The three cases — involving a former volunteer in Perry County, a former teacher and pastor in Muskingum County, and a former teacher in Miami County — are not connected to one another, and law enforcement has not alleged that any of the misconduct occurred during LifeWise programming. A LifeWise spokesperson told NBC4 that all three men passed background checks before joining the program.

The charges surface as LifeWise, founded in 2018 by former Ohio State football player Joel Penton, continues a rapid expansion across Ohio. The nonprofit now operates in more than 260 of Ohio’s 607 school districts, including a newly announced launch at Tiffin City Schools, according to Develop Seneca County, the local economic development organization that announced LifeWise’s membership last fall.

Perry County volunteer pleads guilty to rape, sexual battery

William VanSickle, a volunteer with the Northern Local LifeWise chapter in Perry County, was arrested in mid-April and has pleaded guilty to one count of rape and two counts of sexual battery against a minor, according to NBC4’s reporting. Jail records cited by NBC4 indicate VanSickle had forced sexual contact with a minor over a five-year period between January 2017 and January 2022.

VanSickle is scheduled to be sentenced June 1 and is being held on a $1 million bond. A LifeWise spokesperson told NBC4 that VanSickle was removed from the program once the organization learned of his arrest and that his role was in a “limited capacity.” Court records indicate that the minor did not know VanSickle through LifeWise.

Muskingum County pastor pleads guilty to voyeurism, gross sexual imposition

Christopher Riggs, a Muskingum County pastor and former LifeWise teacher with the Tri-Valley chapter, has pleaded guilty to voyeurism and gross sexual imposition involving a minor, NBC4 reported. Riggs resigned from his LifeWise teaching role in November.

According to NBC4, court documents show Riggs’s misconduct was directed toward a minor teenager who was known to Riggs but not connected to him through LifeWise. NBC4 reported that Riggs appeared to be the only pastor at Washington Township Baptist Church before his guilty plea.

Miami County teacher held on $500,000 bond; sheriff seeks additional victims

On Wednesday, the Miami County Sheriff’s Office said it had received multiple rape complaints from minors involving Kenneth E. Holycross, who worked as a teacher with LifeWise Bethel Local in Tipp City from August 2024 to summer 2025, according to NBC4.

Jail records cited by NBC4 show Holycross is being held on a $500,000 bond on two counts of rape. Court records indicate Holycross is accused of forced sexual contact with a minor under the age of 13 between May 1 and May 19. Miami County Sheriff’s detectives said they suspect additional victims may exist and have asked anyone with information to come forward.

Holycross also previously worked at Dayton Children’s Hospital as a mental health technician, according to his LinkedIn profile cited by NBC4. WDTN, NBC4’s sister station in Dayton, was told by Dayton Children’s that “Kenneth Holycross III is no longer employed at Dayton Children’s. We are working closely with investigators and are not aware of any incident that occurred at Dayton Children’s.”

A LifeWise spokesperson told NBC4 that Holycross had “limited interaction with students” during his time with the program and that there was no indication his alleged crimes were associated with his LifeWise work.

LifeWise points to background-check policy

LifeWise told NBC4 that all staff and volunteers undergo screening through ADP Screening and Selection Services, and that all three men passed their background checks without incident.

“LifeWise continues to use professional background screening services as part of its broader child safety policies and procedures,” a LifeWise spokesperson told NBC4. “We remain committed to maintaining strong safeguards, accountability and oversight throughout our programs.”

The organization said in a separate statement that “the safety and well-being of students is LifeWise’s highest priority” and that it takes “all concerns involving student safety extremely seriously.”

The recent cases are not the first time questions have been raised about LifeWise’s vetting. In 2024, NBC4 reported, a LifeWise director in northern Ohio was fired after losing her teaching license over allegations she sexted a minor. She did not face criminal charges, and the misconduct was not flagged by LifeWise’s background check process, which was being conducted at the time by a different vendor, ProScreening.

Critics renew vetting concerns as program reaches Tiffin

The Secular Education Association, a parent-led national organization that began in 2023 as a Facebook group called Parents Against LifeWise, first connected the three cases publicly, NBC4 reported. The group has long argued that LifeWise’s screening practices do not meet the same standards as those required of public school employees, who must undergo fingerprint-based Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and FBI background checks.

