2025 and June 2026, a review of those filings identified $538,800 earmarked for Husted through AIPAC.

That is money AIPAC helped bring into Husted’s campaign even though the individual donors — rather than AIPAC PAC itself — legally made the contributions.

AIPAC’s own PAC also opened its checkbook for Husted.

On April 22, AIPAC PAC reported giving Husted for Senate $5,000. The contribution appears in AIPAC’s federal lobbying disclosure, which identifies Husted’s campaign by name and lists the contribution as a federal election contribution.

AIPAC PAC has become one of the country’s largest federal political fundraising operations since registering with the FEC in December 2021. It reported more than $50 million in receipts and nearly $45.9 million in contributions to other political committees from the beginning of 2025 through July 31, 2026.

AIPAC was still raising money for Husted in September

The flow of money to Husted did not stop with the campaign’s June 30 reporting period.

As of Sept. 4, AIPAC was featuring Husted on its fundraising platform and soliciting additional contributions for his Senate campaign.

The fundraising page offered donors preset contribution amounts ranging as high as $3,500 for Husted.

That means AIPAC was still using its fundraising network to generate money for Husted less than two months before the November election.

Husted’s campaign reported $14.35 million in total receipts through June 30, including $8.65 million in contributions and more than $6.27 million from individual donors.

The hundreds of thousands routed through AIPAC represent only part of Husted’s overall fundraising, but the filings show an extensive financial operation working on his behalf: AIPAC’s PAC gave directly, its donor network sent hundreds of thousands more, and the organization continued asking supporters to give to Husted into September.

Brown’s campaign records show no AIPAC money

The federal campaign-finance record for Brown tells a different story.

A review of Brown’s campaign committees found no contributions from AIPAC PAC and no individual contributions earmarked to Brown through AIPAC.

AIPAC PAC did not exist for most of Brown’s political career. The organization registered its federal PAC in December 2021.

But since AIPAC established that PAC, federal records reviewed for Brown show no AIPAC PAC check to his campaigns and no AIPAC conduit fundraising on his behalf.

That includes Brown’s expensive 2024 reelection campaign, when Friends of Sherrod Brown reported more than $96.5 million in receipts.

Brown launched another Senate campaign in 2025. His current committee, Friends of Sherrod Brown, reported more than $38.5 million in receipts through June 30. The review likewise found no AIPAC PAC contribution or AIPAC-routed contributions to that committee.

Claims that Brown has been taking campaign money from AIPAC are not supported by the federal records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net.

The records do show AIPAC putting its fundraising operation behind Husted.

More than $538,000 routed through its donor network. A direct PAC contribution on top of that. And, as the campaign entered its final stretch, AIPAC was still asking its supporters to send Husted more.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The ruling does not find that Ickes is qualified to return to the bench.

Justice Jennifer Brunner, concurring in the decision, said Ohio law leaves the court unable to provide relief to voters who “will be presented with a ballot that contains the name of a judicial candidate who is ineligible to hold the office for which he seeks election.”

As TiffinOhio.net reported Aug. 19, the Ohio Supreme Court suspended Ickes from practicing law for two years and immediately suspended him from judicial office without pay after finding he committed multiple judicial-conduct violations.

The court said Ickes had “pervasively used vulgar language with colleagues, fostered an inappropriate and unprofessional workplace environment, and adjudicated criminal cases despite the appearance of impropriety.”

The suspension came after a disciplinary case that included Ickes presiding over criminal cases involving his stepson, a law-enforcement officer, and conduct inside the courthouse that ultimately prompted the Supreme Court to impose a substantially harsher punishment than its Board of Professional Conduct had recommended.

Ickes was already seeking another six-year term.

Independent judicial candidate Kimberly Ontko challenged his candidacy the next day, asking the Sandusky County Board of Elections to remove him from the general-election ballot.

The board rejected the protest as untimely. Ontko then took the fight directly to the Ohio Supreme Court, a case TiffinOhio.net reported on Aug. 27, seeking orders preventing the board from placing Ickes on the ballot or requiring it to grant her protest.

In a decision issued Sept. 14, the Supreme Court denied both requests.

Ickes filed for reelection in January and was certified as the Republican candidate before winning the May primary unopposed. State law required a formal protest against that candidacy to be filed before the primary — specifically by 4 p.m. Feb. 20.

Ontko could not have challenged Ickes on the basis of his suspension by that deadline because the Supreme Court did not suspend him until nearly six months later.

But the statutory deadline still controls.

“The General Assembly remains free to rewrite the statute to allow protests” that are blocked under existing precedent, the court wrote.

The justices also rejected an argument that the Sandusky County Board of Elections could remove Ickes on its own after his suspension.

Ohio law gives a board of elections authority to independently invalidate a candidacy that violates legal requirements, but that authority is subject to a statutory deadline. The Supreme Court concluded that, in Ickes’ case, the board’s authority to invalidate his candidacy under that provision expired March 6 — 60 days before the May primary.

That means Ickes’ August suspension occurred months after both avenues identified by the court for challenging his candidacy had already closed.

“The board of elections could not have granted her protest,” the court concluded, and it could not have independently invalidated Ickes’ candidacy after the statutory deadline.

Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Joseph T. Deters, Daniel R. Hawkins and Megan E. Shanahan joined the unsigned opinion. Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy and Justice Patrick Fischer concurred in the judgment only.

Brunner separately highlighted what the ruling means for Sandusky County voters: Ohio law currently provides no way for the Supreme Court to prevent an ineligible judicial candidate from appearing on the ballot under circumstances like these.

Ickes’ two-year law-license suspension is scheduled to extend well beyond the Jan. 1, 2027 start of the judicial term he is seeking.

The November election therefore moves forward with Ontko and Ickes on the ballot even after the state’s highest court suspended Ickes from judicial office and stripped him of his ability to practice law for two years.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

He already had two official jobs with the state that paid $176,000. 

Why, critics asked, did he need another? And, because the executive branch he was part of regulates such banks, did he have a potential conflict of interest?

Husted said he would recuse himself from any conflicts. He also told the Capital Journal that the gig wouldn’t pay much, about $20,000 a year.

He explained that it was a learning opportunity; a chance to see from the inside how a regional bank helps Ohio communities by doing things like lending to farmers and small businesses.

What he didn’t say was that the bank would become a source of political money for him.

Campaign disclosures show that Heartland Bank gave $492,000 to Husted’s political committee, Jon Husted for Ohio, after he joined its board of directors. The contributions continued after Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted in 2025 to the U.S. Senate and at least until June 30, when Heartland gave the committee $15,000, records from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office show.

Husted’s financial disclosures also show that, as of last year, he and his wife had at least $250,000 on deposit in the bank and at least $16,000 invested in its successor company’s stock.

Husted’s office didn’t respond to questions for this story.

But Paul Nick, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, said it isn’t a violation of state ethics law for an official like Husted to receive such campaign contributions.

“There is an exception in the conflict of interest law that is relevant to your question,” Nick said in an email.  “R.C. 102.03(G) states that campaign contributions are not a thing of value for purposes of the Ethics Laws, unless there is evidence that it was a bribe, other criminal offense, or made with purpose to commit a fraud.”

Catherine Turcer of voting rights advocacy group Common Cause Ohio said it’s naive to think businesses aren’t buying access when they make big political donations.

“We act like it’s Kabuki theater when it comes to campaign contributions,” she told the Capital Journal. “It’s nearly legalized bribery. People who are paying attention know that.”

Real-life experience

Husted joined the board of Heartland Bank after he had been lieutenant governor for about three years. 

In addition to being No. 2 in the DeWine administration, Husted headed up InnovateOhio, a public-private sector board tasked with making state government more efficient. DeWine created the agency shortly after becoming governor in 2019.

After Husted joined the bank’s board, he said he only expected to be paid about $20,000 a year for his efforts. But he said the experience would be invaluable to him as a public official.

“What you do at a community bank is very micro issues,” he told the Capital Journal in July 2022. “It’s loans for people’s automobiles, it’s farmers who borrow money, it’s restaurants and businesses who need capital. It’s a great opportunity for me to learn about all that, and for many years it’s something that I’ve wanted to do but just never really could prioritize it.”

He added, “I only intend on doing it for a couple of years to get the experience, to get the understanding, and that’s why I did it. I think it’s a great educational experience and I would recommend it to any policymaker.”

Husted said he would declare any potential conflicts of interest and would recuse himself when he did.

He stayed on the bank’s board until early 2025, when DeWine appointed him to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by now-Vice President JD Vance. As that happened, Heartland Bank merged with Jasper, Ind.-based German American Bank, which didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Husted personally received a $57,000 “forced payout” on restricted stock as a consequence of the merger, his 2025 Senate financial disclosure shows. The same disclosure shows that Husted and his wife had between $250,000 and $500,000 in Heartland bank as well as $16,000 to $30,000 worth of stock in what is now German American Bancorp, Heartland’s new parent company.

The DeWine administration didn’t sign off on the merger, however.

If the bank that resulted from it were chartered in Ohio it would have needed approval by the state Department of Commerce’s Division of Financial Institutions. However, a spokeswoman said, it was chartered in Indiana, so Ohio regulators didn’t need to approve it.

In addition, the Capital Journal filed a public records request for copies of any written communications regarding Heartland Bank between Husted or his staff and the Division of Financial Institutions, to see if Husted and his staff were writing to regulators about the merger or other bank business.

The Division of Financial Institutions said there were none.

Ethical questions large and small

The Capital Journal found no documentary evidence that Husted violated his pledge to avoid conflicts. But he and many others in the DeWine administration have faced a number of potential conflicts and other ethical questions over the years.

For example, as a state lawmaker, Husted protected the funding and fought against greater scrutiny of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an online charter school that gave him $36,000 in campaign donations. 

The school imploded starting in 2016 as investigations showed it had one of the highest dropout rates in the country. 

The school also couldn’t show that its tens of thousands of students were doing anything more than logging onto their computers once a day. By that time, taxpayers had sunk more than $1 billion into the scheme, which was originally drawn up on a Waffle House napkin.

In addition, Husted supported Ohio House Bill 6, a $1.3 billion FirstEnergy bailout that resulted in a federal investigation and the arrest of five prominent Ohio Republicans.

Both Husted and DeWine, who signed the bill into law, said they were unaware of the $61 million in dark-money bribes that made it possible. But several senior officials in the administration were former FirstEnergy employees and one set up one of the main dark-money groups that funded the scheme.

A federal prosecutor said the scheme was likely the biggest bribery scandal in Ohio history. Litigation over it revealed internal documents saying FirstEnergy executives secretly funneled a $1 million donation through another dark-money group to the “Husted campaign” in 2017. 

The contribution was made to an independent group, and Husted’s spokeswoman told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that his campaign wasn’t affiliated with it. She didn’t answer other questions.

Husted’s committee continued to receive Heartland Bank’s money as his administration made Josh Rubin, an Intel lobbyist, head of Ohio’s “private” economic development authority.

That was after the authority, JobsOhio, and the state had committed billions to a massive Intel chip plant that is now far behind schedule. Intel continued to pay Rubin to lobby the state since his 2023 appointment.

In addition, Husted’s wife was invested in Intel stock even though he has used his official positions to communicate with company officials and other insiders. Press accounts show Husted received information about the project that wasn’t widely known.

Turcer of Common Cause said it’s important to raise red flags when officials have potential conflicts. That keeps small scandals from growing into big ones, she said.

“What’s important about keeping government work separate from corporate work is to make sure a government official is paying attention to the needs of Ohioans,” she said of the Heartland Bank contributions to Husted’s political committee. “Is this a scandal like House Bill 6? No. But we can learn a lot about a culture of corruption in Ohio from things like this. It’s not a lot to ask that state elected officials — like the lieutenant governor — focus only on the state of Ohio and the folks who put him in office.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The deadline to file charter amendment petitions with Ohio’s city councils in time to make the Nov. 3 ballot passed Sept. 4. Registered voters in charter cities can file charter amendment petitions at any time, but if the next regular election is less than 60 days or more than 120 days away, a special election is held instead.

Nine petitions — in Conneaut, Defiance, Granville, Oregon, Pataskala, Piqua, Sunbury, Trenton, and Upper Sandusky — mirror a statewide effort to ban data centers that draw over 25 megawatts of energy per month. Organizers with Conserve Ohio are hoping the statewide petition will make the 2027 ballot after missing a signature deadline in July.

“Conserve Ohio is continuing to organize with many more communities across Ohio to enact local data center bans and to create local government structures that are by the people and for the people,” the group said in a statement Tuesday.

Piqua petition organizer Alisha Lange said she became politically engaged in 2023, when a battery plant approved by the city gave her and others living nearby long-term health issues. She pleaded with politicians who represented Piqua, including U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, with little success.

Now, she says those private meetings are a waste of time. After Meta announced plans for a data center in Piqua that would demand around 1,400 megawatts of power, she gathered enough signatures for a petition to recall Piqua’s mayor and two city commissioners, she said. Two more petitions filed Monday would change the city’s signature requirements for recalls to match state law and strike down a city agreement to power the data center.

“When we’re out getting signatures, people come up, and they all want to share something. They’re all upset,” she said. “It’s like some fellowship … Even though the data centers are driving us apart, the petitions are bringing us together.”

Ohio has the fourth-most operational data centers in the country, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center published in April, and tech giants and data center developers want to build dozens more across the state. 14 of the 18 communities with petitions filed for the November election have received formal proposals for new data center projects.

A Gallup poll in May found that over 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, and a Bowling Green State University poll found that a similar percentage of Ohioans support a data center moratorium. Opponents list a variety of grievances, like rising utility bills, negative effects on the environment, or concerns about artificial intelligence.

Different petitions tackle the issue in different ways. While gathering signatures for the 25-megawatt petition, many Piqua residents told Lange they would rather ban data centers entirely. That became another petition, and it now has enough signatures for a special election, she said.

Urbana voters will decide on a charter amendment to ban data centers that draw over 7.5 megawatts of power, and Hubbard is the only Ohio city that will vote on a full ban this November.

Pleasant Township resident Jen Belt lives within two miles of a proposed data center in Grove City. She was part of a petition drive to make any new heavy industrial project in Grove City — not just data centers — subject to a citywide vote. 

While she signed the statewide Conserve Ohio petition, Belt said Grove City organizers decided against advocating for a local data center ban because they were worried about litigation.

“If the state would just ban these hyperscale facilities in general, that would be awesome,” she said. “ … I just feel like they need to sell it to us and come here responsibly.”

Two Adams County townships located on the Ohio River will vote on zoning plans meant to preserve their “rural and agricultural character” in response to a potential data center that would use more than 20 times as much power as the county itself.

Two counties over, Wilmington residents proposed a 33-page zoning ordinance after Amazon Web Services announced plans for a $4 billion data center on land next to a local subdivision. 

Residents have filed multiple federal lawsuits over the city’s handling of the project, and four referendums on Wilmington’s November ballot would strike down zoning ordinances passed by the city.

The city’s alternative zoning ordinance is the fourth ballot measure related to data centers to go in front of the Ohio Supreme Court in the last month. 

A referendum against a proposed data center in Ashville and a 25-megawatt data center ban in Trenton will be on the general election ballot after legal battles, and a trio of Sidney petitions related to data centers will likely become a special election after the state’s highest court ruled that the city clerk illegally blocked them.

The Clinton County Board of Elections rejected Wilmington residents’ petition to put the zoning ordinance on the ballot after determining that it would create new ways for residents to sue, which would go beyond Wilmington’s municipal power.

Wilmington resident Quintin Koger Kidd, a longtime IT professional who helped write the ordinance, said the disputed clause only restates existing state and local law. If the court rules against residents in their lawsuit challenging the board of elections’ decision, Koger Kidd said he plans to circulate new petitions without the clause.

He does not support banning data centers entirely, adding that he sees it as a land use issue.

“Data centers provide a useful service, but they have impacts on our community,” he said. “How do we minimize the negative impacts on our community while accruing the benefits to our community?”

In Grove City, Belt said voters could approve a data center if the developer makes a strong enough case.

“The point is that it shouldn’t be up to seven people sitting on a board,” she said. “People are losing their trust in their governments, locally and nationally. They’re seeing large corporations attempt to bully and strongarm their county and municipal governments, and they’re just fed up with it.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

This plan appears to center on three priorities: undoing punishing Medicaid cuts passed as part of the Orwellian-named One Big Beautiful Bill, bringing back Affordable Care Act subsidies, and considering moving up the Medicare age of eligibility. For Ohioans, this isn’t an abstract debate. At issue is whether a person in their early 60s can quit a job they hate, retire when they planned to, or – and most importantly – survive being laid off without draining their savings.

Let’s review some of the carnage created by Congressional Republicans’ healthcare rampage – all carried out with President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic approval.

After Congress allowed the ACA premium tax credits to lapse at the close of 2025, Ohio’s ACA insurance marketplace sign-ups cratered. Without the stabilizing force of those credits, 161,000 fewer Ohioans were enrolled in marketplace plans in February 2026 than just a year earlier. Meanwhile, the typical Silver-tier plan skyrocketed about 20% to $625 a month for 2026, up from $497 in 2025. Those in households earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level lost access to subsidies altogether.

The demographic old enough to bear the brunt of premiums that climb with age, yet just shy of being eligible for Medicare at 65, is precisely the group who would gain the most from expanding Medicare eligibility. While the history of attempts to shore up healthcare access has been one of closing gaps and responding to changes in economic and social factors, this group has often been left behind.

Employment data adds another layer. Across the U.S., people between ages 60 and 65 are unemployed at rates similar to the general workforce (3.2% in March 2026, with a peak near 4.1 percent in January). But that number conceals a starker truth: once an older worker is out of a job, getting back to work takes them much longer than it does younger people.

By July 2026, laid-off workers between 55 and 64 were spending roughly 33 weeks unemployed on average, and those older than 65 were spending about 36 weeks out of work. Those in their late 40s and early 50s, in comparison, were unemployed an average of 20 weeks. The delta between these two groups will only widen as artificial intelligence renders entire sectors of our previous economic life obsolete.

In making healthcare access harder, Republican policymakers are actively promoting what economists call “job lock.” Many Ohioans in their early 60s stick with jobs they’d rather leave because employer-provided insurance is all that separates them from marketplace premiums they can’t afford. If they do end up out of work, they’re stuck job-hunting longer, without any affordable coverage bridging the gap.

This is where restoring Medicaid funding converges with the Medicare conversation. As the Capital Journal has previously reported, 600,000 Ohio residents had already lost Medicaid coverage between 2023 and 2025. As the Capital Journal explained, separate analysis from highly respected outlets showed that, without ACA subsidies, about 4.8 million Americans nationwide will end up with no coverage at all. A large share of these are working adults stuck in healthcare purgatory, earning too much for Medicaid and too little to cover a marketplace plan at full price. This gap only grows when insurers charge more depending on age, which they inevitably will if Congress doesn’t act.

Lowering Medicare’s eligibility age isn’t a simple fix, of course. For starters, it’s far from clear that lawmakers will be willing to expend the political capital required to fund it. There’s room for disagreement over its actual cost, its ripple effects on private insurance markets, and whether a more targeted approach (reinstating subsidies, for example) might deliver similar benefits at a better price point. Especially with Ohio’s rapidly aging population, Ohio’s congressional delegation owes its constituents an open debate on these questions. Voters should be asking candidates to state their positions.

The challenges Ohioans are facing should drive this policy debate. This isn’t a proposal built for the young and healthy. Instead, it’s targeted at exactly the stage of life when insurance grows both costlier and harder to replace. But it is precisely this stage of life when losing it can be the difference between retiring comfortably, retiring in financial ruin, or not retiring at all.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Virginia state law required couples with children, like the Fairfaxes, to wait a year before being allowed to file for divorce. Cerina’s husband, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, had also tried different legal tactics to prolong the process.

In March of this year, a judge granted Cerina sole custody of their children and ordered Justin to move out.

A few weeks later, with just days left before his move-out deadline, Justin fatally shot Cerina and then himself, police say, while their two teens were also in the house.

The tragedy focused national attention on state divorce laws, which have remained mostly static since 2010, when New York became the last state to allow no-fault divorce. In the years since, most of the states that have tweaked their divorce laws have made it easier, not harder, to get one. Virginia, for example, relaxed some of its requirements just days before Cerina Fairfax’s death.

Now that could be changing.

In recent years, more conservatives have turned to divorce as a “family values” talking point, with some pushing to make it harder for couples to divorce. By doing so, they’ve relaunched a national conversation that would have been nearly unthinkable just a few years ago.

In 1969, California became the first state to allow no-fault divorce, which allows one member of a couple to file for divorce without proving that the other person engaged in wrongdoing such as adultery, abuse or abandonment. No-fault divorce emerged from the women’s rights movement of that era, promising women greater freedom to escape from unhappy or abusive marriages.