The cases come as LifeWise continues to grow inside Ohio public school systems, including in Seneca County. Develop Seneca County announced in September 2025 that LifeWise had joined the organization and was “gearing up to launch its first program at Tiffin City Schools.” A 2024 proposal from a LifeWise steering committee outlined plans to serve students from Krout and Washington elementary schools, with classes held at the Chandelier Event Center and Restoration Alliance Church.

LifeWise reported revenue of more than $39.2 million in fiscal year 2024-25 and now serves roughly 60,000 students in 32 states, according to its most recent IRS filing.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The summit, held at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley and co-hosted by Cox and the Washington, D.C.-based Abundance Institute, has drawn an attendee list heavy with Trump-administration officials, congressional Republicans, energy executives, and AI and crypto investors. According to the published agenda, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Ho Nieh are all on the program alongside Ramaswamy. Tickets are sold out.

Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati businessman who won the May 5 Republican primary, faces former state health director Dr. Amy Acton in the Nov. 3 general election. Recent polling shows the race within the margin of error: a Bowling Green State University/YouGov survey in April had Ramaswamy at 48% and Acton at 47%, and the RealClearPolling average puts him ahead by a single point.

What the summit is

Cox unveiled Operation Gigawatt in October 2024 with a goal of doubling Utah’s electrical generating capacity to roughly 20 gigawatts by 2035. State officials have pointed to AI data centers, broader electrification, and the retirement of baseload generation as the primary drivers of rising demand.

The summit lands as Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, the state land-use agency that approved both the state’s largest proposed AI data center and a planned uranium enrichment equipment site at Camp Williams, is drawing scrutiny over expanded authority to issue bonds and redirect tax revenue with limited public oversight, according to reporting by TownLift, a Park City news outlet.

The summit’s sponsors include NVIDIA, Chevron, NextEra Energy Resources, Holtec International, CoreWeave, Trust Ventures, Valar Atomics, Excelsior Energy Capital, Cholla, EnergySolutions, Oracle, and the Lehi-based battery company Torus, listed as one of two top-billed “Executive Partners.”

At least nine of those sponsors have together routed more than $407,000 into the campaign accounts and political action committees of Cox and other top Utah Republicans since 2022, according to a Utah Political Watch analysis of campaign finance disclosures published earlier this week. Torus alone cut Cox three $50,000 checks across 2022, 2024, and 2025. Cox personally received $226,041 of the $407,000 total.

Ramaswamy’s data center position

Ramaswamy has made data center and crypto infrastructure expansion a recurring theme of his gubernatorial campaign. At a March 2025 Lincoln Day Dinner appearance in Jefferson County, he told the audience: “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.”

On his verified X account, Ramaswamy has called Ohio’s data center boom “good” on multiple occasions, consistently framing it as an economic opportunity while attributing rising electricity costs to insufficient fossil fuel production rather than the facilities themselves. “We’re seeing an AI data center boom (which is good), right at the time when we face supply constraints on baseload power generation,” he posted on March 27, 2025. “I’ll unshackle energy production in Ohio, from fossil fuels to nuclear energy, without apology.”

In his post-primary victory speech earlier this month, Ramaswamy pledged that Ohioans would “wake up to lower utility bills because the state is producing more energy” under his administration. He has not detailed how expanded electricity generation would offset the additional demand created by the data centers he says he wants to bring to Ohio.

The Strive connection

Ramaswamy founded the asset management firm Strive in 2022 as an anti-ESG investment shop. The company relocated from Columbus to Dallas in November 2024, according to Ohio Capital Journal, and has since pivoted aggressively into Bitcoin.

In a May 19 disclosure, Strive said it now holds 15,391 Bitcoin valued at roughly $1.1 billion, making it the ninth-largest public corporate Bitcoin treasury. Bitcoin Treasuries data places Strive’s holdings just behind Coinbase and Riot Platforms.

The company’s accumulation has not been profitable. Strive’s average cost basis is approximately $104,073 per Bitcoin, well above current market prices in the $76,000–$79,000 range. As of April, the firm was sitting on more than $500 million in unrealized losses on the position. Bitcoin mining and the data centers that house mining operations are among the most energy-intensive commercial activities in the world.

The two largest donors to Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial super PAC have similarly heavy crypto exposure. Ross Stevens, who contributed $14 million, is actively involved in Bitcoin and crypto ventures. Jeff Yass, who contributed $10 million, holds more than $2 billion in Strategy and Coinbase through Susquehanna International Group, according to a joint investigation by The American Prospect and the Center for Media and Democracy.