But the loss of that freedom suddenly seems more plausible, particularly for those whose confidence in federal protections for women’s rights was shattered after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. And as state lawmakers ramp up restrictions around birth control, fertility treatments and pregnancy loss, new limits on divorce seem less far-fetched.

“What’s different now is that it’s actually gaining some traction,” said Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law whose work focuses on the legal history of marriage. “Simply the idea that we’re talking about it seriously, that it’s part of some Republican party platforms, that it’s not just laughed out of the room.

“Even if we’re not anywhere near eliminating it, that is the major change.”

Earlier this year, for example, an Iowa Senate subcommittee approved a bill that would allow couples to opt out of no-fault divorce when they’re registering for marriage licenses.

“In the last generation, we have seen the chaos of — the circus of — pure no-fault divorce, (and) the ugliness of divorce and the breakdown of marriage,” Iowa state Sen. Jesse Green, a Republican, told his colleagues during a February hearing on his bill, which later died in committee.

“A lot of people are not getting married anymore because maybe, in some cases, they feel the lack of support and accountability with our law,” he said.

In Texas and Nebraska, the official state GOP platforms call for ending or limiting no-fault divorce. Other state Republican parties, such as in Louisiana, have considered similar party planks.

Republican lawmakers in states including South Carolina and South Dakota have filed bills to limit no-fault divorce or make the process harder.

Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican and pastor, filed a bill in 2024 to abolish no-fault divorce, after saying he wanted to see public shaming for those who cause divorce.

At the same time, some prominent social media influencers have been using their platforms to call for streamlining divorce laws.

Hadley Vlahos, a Mississippi registered nurse with 2.2 million followers on TikTok, used her platform this summer to talk about her three-year-long divorce, which included an 11-day trial and hundreds of court filings. She has called for changes to Mississippi’s divorce law, one of only two in the country that doesn’t allow a no-fault divorce if one spouse objects. Her petition to change state law has more than 30,000 signatures.

Jen Hamilton, a nurse and content creator North Carolina who has 7.2 million followers across TikTok and Instagram as well as a bestselling book, called for changes to the divorce laws in her state after separating from her husband.

She recently appeared at a fundraiser with North Carolina state Sen. Woodson Bradley, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill that would shorten the required separation period before divorce in certain circumstances. That bill remains in committee.

Hamilton’s goal, she told her followers, “is to do everything that I can to get North Carolina law changed to protect women — and some men — from these archaic, paternalistic laws that keep people trapped in marriages that are either unhealthy or dangerous.”

A paradox

Divorce has been declining in the U.S. for more than 40 years.

Four of the five states with the highest divorce rates — Oklahoma, Nevada, Mississippi, Wyoming and Alabama, as of the most recently available data — are Republican led; Nevada has a Republican governor but a Democratic-controlled state legislature.

But state laws aren’t an effective way to raise or lower the number of divorces, said Krista Westrick-Payne, a marriage and divorce researcher and assistant director at the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

“The more significant things that affect whether or not a couple decides to divorce has much more to do with their relationship and their personal situation,” Westrick-Payne said.

Religious areas tend to see higher divorce rates, according to her research. So do areas that are more politically conservative.

“That feels like a paradox,” she said. But those areas generally see more people marrying at younger ages — one of the biggest predictors of divorce.

“So it’s not to say religious people are divorce prone; it’s just they have all these other risk factors, and underlying population dynamics that affect this.

“People like to get on social media and make these overarching statements, flattening a very complex issue,” she said. “And I don’t think that serves anyone very well.”

The most dangerous time

The Iowa proposal to allow couples to opt out of no-fault divorce faced strong opposition from domestic violence advocates, who said such laws especially burden people fleeing domestic violence — who are overwhelmingly women — and can leave them stuck in a dangerous marriage while they try to prove to a court that they’re being abused.

“For someone experiencing domestic violence, leaving is already incredibly complicated, and for a lot of survivors, it is the most dangerous time,” said Lindsay Pingel, director of community engagement at the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which represents 25 victim service provider organizations across the state.

Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, himself divorced, signed the law that made his state the first to allow no-fault divorce. Prior to that, a person trying to divorce had to prove in court that his or her spouse did something wrong. But such things are difficult to prove in court, and subject to a judge’s interpretation.

“We know that domestic violence doesn’t always come with the kind of documentation that someone who’s never experienced an unhealthy relationship might expect,” Pingel said. “There might not be a police report, or medical records, photographs or witnesses.”

Most survivors of domestic violence don’t talk about it with others until they’ve decided to leave, she said. And many don’t feel safe involving authorities in a situation that could make it more dangerous.

“We have to stop asking why survivors continue to stay in unhealthy relationships when we continue to put barriers in place that prohibit them from leaving.”

Women who talked to Stateline about their divorces described years-long court battles with convoluted rules, fraught custody arrangements and uneven protections in cases of abuse.

Some states require months- or years-long waiting periods where a couple must be separated before they can file for divorce. At least three states — Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana — allow so-called “covenant marriage,” a legally binding agreement that comes with additional requirements and is harder to end through divorce. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is from Louisiana, is in a covenant marriage with wife Kelly.

Recently, some states have made it easier for couples to divorce. Maryland, for example, moved to a purely no-fault divorce process in 2023.

Virginia’s new divorce law includes some narrow changes, including an option for speeding up the divorce process. It also created a legislative work group to study whether the state should eliminate fault-based divorce entirely.

And in Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe in April signed a new law clarifying that pregnancy can’t prevent a divorce from being finalized.

Pingel, of the Iowa domestic violence coalition, said supporting healthy marriages and protecting vulnerable people from dangerous marriages aren’t competing goals.

“Children benefit from safety and stability,” she said. “and keeping someone legally tied to a person who is causing harm doesn’t necessarily create a healthier family.”

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@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.

Ohio’s political status quo is Republican government.

Republicans have controlled the governor’s office, Ohio House and Ohio Senate continuously since January 2011. The party also controlled all three from 1995 through 2006.

The Republican hold on the legislature stretches even further. Statehouse News Bureau records show Republicans have controlled the Ohio House since 1995 except for the 2009-10 legislative session. Democrats have not controlled the Ohio Senate since 1985.

Republicans George Voinovich, Nancy Hollister and Bob Taft held the governor’s office from 1991 through 2006. Democrat Ted Strickland served one term from 2007 through 2010. Republicans John Kasich and Mike DeWine have held the office ever since.

Ramaswamy is campaigning to change a state government his party has controlled for almost all of the past three decades.

His campaign platform promises to slash property taxes, phase out the state income tax, cut electric bills, reduce government spending and bureaucracy, improve schools, reform Medicaid and rewrite Ohio’s approach to data centers.

Some of those promises amount to a direct repudiation of decisions made under Republican governors and Republican legislative majorities.

Ramaswamy was asked about that directly in May.

After he declared Medicaid fraud his “absolute top priority,” The Associated Press asked how much responsibility Ohio’s Republican establishment should bear after controlling state government for more than 15 years.

“I’m not playing that game, OK?” Ramaswamy responded.

He instead said his candidacy represented “a bottom-up movement and a demand for change, positive change in the state” and “a movement beyond the status quo.”

Republicans have been the status quo for decades

Ramaswamy is not running against a divided state government where responsibility has regularly shifted between the parties.

Republicans have won 83% of Ohio’s statewide elections since 1994, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.

The party regained complete control of state government after the 2010 election. Since Kasich took office in January 2011, every Ohio governor has been Republican, every General Assembly has had Republican majorities in both chambers and every state operating budget has moved through a Republican-controlled legislature to a Republican governor.

Ramaswamy’s own ticket comes directly from that government.

His running mate, Rob McColley, is not simply a Republican lawmaker. He is president of the Ohio Senate. He has served in the General Assembly since 2015 and in the Senate since 2017.

When Ramaswamy selected McColley as his running mate in January, he said McColley would be his “governing partner” and help advance his legislative agenda.

Fifteen Republican senators had already endorsed Ramaswamy in March 2025, including every member of the Senate Republican leadership team.

The campaign’s own endorsement announcement captured the two messages Ramaswamy is running on.

“For years, Republican leadership has turned Ohio into a Midwest success story,” McColley said.

The campaign then said Ramaswamy’s leadership “isn’t about maintaining the status quo.”

Ramaswamy added: “Ohio is already great — but great isn’t good enough.”

He attacks Ohio’s COVID response. DeWine says the decisions were his.

Ramaswamy’s attacks on Ohio’s COVID-19 response put him in direct conflict with the Republican governor who made those decisions — and who has endorsed him.

Former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton’s role in the pandemic has become a major Republican line of attack in the 2026 governor’s race.

Ramaswamy has accused Acton of promoting dangerous “COVID ideology” and has attacked her over shutdowns, restrictions and the postponement of Ohio’s March 2020 primary election.

Acton signed major public-health orders as DeWine’s health director. But AP reported that those orders were issued at the urging of DeWine, who was governor throughout the pandemic.

DeWine publicly rebuked one Ramaswamy campaign ad that blamed Acton for suspending the March 2020 election.

“I told her to issue the health order,” DeWine said. “The decision was mine.”

DeWine has made the same point about Ohio’s broader pandemic response.

“The decisions that were made during COVID, they were my decisions,” DeWine told PolitiFact. “The buck stops with me.”

Jon Husted, DeWine’s Republican lieutenant governor during the pandemic and now a U.S. senator, also told PolitiFact that DeWine ultimately made the decisions.

Ramaswamy himself had a connection to the administration’s pandemic response.

AP reported that Ramaswamy wrote in a 2021 op-ed that, while leading biotechnology company Roivant Sciences, he “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19” in 2020.

Ramaswamy told AP his work with Husted focused on reopening the economy. He supported vaccination and advocated wearing masks while opposing government mandates.

Six years later, Ramaswamy is campaigning against pandemic decisions made by the Republican administration he advised.

His running mate’s campaign biography says McColley helped ensure Ohio never repeats what it calls “the overreach of the COVID-era shutdowns led by Democrat Amy Acton.”

DeWine has said he was the one making those decisions.

DeWine nevertheless endorsed Ramaswamy and McColley in January.

“Ohio is winning new business projects from the coasts, and Vivek will keep the momentum going,” DeWine said.

He promises to fix Medicaid. His running mate helped eliminate its oversight committee.

Medicaid puts Ramaswamy’s change message even closer to the Republican leadership supporting his campaign.

On May 19, Ramaswamy announced a plan to “crush” Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse.

His campaign said approximately $47 billion would flow through as many as 10 state entities by fiscal year 2027, creating bureaucracy and “leaving an opening for bad actors to exploit a broken system.”

Standing with Ramaswamy at the announcement were McColley, Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman and Republican Auditor Keith Faber.

All three already hold power in the state government Ramaswamy says needs a new approach.

McColley also held key decision-making authority over the 2025 state budget that eliminated Ohio’s Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee.

The Ohio Legislative Service Commission confirms that the committee was abolished by House Bill 96, the two-year state operating budget enacted in 2025.

State law had authorized the committee to oversee Medicaid and investigate state and local Medicaid agencies.

AP reported the committee was investigating contracts involving Gainwell, the nation’s largest Medicaid claims processor, when lawmakers eliminated it.

Republican state Rep. Jennifer Gross, who served on the committee, told AP it could have helped carry out the fraud-fighting agenda Ramaswamy is now proposing.

“I believe that if we had kept JMOC it always could have been something that we kept in place that could have morphed into a DOGE Ohio, an Ohio Medicaid DOGE,” Gross said.

DeWine’s administration has pushed back against claims that Ohio failed to pursue Medicaid fraud.

DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney told AP that the suggestion Ohio had not been combating Medicaid fraud was “just not true.” He cited about 2,300 indictments, 2,200 convictions and $644 million recovered since 2011.

Republican Auditor Keith Faber also said the fraud concerns being highlighted by Ramaswamy were not new to state officials.

Ramaswamy is therefore promising a new crackdown while members of his own ticket and political coalition have spent years overseeing the program, writing its budgets and restructuring its legislative oversight.

He wants to overhaul Ohio’s universities. DeWine says no.

Ramaswamy is also campaigning against the current Republican administration’s approach to Ohio’s public universities.

He has argued that Ohio’s university system is too fragmented and has called for consolidation or elimination of some state universities as enrollment declines.

In a March column published by his campaign, Ramaswamy called for major changes to the public higher-education system.

DeWine wants no part of eliminating state universities.

Speaking to college and university trustees Sept. 9, DeWine rejected the proposal.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” DeWine said. “First of all, it’s not going to happen. Can’t happen. Too much opposition.”

DeWine said eliminating state universities would work against efforts to broaden access to higher education. He also said he doubted lawmakers would even introduce such a proposal.

The governor saying that is not Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent.

It is the Republican who has governed Ohio since 2019 and endorsed Ramaswamy to succeed him.

He says he’ll fix data centers after Republican government helped build the boom

Ramaswamy’s August data-center plan offers another direct example.

Ohio spent years competing for data centers through tax incentives and economic-development policies under Republican governors and legislatures.

That strategy helped turn Ohio into a major data-center destination.

It also became far more expensive than the state had projected.

Ohio estimated in 2024 that its data-center sales-tax exemption would cost about $136 million in fiscal year 2025. The actual cost reached nearly $1.6 billion, according to state figures reported by AP.

DeWine paused new awards of the tax incentive this summer while lawmakers study data centers’ economic, environmental and energy effects.

He still supports the industry. DeWine told AP that roughly $37 billion in Ohio data-center investment during 2024 and 2025 had been worthwhile.

Ramaswamy is now campaigning on restrictions that go far beyond the policy Ohio used to attract those projects.

His “Ohioans-First Data Center Pledge” would require future projects to provide free electricity or compensation to nearby residents, pay full property taxes and meet environmental and farmland protections.

Ramaswamy says he would halt approvals for new projects until legislation imposing those conditions takes effect.

His own description of the problem is direct.

“The data center industry has badly failed to earn the trust of millions of everyday Ohioans,” Ramaswamy wrote.

He then separated himself from the state’s existing policy.

“While I had no part in these past projects, I am committed to ensuring our policies catch up to current realities,” he wrote. “I’m pro-Ohio, and I have a plan to fix the problem.”

Ramaswamy is correct that he did not hold state office when those projects and incentives were approved.

Republicans did.

Property taxes and electric bills are also central to his campaign

Ramaswamy’s broader affordability campaign follows the same pattern.

His campaign says property taxes have “surged” since the pandemic and says Ohio families have been “asked to pay more and accept less.”

He promises to roll property taxes back to pre-pandemic levels.

His statewide platform also promises to “reduce electric bills,” “cut government bloat” and improve educational performance.

Property taxes are not set exclusively by the governor or General Assembly. Local levies, school districts and county property valuations determine much of what homeowners pay. Electric bills are also shaped by utilities, power generation, transmission costs and the regional PJM market.

State government still controls major pieces of both systems.

Ohio lawmakers write state property-tax law and school-funding policy. Governors sign those laws and appoint members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The General Assembly writes utility law, authorizes state energy policy and determines how state money flows to schools and local governments.

Republicans have controlled those state decisions without interruption since 2011.

The Republican establishment is not opposing him. It is backing him.

Ramaswamy can credibly separate himself personally from decisions made before he entered state politics. He has never served in Ohio government.

The same cannot be said for the political coalition surrounding his campaign.

His running mate runs the Ohio Senate.

House Speaker Matt Huffman has spent years in legislative leadership, including four years as Senate president before becoming House speaker in 2025.

DeWine has been governor since 2019 and served as attorney general for eight years before that.

Faber has served as state auditor since 2019 after years in the legislature, including as Senate president.

The Ohio Republican Party endorsed Ramaswamy in 2025.

DeWine endorsed him.

Republican Senate leaders endorsed him.

Ramaswamy is not leading a revolt against the politicians who have controlled Columbus. Many of them are part of his campaign coalition.

Changing direction without changing the party in power

Ramaswamy’s campaign does not argue that Republican control of Ohio has been a failure.

Quite the opposite.

McColley says Republican leadership turned Ohio into a “Midwest success story.” DeWine says the state is winning business projects and wants Ramaswamy to “keep the momentum going.” Ramaswamy says “Ohio is already great.”

At the same time, Ramaswamy is running on a long list of policies he says need to be changed: COVID-era government overreach, high property taxes, high electric bills, Medicaid bureaucracy and fraud, an inadequate education system, a fragmented university system and data-center policies that he says failed to protect Ohio families.

Those conditions did not develop while Democrats controlled Ohio’s state government.

By the time the next governor takes office in January 2027, Republicans will have controlled the governor’s office, Ohio House and Ohio Senate continuously for 16 years.

Ramaswamy is asking voters to keep the same party in power while giving him authority to change the government that party has been running.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Police spotted Ryan Aiden Hatcher around 6:46 p.m. as he was walking into the Laird Arcade on South Washington Street, according to police dispatch records. The log says Hatcher matched the description officers were looking for and then “took off running” near Madison and South Monroe streets.

Officers began searching the surrounding area, checking several downtown blocks and alleys. Dispatch records show police received information that Hatcher had been seen running behind the Clover Club and later searched near the 300 block of South Washington Street.

The search continued for nearly an hour. At 7:42 p.m., an officer radioed, “We got him over here.” Police reported Hatcher in custody one minute later.

Seneca County Jail records list three charges associated with Hatcher’s booking: obstructing official business, resisting arrest, and a parole/probation violation.

Jail records list $5,000 cash bail on the obstructing official business charge, $5,000 cash bail on the resisting arrest charge and $10,000 cash bail on the parole/probation violation, for a combined listed bail amount of $20,000.

Police dispatch records said officers had been looking for Hatcher on a statewide pickup warrant stemming from a criminal-trespassing case. That warrant was listed in the police log with a $10,000 cash-or-surety bond and no 10% option.

The jail record does not yet list case numbers or court dates for the new charges.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

This time, it was Husted’s political director.

Stephen Woytek, 25, was fired Friday after The Washington Post reported that he had used a photograph of Nazi SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture and maintained more recent online content celebrating Rhodesia, the former white-minority-ruled state in what is now Zimbabwe.

Husted’s campaign said it decided to part ways with Woytek after The Post contacted the campaign about his social-media history.

“While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others,” a Husted campaign spokeswoman told The Post. “Sen. Husted demands better of those who represent him.”

The campaign said Husted made the decision to remove Woytek immediately after learning about the material.

But The Post reported that Husted’s campaign did not answer questions about whether or how Woytek’s social-media accounts had been vetted before he was hired as political director in August.

That question carries added weight because Woytek is not the first Husted campaign figure to leave after reporters uncovered publicly discoverable information about his past.

In July, Andrew Havas resigned as Husted’s volunteer Franklin County campaign chair after NBC News asked the campaign about a 2009 guilty plea in a criminal case involving a 15-year-old.

Husted’s campaign said then that Havas had never disclosed the case.

Two months later, the campaign is again explaining why someone chosen to represent Husted is gone only after journalists brought damaging information to its attention.

Nazi SS photograph remained publicly accessible

According to The Washington Post, Woytek changed his Facebook profile picture in 2018 to a historical photograph depicting soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division.

The Leibstandarte began as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit before becoming a division of the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi organization responsible for extensive war crimes and atrocities during World War II.

The profile photograph showed actual SS soldiers holding captured Soviet banners and remained publicly accessible on Woytek’s Facebook account Friday, according to The Post.

The newspaper also found an account bearing Woytek’s name and photograph on Pinterest with a board titled “WWII Uniforms.” Its only two images appeared to depict Nazi-era German uniforms.

Woytek also participated in historical reenactments.

Photographs linked through a reenactment organization appeared to show Woytek dressed in an SS uniform at a 2018 event where Nazi flags were displayed. He would have been 16 at the time.

Woytek has also portrayed soldiers from other sides and conflicts, including a Union soldier during Civil War reenactments and an American soldier from the 83rd Infantry Division during World War II reenactments.

He told The Post that his interest in the SS was historical, not ideological.

“I want to be unequivocal: I reject the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented,” Woytek said.

Woytek said he participates in reenactments because he believes younger generations should be educated about history and acknowledged that he should have exercised better judgment in how he presented those activities online.

Recent playlist praised white-minority-ruled Rhodesia

But another part of Woytek’s online activity was much more recent.

A Spotify account bearing his name and photograph maintained a public playlist called “Tales From Rhodesia.”

Its description read: “homesick for a place that no longer exists.”

The playlist featured songs including “National Anthem of Rhodesia,” “Rhodesians Never Die” and “Rhodesia.” The Post reported that music was added to the playlist as recently as August.

Understanding what Rhodesia was — and what it has come to symbolize — is critical to understanding the significance of the playlist.