The Ohio context

The Ohio backdrop for Ramaswamy’s Utah appearance is one of mounting ratepayer pressure. Since House Bill 6 — the law at the center of the FirstEnergy bribery scandal — took effect in October 2019, the average Ohio household’s annual electricity bill has risen by $663, from $1,070 to $1,733, according to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. From 2020 to 2025, Ohio ratepayers paid roughly $527 million in utility subsidies tied directly to HB 6.

Ohio data centers have meanwhile collected approximately $2.5 billion in state tax breaks since 2017, according to a report covered by Signal Ohio, while individual facilities have created as few as 10 to 50 permanent jobs. Rural Ohioans have begun gathering signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment to ban large data centers, citing rising electric bills, water strain, and limited long-term employment.

Casey Putsch, the Republican who challenged Ramaswamy in the May 5 primary, identified data centers as a defining political issue in a January Ohio Capital Journal interview. “We’re being sold out to billionaire interests,” Putsch said. “The data centers, massive concerns, OK? They have tax abatements for 10 to 15 years, nothing coming in. We’re subsidizing the costs through the electricity because they suck the same amount of power as small towns.”

The campaign calendar

Ramaswamy entered the general election with a substantial cash advantage. His campaign reported more than $30 million on hand after the primary, including a $25 million personal loan, against Acton’s $5 million. Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both rate the race “Leans Republican,” a shift from earlier “Likely Republican” classifications.

Acton, who has framed her campaign around lowering costs for Ohio families, has questioned her opponent’s focus. In remarks following her primary win, she described Ramaswamy as someone who treats Ohio as “a flyover state” and is “out for himself.”

The Operation Gigawatt Summit closes Friday afternoon with a 3:00 p.m. reception. The Ohio general election is on Nov. 3.

TiffinOhio.net reached out to the Ramaswamy campaign for comment on Friday’s Utah appearance. No response was received prior to publication.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Senate Bill 341 was set for a Judiciary Committee vote last week. After a closed Republican caucus meeting, the bill came off the agenda. It is not back on this week’s schedule either.

Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, who is running for lieutenant governor on Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s ticket, told the Dispatch that even straightforward issues sometimes warrant more time. “We’ve still got time left in this legislative session,” McColley said.

That position is a marked shift from where McColley stood three months earlier. When the bill was introduced in February, he told reporters the Senate would “certainly take a serious look at it and probably pass it,” according to coverage by Morgan Trau of WEWS.

Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Sen. Louis Blessing III, R-Colerain Township, was blunt with the Dispatch about the delay. He said members of the Republican caucus appear comfortable with child marriage continuing in Ohio. Blessing, his Republican co-sponsor, declined to comment.

What Senate Bill 341 would do

The bill would set Ohio’s minimum marriage age at 18, with no exceptions. Under current state law, enacted in 2019, a 17-year-old may marry if a juvenile court finds the minor has completed marriage counseling, a 14-day waiting period has passed, and the spouse is no more than four years older. Parental consent is not required.

The 2019 statute followed a Dayton Daily News investigation documenting 4,443 marriages involving girls 17 and under between 2000 and 2015. Fifty-nine of those involved girls 15 or younger. The newspaper identified three marriages involving 14-year-old girls, including a pregnant 14-year-old who wed a 48-year-old man in Gallia County in 2002.

Unchained At Last, the national advocacy organization founded by Fraidy Reiss, says Ohio recorded 5,062 marriages involving minors between 2000 and 2024 — and that 53 of those occurred under the revised 2019 law.

No witness has testified against SB 341 in four committee hearings, the Dispatch reported.

Reiss told the Dispatch she does not know who in the Senate is holding up the bill. She called the blockage shameful and said it amounts to a betrayal of Ohio girls. The group has announced plans to protest at the Ohio Statehouse on June 3.

Committee Chairman Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville, said advocates plan to sit down with senators to make the case for the change.

The bill would leave in place language from a 2004 Ohio statute prohibiting same-sex marriage. That provision is currently unenforceable under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. If Obergefell were overturned, Ohio’s same-sex marriage ban would again take effect.

McColley’s hedge lands in a politically charged campaign

McColley’s reluctance to move SB 341 forward comes as the Ramaswamy gubernatorial ticket continues to face scrutiny over its handling of issues involving child safety and sexual abuse.