Rhodesia was the name used by the government that controlled what is now Zimbabwe after declaring independence from Britain in 1965 rather than accept a transition toward majority rule. A small white minority maintained political control over the country’s much larger Black population.

The regime fought a lengthy war against Black nationalist insurgencies before collapsing and giving way to internationally recognized Zimbabwe in 1980.

Decades later, nostalgia for Rhodesia has been adopted in parts of the white-supremacist movement.

The Anti-Defamation League says Rhodesia has become a “lost cause” among white supremacists, who have embraced Rhodesian imagery and slogans including “Rhodesians never die.” The ADL cautions that Rhodesian symbols are not automatically evidence of extremist beliefs and must be evaluated in context.

The white supremacist who murdered nine Black worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015 displayed Rhodesian imagery and operated a website called “The Last Rhodesian.” The gunman who killed three Black people at a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General store in 2023 also wore a Rhodesian Army patch.

One song included on Woytek’s playlist, “Zimbabwe Ruins,” depicts modern Zimbabwe in degrading terms and uses a racial slur for African troops, according to The Post.

Woytek did not answer The Post’s questions about the Rhodesia playlist or what he intended by it.

The playlist was made private Friday.

Another vetting failure

Woytek’s departure comes just two months after Husted’s campaign lost another representative when reporters uncovered information the campaign said it did not previously know.

Andrew Havas had been named Husted’s volunteer Franklin County campaign chair in December and appeared publicly on behalf of the campaign.

As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, Havas resigned in July after NBC News contacted Husted’s campaign about a criminal case dating to 2008.

Havas was 22 when he was originally charged with sexual misconduct with a minor in Mahoning County in a case involving a 15-year-old, according to court records reviewed by NBC News.

The sexual-misconduct charge was later reduced to one count of misdemeanor assault as part of a plea agreement. Havas pleaded guilty to the assault charge in 2009, was sentenced to 90 days in jail, fined and ordered to have no contact with the minor.

Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce said Havas had not told the campaign about the case.

“Upon learning the facts, we immediately accepted his resignation as a campaign volunteer,” Natoce told NBC News at the time.

Havas’s conviction was a matter of public record.

Woytek’s Facebook profile photograph, Pinterest account and other social-media activity were likewise publicly accessible.

In both cases, damaging information about people selected to represent Husted became an issue not because the campaign announced that it had discovered the material through its own vetting, but after journalists began asking questions.

That leaves Husted facing a question larger than either individual controversy: how his campaign is deciding who gets entrusted to represent him.

Woytek was not an obscure volunteer. As political director, he held a senior role in one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate campaigns in the country.

Havas was not simply a supporter, either. Husted’s campaign selected him to serve as its Franklin County chair, representing the campaign in Ohio’s most populous county.

The campaign’s response has followed a similar pattern in both cases: once reporters uncovered the information and brought it to Husted’s attention, the person was gone.

The unanswered question is why the campaign did not find it first.

Woytek previously worked for northwest Ohio lawmaker

Woytek also has ties to northwest Ohio politics.

Before joining Husted’s Senate campaign, he served as a legislative aide to state Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, a Perrysburg Republican representing Wood County and surrounding areas.

Woytek graduated from The Citadel in 2024 and serves in the National Guard, according to The Post.

Husted is facing former Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in November in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

During his 2023 presidential campaign, Ramaswamy questioned whether the federal government had told Americans the truth about the attacks and said it was legitimate to ask whether federal agents were aboard the hijacked planes that slammed into the World Trade Center.

There is no evidence that federal agents were aboard those planes.

“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers,” Ramaswamy told The Atlantic.

Ramaswamy acknowledged at the time that he had no evidence for the idea.

“Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” he said. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.”

That is a classic conspiracy-theory formulation: introducing an extraordinary possibility without evidence and presenting the absence of evidence as a question authorities should be required to disprove.

Ramaswamy had already questioned the established account of the attacks earlier that month.

Asked whether 9/11 was an “inside job” or occurred as the government had described it, Ramaswamy responded: “I don’t believe the government has told us the truth,” according to NBC News.

He later told The Atlantic: “I want the truth about 9/11.”

The basic facts of who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks are not an unresolved mystery.

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission, established by Congress to investigate the attacks, documented how 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back.

The commission’s report identifies the hijackers, reconstructs their movements, documents how they boarded the aircraft and describes how the hijackings unfolded.

CNN later noted explicitly that there was “zero evidence” that U.S. government agents were aboard the planes on Sept. 11.

There have been legitimate investigations into whether people connected to the Saudi government assisted some of the hijackers before the attacks. Documents concerning those contacts have continued to emerge publicly in the decades since 9/11.

But evidence concerning Saudi contacts does not provide evidence that American federal agents were aboard the hijacked aircraft — the separate theory Ramaswamy injected into the conversation.

Ramaswamy said he was misquoted. The recording showed otherwise.

After his remarks generated national backlash, Ramaswamy tried to deny making them.

When CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins confronted him with the quotation during an Aug. 21, 2023 interview, Ramaswamy said the reporting was wrong.

“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” Ramaswamy said.

He claimed his remarks about federal agents concerned the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol rather than the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The truth is there are lies the government has told about 9/11, but it’s not the ones that somebody put in my mouth,” Ramaswamy told CNN.

Nobody had put the words in his mouth.

The Atlantic released the unedited audio the following day.

The recording showed Ramaswamy saying exactly what the magazine reported.

“I think it is legitimate to say, How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?” Ramaswamy can be heard saying on the recording.

He later returned to the idea.

“We did a 9/11 commission, and if there are federal agents on the plane we deserve to know,” Ramaswamy said.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reviewed the recording and concluded that Ramaswamy “was not misquoted at all.” The only material omitted from the published quotation was an unfinished fragment that did not alter what Ramaswamy had said.

After the recording disproved Ramaswamy’s denial, his campaign changed its defense. A spokesperson argued that his words had instead been taken out of context.

The recording also undermined that explanation: Ramaswamy himself introduced 9/11 while discussing government agents, explicitly referred to agents being “on the planes,” returned to the same possibility later in the conversation and repeatedly connected it to the 9/11 Commission.

He stood by the remarks at Ground Zero

Ramaswamy did not subsequently retract the comments.

On Sept. 11, 2023, he traveled to Ground Zero in New York City for the anniversary of the attacks.

Asked there about the remarks that had generated the controversy, Ramaswamy said he stood by them.

“I stand by what I said,” Ramaswamy said, while arguing that Americans deserved a government they could trust.

Three years later, Ramaswamy is no longer running for president. He is the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio.

And the comments remain part of his record as he asks Ohio voters to put him in charge of state government.

On the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, the sequence is straightforward: Ramaswamy raised an evidence-free theory about federal agents being aboard the hijacked planes, questioned whether Americans had been told the truth about 9/11, falsely claimed he had been misquoted when his comments became public, and continued defending the remarks after a recording proved he had said them.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Wood County auditor candidate Mark Wongrowski joined residents at the Bowling Green demonstration, where protesters held signs calling Husted “the face of data centers” and criticized the Republican senator’s record as lieutenant governor.

“Senator Jon Husted spent years as our lieutenant governor rolling out the red carpet for data centers,” Wongrowski said. “Instead of taking responsibility, he told Ohioans, ‘when we look in the mirror, we are the problem.’”

“Senator Husted wants you to believe that your electricity bills are your fault,” Wongrowski continued. “Let’s elect leaders who will work for Wood County families and not the corporations cutting backroom deals.”

Husted served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor from 2019 until January 2025 and became one of the DeWine administration’s most vocal boosters of large technology and data center investments.

When Amazon Web Services announced plans in 2023 to invest another $7.8 billion in Ohio data centers, Husted said the expansion would position Ohio at the center of the artificial intelligence industry.

“This positions Ohio as a critical location for the most discussed technology in the world, artificial intelligence,” Husted said at the time.

A year later, the DeWine-Husted administration announced another $10 billion AWS data center expansion.

“Artificial Intelligence and data centers are crucial to America’s economic superiority,” Husted said in the December 2024 announcement.

The data center fight has now reached Husted’s former political backyard in northwest Ohio.

Meta announced in April 2025 that it was building a 715,000-square-foot data center in Middleton Township, just outside Bowling Green. The company says the facility represents an investment of more than $800 million and will be optimized for artificial intelligence workloads.

The project sits on a 280-acre site and is expected to support about 100 permanent jobs after construction, according to JobsOhio.

The Meta project was publicly announced several months after Husted left the lieutenant governor’s office. But it arrived after six years in which Husted and the DeWine administration openly promoted Ohio as a destination for the data center and artificial intelligence industries.

Bowling Green resident Beth Cole said the consequences are now landing in communities like hers.

“Jon Husted helped bring data centers to Ohio and has continued to vote for tech billionaires’ interests — I’m one of the unfortunate people that is forced to have a data center being built in my backyard because of it,” Cole said.

Cole also blasted comments Husted made this summer when discussing why demand for data centers has grown.

During a July interview, Husted argued that consumers themselves create demand for data centers by using internet-connected products and services.

“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,” Husted said. “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 comments were also documented by the Ohio Capital Journal, which reported that Husted played a significant role in attracting several billion-dollar data center projects while lieutenant governor.

“It is incredibly disrespectful that Jon Husted has now decided to blame data center development on Ohioans by telling us to look in the mirror because we are the problem,” Cole said at the Bowling Green rally.

Another Bowling Green resident, Maria Simon, said her own electric bill had climbed sharply over the past year.

“This data center is affecting all of us,” Simon said. “Last July, my electric bill was $29. This year, it’s $130. It’s absolutely frightening.”

Simon’s individual bills do not establish that data centers caused the increase. But electricity affordability and the massive new power demand created by data centers have become statewide issues.

A June analysis by Third Way estimated that total electricity costs for an average Ohio household could approach or exceed $800 between June and September, compared with $682 the previous summer. The report cited growing data center demand alongside manufacturing, electrification and insufficient new power generation as drivers of record electricity demand.

Ohio’s own consumer advocate has raised the same concern. The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel says the growing number of data centers is placing additional stress on the state’s electric grid and “could cause utility bills to go up for all Ohioans.”

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has also begun imposing protections designed to keep ordinary customers from absorbing costs created by large data center loads. In August, the commission ordered additional safeguards for AEP Ohio customers, saying it wanted to ensure other ratepayers were not stuck with costs associated with serving data centers.

Husted has changed his emphasis as public opposition to data centers has grown.

In July, he introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require states to consider standards aimed at making large electricity users pay for the new generation, transmission and grid infrastructure needed to serve them.

“We must do that without passing the costs on to working families and small businesses,” Husted said when announcing the legislation.

He has not abandoned support for the industry. Husted continues to argue that artificial intelligence and data centers are important to the economy and national security while saying the companies should bear the infrastructure costs created by new projects.

That shift has become a central issue in his race against Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Sherrod Brown. Brown has repeatedly attacked Husted’s record on data centers, while Husted has defended continued development with additional ratepayer protections.

For the residents gathered in Bowling Green this week, the debate is no longer centered on projects hundreds of miles away in central Ohio.

One of the newest projects is being built in Wood County.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The former U.S. senator from Ohio sought to rally the GOP base on the second and final day of the unusual gathering, as Republicans vie to retain control of the U.S. House and Senate in the midterms less than two months away, even as President Donald Trump faces anemic approval ratings amid the war in Iran and concerns surrounding the economy. 

Vance repeatedly maligned Democrats as “crazies,” referencing some of the more controversial statements recent primary winners have made. And he urged the enthusiastic crowd to put aside policy differences with GOP candidates to keep “the party of common sense” in power.

“It’s so much more than having good politicians in Washington,” he said. “It’s about sending a message to the Democratic Party that if you send your crazies, we’re going to send you packing.” 

At one point during his speech, members of the crowd chanted “48” — an apparent signal of support for Vance to become the 48th president. Vance responded: “We got to take care of business this November — then we’ll worry about what comes next.” 

‘Birthright’

Vance infused the recent birth of his fourth child into his speech. He and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, welcomed son Alec Neel Vance in July.  

And he portrayed what he called Republicans’ support for Americans’ “birthright” as a major theme heading into November. 

“I believe that our founders built this nation on a promise that echoes our creator: That every American child is born an heir — is born with a birthright,” Vance said, adding that “that birthright, ladies and gentlemen, is what this November is all about.” 

Several times, Vance accused immigrants living in the country illegally of stealing what should belong to U.S. citizens. He said that Democrats, particularly former President Joe Biden, encouraged that theft.

“My little boy, he is now our fellow citizen, though he doesn’t know it,” he said. “And I think about what the Democrats have said about our shared birthright as Americans, or frankly, the lack thereof.” 

Vance said the birth of his youngest son shifted his focus to the future.

“Now, because we got a new kid around, I can’t help but look at the future of this country through the eyes of the future of my son,” he said. “And I can’t help but think about what it is that we’re fighting for and what it is that we want for all of our children.” 

Vance honors Charlie Kirk

The vice president also paid tribute to his late friend and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot while speaking on a Utah college campus one year ago Thursday. 

Vance praised Kirk as a devoted husband and father, addressing Kirk’s two young children, saying: “For those of us who loved your dad, we knew him as something even better than a great man. He was a good man.” 

Later in his speech, Vance urged voters to “do what Charlie did: Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater — don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.” 

‘Trump’s most loyal puppet’

Kendall Witmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, blasted Vance as “Donald Trump’s most loyal puppet,” noting that the vice president is “working in lockstep to enact an agenda that has hiked prices and made life unaffordable for working families,” in a statement Thursday night.  

“Vance has defended even their most disastrous policies, proving his loyalty to Trump over the American people,” Witmer said. “Vance will continue to gaslight Americans, but voters know the truth: Trump and Vance have tanked the economy, plunged the country into more endless wars, and failed to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”

Vance is slated to deliver remarks Monday at an industrial manufacturing facility in Olathe, Kansas, during an event hosted by Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc. 

On Monday, he will also visit a federal law enforcement facility in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is set to speak on the Trump administration’s sweeping anti-fraud effort, which he has helmed. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“Robotics and other things like that are going to take away, are going to end a lot of the repetitive work,” Husted said during a 2021 virtual appearance with the Darke County Chamber of Commerce.

“If you worked in something that had a repetitive nature to it, those kinds of jobs are going away,” Husted said. “They’re going to be replaced by robots. I don’t think that is a bad thing, because I don’t think those are enriching — the enriching kinds of jobs that most people want to do.”

Husted was Ohio’s lieutenant governor and director of the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation when he made the comments.

The office is responsible for developing Ohio’s workforce strategy, promoting job-training programs and connecting employers with workers.

MeidasTouch reported the 2021 remarks Wednesday.

Husted’s workforce office was overseeing state programs designed to prepare Ohioans for an increasingly technology-driven economy.

TechCred, launched under the DeWine-Husted administration, used state funding to help employers train workers for technology-focused credentials in fields including robotics, software development and cybersecurity.

“As businesses restart operations and people go back to work, the need for a tech-savvy workforce is growing,” Husted said in 2020. “We must aggressively prepare Ohioans to compete.”

His comments to the Darke County Chamber went further: some jobs would not simply change. They would disappear.

“Those kinds of jobs are going away,” Husted said. “They’re going to be replaced by robots.”

Husted helped promote Ohio’s data-center boom

Husted spent his years as lieutenant governor promoting major technology and data-center investments in Ohio.

In 2019, he joined Google executives to celebrate the company’s $600 million data center in New Albany.

The project was expected to create about 50 jobs, according to The Statehouse News Bureau.

Google received a 15-year property-tax abatement from New Albany and a 15-year state sales-tax exemption estimated at $43.5 million.

Husted defended the tax breaks.

“There’s real benefits, to real people who live here and call central Ohio home,” Husted said at the groundbreaking. “You see all the men and women coming back, these are jobs, they have families it helps them pay the mortgage, pay for their cars, save for the future.”

Husted said the benefits would “far outweigh the tax breaks” and predicted Columbus would become the “tech hub of the Midwest.”

Ohio now has more than 200 data centers, the fifth-highest total in the country, according to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

Companies plan as much as $40 billion in additional Ohio data-center investment by 2030.

The state consumer advocate says data centers create construction jobs but relatively few permanent jobs once the facilities are built.

Large AI-focused hyperscale data centers can consume as much electricity as small cities.

Husted continues to promote AI and robotics

Husted has continued promoting artificial intelligence and robotics since becoming a U.S. senator.

At a White House roundtable in March, Husted called American dominance in artificial intelligence a national economic and security priority.

“If America wants economic and national security dominance, we must lead in technology and AI to stay ahead of adversaries like China,” Husted said.

In May, Husted joined legislation creating a national research infrastructure for artificial intelligence.

“As AI continues to transform the world on a global and economic scale, it’s critical to our innovation and national security that America leads — and wins — the race,” Husted said in announcing his support for the legislation.

Husted visited Path Robotics in Columbus in August, where the company develops robotic welding systems using artificial intelligence.

His office said Path Robotics was helping Ohio manufacturers “overcome workforce challenges and increase their productivity.”

“Ohio is building the future of American manufacturing, from the next generation of defense technology to the robotics that are helping our manufacturers compete and grow,” Husted said in an Aug. 14 statement.

Five years earlier, while running Ohio’s workforce-transformation office, Husted had already said what he expected robotics to mean for workers performing repetitive jobs.

“They’re going to be replaced by robots,” Husted said.

“I don’t think that is a bad thing.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

And if Vivek Ramaswamy is elected governor, Ohio would have a chief executive who spent much of his campaign cheering it on, holds investments across the industry and has proposed rules that would allow hyperscale projects to keep being built once companies meet his conditions.

The scale of what is already coming to Ohio is hard to overstate.

AEP Ohio reported in February that data centers and developers had signed binding contracts for 17,861 megawatts of electricity.

For comparison, peak demand from every AEP Ohio customer combined — homes, factories, stores, hospitals and everything else — has historically ranged between about 8,000 and 10,500 megawatts.

Before AEP imposed new financial requirements on developers, companies had requested roughly 30,000 megawatts.

And that is just one Ohio utility.

In Pike County, an even larger bet on artificial intelligence is taking shape at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

AEP Ohio says a 10-gigawatt data center campus is planned there.

OpenAI announced last month that it has agreed to secure approximately 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the site. NVIDIA will provide the computing infrastructure, while SB Energy will build, own and operate the data center.

NVIDIA says it is investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy and providing financial backing for the project.

That same NVIDIA is among the companies Ramaswamy has personally invested in.

Ramaswamy wanted the boom

Ramaswamy’s campaign has tried to reposition him as a skeptic of the data center industry as voter opposition has grown.

His own words tell a longer story.

As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, Ramaswamy was recorded repeatedly praising Ohio’s data center boom in 2025.

“We’ve got AI data centers moving to our state. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing,” Ramaswamy said in one March 2025 video.

At a Republican dinner in Wintersville that same month, he was even more explicit.

“It takes two years to build an AI data center or Bitcoin mining firm or whatever — all of which I want in the state, by the way,” Ramaswamy said.

TiffinOhio.net identified at least 10 recorded instances over a matter of weeks in which Ramaswamy described data center development as good, great or something Ohio should welcome.

He carried that message into 2026.

In May, while already running for governor, Ramaswamy traveled to Utah to keynote the Operation Gigawatt Summit, an industry gathering focused on accelerating AI infrastructure, power generation and data center development. Sponsors included NVIDIA and Oracle.

Then the politics changed.

Communities across Ohio began organizing against hyperscale projects. Local governments imposed moratoriums. Electricity costs became a statewide political issue. Data centers went from economic-development ribbon cuttings to one of the most contentious issues of the 2026 election.

Ramaswamy changed his pitch.

His moratorium ends when his rules begin

Ramaswamy now says that on his first day as governor he would issue an executive order stopping new data center project announcements until lawmakers pass his preferred legislation.

But his plan is not to stop hyperscale data center development in Ohio.

It is to set the price companies must pay to keep building.

Under the “Ohioans-First Data Center Pledge” Ramaswamy released in August, projects would be allowed to proceed if they meet three requirements.

Companies would have to provide free electricity or compensation to nearby residents, pay full property taxes that would be used for local property tax relief, and meet environmental and farmland protections.

“If a project fails to meet any one of these three requirements, it will not be built,” his campaign says.

The inverse is just as clear: meet them, and construction can continue.

Ramaswamy reinforced that position during a Sept. 4 interview on “The State of Ohio.”

He described how a hyperscaler could finance its own power generation and use excess capacity to provide electricity to surrounding residents. He talked about using industrial sites, requiring landscaping around facilities and ending some secrecy agreements.

He did not propose closing Ohio to hyperscale data centers.

He proposed a framework for approving them.