During his 2024 presidential run, Ramaswamy’s allied super PAC, the American Exceptionalism PAC, accepted a $100,000 donation from New York hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, who was named in court documents as an associate of Jeffrey Epstein. The PAC pledged to refund the contribution but dissolved without doing so, according to federal filings.

Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign has also drawn criticism for promoting endorsements from Ohio Republican state lawmakers accused of misconduct involving young people, as TiffinOhio.net previously reported. Those endorsements were briefly removed from Ramaswamy’s website before being restored.

In April, Ramaswamy faced sharp pushback after telling supporters that his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, offered no real vision for Ohio “other than to complain about what someone else did to her” — a reference to Acton’s public account of surviving childhood sexual abuse.

Ramaswamy and McColley face Acton and her running mate David Pepper in the November 3 general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The measure — which succeeded 217-198 — would also bar federal funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that provides federal aid to schools from being used “to teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology.” 

Eight Democrats broke ranks with their party to vote for the Republican-led effort, including: Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Cleo Fields of Louisiana, Laura Gillen of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state and Eugene Vindman of Virginia. 

Fifteen House members did not vote.

Parental consent

The bill would also require schools to get permission from parents before changing “sex-based accommodations” to allow a student to access a locker room or bathroom consistent with their gender identity. 

Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said during floor debate the measure “takes monumental strides to restore parental rights and educational sanity.”

The bill “affirms the right of parents to be in charge of their children’s upbringing and ensures schools remain partners in a child’s education” and “also establishes clear guardrails to ensure taxpayer dollars are used to support learning, not indoctrinate kids in radical ideology and agendas,” the Michigan Republican added.  

Walberg led the bill alongside Rep. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican who brought forth a separate measure that was later looped in and bars the use of federal funds “to teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology.” 

The bill draws on a definition of “gender ideology” in a January 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

The order defines “gender ideology” as “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.” 

GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted in a fact sheet that “gender ideology” is “an inaccurate term deployed by opponents to undermine and dehumanize transgender and nonbinary people.” 

House Dems, LGBTQ+ advocacy groups blast bill

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Education and Workforce panel, blasted the measure during floor debate, saying it would “impose a rigid federal mandate that ignores context, disregards students’ safety and prioritizes politics over people.” 

The Virginia Democrat noted that the bill “bars any discussion of transgender people or topics in the classroom, including “banning books with transgender characters” or discussing “the existence of transgender people.” 

Scott noted that the bill “takes away state and local control of curriculum on education — the very thing that the current administration claims they’re giving back to states by illegally dismantling the Department of Education.” 

Fears students will be outed

Rep. Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, criticized the legislation ahead of floor debate as the “Don’t say trans bill.”

The California Democrat told States Newsroom he was concerned the measure would force school officials to out students to their parents, regardless of whether the official knew the student could suffer harm.

Takano, who also sits on the House education panel, also expressed concern that in the case where parents are supportive of their child using different pronouns, “if the teacher uses a different pronoun, that could be interpreted as ‘promoting gender ideology.’”

He said “we can’t discount that this administration will use a maximalist interpretation of the law, which would make even the case where” a student with supportive parents of trans children “could not go by the preferred nickname.” 

David Stacy, vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, condemned the bill as “cruel” and noted the LGBTQ+ advocacy group was “prepared to fight it,” in a statement shared with States Newsroom ahead of the vote. 

“Trans kids are not a political agenda — they are students who deserve safety and affirmation at school like anyone else,” Stacy added. 

“Despite the many pressing issues facing our nation, House Republicans continue their bizarre obsession with trans people,” 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.

The fight over election security is intensifying in Washington, D.C., as the White House and its allies seek to rewrite rules around voter registration and mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections. The stakes of the contests are massive — control of Congress and the future of Trump’s legislative agenda.

Trump wants lawmakers to attach the SAVE America Act to unrelated housing and surveillance legislation after it stalled in the U.S. Senate. The SAVE bill would require individuals to show documents, such as a passport or birth certificate, proving their citizenship to register to vote. It would also mandate voters show photo ID to cast a ballot.

“Voter I.D., and Proof of Citizenship, must be approved, NOW,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social, his social media platform. On Wednesday, he took to social media again to call for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian and suggested she’s an impediment to passage of the bill.

“We need THE SAVE AMERICA ACT passed, and NOW,” Trump wrote.

Democrats and voting rights advocates say the measure would cause chaos if passed this close to the election. They warn it would disenfranchise voters and create additional obstacles to voting for married women and others who have changed their names.

Vote possible soon

The Senate may hold another vote as early as this week on adding the SAVE America Act to a budget reconciliation bill. Senators rejected a prior effort to advance the legislation in a 48-50 vote in April, but Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, has vowed to try again. 

The SAVE America Act is popular among Republicans in the U.S. House, which passed the bill in February. But a handful of Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in opposing the proposal, which doesn’t have enough support to overcome a filibuster.

“It is voter suppression with a suit and tie,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday in a speech at a progressive conference.

Some House Republicans have kept up pressure on the Senate to act. During a House Administration Subcommittee on Elections hearing Wednesday, Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, called for the passage of the bill multiple times.

“American citizens deserve secure elections and to know that their votes are guaranteed,” Miller said.

Thune blames Democrats

Senators spent several weeks this spring debating the legislation before moving on to other business. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, on Monday said the chamber held a “robust debate” but indicated senators were unlikely to return to the legislation.

Speaking about the bill in the past tense, Thune cast the measure as a political cudgel that Republicans would use against Democrats in November.

“Democrats are on the record against all of it,” Thune said on the Senate floor. “And we’ll be sure the American people know that Democrats are blocking commonsense policies that have broad support from the American people.”

Democrats, fearing that Trump may try to assert unilateral control over elections regardless of whether the legislation advances, have begun outlining how they plan to combat any attempted election takeover. 

Schumer on Tuesday said Senate Democrats are launching an election protection task force. The group, which will include 11 senators and election experts, will be prepared to mount “lawsuit after lawsuit” throughout the election process.

“Let me be very clear: local officials run elections. Voters decide elections. Donald Trump does not,” Schumer said.

Troops at polling places

In describing their concerns, Schumer and others point to Trump’s refusal earlier this month to close the door on deploying troops to polling places. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also recently dismissed the possibility as a “gotcha hypothetical” without actually ruling it out. 

Federal law prohibits federal troops and agents at election sites in nearly all circumstances.

“I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” Trump told reporters when asked about sending troops of immigration agents to the polls.

Trump’s critics also emphasize his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his continuing portrayal of the contest as stolen. He has pardoned rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting Congress’ certification of the election. 

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who say they were victims of past administrations.

“This is pure fraud and highway robbery,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.

Executive orders

Preparations for possible interference in the midterms come amid a series of steps by the Trump administration over the past year aimed at giving the White House greater authority over elections — though the U.S. Constitution says they are administered by the states.

Trump signed an executive order last year that sought to mandate proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, but the measure was blocked in court. He signed another order in March restricting the sending of ballots through the mail; a federal judge is expected to rule soon on a request to halt its enforcement.

Trump this week attacked Maryland officials over a mistake that caused voters to receive incorrect mail-in ballots for the state’s June primary. Maryland election officials have faulted a vendor for the error and are resending the ballots, but the president has called for a Justice Department investigation.

“You want to have proof of citizenship, you want to have voter ID, you want to have all these things. But to me, maybe the worst of all is the mail-in ballots,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

DOJ battles states

For months, the Department of Justice has demanded states turn over sensitive personal data on voters, such as driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers and dates of birth. 

It has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the information, which it plans to run through a computer program called SAVE at the Department of Homeland Security to identify possible noncitizens.

Federal judges have so far ruled against the Justice Department. Several voting rights groups have also sued to block the DOJ effort, alleging the Trump administration wants to build an illegal national voter database.

Anthony Nel, a Texas resident and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that his voter registration was canceled a month after SAVE wrongly identified him as a possible noncitizen.

“The DOJ should not be building a national database out of our most sensitive, personal information when it can’t even get this right,” Nel said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

As more than 300,000 companies scramble to get their money back, one large group is getting stiffed: American consumers — including in Ohio. Tariffs were estimated to cost Ohio households $1,750 per year, with 130,000 jobs at risk and $18 billion in exports exposed — making it the sixth hardest-hit state in the country.

After President Trump imposed sweeping, indiscriminate tariffs on so-called “Liberation Day” last year, companies moved swiftly to pass on their higher prices to consumers. Consumers, already facing an affordability crisis — and reporting historic dissatisfaction with the economy — paid those higher prices at the grocery store, hardware store, and clothing store.