Other states are shutting the door

That could become much more consequential as other states move in the opposite direction.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order in July imposing what her office called the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers.

New York’s one-year pause is designed to develop new rules for utility costs, infrastructure and community impacts. Hochul also called for repealing state sales-tax exemptions for massive data centers.

“Progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, depleted water supply or noise pollution,” Hochul said when announcing the order.

New York is not alone.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that more than 10 states have moved to suspend, repeal or reconsider incentives offered to data centers as the cost of the artificial-intelligence buildout explodes.

That leaves hyperscalers looking for something they increasingly cannot find in established markets: enormous blocks of land, enormous supplies of electricity and a government willing to let them build.

Ohio checks every box.

CBRE reported last month that power availability and the ability to win government approval are now among the most important factors determining where data centers are built. Northern Virginia remains America’s largest data center market, but land and permitting constraints are slowing its expansion.

Ohio, meanwhile, already has a pipeline of contracted electricity demand unlike anything the state has seen before.

If New York and other states make hyperscale construction harder while a Ramaswamy administration establishes a path for companies to build in Ohio, projects do not disappear.

They can move.

Ohio is positioned to take them.

Ramaswamy has money in the companies driving the boom

Ramaswamy would not enter the governor’s office as a financially detached observer of that industry.

His own investment portfolio reaches into it.

A TiffinOhio.net review published in May detailed holdings identified in Ramaswamy’s Ohio financial disclosure and an analysis by progressive policy group Innovation Ohio.

They include NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon.

Amazon and Microsoft operate enormous cloud-computing businesses built around hyperscale data centers.

NVIDIA sells the processors at the heart of the AI infrastructure boom — including the equipment that will fill the massive OpenAI campus being built in Pike County.

Ramaswamy has also reported investments in industrial real estate companies Prologis, Plymouth Industrial REIT, Rexford Industrial Realty and Terreno Realty, along with an infrastructure investment fund with exposure to digital infrastructure.

His exposure to the semiconductor industry is particularly significant.

Ramaswamy’s 2023 federal financial disclosure listed between $1 million and $5 million in the Strive U.S. Semiconductor ETF, a fund he helped launch through the asset-management company he founded.

The fund is built around semiconductor companies whose products are essential to data centers.

Ramaswamy’s campaign also received a maximum $16,615 contribution from the Vistra Employee PAC in 2025. Vistra is among the energy companies pursuing new generation tied to the country’s explosion in AI electricity demand.

The overlap would follow Ramaswamy into the governor’s office.

A governor with enormous power over the buildout

Ohio’s governor does not personally approve every data center.

He does control appointments across the state machinery that determines how easy they are to build and how much public support they receive.

Under Ohio law, the governor appoints all nine members of the JobsOhio board. JobsOhio recruits companies, negotiates economic-development packages and has played a central role in bringing major technology investments to the state.

The governor also appoints members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which regulates electric utilities and has already adopted special rules governing enormous data center loads.

And the governor appoints two members of the Ohio Tax Credit Authority while his appointed development director chairs it. That authority administers the state’s lucrative data center sales-tax exemption.

Those decisions involve billions of dollars.

Ohio already gave the industry a massive tax advantage

Ohio’s existing data center subsidy has become far more expensive than state officials projected.

Data centers can receive exemptions from sales and use taxes on servers, cooling systems, electrical equipment and other qualifying purchases under Ohio Revised Code Section 122.175.

The exemption cost the state nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, more than 11 times an earlier state estimate.

Gov. Mike DeWine responded in May by suspending consideration of new exemption applications while lawmakers study the industry.

Ramaswamy’s August data center plan promises to eliminate property-tax abatements for future projects.

It does not promise to permanently repeal Ohio’s sales-tax exemption.

That leaves one of the industry’s largest state subsidies unresolved just as Ramaswamy is asking voters to put him in charge of the government that administers it.

From data center hub to data center capital

Northern Virginia is still America’s data center capital today.

But the next wave of AI infrastructure is too large to remain concentrated there.

CBRE reported in August that Northern Virginia had about 4,497 megawatts of operating data center inventory at the end of the first half of 2026.

AEP Ohio already has commitments for nearly 18,000 megawatts of future data center electricity demand in its territory.

Those figures measure different things — operating computing capacity in Virginia versus contracted electric load in Ohio — but the scale of Ohio’s pipeline is unmistakable.

One Ohio project alone is planned around 10 gigawatts.

New York has stopped new hyperscale projects for a year. Other states are reconsidering subsidies. Established markets are struggling to find enough land and electricity.

Ohio already has hyperscalers lining up.

And Ramaswamy’s policy tells them what they have to do to get in.

If he wins in November, the companies looking for somewhere to put the next generation of massive AI facilities may find a state government ready to make Ohio their answer.

Some of those companies are already in Ramaswamy’s investment portfolio.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“I’ve got a pretty simple view on this: if you haven’t done anything wrong, the government shouldn’t be keeping tabs on everywhere you go,” Jones said Thursday.

“Flock is one example, but AI-powered surveillance is spreading fast, and the law needs to catch up,” he said.

Jones said he would work with members of both parties to introduce legislation protecting Ohioans from mass surveillance if he defeats Republican state Rep. Gary Click in November.

“Big tech doesn’t get to own our privacy, and government doesn’t get a blank check to take it away,” Jones said.

Click, a three-term Republican from Vickery, has not publicly taken a position on Flock cameras or the growing push at the Ohio Statehouse to restrict automated license plate surveillance. A review by TiffinOhio.net of Click’s public statements, legislative news releases and newsletters found no statement addressing Flock or the proposals now being advanced by other Ohio lawmakers.

Jones’ position puts the issue directly into the race for House District 88 at a time when opposition to mass vehicle surveillance is increasingly crossing party lines.

Flock cameras are already operating in the district

The debate is not an abstract one for voters in House District 88.

The Fremont Police Department uses Flock Safety automated license plate readers. According to the department’s public Flock transparency portal, Fremont had 10 cameras and retained data for 30 days as of the portal’s July 25 update.

Those cameras recorded 248,593 vehicle detections and were searched 84 times during the 30-day period reflected on the portal.

The Sandusky County Sheriff’s Office also operates Flock cameras. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance lists six Flock automated license plate readers operated by the sheriff’s office as of September 2025.

Flock cameras capture passing vehicles and make information about them searchable by law enforcement. The technology can identify license plates and other characteristics of a vehicle and associate those observations with a location and time.

Police agencies have used the systems to find stolen vehicles, locate wanted suspects and develop leads in criminal investigations. But the ability to build a searchable record of where vehicles have been seen has also fueled concerns about what happens when police use the technology to track people who are not suspected of a crime.

Bipartisan backlash reaches Ohio Statehouse

Jones is taking his position as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle begin pushing for restrictions in Columbus.

Democratic state Reps. Tristan Rader and Darnell Brewer and Republican Reps. Levi Dean and Justin Pizzulli called on the Ohio Department of Transportation this month to stop approving automated license plate readers in state highway rights-of-way and review permits already granted for the cameras.

The lawmakers argued that Ohio lacks comprehensive statewide rules governing how license plate information is retained, searched, shared and used.

“The government should not be able to track everyone, everywhere, all the time just in case someone might someday become the subject of an investigation,” Rader said.

Dean, a Republican from Xenia, has gone further. He announced plans Sept. 3 to introduce the Ohio Freedom from Mass Surveillance Act.

Dean’s proposal would prohibit government entities from deploying mass-surveillance technology such as Flock cameras and would require a search warrant before the government could access surveillance footage. It would also prohibit the sale of surveillance data.

“A tool that can track the movements of innocent Americans can also be abused in the wrong hands,” Dean said.

Republican state Sen. Al Cutrona of Canfield is pursuing a different approach. Cutrona submitted legislation Wednesday that would allow automated license plate readers to remain in use while placing new restrictions on the data they collect.

His proposal would require data to be deleted after 10 days, prohibit the sale of collected information, require law enforcement agencies and local governments using the cameras to adopt access policies and require annual reporting to the Ohio Attorney General.

Jones has not yet released bill language spelling out whether his proposal would resemble Dean’s broader prohibition, Cutrona’s regulatory approach or another model. His campaign statement instead committed him to working across party lines on legislation aimed at mass surveillance generally.

Cases of alleged misuse fuel concerns

The push for restrictions has accelerated following reports that law enforcement personnel have used Flock systems for purposes unrelated to legitimate investigations.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther suspended the city’s use of Flock cameras Sept. 3 after officials began investigating a police officer’s use of the system.

A national database reviewed by USA Today found that the officer searched for the location of a single vehicle more than 200 times. Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant said the department did not believe the searches were connected to an investigation. The officer was relieved of duty while the matter was investigated.

“What I have learned has shaken my trust,” Ginther said while announcing the suspension.

Flock has also become an issue in political races across the country as lawmakers and candidates from both parties question whether existing laws have kept pace with the rapid expansion of automated surveillance technology. An Associated Press report published this month found candidates in several states campaigning on proposals to restrict or ban the systems.

Click backed separate government camera proposal

Although Click has not publicly weighed in on Flock cameras, he has previously backed legislation involving government access to surveillance cameras.

Click is listed as a cosponsor of House Bill 649, a Republican-backed child care fraud proposal that, as introduced in January, would have required cameras at every entrance and exit of child care centers and in general areas where children receive care.

The original bill required cameras to record whenever a center operated, required recordings to be stored for 60 days and required centers to provide the Ohio Department of Children and Youth access to stored footage. Within 12 months, the bill would also have required live state access to the cameras.

The proposal generated opposition from child care providers and privacy advocates and was substantially changed during committee hearings.

Ohio Capital Journal reported that lawmakers later moved to prohibit storage of certain photos or videos and faced opposition over proposals involving photographs or technological identification of children.

Click himself acknowledged during a March committee hearing that support was lacking for part of the proposal.

“I think there’s not a broad amount of support for [child photo or video capture] staying in the bill,” Click said.

Click remains listed as a cosponsor of HB 649. The legislation remains in the House Children and Human Services Committee and has not passed the Ohio House.

TiffinOhio.net previously reported on Click’s support for the legislation and the surveillance provisions contained in its original version.

Jones is challenging Click in the November general election for House District 88, which includes all of Seneca and Sandusky counties.

For Jones, the broader question is where Ohio draws the line as technology gives government agencies increasingly powerful tools for tracking people.

“When I get to the Statehouse, I’ll work with Republicans and Democrats to introduce legislation protecting Ohioans from mass surveillance,” Jones said.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Additional signs are expected to be installed at the entrances to Republic, according to a write-up submitted by Seneca East FFA Co-Reporter Jordyn Enders.

The signs are intended to represent the generations of students who have participated in Seneca East FFA, along with the families, businesses, alumni, school staff and other community members who have supported the chapter over the years.

For the chapter, the project also reflects the FFA values of leadership, service, agriculture and personal growth.

Seneca East FFA has earned recognition beyond the local community, including being named a nationally recognized chapter. Members have also competed at the state and national levels in Career Development Events, while the chapter has maintained a regular presence at both the Attica Independent Fair and Seneca County Fair.

Chapter leaders said those accomplishments have depended on continued support from throughout the Seneca East community.

The new signs are meant to serve as a visible reminder of that relationship — and of the students and supporters who have helped build the chapter over time.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Speaking Wednesday before public-university and community-college leaders at Ohio State University, DeWine called university consolidation “not a good idea” and said it “can’t and won’t happen” while he is governor.

“The idea that we would get rid of any of our state universities, I think, would infringe upon our efforts to continue to broaden our access,” DeWine said, according to News 5 Cleveland.

DeWine’s declaration drew applause from the university leaders in the room.

Ramaswamy has spent months changing how he describes the proposal.

In March, he said Ohio simply has too many public universities.

“We have too many of them,” Ramaswamy said in a campaign video. “They need to be consolidated.”

He was still defending the idea in April.

“I don’t think you should be funding subpar universities,” Ramaswamy said when questioned by a student during a Turning Point USA event at Ohio State, according to News 5.

Ramaswamy said universities should stop duplicating programs and allow their strongest programs to survive.

“Let them excel in a couple of areas and really bring tuition down in the process,” he said.

Ramaswamy had also written about shutting down struggling universities while discussing his plan to eliminate Ohio’s state income tax. In that discussion, he pointed to Cleveland State University, the University of Akron, Kent State University and Central State University as institutions that had faced problems.

He did not explicitly say those four universities should be closed.

Then, in July, Ramaswamy said reports that he wanted to shut down universities were “incorrect.”

Instead, he said he wanted to eliminate or consolidate programs inside them.

“I think that we have too many duplicative programs in our universities,” Ramaswamy said at a Strongsville town hall, according to News 5. “I want every region to have the best higher education institutions available for people in that region. But not every university needs to offer every program.”

“They just don’t have to be under the same exact roof in the same college,” he added.

That was not what Ramaswamy said in March, when he said Ohio had too many universities and “they need to be consolidated.” Nor was it how he framed the issue in April, when he said taxpayers should not be “funding subpar universities.”

Ramaswamy has not released a list of universities he would consolidate or close. He has not identified which academic programs he would eliminate. And he has not laid out a public standard for deciding which Ohio universities qualify as “subpar.”

DeWine rejected the university-closure version outright Wednesday.

“Can’t and won’t happen,” he said.

DeWine, however, leaves office in January and cannot bind the next governor or General Assembly.

News 5 Statehouse reporter Morgan Trau asked him what would happen if the next governor and lawmakers embraced Ramaswamy’s proposal.

“Well, that’s the speculation,” DeWine said. “We don’t know, first of all, who’s going to be elected governor.”

He also questioned whether lawmakers would go along with it.

“Second, we don’t know if they will embrace that at all,” DeWine said. “I think that it’s unlikely that anyone would really make that proposal.”

University leaders push back

Ohio university leaders have been pushing back on Ramaswamy’s proposal for months.

Kent State University President Todd Diacon defended the state’s regional-campus system in an April essay.

“The campuses Gov. Rhodes envisioned aren’t redundancies,” Diacon wrote. “They are lifelines — for the students, for local employers, for the civic identities of communities that have built themselves, in part, around the presence of a university in their midst.”

Diacon was in the room for DeWine’s remarks Wednesday.

Afterward, he told News 5 that universities and their regional campuses are tied directly to the communities around them.

“They are important members of their communities, and it’s not just in terms of ‘We employ people in those communities,’ but the tax bases of those communities,” Diacon said.

Ramaswamy still hasn’t said what would go

Northwest Ohio has several public universities and regional campuses, including Bowling Green State University, the University of Toledo and BGSU Firelands.

Ramaswamy has not said any of them would be closed, consolidated or stripped of programs.

He also hasn’t said they wouldn’t be.

Nearly six months after saying Ohio has “too many” universities, Ramaswamy has yet to publicly spell out which universities or programs Ohio has too many of.

DeWine, the Republican governor who endorsed him, made his position clear Wednesday.

Getting rid of Ohio’s state universities, DeWine said, is “not a good idea.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Brady D. Monaco was found unconscious and unresponsive with shallow breathing and what a deputy described as a “major open head wound” following the Sept. 7 crash, according to records obtained by TiffinOhio.net.

Monaco was later flown by Life Flight to St. Vincent Medical Center. Chief Deputy Charles Boyer said his current condition was not available because the hospital would not release it.

The Sheriff’s Office is sending the case to the Seneca County Prosecutor’s Office for review of possible felony charges, Boyer told TiffinOhio.net. The agency’s incident report lists failure to comply with an order or signal of a police officer as the offense under investigation, while the report says criminal and traffic charges remain pending.

The incident began at approximately 1:39 a.m. when Tiffin police were dispatched to a disturbance involving a large group outside Planet Fitness at 870 W. Market St.

Dispatchers advised responding officers that a man had reportedly been knocked unconscious, according to sheriff’s reports.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-teen-127-mph-lights-off-rollover-crash/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“The public right-of-way should not become free real estate for an unaccountable, privately operated surveillance network,” the letter reads.

Ohio state Reps. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, Levi Dean, R-Xenia, Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Justin Pizzulli, R-Scioto County, all signed on. Separately, Dean plans to file legislation prohibiting agencies from using camera data without a warrant.

It’s another example of the widespread and rapidly growing backlash to Flock cameras.

The company operates a network of automated license plate readers around the country, giving law enforcement agencies a powerful tool for tracking down suspects. Flock touts its cameras’ role in solving cases — from human trafficking in Detroit to a jewelry theft in Denver. In 2025, the company claims, its technology supported more than 1 million investigations.

But to critics, the scope and reach of the company’s technology is the problem: why is a private company worth more than $8 billion operating a nationwide surveillance network?

Political quandary

It’s become a hot topic on the Ohio campaign trail. Libertarian candidate for governor Don Kissick regularly cites stories about Flock with the comment: “DeFlock Ohio.”

But both major party candidates for governor have wrestled a bit with how to address the technology. Although Democrat Amy Acton initially praised the cameras’ role in solving crimes, late last month she promised “strict guardrails” as governor to prevent abuse.

In a statement last week Acton went further, stating that while law enforcement should have the tools they need, “it has become clear that AI-powered Flock cameras are prone to misuse and pose serious risks to Ohioans’ privacy.”

Acton’s campaign went on to voice support for Rader, Dean, Brewer and Pizzuli’s effort to block permits on state highways, and added “as governor, she would support bipartisan legislation banning the use of Flock across Ohio and work to prevent the abuse of AI surveillance.”

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has said he’s in dialogue with Ohio law enforcement, and they’re “on the same page” about prosecuting crime rapidly and respecting the Constitution in the process.

“And that means that Flock cameras will not ever be used — period — in this state, to spy on an individual, when they’re in a private space, and a private space includes not just your home but also your car,” he said in Lima, late last month.

But Flock cameras don’t spy on people inside the car. Flock will be the first to tell you — their cameras are focused on the license plate, make, model, and features like a car’s color. The Ohio Capital Journal asked Ramaswamy’s campaign to clarify if he supports the ordinary use of Flock cameras. The campaign did not respond.

The city of Columbus provides an even clearer window into just how precarious the politics can get. On Aug. 28, Mayor Andrew Ginther announced a “strengthened framework” and “independent oversight” for the city’s Flock system. He highlighted how the network helped Columbus police solve a homicide and a nonfatal shooting as well as track down a missing senior and a kidnapped child.

“This should not be a choice between protecting civil liberties and protecting people from violent crime,” Ginther said at the time. “Columbus can and should demand both.”

Less than a week later, Ginther announced the city was pausing the program altogether. That change of heart was prompted by a USA Today investigation that noted Columbus Police Officer Melvin Tellis searched for the same license plate number 272 times between Nov. 2023 and Dec. 2024.

“Until I can report out to the people of Columbus that this isn’t a more widespread issue,” the mayor said, “I can’t, with confidence, ask them to trust us with this technology.”

Lawmakers’ letter

State lawmakers want Ohio Department of Transportation Director Pamela Boratyn to halt new permits for Flock-style cameras and review those that have already been issued. “Wherever legally authorized,” they want her to revoke permits and get cameras taken down. They’re also asking for a public accounting of how many cameras the agency has authorized, their ownership, and the terms of the underlying agreement.

The lawmakers point to the state of Florida, where transportation officials took steps to revoke permits at the end of last month.

“Ohioans deserve the same protection,” the lawmakers stated.

“The question is not whether these cameras can sometimes help solve an individual crime,” they added. “The question is whether that benefit justifies building a system capable of tracking millions of innocent Ohioans without a warrant, individualized suspicion, or meaningful public oversight.”

Ohio hasn’t come up with a policy to control how that traffic data is “searched retained shared or used,” and until it does, the lawmakers contend state agencies should pull back.

“Our roads belong to the public,” Reps. Rader, Dean, Brewer, and Pizzulli wrote. “They should not be used to quietly construct a statewide tracking network around the public.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans 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.

They were virtually silent on deep cuts to safety-net programs on which thousands of their employees depend. Nor did they do much to stand up against aggressive tactics federal agents used against their foreign-born employees, many of whom were in the country legally.

Those are the main assertions of the Institute for Policy Studies’ Executive Excess 2026 report.

“Our main finding: (corporations) have overwhelmingly focused on tax cuts and other policies that primarily benefit CEOs and other wealthy individuals while turning a blind eye to government actions that threaten the economic and personal security of low-wage workers,” the report said.

It was the Institute’s 32nd annual look at the “Low Wage 100,” that is, 100 of S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median pay.

Until this year, the reports have looked primarily at the huge and growing disparity between the compensation of top executives and their employees.

This year’s report showed that those trends continue. 

“Average CEO compensation within the Low-Wage 100 hit $17.5 million in 2025,” the report said. “The group’s average median worker pay sat at just $36,571 last year.”

That means that on average, a CEO in the group made as much as 614 workers in 2025. That was up from 574 in 2019, according to the report.

In one measure of how historically unequal the American workplace has become, in 1965, “the CEO-worker pay ratio at major U.S. corporations averaged just 25 to 1,” the report said. 

One big way CEOs pad their own pockets is through stock buybacks. 

Instead of using cash to reinvest in employees, facilities or research, they buy up huge blocks of stock, thereby inflating the value of each share — “and, in the process, pump up the value of the stock-based compensation that makes up about 80% of corporate CEO compensation,” the report said.

Between 2019 and 2025, the Institute for Policy Studies’ “Low Wage 100” companies spent $718 billion on such buybacks, the report stated. Much of the money was freed up by huge corporate tax cuts that were part of Trump’s signature legislation from his first term. 

The Institute for Policy Studies report says that industry groups representing the Low Wage 100 were enthusiastic about renewal of the tax cuts as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer by congressional Republicans and signed by Trump. 

They’ve been almost silent, however, about the fact that the same law cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and $186 billion from federal food assistance over a decade. The cuts would seem to harm the businesses’ own interests since many of them sell food and most pay so poorly that they have thousands of employees who qualify for the low-income programs.

The Business Roundtable, the National Restaurant Association, the International Franchise Association, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and the National Retail Federation are industry groups that lobby for the Low Wage 100. They all applauded the Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts, the report said.

But when it comes to the safety-net programs, among the lobby groups, “only the National Retail Federation even mentioned the cuts — and only did so to praise them for ‘reducing waste and fraud,’” the report said.

“In reality, cases of fraud are rare, and the massive spending cuts in the law will greatly exceed the costs of routine administrative errors,” researchers stated. “We could find no evidence of any Low Wage 100 executives raising concerns about these painful safety net cuts.”

The Government Accountability Office in June updated a report on employees in select states who received benefits from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2025.

It found that 2,800 employees of  Cincinnati-based Kroger received Medicaid in six states, and 3,300 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in nine states. A spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond when asked whether the company had made any public statements or worked behind the scenes to stop the safety-net cuts.

Another grocery giant, Walmart, had 16,000 on Medicaid in six states, and 15,500 on SNAP in the nine states the GAO surveyed. It also didn’t immediately respond when asked whether it opposed the cuts and whether it did anything to stop them.

The Institute for Policy Studies report also called out the corporations for doing little to protect immigrant workers even though they’re heavily dependent upon them.

“The 5.7 million immigrants who perform low-wage jobs in the United States make up about 22% of the country’s low-wage workers (defined as earning less than two-thirds of U.S. median income), according to Urban Institute analysis of census data,” it said.

Last winter, masked ICE agents in Minneapolis committed a series of violent acts, including shooting and killing two U.S. citizens. They also arrested 3,600 others, two thirds of whom had no criminal records.

The report said the corporate response to the mayhem was slow and weak. Researchers acknowledged that CEOs for Minnesota-based companies Target, Best Buy, and Ecolab “eventually” issued an open letter calling for “immediate de-escalation.”

“But they did not directly condemn ICE for fatally shooting protestors or for arresting their employees, many of them U.S. citizens or legal visa holders,” the report stated. “Months later, when the Trump administration requested an additional $70 billion in funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, Low Wage 100 CEOs raised no objections.”

The Institute for Policy Studies suggested reforms to narrow the gap between low-wage workers and their CEOs, including taxing companies with “excessively paid” CEOs, taxing and restricting stock buybacks, and cutting corporate contracts and subsidies to companies that pay their CEOs significantly more than their regular employees.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio has emerged as one of the top states for data center developers, with roughly 100 of the facilities already up and running and nearly 150 more on the way.

Many of those planned facilities may never get built, but their projected electricity needs will drive up energy bills for Ohioans anyway.

Utilities base their grid investments on demand projections. In Ohio, those forecasts are now through the roof. The state’s largest regulated electric utility is American Electric Power’s Ohio Power Co., which anticipates demand will nearly triple over the next decade, largely due to expected data center projects.

Critics question the validity of these forecasts — and the wisdom of using them to justify costly investments that utility customers will end up on the hook for if the numbers don’t pan out.

Forecasts from utilities in Ohio and elsewhere generally presume trends will continue along the same paths as in recent years, said Jonathan Koomey, a researcher who runs the firm Koomey Analytics and focuses on issues related to data centers, computing, and climate solutions.

But in fact ​“there is deep uncertainty,” Koomey said. Computing generally has gotten more efficient over time, and so future data centers might be less energy-intensive. There’s also the question of whether demand for AI services will be able to support the ambitious plans developers are pursuing today. Plus, developers often shop projects in multiple locations to look for the best deal.

Ohioans are already facing rising power bills — and more increases are now likely based on sky-high demand forecasts.

“We have watched projected demand become the justification for enormous spending, record capacity costs, and increasingly urgent claims about grid reliability,” Brad Belden, board chair of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group, said at its annual energy conference on Aug. 27. “‘Reliability’ cannot become the magic word that ends every conversation about cost.”

So far, regional grid operator PJM Interconnection hasn’t been persuaded by those challenging the extent to which energy needs will actually grow. PJM serves Ohio and all or parts of a dozen other states, overseeing the procurement of generation and transmission.

“The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association has been saying that, effectively, load growth is not real. I think that is both naive and irresponsible,” said Asim Haque, PJM’s executive vice president for government and member services.

Mounting costs

Data center forecasts can drive up electricity costs in two key ways: by increasing capacity prices and by prompting utilities to build new power lines in anticipation of future demand.

Capacity prices pay for power plant operators to be available to meet spikes in demand. In PJM territory, those charges have surged more than tenfold since May 2025. That’s because PJM lacks the total generation necessary to meet the deluge of demand it expects from data centers.

Meeting that need, which analysts like Koomey say may be inflated, will likely lead to a jump in fossil-fueled electricity. Between 2025 and 2027, added generation from fossil-fueled plants in the region will be 2.5 times the extra electricity supplied by solar and wind, reported Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Analysts have criticized PJM in general and Ohio in particular for making it difficult to build inexpensive solar, wind, and battery projects in recent years — all of which could have helped cushion rising costs now and alleviate projected capacity problems in the future.

Projections by utilities and the grid operator also drive plans for expanded infrastructure, because utilities map out those investments today on the basis of what they expect customers will need in the future.

“If these data centers don’t show up …, you’re going to pay the costs,” said John Seryak, CEO and founder of the energy consulting firm RunnerStone.

In Ohio, both manufacturing and consumer advocates worry that plans to build transmission and other infrastructure are not being met with enough scrutiny.

Although large-scale projects are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, lower-level ​“supplemental” transmission is up to the states, PJM’s Haque said. Those projects are necessary to meet growing demand, including that from data centers, especially where developers won’t bring their own power or nonetheless want to tie into the grid for backup.

Supplemental transmission projects can add up to billions of dollars, though. And in Ohio, no one is independently examining their prudence or cost-effectiveness, Maureen Willis, agency director for the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, said at the OMA conference.

A 2025 Ohio law calls for utilities and state regulators to consider grid-enhancing technologies as a more cost-effective alternative to building traditional transmission projects. But it’s unclear how that provision and cost recovery will work together. A new rule limiting the time to question company witnesses about customer charges will make it even harder to challenge costs.

The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel filed a complaint with FERC in 2023, asking it to require scrutiny of the costs for supplemental transmission, but the agency has not yet acted. Last month the agency asked the commission to speed up its review.

“OCC’s consumer-protection complaint has been collecting dust at FERC for nearly three years while billions more in transmission projects continue to be added,” Willis said. ​“Consumers deserve answers, accountability, and protection from unjustified costs.”

In Ohio, the largest projected overall growth in demand is the tripling expected by AEP Ohio, Koomey said at the OMA event.

As of February, that AEP Ohio load forecast reflected signed contracts for 17.8 gigawatts of data-center demand planned to come online at various points through 2035, down from its earlier estimate in 2025.

Still, even at the lower level, critics question the figure. A March 2026 regulatory staff filing at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio noted some double-counting for AEP Ohio’s expected data center growth.

At the PJM level, the grid operator released new guidance in January that alters its process for load forecasting and adds steps for states to review adjustments for large loads. Critics say that’s not enough.

“Show us the demand. Show us what is being built. Show us who is paying for it. And show us what happens if the forecast is wrong,” said Belden of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group. ​“Those are the questions any responsible business would ask before making a major investment. We should expect the same discipline when billions of dollars in grid investment are on the table.”

“New investment should strengthen Ohio’s economy, not turn existing customers into an insurance policy for projects that may never materialize,” he said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio is delaying a new restriction that would have barred SNAP recipients from using their benefits to buy many sugary drinks beginning Oct. 1.

The delay came at the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which now plans to seek public comment on the restriction. The reversal follows a federal judge’s ruling that the agency failed to provide required public notice before approving similar SNAP restrictions in five other states. 

Ohio’s ban, which was approved in March, would have prevented SNAP recipients from using grocery benefits to buy beverages where the first ingredient is sugar, corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup. It also excluded carbonated beverages with the second ingredient being sugar, corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup. 

That would have banned many full-sugar sodas, like Sprite and Coke, but allowed the sale of diet and sugar-free beverages under SNAP. 

SNAP retailers across the state had already been asked to fill out forms attesting that they wouldn’t sell sugary beverages to people with EBT cards. It’s not clear how long the ban will be on hold. 

The change in direction comes after the Trump administration encouraged states to request restrictions on SNAP sales for non-nutritious items like soda and candy. Twenty-two other states across the U.S. joined Ohio’s effort in requesting restrictions, which were in various stages of implementation.  

But now, the USDA has asked Ohio to delay the change so it can issue a notice in the Federal Register, a government publication where new rules and regulations are typically shared. This allows the public to comment and give feedback. The federal government needs to assess these public comments about Ohio’s SNAP restrictions, according to a press release from Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services. 

The news comes following a June court decision about SNAP restrictions in other states. SNAP recipients in five states, not including Ohio, sued the USDA because it had approved food-restriction projects. A U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled against the agency, saying it failed to follow its own requirement to give public notice in the Federal Register before the rules take effect.

The judge’s ruling blocked the programs from going into effect in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia. 

It also seemed to give the federal government pause. In addition to Ohio, the USDA recently asked South Carolina and North Dakota to push back implementation of waivers that would ban SNAP participants from buying foods such as candy and soda.

A USDA spokesperson confirmed to Signal Cleveland in an email that the notice to Ohio was related to litigation but did not respond to a question about how long the delay would last.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Republican nominee for Ohio governor put on a polo, stepped into a batting cage and used America’s national pastime as the backdrop for a polished video promising voters “10 things” he would do as governor.

Then people saw the swing.

By Wednesday, Ramaswamy was being ridiculed nationally, political strategists were openly questioning how his staff allowed the video to be published, and a man who says he watched the filming firsthand was describing a much less flattering performance than the campaign’s finished product suggested.

By Wednesday evening, Ramaswamy had deleted the video.

Michael Peacock, who said he was inside the batting facility when Ramaswamy filmed the spot, said the campaign selected the slowest pitching-machine setting available and Ramaswamy made contact on just five of 25 pitches.

“The campaign video just replays those same five swings over and over,” Peacock said in an Instagram video recounting what he witnessed.

Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from TiffinOhio.net.

TiffinOhio.net asked whether Ramaswamy took approximately 25 pitches, whether he made contact on five, whether his team selected the slowest available setting, whether individual swings were reused in the final video and why the post was deleted.

The campaign answered none of those questions.

A carefully constructed piece of Americana

The choice of baseball was not incidental.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has increasingly presented the wealthy biotech entrepreneur through familiar images of sports, family, football and everyday American life as it works to turn a former presidential candidate and Wall Street-connected businessman into a relatable candidate for Ohio governor.

His official campaign website explicitly describes its vision as “Revive the American Dream in Ohio.”

Baseball provided an almost literal visual shorthand for that message.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame calls baseball the country’s “National Pastime” and describes the sport as an American family tradition whose history is tightly bound to the history of the United States.

So Ramaswamy’s campaign put a bat in his hands.

That decision is particularly striking because Ramaswamy can actually play another racket-and-ball sport.

Mediaite reported Wednesday that Ramaswamy’s social-media pages contain another version of the campaign concept built around tennis — a sport critics acknowledged he plays competently.

James Surowiecki, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, zeroed in on that choice.

“Ramaswamy is a very solid tennis player,” Surowiecki wrote, arguing that the campaign could have made essentially the same advertisement around tennis instead of putting Ramaswamy in a batting cage.

Instead, the campaign chose baseball — and produced a video designed to make each policy promise appear alongside another successful swing.

According to the eyewitness who watched the filming, that succession of apparent successes existed largely in the edit.

Five contacts in 25 pitches, eyewitness says

Peacock’s account transformed the episode from a simple round of internet mockery into a question about how the campaign constructed the image it presented to voters.

He said Ramaswamy’s team entered the batting cage and chose its slowest pitching setting.

Ramaswamy then faced 25 pitches, according to Peacock.

He made contact with five.

The finished campaign video did not show the other 20 attempts.

Instead, Peacock said, the campaign repeatedly reused footage from the handful of swings in which Ramaswamy connected as text and audio moved through his list of policy promises.

Peacock walked viewers through the campaign video and identified swings he said appeared more than once.

The Daily Beast independently noted that footage of one of Ramaswamy’s swings appeared to have been used twice in the short campaign video.

The publication also reported Peacock’s account from inside the batting cage.

“Just garbage fundamentals,” Peacock said.

There is nothing unusual about campaigns editing video. Political advertisements are, by definition, produced presentations of a candidate.

But here, the editing went directly to the image the video was attempting to create: Ramaswamy confidently stepping up, delivering a promise and taking another swing.

The man who watched the filming says viewers were seeing the same few moments of contact again and again.

The image campaign backfires

The attempt at relatability quickly produced the opposite reaction.

The video was posted Tuesday to Ramaswamy’s TikTok and Instagram accounts, according to Mediaite, which documented the original post while it was still online.

Critics immediately focused on Ramaswamy’s mechanics.

Surowiecki compared the swing to that of an “uncoordinated 6-yr-old.”

Conservative sports commentator Jon Root said Ramaswamy appeared to be trying to look “relatable & athletic” and asked: “How in the world did his team approve this?”

The criticism extended beyond partisan opponents.

Veteran Republican strategist Kevin Madden wrote that every campaign needs a staffer with enough standing to tell a candidate, “Sorry. No. you/we cannot do this.”

The Daily Beast reported that the most-liked response on Ramaswamy’s own TikTok distilled the reaction into six words: “Why would u post that swing.”

Others questioned why a campaign trying to make its candidate appear relatable would deliberately showcase him doing something he appeared not to know how to do.

That is what made the episode particularly damaging to the manufactured-Americana project surrounding the video.

Nobody expects Ohio’s governor to hit a curveball.

Ramaswamy’s campaign chose to put him in the batting cage. It chose baseball as the visual language for his political message. It chose which pitches voters would see. And it chose to publish the finished product.

Then an eyewitness described what was left on the cutting-room floor.

Then the video disappeared

Hours after the ridicule spread nationally, the original Instagram video was no longer available on Ramaswamy’s account Wednesday evening.

The deletion does not establish why the campaign removed it, and Ramaswamy’s campaign did not tell TiffinOhio.net why it did so.

But the sequence is clear.

The campaign produced a baseball-themed video designed to package Ramaswamy’s political agenda inside one of the most recognizable pieces of American cultural imagery. The video instead went viral for his swing. An eyewitness said the polished edit concealed 20 misses out of 25 pitches and recycled the five attempts in which Ramaswamy made contact. Campaign professionals questioned how the spot was ever approved.

Then Ramaswamy deleted it.

For a campaign spending enormous energy constructing an image of its candidate as an Ohio everyman, the batting-cage stunt offered an unintended glimpse behind the production: choose the setting, shoot enough attempts, keep the usable ones, build the image — and, when the image collapses, take it down.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“The cost of living, we have work to do, but it is coming down,” Merrin said during a Sept. 7 interview with 13abc.

For Ohio families paying for groceries, electricity, housing and gasoline, however, prices remain higher than they were a year ago.

The latest federal inflation figures available when Merrin spoke showed consumer prices across the Midwest were 3.5% higher in July than in July 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Groceries were up 2.2%. Shelter was up 4.5%. Electricity was up 8.1%. Gasoline was up 23.1%. Medical-care services were up 3.3%.

Every major grocery category tracked by BLS was more expensive than it had been a year earlier. Fruits and vegetables were up 3%, cereals and bakery products 2.5%, and nonalcoholic beverages 4.1%.

And the pressure at the gas pump has intensified since those July inflation figures were collected.

As of Wednesday, Sept. 9, AAA reported Ohio regular gasoline averaging $4.07 a gallon, compared with $3.00 a year ago.

Diesel in Ohio was averaging $5.89, up from $3.63 a year earlier. Nationally, diesel reached $5.94 Wednesday, the highest average AAA has recorded.

The current fuel spike has been driven largely by disruptions to global oil supplies amid the U.S.-Iran war and sharply reduced traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil climbed back above $100 a barrel Wednesday, adding fresh pressure to gasoline, diesel and transportation costs.

Merrin’s comments also came on a holiday weekend when Americans were already confronting record fuel prices. AAA reported regular gasoline at $4.14 nationally heading into Labor Day, nearly $1 more than a year earlier and above the previous Labor Day record of $3.82 set in 2012.

Ohio had just finished its most expensive August for gasoline in federal records dating to 2003.

Merrin is the Republican nominee in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, where he is again trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

Inflation slowed for a month. Prices did not broadly fall over the year.

The Midwest consumer price index fell 0.2% from June to July. Gasoline prices dropped 3.2% during that month and the broader energy index fell 1.9%, helping pull the regional index lower.

But that short-term decline did not erase the increases that had already occurred.

Compared with the same month one year earlier, Midwest prices were still 3.5% higher.

The distinction matters because falling inflation and falling prices are not the same thing. A lower inflation rate means prices are rising more slowly. For the overall cost of living to actually decline, the price level itself has to fall.

That has not happened on a year-over-year basis.

Nationally, consumer prices were 3.4% higher in July than a year earlier. Grocery prices were up 2.7%, electricity 4.2% and gasoline 24.6%.

The August inflation report is scheduled for release Friday, Sept. 11.

Merrin praised Trump, who promised to bring prices down ‘starting on day one’

Merrin tied his assessment of the economy directly to President Donald Trump during the same Labor Day interview.

“President Trump is doing everything he can to bring our economy back,” Merrin said.

Trump made lowering the actual price of everyday goods — not simply slowing the rate of inflation — a central promise of his 2024 presidential campaign.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one,” Trump said during an August 2024 campaign event in New Jersey.

Trump said increased domestic energy production would drive down the cost of other goods and promised to reduce energy and electricity prices by “at least half” within 12 months.

“That’s going to bring down prices of everything,” Trump said.

More than a year and a half into Trump’s second term, overall consumer prices have continued to rise.

Presidents do not directly set the price of gasoline, groceries or electricity, and individual price movements are influenced by everything from wars and weather to commodity markets, corporate decisions, supply shortages and interest rates.

But Trump explicitly campaigned on bringing those prices down, and Merrin invoked Trump while telling northwest Ohio voters that the cost of living was now moving in that direction.

The latest available federal data show the overall price level remains higher than it was a year ago.

Kaptur has pushed legislation aimed at utility and prescription costs

The issue is also emerging as a dividing line in the race between Merrin and Kaptur.

Kaptur, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, has made rising utility bills a focus of her work in Congress.

In July, she introduced the Ratepayer Justice and Commercial Power Accountability Act, legislation that would create a federal fund to reimburse residential customers and businesses when utility corruption or misconduct causes them to pay higher rates.

The proposal grew out of the FirstEnergy bribery scandal in Ohio. Under Kaptur’s bill, money obtained through penalties and recoveries from utilities and executives could be returned to affected ratepayers, while additional funding could be directed toward electric-grid improvements in communities harmed by utility misconduct.

The bill, H.R. 9700, has been referred to several House committees and has not yet become law.

Kaptur has also pushed for increased federal investment in the electric grid and energy-efficiency programs, arguing that expanding supply and modernizing infrastructure are necessary to keep household power bills from climbing further.

During consideration of the fiscal year 2027 Energy and Water spending bill in May, Kaptur opposed proposed cuts to Department of Energy efficiency, innovation and grid programs, saying reduced investment would ultimately mean higher costs for consumers.

She has raised similar concerns about the enormous amount of electricity being demanded by new data centers. Ohio households were projected this summer to pay about 17% more for residential electricity than the previous summer, according to an analysis cited by the Ohio Capital Journal.