Instead of focusing on strategic sectors where American manufacturers were being undercut or where we’re developing new technologies, Trump imposed tariffs seemingly on a whim — hitting inputs that drove up costs for manufacturers and goods (like bananas or coffee) that are not made in the mainland United States and never will be.

The results were as expected.

New data from the Federal Reserve found that businesses were able to pass through tariffs almost completely, raising core goods inflation by 3.1 percent. The Harvard Pricing Lab finds that retail prices for imported goods are up 5.4 percent compared to pre-Liberation Day trend.

Furthermore, the shock and confusion of the Liberation Day tariffs and dozens of subsequent adjustments allowed companies to take advantage of the pricing environment, raising prices even if they were not directly affected. Some even bragged about it on calls with their investors.

Unsurprisingly, consumers think this arraignment is unfair.

Polling from my organization, Groundwork Collaborative, found that 44 percent of Americans think refunds should go to consumers — and 34 percent believe that refunds should go to consumers and businesses.

Just 7 percent say that only businesses should get their money back. But that’s what’s happening.

Consumers won’t see a dime from the refunded tariffs — and in all likelihood they’ll keep paying for them. Prices, as retail experts like to say, are like “rockets and feathers.” When they go up, they go up quickly. But when costs fall, prices come down slowly — if they come down at all.

Big corporations that were able to pass through the price increases will now get a windfall, with no plans to pass on those savings. Costco made news by announcing they planned to use their sizable refund to lower prices, but almost no other corporations have followed their lead.

In addition to hurting consumers, the benefits of tariff refunds are unequally distributed between big and large corporations. Some 56 percent of small businesses reported that tariffs negatively impacted their operations, and many have shared difficulties and confusion with navigating the tariff refund portal.

Larger companies have used their size and market power to negotiate with suppliers and push costs onto consumers, but many small businesses had to pay whopping bills or risk going under. Some even sold the rights to their future refunds to Wall Street for pennies on the dollar to get cash up front to weather the storm, and now companies like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik’s old firm are profiting.

Families are hurting in this economy. They’re facing rising prices at the pump — up 50 percent because of Trump’s war in Iran — along with runaway utility bills and further uncertainty as Trump’s latest round of tariffs wind their way through the courts.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration hasn’t lifted a finger to ensure that corporations pass their savings through to consumers. In fact, Trump has even asked businesses not to claim the refunds at all, telling them he’ll “remember” companies that opt out.

With corporate profits at record highs, Congress should step in to ensure that consumers see some relief. Americans already paid these tariffs once — they shouldn’t have to pay again while corporations cash the checks.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“If you want congressional leadership that fights to lower your taxes, that fights to put more money in your pockets and fights to protect your jobs, the only game in town is Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans,” Vance said.

But the Trump brand is hurting — placing Republicans’ miniscule U.S. House majority at high risk, despite a GOP rush to redistricting in Southern states this spring following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision and earlier gerrymandering.

Public polling shows most voters are dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s job performance and historically, the party not in the White House wins seats in the midterms.

The GOP gerrymandering could offset some losses, analysts say. But whether voter displeasure with the president translates into enough Democratic gains to retake the House and usurp the GOP trifecta in Washington also remains to be seen, five months out.

Vance’s visit to Democratic-leaning Kansas City underscored the extraordinary effort Republicans have undertaken to give the party a chance at retaining control of the House in the midterm elections. The GOP now holds 217 seats to 212 for Democrats, with one independent and five vacancies.

GOP states, including Missouri, have engaged in a blitz of gerrymandering over the past nine months, dividing areas like Kansas City in hopes of securing additional seats as the party faces political headwinds ahead of November. 

Without the redistricting war that Trump triggered last year, Republicans could lose no more than three House seats and keep their majority. Redrawn lines push that number up slightly, in the eight-to-10 range, Erin Covey, an editor who specializes in U.S. House races for the elections forecaster Cook Political Report, said in an interview.

“That is still not going to be enough to protect (Republicans) from a difficult national environment,” Covey, who specializes in House races, said.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said redistricting may be more beneficial to Republicans in the long term than in the 2026 election.

“Because of the economic problems that the country is confronting, and the fact that a lot of that blame is going to be at the doorstep of the White House, it’s going to be a challenge for Republicans,” he said. “Republicans are playing the long game, and it’ll eventually pay off, but it’s going to be a tough ride this cycle.”

The case for Democrats

The president’s party has gained House seats in a midterm cycle only three times in the last century. Twice, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and at the height of the Great Depression, history-shaping events explained the exception.

Not only is there no comparable event this year, but the political environment strongly favors Democrats.

A Quinnipiac University poll published Wednesday showed 50% of voters preferred Democrats won control of the House, while only 39% preferred Republicans.

The same survey showed Trump’s approval rating at a second-term low, 34% approval with 58% disapproving. On economic issues, as the price of gas has skyrocketed during the war with Iran, nearly twice as many voters disapproved of Trump’s handling than approved.

Other polls show similar attitudes. Both the preference for Democratic House control and disapproval of Trump have risen steadily.

“Midterms are typically a referendum on the party in power,” Covey said. “So the fact that Trump’s approval rating has been under 40% for the past several weeks, and it has obviously been made worse by the war in Iran, is going to be a really significant issue for Republicans.”

Redistricting might cap Democrats’ best-case scenario, but it doesn’t change the underlying conditions, Democratic campaign strategist Tom Bowen said in a Tuesday interview.

“It’s going to change some outcomes for sure,” said Bowen. “But the environment is what shapes these races more than anything else. Voters aren’t going to vote on redistricting. What they’re going to vote on is high gas prices, and that’s going to make seats where Trump did well… it’s gonna put some of those seats in play.”

Republicans in the Trump era have also struggled to get their voters to the polls when Trump himself is not on the ballot. 

“Your base is depressed,” Bowen said of Republicans. “Sure, you theoretically drew yourself, you know, 10 points of margin. It doesn’t matter if the environment is that terrible.”

US House redistricting arms race

Republicans did have a plan to prop up their House majority.

At Trump’s urging last year, a handful of Republican states redrew their congressional lines, beginning with Texas. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio followed. States traditionally enact new maps once a decade following the census, but that norm has now been shattered.

Democrats responded with a California gerrymander approved by voters. In Virginia, voters also approved new lines but the election was invalidated in May by the Virginia Supreme Court.

California and Virginia are the only Democratic-controlled states to have advanced the new maps. In conservative Utah, state courts have forced adoption of a new map that could allow a Democrat to win a race to represent the Salt Lake area.

Democrats are actively weighing action in Colorado, Maryland, New York and other states, but their ability to act this year is restricted by state limits on gerrymandering and other procedural barriers.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on April 29 in Louisiana vs. Callais then set off a new round of Republican-led gerrymandering. In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority sharply weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, which had protected districts where a majority of residents belonged to a racial minority group.

The Callais decision only explicitly struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which contained a second majority-Black district that the conservative justices found unnecessary. 

But GOP-controlled states in the South interpreted the decision as a green light to eliminate majority-Black districts, often centered on major cities, that reliably elect Democrats.

Florida lawmakers passed a new map within hours of the Supreme Court decision. Alabama and Tennessee advanced gerrymanders, with Louisiana expected to follow soon. South Carolina lawmakers are also advancing a new map.

Federal and state court lawsuits have been filed against the maps, leaving open the question of whether judges could eventually block some of the gerrymanders. But opponents of Republican gerrymanders have not fared well in their legal challenges up to this point.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for Southern states to act quickly to redraw maps, including lifting a lower court order that had stopped an Alabama gerrymander from taking effect. The justices also sped up paperwork to allow Louisiana lawmakers to move forward on developing a new map.

At the state level, the Missouri Supreme Court last week refused to block a gerrymander of the Kansas City region. Opponents had wanted the court to halt the map until state officials decide enough signatures have been gathered to force a statewide vote over the redrawn lines.

The dust is still settling on redistricting this year, but it so far has given Republicans a moderate edge.

The case for Republicans

While it would take a historical anomaly for Republicans to keep their House majority, the party’s campaign apparatus argues that some variables are in its favor. 

Notably, the GOP holds an edge in fundraising and a map with few Republicans running for reelection in districts Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024.

“House Republicans are on offense and well-positioned to defy history thanks to strong candidates, a historic fundraising advantage, and a message that’s connecting with voters in battleground districts across the country,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote in a statement. 

“While Democrats remain bogged down by messy primaries, a weak national brand, and a shrinking battlefield, Republicans are building the infrastructure and momentum needed to grow the majority in November.”