Kaptur has also backed legislation aimed at another major household expense: prescription drugs.

In 2025, she joined Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona in introducing the Global Fairness in Drug Pricing Act.

The bipartisan bill would direct federal regulators to establish international price benchmarks for prescription medications in an effort to prevent Americans from paying substantially more for the same drugs than consumers in other developed countries.

That proposal also remains pending in Congress.

Kaptur voted in January for a bipartisan federal spending package that included billions of dollars for housing assistance, energy and water infrastructure programs and more than $3.2 million in projects she secured for northwest Ohio, including water infrastructure in Defiance and Erie County. Kaptur said those investments were intended in part to reduce pressure on local utility bills.

“Affordability isn’t an abstract concept, it’s real dollars and cents,” Kaptur said at the time.

Merrin also misstated the jobs report

Merrin made another economic claim during his Labor Day interview that does not match the federal government’s figures.

“This last jobs report, over 160,000 new private sector jobs added,” Merrin said.

The United States did add 162,000 jobs in August.

But those were not all private-sector jobs.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Sept. 4 employment report, total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 162,000.

Private employers added 127,000 jobs.

Government employment accounted for another 35,000.

The 162,000 figure Merrin described as private-sector job growth was the total increase across both private and government employment.

The report was otherwise stronger than economists had expected. The unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, and previous estimates for June and July were revised upward by a combined 55,000 jobs.

But wage growth continued to run close to the pace of inflation. Average hourly earnings were up 3.1% from a year earlier in August, according to BLS, while the most recent national inflation reading showed consumer prices up 3.4% from a year earlier.

For northwest Ohio voters deciding between Merrin and Kaptur this fall, the cost of living is likely to remain difficult to separate from the numbers people encounter outside a campaign event: the grocery receipt, the electric bill and the price displayed at the gas station.

And for now, all three remain higher than they were a year ago.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

All 47 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus, 199 current House Democrats and 15 former House Republicans signed the friend-of-the-court brief opposing President Donald Trump’s policy to add several requirements to mail ballots. 

The U.S. Constitution “is unambiguous” in empowering states to run elections, while Congress can enact laws to oversee elections generally, they argued.

“Congress has passed several laws regulating federal elections—though it has always done so surgically, deliberately leaving the States with considerable room to maneuver,” they wrote.

The executive branch has no role, they said. 

The Trump administration has argued the rule, published last month, requires only “modest” technical specifications for mail ballots and that states transmit lists of eligible voters to receive the ballots. The rule is a targeted measure affecting mail delivery, not elections, the administration says.

But the lawmakers say that argument fails. 

The agency cannot take action related to elections without a congressional directive, they wrote. Congress never wrote a law asking for the requirements included in the USPS rule, they said. 

Executive order

In this case, Trump spurred the Postal Service to write the rule in a March executive order, based on the unsubstantiated premise that vote-by-mail is vulnerable to fraud. 

That shows the rule is meant to address Trump’s concerns about election administration, not mail specifications, the lawmakers said.

“The integrity of our constitutional system depends on each branch keeping to its assigned role,” they wrote. “The Framers set up a two-part system that gave States default authority to regulate federal elections subject to Congress’s authority to override the States. The Framers did not provide the President with any authority to interfere in that system, nor has Congress imbued the Executive Branch with any such authority by statute.”

Spokespeople for the White House, USPS and the Department of Justice, which is representing the Trump administration in the case, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

In a separate brief, the legal advocacy group the Society for the Rule of Law made a similar argument, saying the federal postal law the administration has cited provides only broad language that does not empower the agency to regulate election mail.

“The non-election, boilerplate … provisions on which Applicants rely are not a secret, alternative way for the USPS to bar ballot mail, conditionally or otherwise, on the eve of election day,” the group wrote. “Under the federalism presumption and the major question doctrine, the USPS needed a clear statement of statutory authority.”

Rushed delivery

The rule would require technical elements such as unique barcodes on ballot envelopes. Elections experts say those requirements are unworkable in time for the fall’s midterm elections because states have already designed, printed and — in some cases — begun sending ballots.

The rule would also require states to send to the federal government lists of eligible voters, which would be checked against a Department of Homeland Security database to verify citizenship. 

The rule bans the Postal Service from delivering ballots to registered voters who are not verified through that method.

The online portal that the rule says states should use for this process has still, less than two months until Election Day, not been introduced to states. A whistleblower last week reported the rushed development has led to myriad problems with the tool, which could result in legitimate ballots being rejected.

Opponents, including more than 20 Democratic state officials and voting rights groups that sued to challenge the rule, say it would risk disenfranchisement for the millions of voters, including Trump, who vote by mail.

High court ruling pending

The rule has been the subject of rapidfire legal fighting over the past several weeks, and the Supreme Court is now weighing whether to overturn a Massachusetts federal judge’s order pausing the rule while litigation continues, after the Trump administration filed an appeal over the weekend.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Sunday asked the states and voting rights groups challenging the rule to file their response to the application by Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern.

That district court injunction from Judge Indira Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, held that the rule was likely unconstitutional and unlawful for reasons the members of Congress articulated Tuesday: The Constitution grants states and Congress the power to oversee elections and states would be harmed if they are forced to comply with the regulation before courts can determine its legality.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump posted an AI-generated cartoon image of himself Sunday evening in which he is depicted as a hockey player striking Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is shown down on the ice, with a hockey stick. 

“Get up, governor,” a speech bubble from Trump’s mouth reads, apparently referring to Canada as a U.S. state rather than a sovereign country. 

Nearly $28 billion in U.S. exports crossing the border to Canada now carry up to 50% tariffs, a dollar-for-dollar match on Trump’s taxes on Canadian goods imposed last month, according to Canadian officials. 

Among the 629 categories of products Canada has targeted are key outputs from U.S. states with hotly contested races in the fast-approaching November midterm elections, including Maine’s paper and lumber industry, Michigan’s vehicle manufacturing and Wisconsin dairy production.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who’s in the midst of a tough reelection campaign, warned in late August roughly $170 million of her state’s goods will be impacted by the Canadian tariffs, with more than half of that coming from the forest product sector. Canada revised its tariff proposal Aug. 27 to exclude seafood, including Maine’s significant lobster industry. 

5% of goods in question

The United States and Canada’s dueling tariffs represent roughly 5% of the two countries’ massive and intertwined trading partnership, which totaled $879.9 billion in goods in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But the escalation has been accompanied by Trump’s near constant trolling of the U.S. northern neighbor, including threats since his days on the 2024 campaign trail to annex Canada as the 51st state. 

Over the Labor Day weekend, the president declared on his Truth Social platform “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!”

“If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggybank.’ BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA. AMERICA FIRST!” Trump wrote, referencing his executive order Aug. 27 renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.

The Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier has multiple manufacturing partners and facilities in the United States, including in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kansas and New Jersey, according to the company.

“Bombardier aircraft create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs through the company’s growing American footprint as well as within its supply chain made up of approximately 2,800 American companies across 47 states,” according to a Bombadier statement issued Monday. 

“The company spends over $2.5 Billion with suppliers each year. This deeply integrated network and incredible growth stem from the company’s heritage in the business jet industry, dating back to the innovations of Learjet in Wichita, Kansas, and the first business jets to enter service,” the statement continued.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said in a post on X Monday evening that he contacted Trump “to make certain the President is aware of the significant contributions of Bombardier to Kansas and the importance of its presence in Wichita to many Kansas workers at Bombardier and in the Bombardier supply chain.”

The company supports roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to the Kansas Republican.

Executive orders

Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed Aug. 21. In days prior Trump had said he would delay new tariffs on Canadian goods while negotiations continued. 

Trump signed three executive orders for new tariffs on Canada in late July using a Depression-era law that has never been enforced. 

Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

They are demanding to be heard by Congress and the Trump administration as tariffs dig into struggling farmers’ bank accounts, and partisanship threatens the Farm Bill, legislation that had bipartisan support for decades before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed things.

Meanwhile, consumers are having trouble choosing at the grocery stores after recalls of lettuce, other produce, and even some types of meat.

“Of course, farmers always get the black eye at the end of the day when that sort of stuff happens,” said Joe Logan, a beef farmer in Northeast Ohio, and president of the Ohio Farmers Union.

Logan and others in the union are concerned about the cuts that have been made within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which could have prevented some of the illnesses, or at least helped the country respond to contaminations like cyclosporiasis.

Logan specifically pointed to cuts made to the Agricultural Food Safety Inspection Service, and the fact that the government backed off of a law that required country-of-origin listings on cuts of beef, pork, and ground beef back in 2016.

“It was not very long ago that we would know not only the pathogen, we would know the source, because we would have surveillance in the system, and there’s a reason we do these things,” Logan said. “The USDA is being kicked around, and mismanagement is the reason.”

There are currently 17 active alerts listed on the USDA’s website, which includes recalls and public health alerts. Ten of them are listed as Class 1, the highest priority for recalls.

While product contamination is listed for several recalls and public health alerts, seven are listed as import violations, or “produced without benefit of inspection.”

Beef farmers like Logan are also facing struggles as the Trump administration attempts to push back against tariff-induced price increases by importing beef from other countries.

Trade conflicts with China and Canada are also causing issues. According to Logan, two-thirds of livestock grown in Canada is sent to the U.S.

“It really puts us in a tough place,” Logan said.

As a fifth-generation farmer who’s seen his share of ups and downs in the marketplace, Logan said in his first year as a beef farmer (transitioning from dairy cattle), beef prices were “solid all year.”

“It was kind of gratifying to think about maybe making a little money, and maybe expanding our herd,” he said.

Those hopes were dimmed after the announcement that Trump planned to import beef from outside the U.S., hampering an opportunity for Logan to become more profitable.

He said the choice to broaden the market as Trump tries to soften the blow of tariff prices on the American consumer sends a disappointing message to farmers.

“The clear signal that it sends to cattle producers is that you can not trust this administration to come up with (policies) that are going to give us a stable enough marketplace for us to be confident about expanding our herd,” Logan said.

Tariff prices are hitting farmers in many ways, from competition, to parts and materials. While preparing for corn season, Shelby County farmer Chris Gibbs replaced a drive chain on his planter, and noticed the parts number for the company on one side, and “made in China” on the other.

“I don’t care where it comes from, but what I knew at that exact moment is that I paid tariff on that doggone thing,” Gibbs said.

Even without tariffs in the discussion, farmers are looking for some level of predictability from the government, as participants in an industry that lives and dies by weather conditions and good crop years.

When there are droughts or low commodity prices, farmers have a knack for figuring it out.

“You do it, you move money around, you dig nickels out of the couch, you put off buying capital assets,” Gibbs said. “You make do.”

But the recent changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a Farm Bill that has been limping along without a full renewal since 2018 have created a “cash-flow working capital crisis in agriculture,” according to Gibbs.

That crisis revolves less around large corporation farms and more on those that actually grow the food for Americans, according to Logan.

“We have a livestock-centric policy right now that leaves the people that actually produce food that people eat kind of out in the cold, in terms of agricultural policy and subsidy support,” Logan said.

In December of last year, Gibbs headed to his supplier to pick up inputs like fertilizer and seed, and realized he couldn’t afford them because of the cost of production.

“I didn’t have the money,” Gibbs said. “I had the crops in the bin (ready to sell), but I was unwilling to sell them just to buy my inputs.”

The price of nitrogen-based fertilizer, used on crops like wheat, had already gone up. Then the Iran war began and the global oil market had a direct impact on local farmer costs.

“The oil drilling process in the Middle East creates gas, and that gas is what’s used to make nitrogen fertilizer,” Gibbs said. “It’s a worldwide market, so what happens there affects me.”

As the war continued, prices for the fertilizer doubled, even as commodities stayed at the same price.

Gibbs said he went into his supplier “dejected and almost embarrassed.” It was something the supplier had seen from many of his customers.

“He told me that’s the same story throughout the area,” Gibbs said.

Both Gibbs and Logan are hoping government officials will hear their concerns and bring back funding for the Farm Bill and long-established supports that have faded away through budget cuts and staff losses.

The Farm Bill is usually a bipartisan effort that combines the nutrition supports needed predominantly in urban areas of the country with the agricultural supports needed in rural areas.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the priorities, leaning away from nutrition assistance, like SNAP, supported by urban constituencies, and more toward rural districts.

That means fading bipartisan support, and less support from farmers as well.

“What Congress has hooked farmers’ wagon to is that now agriculture is dependent on one party, and that’s a dangerous place to be,” said Gibbs, who used to be chair of the Shelby County Republican Party and is now chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Combining his role as Ohio farmer and former county executive director for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Gibbs joined a July letter to the heads of the congressional agriculture committees, which was actually a follow-up to letter sent in February, urging action to counteract Trump administration decisions.

“In the five months since many of us wrote to share our concerns, the pressures facing farmers and ranchers have intensified dramatically in ways that jeopardize the entire U.S. ag economy – now and in the future,” the letter stated.

The group of more than 40 former farmers, academics, and agriculture leaders asked that the committees reflect on the increases in fuel and fertilizer costs, the stalling of agricultural exports, and increasing amount of farm bankruptcies.

They also decried the “widespread use of tariffs as a trade policy,” saying it “continues to be a disaster for American agriculture.”

“The outcome of these new tariffs will damage U.S. ag exports and our competitiveness in the world and increase costs to Americans,” the letter stated.

“The various handshake deals secured by this administration do not come close to offsetting the instability and loss of markets caused by this haphazard trade policy.”

Gibbs said neither congressional committee has responded to the letter.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The survey ranked 261 colleges and universities after receiving responses from nearly 63,000 students who were surveyed via College Pulse from Jan. 2 through June 3. 13

Ohio colleges and universities were ranked between No. 64 and 237. 

Half of students surveyed nationwide said the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was difficult to openly discuss on campus. 

Slightly less than half (46%) of students said President Donald Trump was hard to openly talk about on campus. 44% of students said right-wing activist Charlie Kirk who was killed last September while speaking at Utah Valley University, 43% said abortion, 38% said immigration, and 38% said transgender rights were difficult to openly discuss on campus. 

This is the seventh consecutive year FIRE has done this survey, which now gives universities letter grades. Slightly less than half of universities surveyed — 121 out of 261 — received a failing grade for their campus speech climate. 

Only 24 universities received a C or better. 

FIRE summed up 12 parts to come up with an overall score for each college or university: comfort expressing ideas, self-censorship, disruptive conduct, administrative support, openness,  political tolerance, the Chicago statement, institutional neutrality, FIRE’s spotlight rating and various speech controversies on campus.

The University of Chicago received the highest ranking with an overall score of 81.42 and a B- grade. New York University got the lowest ranking with an overall score of 44.97 and an F grade. 

Here’s where Ohio colleges and universities ranked on FIRE’s list:

64. Wright State University — 64.82 overall score — D climate grade — 153 students surveyed. 

76. Kenyon College — 63.57 overall score — D climate grade — 151 students surveyed. 

77. Miami University — 63.56 overall score — D climate grade — 294 students surveyed. 

80. Bowling Green State University — 63.38 overall score — D climate grade — 291 students surveyed. 

88. Denison University — 62.98 overall score — D climate grade — 176 students surveyed. 

91. University of Toledo — 62.86 overall score — D climate grade — 155 students surveyed. 

101. Ohio University — 62.27 overall score — D- climate grade — 307 students surveyed. 

108. University of Cincinnati — 61.84 overall score — D- climate grade — 284 students surveyed. 

121. Case Western Reserve University — 60.47 overall score — D- climate grade — 288 students surveyed. 

174. Ohio State University — 58.18 overall score — F climate grade — 333 students surveyed. 

189. Kent State University — 57.65 overall score — F climate grade — 338 students surveyed. 

194. Oberlin College — 57.19 overall score — F climate grade — 86 students surveyed. 

237. University of Dayton — 53.75 overall score — F climate grade — 275 students surveyed.

Case Western had the biggest positive change and was ranked No. 163 on last year’s survey. 

Ohio State had the biggest negative change and was ranked No. 124 on last year’s survey. Ohio State banned chalking on campus last summer and all dorm decor in the common areas must be Ohio State-specific.

Ohio Senate Bill 1 took effect last summer that bans diversity efforts, regulates classroom discussion, prohibits faculty strikes, creates post-tenure reviews, puts diversity scholarships at risk, and creates a retrenchment provision that blocks unions from negotiating on tenure, among other things.

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.

Changes to rules regarding international student visas as well as barring the admission of those who might potentially apply for government benefits in the future are literally guaranteed to undercut the country’s future growth.

And why are these rules deemed necessary? For no other reason than to advance the anti-immigrant nativism long maintained by President Trump and his xenophobic counselor, Stephen Miller. 

Take the case of international students.

International students have historically brought significant benefits to higher education institutions, by subsidizing the tuition paid by domestic students while adding global diversity and understanding to thousands of campuses.

And they have contributed to the overall U.S. economy.

According to the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce, international students added a combined $42.9 billion to the economy in the 2024-2025 school year and supported more than 355,000 jobs across the country.

Up until now, international students on F-visas were allowed to continue their studies until the completion of their programs, as long as they remained in status.

But new rules would allow international students a fixed period of no longer than 4 years to complete their degrees, while also prohibiting graduate students from changing majors, transferring, or completing additional degrees in different fields.

According to the Education Data Initiative, completion of a doctorate, for example, can range from 5 to 11 years, and the average time to complete a bachelor’s degree is closer to 5 years.

Once their time is up, students would have a maximum of 30 days to find a job, leave, or be subject to deportation. 

The decline in international students, which the new rules virtually guarantee, are bound to hit Ohio with a vengeance.

Ohio currently enrolls just under 36,000 international students, a figure which already reflects a decline of nearly 3,000 students from just a year ago.

Enrollment declines at Cleveland State University, for example, are expected to cost the school an estimated $11.5 million in lost tuition revenue this year alone.

For a state whose international students contribute an estimated $1.3 billion a year to the overall economy, and support almost 11,000 jobs, the loss of even more foreign students is a self-imposed wound that provides no understandable benefit.

As Marcello Fantoni, Kent State’s vice president of global education remarked, “There is damage done there, and it will take a long time to be fixed. A long time.”  

The same is true with the new rules published on July 20 regarding what is known as the “public charge ground of inadmissibility.”

The new procedures, which lack clear standards or measures, allow the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to block the entry of otherwise legal immigrants who they think — again, without a clear standard of evaluation — could apply for government benefits at some point in the undefined future.

And these include benefits as modest as taking part in a school’s free lunch program. To be clear, the rules aren’t about preventing noncitizens, including green card holders, from accessing benefits: those prohibitions are already on the books. The new rules are about allowing federal immigration services to ban low-income, legal immigrants.

As with the changes to international student visas, this new rule will cost the economy dearly.

According the to the libertarian Cato Institute, the population most likely to be hamstrung by these revisions contributed $2.8 trillion more to the U.S. economy from 1994 to 2023 than they received in benefits or other costs.

In Ohio, in 2023, immigrants earned $27.3 billion and paid $7.3 billion in state taxes. Although it is difficult to calculate how much of that will be lost with the new regulations in place, the loses — and there will be losses — are once again self-imposed injuries generated solely because of this administration’s well-documented animosity to immigrants, particularly low-income immigrants of color. 

As they rampage through Trump’s second presidency, neither he nor his enablers see any reason to disguise this. We have become all too familiar with Trump’s denigration of “shithole” countries, or his repeated insistence that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Commenting on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to block asylum seekers at the border, Stephen Miller crowed “America’s doors are [now] closed fully to asylum seekers.”

He could have said the same for refugees. Of a ceiling of 7,500 refugees permitted for FY 2026, a historical low, all but three of the 6,668 accepted were white South Africans. When the administration added an additional 10,000 slots this past May, all were reserved for white South Africans. 

As fans cheered for the U.S. men’s national soccer team in the World Cup, it was not lost on many how well the team actually represented today’s America. Of the 26 players, nearly half have dual citizenship; 6 were foreign born, and 5 others were born to immigrant parents.

And yet a DHS social media post sought to drum up support for the U.S. at the World Cup by calling on fans to “DEFEND THE HOMELAND: One Nation. One Homeland. One Team,” a slogan frighteningly reminiscent of the Nazi’s “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” (One People, One Nation, One Leader). 

As the administration continues to use both violence and rule-making to make immigrants’ lives intolerable and to slam shut the door shut to most future immigration, its measures are both economically self-destructive and a refusal to accept that we are, in fact, a country of many different people, all yearning to breathe free. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Last year, the nation added more than 411,000 union members — the largest annual growth since 2008, according to a study published just ahead of the Labor Day holiday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

At the end of last year, more than 14.6 million American workers belonged to a union — about 10% of the workforce, the study said. 

While union membership grew across the country, the State of the Unions report found that states that have sought to protect or strengthen collective bargaining rights added three times as many union members as so-called right-to-work states, which prohibit mandatory union membership or dues as conditions of employment.

“What seems to be the number one driver is the state of the state,” said one of the study authors, Robert Bruno, who leads the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “If the policy is anti-union, it suppresses worker will. Where the law allows worker will to flourish, as I would argue it should, then you see higher numbers. So you can’t ignore politics. You can’t ignore policy.” 

State governments are nearly evenly divided on labor policy, with 26 states having right-to-work laws. Union membership rates sit at about 14% in collective bargaining states and 5% in right-to-work states, the study found.

The study shows that workers in collective bargaining states earn significantly more than those in other states. After adjusting for cost of living variances, the report calculated average hourly earnings of $34.16 in right-to-work states and $37.24 in collective bargaining states.

Union density is nowhere close to its record high. In 1954, more than a third of American workers belonged to unions. Today, that rate is about 10%.  And unions face major policy headwinds at the state and federal levels. In recent years, Southern states have passed new laws aimed at curbing union expansion. And President Donald Trump has sought to strip collective bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal workers. 

Researchers said it’s unclear how federal actions will affect union membership figures. Many of the president’s moves are being litigated in courts and more federal workers have sought to unionize under this administration. 

But public support for labor unions is growing among Republicans and Democrats, Gallup polling shows. 

“More Americans are turning to unions as a bulwark against the rising cost of living, and more public sector workers turned towards unions last year in the wake of some federal actions and federal headwinds,” said State of the Unions coauthor Frank Manzo IV, an economist at the left-leaning Illinois Economic Policy Institute. 

Conservatives have long argued that unions’ benefit on wage growth has been overstated by pro-labor interests. 

In a 2025 review of 147 studies, researchers at the free-market think tank Mercatus Center concluded that powerful labor unions can lead to slower job growth and fewer jobs for unionized workers, reduce company investments in research and development, and increase the likelihood of company closures. 

Researchers at the George Mason University think tank said the difference between the wages of unionized workers and nonunionized workers has declined in recent years and may even be negligible. 

“When powerful and adversarial unions operate with government-granted monopoly privileges and press for unsustainable terms, it can backfire and result in lost jobs and fewer opportunities for workers,” that report said.

This year, state lawmakers passed dozens of bills seeking to boost worker protections across 19 states, according to tracking by State Futures, a nonprofit coordinating hundreds of Democratic lawmakers across the states.

Those measures included three bills aimed at expanding collective bargaining.

Illinois lawmakers granted rideshare and gig drivers the right to organize and to bargain collectively. Washington state extended collective bargaining rights to certain university student employees.

And Virginia lawmakers approved a measure to repeal the state’s longstanding ban on public-sector collective bargaining. That would have expanded the possibility of union membership to half a million public employees in the commonwealth. But Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed that measure in May. 

The governor said she agreed with the goal of expanding collective bargaining rights. But she urged the legislature to adopt specific amendments, including delaying provisions of the bill until 2030 and shifting authority over how the system operates to a state board. 

“While preserving the enrolled bill’s focus on allowing public employees to achieve collective bargaining, my amendments would have also provided additional flexibility for public employers to take into account existing local budget timelines and processes,” Spanberger wrote in her veto message. “However, the General Assembly rejected these amendments.”

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.

“Jesus Christ is a son of God,” Ramaswamy told an Iowa voter while campaigning for president in September 2023.

Ramaswamy explicitly acknowledged the distinction, saying his belief was “different than saying he’s the Son of God.”

When the voter raised the Christian teaching that salvation comes exclusively through Jesus, Ramaswamy described Jesus instead as “a path to heaven.”

The exchange occurred at a campaign stop in Nevada, Iowa, and was reported by NBC News on Sept. 13, 2023. Although some later coverage described the video as originating in 2024, NBC’s contemporaneous report establishes that the exchange took place in September 2023.

The clip resurfaced in the closing days of Ohio’s May Republican gubernatorial primary, spreading through conservative and Christian social media circles and renewing scrutiny of Ramaswamy’s religious beliefs.

Christian backlash followed

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported at the time that conservative Christians were among those criticizing Ramaswamy’s comments about Jesus, while other commenters defended his right to hold Hindu religious beliefs.

The criticism extended beyond social-media comments.

Mike Winger, an ordained Christian teacher who runs the BibleThinker ministry, devoted a May 1 program to Ramaswamy’s remarks under the title “Vivek’s Pagan Jesus Isn’t Jesus.” BibleThinker describes its mission as teaching Christian theology and defending a biblical worldview.

A day later, Cincinnati pastor Michael Clary published an essay titled “Vivek Ramaswamy Can’t Conserve What He Doesn’t Believe.”

Clary, the founding pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, argued that Ramaswamy’s Hindu theology does not merely disagree with Christianity but “absorbs” Jesus into a broader religious system and “demotes him to lesser status.”

Clary went further, accusing Ramaswamy of deliberately presenting his Hindu beliefs in language intended to make them more acceptable to conservative Christian voters.

Other Christian media similarly condemned the remarks. A May 2 essay published by Christian outlet Caldron Pool was headlined “No, Vivek — Jesus Is Not A Way to God.”

Ramaswamy’s statement conflicts with a foundational Christian creed

The dispute is not simply over wording.

The belief that Jesus is the unique, divine Son of God is a foundational doctrine across major branches of Christianity.

The Nicene Creed published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops identifies Jesus as the “Only Begotten Son of God,” “true God from true God” and “consubstantial with the Father.”

The Church of England describes the Nicene Creed as a summary of core Christian beliefs and likewise professes Jesus as “the only Son of God.”

The Orthodox Church in America similarly teaches that “there is but one eternal Son of God.”

Ramaswamy’s description of Jesus as “a son of God” rather than “the Son of God” therefore places his stated belief outside that central Nicene Christian doctrine.

His description of Jesus as “a path to heaven” also conflicts with Christian traditions that teach salvation through Christ alone.

The issue remains relevant in the Ohio governor’s race

Religion has repeatedly surfaced as Ramaswamy campaigns to lead a state where Christians remain the dominant religious group.

The Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found that roughly two-thirds of Ohio adults identify with a Christian tradition. Evangelical Protestants alone account for 26% of Ohio adults, while Catholics represent 16%, mainline Protestants 16% and historically Black Protestants 4%. About 1% of Ohio adults identify as Hindu.

Ramaswamy has continued making appearances specifically aimed at Christian audiences since winning the Republican nomination.

On Aug. 17, he appeared before Christian leaders at the Ohio Faith & Freedom Forum in Middletown. Reason reported from the event that the forum centered on questions about Christian civic engagement and Ramaswamy’s candidacy as a Hindu.

His campaign is now promoting another explicitly Christian-focused event.

Ramaswamy’s official campaign calendar lists a Sept. 19 event in Cleveland titled “Christians, Bikers & Patriots.” The Summit County Republican Party advertises the gathering as an “ask-him-anything town hall” with Ramaswamy.

That continued outreach puts Ramaswamy before a constituency in which questions about his theology have followed him for years and became a renewed source of controversy during the Ohio primary.

And on one of Christianity’s most fundamental theological questions — who Jesus Christ is — Ramaswamy’s own answer was explicit: Jesus is “a son of God,” not “the Son of God,” and “a path to heaven,” rather than the only one.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Tony Ramos, a representative of the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, told Tiffin City Council on Tuesday that the city has continued receiving electricity for less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour under a contract that actually expired more than two years ago.

The city signed a 36-month contract with NextEra in April 2021. That agreement expired in April 2024, Ramos said, but NextEra continued honoring the old rate.

That rate is now going away.

“Five cents a kilowatt hour for electricity is extremely low,” Ramos told council, saying current rates are roughly 9 to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Rather than send Tiffin into the electricity market alone, NOPEC is proposing to combine the city’s municipal electricity demand with 11 other Ohio communities in an effort to secure a better price through bulk purchasing.

The proposed group would represent more than 80 million kilowatt-hours of annual electricity use, Ramos said, and includes communities such as Norwalk, Mansfield, Lancaster, Chardon and Lexington.

“The main goal is to blunt any potential increase,” Ramos said.

He used a move from roughly 4 cents per kilowatt-hour to around 9 cents as an example of the kind of increase NOPEC is attempting to soften through the pooled purchasing program. No final price for Tiffin has been established.

NOPEC expects to present participating communities with pricing and term options in early October. The initial contracts would run either 12 or 24 months and are expected to begin in November or December.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-electricity-rate-increase-ends-cheap-contract/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

City Council on Tuesday gave first reading to Ordinance 2026-61, introduced by Councilmember Aaron Jones, which would expand Tiffin’s existing clean-water-removal grant program to help property owners pay for backflow-prevention devices.

The proposal follows recent rainfall events that city officials said have led to reports of sewer backups affecting several residential and commercial properties.

Under the proposed program, the city would reimburse property owners for 50% of the cost of installing a backflow valve, including labor, up to a maximum city contribution of $2,000.

The assistance would be funded through sewer utility revenue, according to a Finance Committee report presented to council Tuesday.

The program is not yet available. Ordinance 2026-61 received only its first reading Tuesday and was not put to a final vote.

The proposal grew out of a recent City Council Finance Committee discussion over how the city could provide more immediate help to property owners while Tiffin continues work on its larger sewer system.

“Recent rainfall events have led to reports of sewer backups affecting several residential and commercial properties,” Councilmember Kevin Roessner said while reading the committee report. “As the city works to implement its long-term control plan, an interim cost-sharing initiative is being evaluated to provide immediate mitigation.”

Backflow-prevention devices are installed in sewer lines to help stop wastewater from reversing direction when a sewer becomes overloaded. Under normal conditions, wastewater can flow from a building toward the municipal sewer. When flow begins moving in the opposite direction, the valve closes to help keep sewage from entering the property.

Federal Emergency Management Agency guidance describes backwater valves as one way property owners can reduce the risk of sewage entering buildings during sewer backups, while noting that the devices require inspection and maintenance and do not eliminate every possible source of flooding.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-considers-2000-grants-sewer-backflow-prevention/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Four months later, some of the opposition he encountered on his right flank has not gone away.

Casey Putsch, the Republican who challenged Ramaswamy in the primary, declared Monday that he still would not support his party’s nominee and suggested Republicans should consider an independent candidate instead.

“As a lifelong Republican, I said on the campaign — ‘I wouldn’t support Vivek Ramaswamy with a gun to my head,’” Putsch wrote on X. “Amy Acton is no leader, but the Republican Party needs knocked down for 100% selling us out.”

“How about an independent?”

Then on Tuesday, Putsch escalated his criticism while responding to TiffinOhio.net’s reporting on the extraordinary concentration of billionaire money behind the main super PAC supporting Ramaswamy.

Federal campaign-finance records show V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims raised nearly $41.8 million through June 30. Five billionaires supplied about $37 million of it — roughly 88% of everything the group raised during that period.

“Because they want an ROI,” Putsch wrote. “Vivek is here to SELL US OUT.”

Putsch did not provide evidence in the post that the donors had been promised anything in return or that Ramaswamy had agreed to advance their interests. But the comments represent another escalation from a former Republican rival who has continued attacking the GOP nominee months after the primary ended.

And the resistance to Ramaswamy from portions of the right extends beyond Putsch.

Even before Republicans voted in May, The Associated Press reported that Ramaswamy was encountering “growing headwinds” within parts of the GOP base, with conservative voters voicing frustration over issues including data centers, the Jeffrey Epstein files, the war with Iran and the rising cost of living.

The concern inside Ramaswamy’s campaign at the time was not necessarily that conservative voters would cross over and support Acton. It was whether enough dissatisfied Republicans might simply stay home.

Ramaswamy’s running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, warned Republicans before the primary that complacency could prove more dangerous than either Acton or the national political environment.

Conservative audiences have confronted Ramaswamy

The tensions have repeatedly surfaced in places where a Republican nominee would ordinarily expect a receptive audience.

At an April 21 Turning Point USA event at Ohio State University, WOSU reported that more than two dozen people lined up to question Ramaswamy on subjects including immigration, Israel and data centers.

One woman criticized the effect of data centers on farmland. After Ramaswamy defended the industry, she shouted, “Vote Casey Putsch” into the microphone.

“It’s a free country,” Ramaswamy responded.

The confrontation was mild compared with what happened three months later.

On July 29, Ramaswamy appeared at the Young Americans for Liberty national convention at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Video from the event showed attendees loudly booing as he took the stage.

The heckling continued during the appearance as audience members challenged him on issues including Israel and immigration. Ramaswamy ultimately left the stage about 14 minutes into what had been scheduled as a 30-minute appearance, according to contemporaneous reports.

The episode was striking not because Ramaswamy encountered protesters from the left, but because the hostile reception came at the national convention of a conservative and libertarian youth organization.

Immigration, religion and identity have exposed another fault line

A report published Tuesday by Reason describes another source of tension between Ramaswamy and some conservative Ohio voters: immigration, religion and competing ideas about American identity.

The reporter described attending a January gathering of Republican activists in southwest Ohio where a discussion of H-1B visas and immigration became contentious. Attendees challenged Ramaswamy over his support for an immigration system more favorable to highly skilled workers and over his rejection of the idea that Americans with deeper ancestral roots in the country should hold a more privileged place in American identity.

Ramaswamy, the Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, has repeatedly rejected that conception of American identity, arguing instead that being American is rooted in allegiance to the country’s founding principles rather than ancestry.

The same reporter attended an Ohio Faith & Freedom Forum in Middletown on Aug. 17, where Ramaswamy addressed Christian conservatives as a Hindu candidate running against Acton, who is Jewish. Unlike the earlier gathering, the August audience appeared largely receptive to his argument that voters should focus on shared political values rather than a candidate’s personal religion.

That distinction matters: the evidence does not show that Republican voters have rejected Ramaswamy wholesale. He won the Republican nomination decisively, maintains the support of the state party and prominent conservative leaders, and has drawn large crowds at campaign events around Ohio.

But it also shows that winning the nomination did not eliminate the ideological and cultural disputes that surfaced during the primary.

Putsch is not a neutral messenger

Putsch’s continued attacks also come with important context.

His primary campaign drew condemnation for rhetoric targeting Ramaswamy’s Indian heritage and Hindu faith. The Associated Press documented several examples, including Putsch depicting Ramaswamy as an insect being sprayed with pesticide and challenging him to play “cowboys and Indians.”

Ramaswamy responded during the primary by publicly condemning racial and religious identity politics on the right, arguing that American citizenship and commitment to the nation’s founding ideals — not race, ancestry or religion — should determine who belongs in the country.

But Putsch is also no longer the only evidence of discontent on Ramaswamy’s right.

The former primary challenger remains openly opposed to him. Conservative voters have confronted him over immigration and data centers. A Turning Point USA audience member used her question to promote his Republican rival. And months after the primary, attendees at a Young Americans for Liberty convention greeted the Republican nominee with sustained boos and heckling.

At the same time, Ramaswamy has retained significant institutional conservative support. Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou dismissed the online backlash during the primary, while prominent conservative organizations and Republican officials have continued supporting Ramaswamy’s campaign.

The result is a Republican nominee who decisively captured his party’s nomination but enters the final stretch of the general election with some of the fractures exposed during that contest still visible.

Putsch’s message this week made clear that, at least for one of Ramaswamy’s former Republican opponents, the primary did not settle the matter.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“No corner of the lunch box is insulated from the Trump administration’s economic policies,” the organization said in a report on research into rising costs for families during the back-to-school season.

The organization said the price of typical lunch staples increased nearly 11% in the past year.

Groundwork’s data found that packing school lunches will cost families more than $3,800 during the upcoming school year, an increase of $400 from 2025.

“In every aisle of the grocery store, parents are in store for higher prices: fresh blueberries have surged 47.7% over the past year, while deli staples have also become more expensive, with sliced ham and turkey both up roughly 12%,” the report says. “Even pantry staples are costing more, with sandwich bread up 21.8%, apple juice up 20%, and animal crackers up 15.7%.”

Both the Trump administration’s tariffs on goods imported into the United States and a surge in fuel prices since the start of his war in Iran are to blame for the price jumps, Groundwork says.

In July, after previous tariffs Trump imposed either were struck down as unconstitutional or expired, the administration announced new tariffs of 10%-12.5% on products from 59 countries and the European Union. A coalition of 25 U.S. states filed suit in August against the Trump administration over the new tariffs, demanding they be canceled and refunded. The new tariffs, according to the lawsuit, affect more than 99% of imports to the U.S.

Groundwork’s report notes that due to Trump’s war in Iran, the price of oil has skyrocketed, driving up the price of diesel and the costs of petroleum-based plastic packaging. CNBC reported that the national average price for a gallon of diesel fuel reached a record $5.85 per gallon on Sept. 4, a 60% increase over the price a year ago.

According to the nonprofit Engine Technology Forum, some 76% of commercial trucks in the U.S. run on diesel, adding more to the cost of shipping food to grocery stores and increasing consumer prices. 

The war in Iran is also constricting the supply of fertilizer, which is driving up food prices even further, according to the organization.

The Groundwork Collaborative report notes that while families are having to pay higher prices, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump in July 2025 is creating more obstacles to feeding children.

“By making it harder for low-income families to qualify for and retain food assistance and health care benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, the law reduces the number of children who automatically qualify for free meals,” the report says.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The lawsuit, filed May 16, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by investors and entities connected to the failed conservative financial-services startup GloriFi, accuses Ramaswamy and numerous other wealthy investors and business figures of participating in a scheme to misappropriate GloriFi’s ideas and confidential information and use them to create competing companies.

No court has found that Ramaswamy stole GloriFi’s business plan, misappropriated its trade secrets or committed racketeering. But the allegations against him are unusually specific, and parts of the chronology can be independently verified through federal securities records and contemporaneous reporting.

According to the 141-page federal complaint, GloriFi founder Toby Neugebauer discussed bringing Ramaswamy into the company in an executive capacity in the fall of 2021. On Nov. 2, 2021, Neugebauer allegedly offered Ramaswamy 30% of a proposed GloriFi asset-management venture called “WhiteRock” if Ramaswamy would become its CEO.

The proposed business was designed as a conservative counterweight to BlackRock and other major asset managers. The lawsuit says WhiteRock would offer low-cost exchange-traded funds while using its shareholder voting power to advance what GloriFi characterized as pro-America, pro-capitalism and anti-ESG priorities.

The complaint says the business intended to begin with energy ETFs.

Months later, Ramaswamy launched a company built around a strikingly similar public mission.

‘Monopoly board pieces’

The lawsuit says that on Nov. 3, 2021 — one day after the WhiteRock offer — Ramaswamy texted Neugebauer about money he needed to reserve for “two other ‘monopoly board pieces’ we also need to get off the ground.”

According to the complaint, Ramaswamy was referring to an internally produced GloriFi graphic depicting the company’s planned financial-services businesses as spaces on a Monopoly-style board. The graphic is reproduced in the federal complaint and includes a space labeled “GloriFi Asset Management,” which the plaintiffs say represented the WhiteRock business.

The complaint says Neugebauer ultimately decided not to make Ramaswamy GloriFi’s co-CEO after further discussions, in part because Ramaswamy planned to devote significant time to a future presidential campaign. Neugebauer instead allegedly offered to make Ramaswamy GloriFi’s largest outside investor.

The lawsuit says Ramaswamy accepted that investment opportunity.

Forbes independently reported in 2024 that Ramaswamy was involved with GloriFi early in its development and quoted a person with knowledge of the relationship saying Neugebauer and Ramaswamy had “detailed conversations” about GloriFi’s ETF-management business.

Forbes also reported that GloriFi raised approximately $55 million from investors that included Ramaswamy, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and other wealthy financiers and business figures.

The relationship falls apart

According to the federal complaint, the relationship changed dramatically after Neugebauer decided against giving Ramaswamy the GloriFi leadership position.

The complaint alleges that on Nov. 8, 2021 — the day after Neugebauer says he told Ramaswamy and former Mike Pence chief of staff Nick Ayers that Ramaswamy would not become GloriFi’s co-CEO — Breanne Harmsen, an associate of Ayers, downloaded what the complaint describes as the entirety of GloriFi’s confidential and proprietary information from company servers.

The plaintiffs allege the download was performed on behalf of the defendants. The publicly available complaint does not establish that Ramaswamy personally ordered the download, received the files or knew it had occurred.

The lawsuit further alleges that Ramaswamy and other defendants subsequently began working on a competing effort it calls “Project Whitestone,” a name the plaintiffs explicitly contrast with GloriFi’s “WhiteRock.”

That allegation also has not been proven. The publicly available complaint does not include an underlying Ramaswamy or Strive document independently establishing that “Project Whitestone” was a name actually used by Ramaswamy’s side.

What happened next, however, is public record.

Strive launches months later

On May 10, 2022, Ramaswamy and his high-school friend Anson Frericks publicly launched Strive Asset Management. Strive’s launch announcement said the company had raised more than $20 million and would compete with major asset managers including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.

Strive said it planned to create investment funds whose shareholder votes would push American corporations to focus on what it called “excellence over politics.” Contemporary reporting described the venture as an effort to challenge large asset managers over their use of shareholder power on environmental and social issues.

The similarities alleged by the GloriFi plaintiffs did not stop with the broad anti-ESG concept.

Strive’s first ETF was focused on energy.

Federal securities records identify the Strive U.S. Energy ETF, ticker DRLL, as Strive’s first fund and give it an August 2022 inception date. Strive’s current fund records list Aug. 8, 2022, as the fund’s inception date.

When Strive publicly launched DRLL, the company described the energy fund as an alternative to ESG mandates imposed by large asset managers and said it intended to use shareholder engagement and proxy voting to encourage U.S. energy companies to invest more heavily in oil, gas and other energy production.

That sequence sits at the center of the lawsuit: GloriFi alleges that it had already described to Ramaswamy an anti-ESG ETF business intended to compete with BlackRock, beginning with the energy sector, before Ramaswamy launched Strive and made an energy ETF its first fund.

The plaintiffs contend the resemblance was not coincidence. They accuse Ramaswamy and others of taking the concept.

Ramaswamy has not been found liable for doing so.

Neugebauer invested in Strive, too

There is also an important fact that complicates the plaintiffs’ account: Neugebauer himself later agreed to invest in Ramaswamy’s new company.

According to the federal complaint, Ramaswamy initially described Strive to Neugebauer as something substantially different from WhiteRock. The lawsuit says Ramaswamy discussed a beer brand centered on American values as well as an actively managed hedge fund that would pick stocks.

Because GloriFi was not planning a beer company or an actively managed fund, the complaint says Neugebauer believed there was no conflict and agreed to invest in Strive effective March 3, 2022.

The lawsuit alleges that Strive then changed course before its public launch.

Instead of launching primarily as the beer business or actively managed hedge fund allegedly described to Neugebauer, Strive emerged in May 2022 as an asset-management company explicitly challenging ESG investing. Public trademark records also show Strive Enterprises filed applications for “Strive Asset Management,” “Excellence Funds” and “Excellence Capital” in April 2022, shortly before the company’s public launch.

The plaintiffs argue that this sequence is significant: Neugebauer says he invested when he believed Ramaswamy was building a different business, only to later see Strive launch an investment model he believed closely resembled WhiteRock.

Again, that is the plaintiffs’ allegation, not a judicial finding.

GloriFi collapses

GloriFi itself proved to be a spectacular business failure.

The company shut down in November 2022 and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 2023. Forbes reported that GloriFi entered bankruptcy with roughly $40 million in liabilities and about $600,000 in assets after burning through more than $60 million in approximately 16 months.

Contemporaneous reporting and accounts from former employees described missed product launches, technology failures, heavy spending and serious internal management problems. Those facts complicate the lawsuit’s broader theory that GloriFi’s investors and competitors were responsible for destroying the company.

Several defendants have also forcefully rejected Neugebauer’s allegations. A spokesperson for Griffin called them “fabricated nonsense” in a statement to Forbes. Lonsdale told Forbes that he lost money on GloriFi, while representatives of Old Glory called allegations against that company unfounded. Other defendants either declined to comment or did not respond to Forbes.

At the same time, Forbes reported that two people with knowledge of GloriFi and the circumstances surrounding its collapse, along with several former GloriFi employees, defended substantial portions of Neugebauer’s account.

The RICO lawsuit never reached the merits

The Georgia lawsuit accused Ramaswamy and the other defendants of violations of Georgia racketeering law and the federal civil RICO statute, along with theft of trade secrets, conspiracy and other claims. Those causes of action are detailed both in the original complaint and in a later 97-page federal bankruptcy court opinion examining who legally owned the claims.

But the case soon collided with GloriFi’s bankruptcy.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross initially stayed the Georgia litigation in July 2024 and then administratively closed the case on Oct. 3, 2024, pending the outcome of the related bankruptcy proceedings in the Northern District of Texas.

The Georgia court made clear that the parties were expected to report back after the bankruptcy matters concluded. As recently as October 2025, Ross was still requesting status information about the unresolved bankruptcy proceedings. The public docket was updated through August 2026 without showing a merits judgment against Ramaswamy.

Then, in June 2025, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michelle Larson issued a significant ruling over who actually had the legal right to pursue many of the allegations.

Larson found that the “vast majority” of the facts alleged in the federal and Georgia RICO claims described direct injuries to GloriFi itself, rather than injuries unique to Neugebauer.

The court specifically pointed to allegations that defendants interfered with GloriFi’s fundraising, illegally downloaded confidential or proprietary data, copied company products and converted GloriFi trade secrets.

That distinction was critical. Once GloriFi entered bankruptcy, causes of action belonging to the company generally became property of the bankruptcy estate and fell under the authority of the Chapter 7 trustee.

Larson concluded that the portions of the federal and Georgia RICO claims based on injuries to GloriFi belonged to the bankruptcy estate rather than Neugebauer. The portions involving alleged personal disparagement of Neugebauer were different because those alleged injuries were particular to him.

The bankruptcy court also found that Neugebauer and WPI Collateral Management had willfully violated the bankruptcy automatic stay by bringing claims that belonged to the estate without first getting permission from the bankruptcy court.

Larson permanently enjoined pursuit of the litigation in its existing form. But the judge expressly noted that Neugebauer and WPI could seek authority to amend or refile claims that were not derivative claims belonging to the bankruptcy estate.

That was a serious procedural setback for the plaintiffs.

But it was not a ruling that their central allegations against Ramaswamy were false.

The bankruptcy court did not find that Ramaswamy stole GloriFi’s intellectual property, participated in the alleged server download or committed racketeering. It also did not adjudicate those accusations in Ramaswamy’s favor on their merits.

Instead, the litigation was derailed largely by a different question: whether the people who filed most of the claims had the legal right to bring them in the first place.

A different origin story for a company central to Ramaswamy’s rise

The dispute is notable because Strive became a major component of Ramaswamy’s public profile before he entered presidential politics and later became the Republican nominee for Ohio governor.

At its launch, Strive presented itself as a challenger to BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street and argued that large asset managers were using ordinary investors’ money and shareholder voting power to push corporations toward political and social priorities.

That mission remained central to the company for years. In later materials filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Strive said Ramaswamy and Frericks founded the company in 2022 and credited it with helping roll back ESG and DEI mandates in corporate America.

Ramaswamy became one of the country’s most prominent critics of ESG investing, frequently pointing to Strive as a market-based alternative to the corporate behavior he condemned.

The federal lawsuit presents a sharply different account of how that business began.

According to the plaintiffs, months before Strive existed, Ramaswamy discussed becoming the public face of another company’s anti-ESG investment operation, was offered 30% of the venture, received an explanation of an ETF strategy positioned against BlackRock and exchanged a message about financing other pieces of GloriFi’s planned financial-services operation.

Months later, Strive publicly launched as an anti-ESG asset manager.

Its first ETF focused on energy — the same sector the lawsuit says GloriFi had planned to target first with WhiteRock.

Whether those similarities resulted from misappropriation, from investors and entrepreneurs independently pursuing similar ideas during the rise of the anti-ESG movement, or from some other explanation has never been resolved on the merits by a court.

But as Ramaswamy campaigns to become Ohio’s next governor, the allegation remains embedded in the federal court record surrounding one of the companies most closely associated with his rise: that the business model behind Strive was shown to him before Strive existed — and that its creator says Ramaswamy took it.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Every critical violation was marked corrected during the inspection. The findings included improperly held food, expired baby food, improperly stored food and failures to properly date refrigerated, ready-to-eat food.

One establishment, Fatheads in Republic, received two critical citations during a follow-up inspection.

218 Washington Street, Republic — Aug. 14

During a follow-up inspection, health district officials cited Fatheads for two critical violations and one non-critical violation.

Inspectors observed uncovered food on a counter and in a freezer and found ready-to-eat food in a cooler that had been kept beyond the permitted seven-day period.

Both critical violations were corrected during the inspection.

The report also noted that a previously cited issue involving the location of handwashing sinks had been corrected since the prior inspection.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/9-seneca-county-food-facilities-critical-violations-august/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Silver Springs: A Fleetwood Mac Experience will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, at the East Green Amphitheater.

The benefit concert was organized through an effort led by Bob Stine, owner of GW’s Fine Food & Spirits, who wanted to bring another live music event to Downtown Tiffin while raising money and collecting supplies for the Humane Society.

“The Humane Society does so much for our community, and I wanted to find a way to help,” Stine said. “We thought bringing in a great band would be something people would enjoy, and at the same time, we could raise money for a really good cause.”

Silver Springs performs the music of Fleetwood Mac, with the Sept. 24 show expected to include songs such as “Dreams,” “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” “Go Your Own Way,” “The Chain,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Don’t Stop.”

A beer garden with alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages will be available during the concert, along with snacks and a 50/50 drawing. Organizers said proceeds from the beer garden, beverage and snack sales and the drawing will benefit the Seneca County Humane Society.

Attendees are also being encouraged to bring supplies for the Humane Society. A collection truck will be stationed at the event, with organizers hoping to fill it with donations for animals in the organization’s care.

More than 50 local businesses and supporters have sponsored the concert, according to organizers.

Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets. The concert begins at 7 p.m. at the East Green Amphitheater in Downtown Tiffin.

Those interested in sponsoring the event or making a donation can contact Stine at 419-934-0006 or Susan Wilkinson with Simply Shop Local at 419-934-0254 or simplyshoplocal@gmail.com. Sponsorships and donations are being processed through Simply Shop Local, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, on Sunday, Sept. 6, troopers working as Acton’s security detail “intercepted” Havas as he forced his way through the crowd toward Acton.

“Havas knocked multiple fairgoers over while trying to get towards Dr. Acton and was found to be in possession of a taser and two pistols,” the Patrol said in a statement. “Dr. Acton was unharmed during the incident.”

Havas was then turned over to the Mahoning County Sheriff. In its statement, the Sheriff’s office noted a set of brass knuckles were recovered from Havas as well but noted “no weapons were ever brandished.” On Monday, the Sheriff asked for anyone with photos or video recordings of the incident to contact the department.

Havas is a registered voter in Mahoning County. He last voted in the 2024 general election. While the county voter file doesn’t carry a party designation for him, the last time he voted in a primary he pulled a Republican ballot for the 2016 election.

Havas is also related to Andrew Havas, a former county campaign chair for Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign. Andrew resigned that position after NBC News reported he previously served time in jail for sexual misconduct with a minor.

Reactions

After Sunday’s incident, Acton Communications Director Addie Bullock said Dr. Acton and her husband expressed gratitude for the “swift and decisive action of law enforcement and are praying for the recovery of those injured.”

“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” Bullock continued. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”

Acton’s opponents in the governor’s race were quick to condemn Havas’ actions as well.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign stated “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt.”

Libertarian Don Kissick said “whatever our political disagreements, violence is never an acceptable substitute for debate, elections, or the peaceful exchange of ideas.”

“Dr. Acton is my opponent in an election,” he went on, “but first and foremost she is a fellow Ohioan. I am relieved that law enforcement was there to intervene, and my thoughts are with Dr. Acton, her campaign, and everyone injured in this incident.”

Gov. Mike DeWine, who helped bring Acton to statewide prominence by tapping her to lead the Department of Health, said he and his wife Fran were thankful Acton wasn’t hurt “and we send our thoughts to those who were injured.”

DeWine thanked the Highway Patrol and other law enforcement for controlling the situation and insisted “Violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable.”

Attorney General Andy Wilson echoed DeWine’s praise of the patrol and stated, “political violence of any kind has no place in Ohio or our nation.”

On Monday, Acton was back on the campaign trail, taking part in Cleveland’s Labor Day Parade. She acknowledged “a rough day” in Canfield but described herself as scrappy.

“The number one thing I am fighting for is our common humanity,” Acton said. “That is what is at stake in this election. Everywhere I go, it doesn’t know party. Everyone is showing up, and they’re exhausted of the hate and the chaos and the vitriol and the purposely being pitted against one another.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans 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.

The Trump administration quickly appealed the order to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.

Then Sunday, the administration also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the preliminary injunction, saying Talwani rushed it without considering the actual text of its final rule.

“The district court’s continuing prejudgment of the rule is baseless, and an immediate stay is warranted,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a Sunday application to the court.

Sauer described the rule as containing “only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail.” He added that USPS had long recommended the design requirements it was seeking to codify in the rule.

The Supreme Court will consider the application on its emergency docket. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Sunday asked the states and voting rights groups challenging the rule to file their response to the application by Wednesday. It’s unclear when a ruling would come.

Friday injunction

Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, issued a preliminary injunction late Friday, 60 days before Election Day, blocking the U.S. Postal Service rule from going into effect while court challenges play out. The injunction converts a 14-day pause she ordered a week prior.

The Massachusetts federal judge voiced several serious concerns about the policy, including that it infringes on states’ constitutional power to administer elections and Congress’ power to legislate election policy.

The rule, which the Postal Service published last month based on a Trump executive order in March, would disenfranchise voters who depend on mail voting, give states the impossible task of overhauling their election systems ahead of a fast-approaching election and assert power the agency does not have under the U.S. Constitution, Talwani said.

Not an election regulation, USPS says

The administration and a handful of GOP state attorneys general have defended the rule as regulating mail, not elections. 

A statement from U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner restated the claim earlier Friday.

The portions of the rule establishing technical standards for ballot envelopes were based on longstanding best practices and were not “breaking new and uncharted ground,” Steiner wrote.

Similarly, a more controversial provision requiring states to send the Postal Service a list of eligible voters was also not complicated for the agency, he said, noting that USPS would not amend the lists.

“The USPS does not edit, change, review or question the contents of the list—the list is merely a list of voters that a State says are receiving a ballot through the mail,” he wrote. “So basically, the State provided list is a manifest identifying the recipients of ballot mail.”

Clash with law passed by Congress

Talwani said Friday the federal government’s denial that the rule is an election regulation “rings hollow.” 

“Throughout its body of election legislation, Congress has never delegated its Elections Clause power to the USPS,” she wrote. “Unauthorized by the Elections Clause, the Final Rule clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress’s Elections Clause powers but also that power left to the States.”

In addition to the constitutional principles the rule violates, it is unworkable ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, she said. 

All states allow some form of mail-in voting. The first ballots were sent Friday, with North Carolina starting to mail ballots to certain voters. 

Sauer noted that ballots had begun to “enter the mailstream,” with more states set to send ballots in the coming weeks.

That added urgency for justices to act, he said. If courts eventually allow the rule to take effect and states have not taken action to comply, it could threaten voters’ ability to cast mail ballots in those states, he said.

“There is a grave risk that States may not have taken the necessary steps to comply, due to the false sense of latitude created by the court’s improper injunction, potentially depriving those States’ citizens of the ability to vote by mail,” he wrote.

In a statement, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, one of the Democratic attorneys general who sued to block the rule, said Talwani’s order would keep the commonwealth’s election administration on track.

“This order protects our ability to effectively deliver mail ballots to all residents relying on them to make their voices heard in the November election,” she said. “Voters should continue to vote-by-mail as usual and know that this system is safe and secure.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s public pressure campaign on the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, following a quiet earlier move by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro  to dismiss the charges.

Trump, who oversaw the multi-million-dollar renovation of the pool, has blamed vandals for the damage.

“The president of the United States is pressuring your office… to recharge Mr. Hearn (on) what you have decided is meritless,” said Edelman, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama. 

Government lawyers could not answer whether the Trump administration might again try to charge Hearn, of Bethesda, with damaging the reflecting pool. Pirro’s motion for dismissal was without prejudice, which means the case could be filed again.

“I don’t know what the future will bring,”  Michael Spence of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said. “Ten minutes from now that decision could change.” 

Hearn has pleaded not guilty to the charges. 

Reflecting pool drama

Hearn’s case has preoccupied Trump, who faces public backlash and protest as he’s moved to reshape the historic landmarks and landscapes of the nation’s capital. 

That has ranged from moving forward with a triumphal arch that dwarfs the tallest structure in the district, the Washington Monument, to removing iconic cherry blossom trees along the East Potomac Park.  

Over the summer, the Trump administration charged Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, with more than $1,000 worth of damage to the reflecting pool on June 19. 

When Pirro asked the court to dismiss the charges, Trump was angered. Trump said that Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” and pushed for charges to be refiled.

“Frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”

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.

Supporters rally

Attorneys for Hearn, as well as dozens of supporters, gathered outside D.C. Superior Court before the hearing. 

They included Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who slammed the Trump administration for initially bringing felony charges against Hearn. 

“Stop setting up our citizens for fraudulent purposes,” said Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. 

After the hearing, Hearn gave a brief statement. 

“This is not about me, this is about defending democracy,” he said. 

One of his attorneys, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund, said if his client could be charged, then “every American is at risk.”

Edelman said he would make a decision soon.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

School bus driver shortages are often the result of recruitment, retention, financial, and operational challenges happening at the same time, said President-Elect of the National Association for Pupil Transportation Melody Coniglio. 

“Transportation is one of the first and last services a student receives each school day, so when there are not enough drivers, the effects can quickly be felt by students, families, staff, schools, athletics, and the district as a whole,” said Coniglio, who is also West Geauga Local School District’s director of transportation. 

There are 17,008 active bus drivers across the state as of Wednesday, said Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Spokesperson Lacey Snoke. 

Columbus City Schools, the state’s largest district with about 45,000 students, is working to fill bus driver vacancies. 

Columbus has 425 yellow bus and van routes and 395 active bus drivers and 68 contract drivers to bus 32,450 students — including 8,552 charter and nonpublic students as of Tuesday, said district spokesperson Michael Brown. 

The district wants to have 500 drivers. 

“Since school has started, my son’s bus has been late picking up and dropping off,” said Phillip Floyd, the parent of a Columbus City Schools second grader. 

“When I say late, over 20 minutes late.”

As a result, his son has been late or almost late to school every morning. 

“Our kids should be getting to school on time,” Floyd said.

The school bus is supposed to pick Floyd’s son up at 8:37 a.m. and instead it’s been picking him up closer to 8:55 a.m. and is getting to school some days as the bell is ringing at 9 a.m. or after the school day has already started. 

“He’s really frustrated about getting to school late because my son really loves school,” Floyd said.  “He’s missing him out on his morning work that he really wants to do. This is out of his control.”

Floyd also said the bus driver forgot to drop off his son one afternoon, so his son rode the bus an additional two hours. 

“We’re freaking out because where’s our child?” he said. “Your job as a parent is your child’s safety, and you’re not knowing where your child is. … It’s a feeling that I just can’t even put into words.”

Mande Stedman’s fifth grade son has only ridden the Columbus City Schools afternoon bus once, but he got home nearly two hours late. His drop off time is 4:47 p.m., but he got home at 6:35 p.m.

“I was so relieved to see my son and started crying because of how panicked I had been,” she said in an email. 

Her seventh-grade daughter doesn’t use the morning school bus because her pick-up time would be 5:52 a.m.  

Ohio requires public school districts to provide transportation for eligible students attending nonpublic and community schools — something Coniglio said can “add another layer of complexity” since those schools can go beyond the school district’s boundaries. 

“From an operational standpoint, those miles and minutes matter,” she said.  

“A bus and driver assigned to transport even a small number of students outside the district may not be available to serve another route during that same period.”

Patrick Henry Local Schools in northwest Ohio buses 500 students who attend their school district and 15 students who do not attend public school, said Superintendent Josh Biederstedt. 

The district has 12 full-time bus drivers and four substitutes for 12 routes and three non-public routes, he said. 

“We offer our current employees a financial incentive to get their Commercial Driver’s License and become a sub driver,” Biederstedt said in an email. 

“Additionally, we offer current employees an incentive for referring new bus drivers that either become a sub or full time driver.” 

Retention is an important factor. 62% of bus drivers and aides reported feeling unsupported when dealing with challenging student behavior according to the Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group survey. 

“Recruiting new drivers will not solve the shortage if districts are unable to retain the qualified, experienced drivers they already have,” Coniglio said. 

About 22,000 Ohio students were determined to be impractical to transport last year, Coniglio said. 

“When a district determines that transportation for an eligible student is impractical after considering the factors required under Ohio law, the district may offer the family payment in lieu of providing transportation,” she said. 

“If Ohio did not have the Payment in Lieu of Transportation option available to districts, I believe the statewide driver shortage and its operational impact would be considerably more visible,” she 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.