Even without redistricting, the 2026 House map favored Republicans: Sixteen Democrats won 2024 races in districts Trump carried, and only three Republicans came from districts that voted for Harris.

Those so-called crossover districts provide a starting point for the number of competitive districts, which continue to shrink as the country becomes more polarized and lawmakers draw U.S. House districts to favor incumbents.

Chris Pack, a Republican campaign strategist, said the situation was reversed in Trump’s first-term midterms, when Democrats gained 40 seats.

“I don’t think it’s fair to compare this (year) to 2018,” he said. That year, 23 Republicans represented districts that Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton won. “Now, it’s three.”

In fundraising, the two House campaign committees, the NRCC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, have raised similar amounts this cycle and have roughly equivalent cash on hand.

But the Republican National Committee’s cash on hand dwarfs the Democratic National Committee’s, $117 million to $14 million, according to Federal Elections Commission records filed April 30.

The president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has also raised more than $300 million this cycle, which it could spend on congressional races.

Pack also said the party could compete, despite the environment, by emphasizing Democratic positions outside the mainstream.

“It’s just really reminding voters that, again, Democrats are far more out of touch with everyday Americans than Republicans are,” he said.

Analysts maintain it is still the GOP at a disadvantage.

“Republicans do have a path — more of a path, certainly, than they did before the Virginia and U.S. Supreme Court decisions,” Covey said. “But they’re still the underdogs.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Lawmakers in the Ohio House and Senate introduced joint resolutions this week to enshrine voter photo ID laws into Ohio’s constitution. 

House Joint Resolution 9 was introduced by Ohio Reps. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, and Heidi Workman, R-Rootstown. 

Senate Joint Resolution 10 was introduced by state Sens. Jane Timken, R-Jackson Township, and Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green. 

“This is about fair and free elections,” Timken said. “Voters need to know that when someone goes to vote, that it is the actual person who is registered to vote, and we do that by photo ID. This is overwhelmingly supported, not only by Republicans, but Democrats.” 

The Pew Research Center showed 83% of Americans support requiring photo identification to vote. 

“If you want to rent a car, you want to go to a hotel, get on an airplane, you need to show photo ID,” said state Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson.

“If you want to buy alcohol or even certain medicines, you need a photo ID. It makes all the sense in the world that when we’re talking about something as serious and as important as the integrity of our elections, that it would also require a photo ID.”

If an Ohio voter is unable to provide a valid photo ID in person on election day, the joint resolutions would allow a voter to cast their ballot provisionally and provide photo ID at the board of elections by the deadline for their ballot to be counted.

The resolutions require three-fifths approval to be placed on the November ballot. 

“I think the voters will decide that they want to protect it,” Bird said. “It’s wildly popular.”

Ohio law already requires citizens to provide photo identification before voting thanks to a bill the lawmakers passed in 2022 and took effect in 2023. 

“We have some of the most restrictive election laws,” said state Rep. Phil Robinson, D-Solon. “This legislation is unnecessary.”

A valid photo ID includes an unexpired driver’s license, state ID card, a passport, a U.S. military ID card, an Ohio national guard ID card, or an ID card issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said he hopes to pass the Senate’s resolution either June 10 or June 17.

“(The joint resolutions are) in response to some voter integrity concerns that have been happening nationally,” McColley said. 

McColley is running for the job of lieutenant governor in November, alongside Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy has said Ohio must enshrine voter ID in the state constitution.

“Voter confidence in our election system is lower than it’s been in a while, and I think it’s important that we offer the voters the opportunity … to decide for themselves whether they want to put this in the constitution, offering it the highest possible level of protection to secure the system that they have in place to secure the fundamental right of voting … for generations to come,” said McColley. 

Hawaii and Virginia had voter photo ID requirements laws, but those laws were repealed. 

“When you see these kinds of examples happening in other states, it becomes imperative that we protect photo ID in Ohio by placing it … in the Constitution,” Bird said. 

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost brought forth six indictments for voter fraud in 2024 after receiving 600 referrals of alleged voter fraud from the Ohio Secretary of State. The indicted were accused of voting at least once between 2008 and 2020 despite not being U.S. citizens then. 

“Election fraud is so very rare,” said Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood. 

“I think this is an attempt by the Republicans to have an election go their way, because without doing something extraordinary like this, rather than just appeal to the voters on the basis of their policies, they’re actually limiting the amount of people that can vote because they see that as their path to winning.” 

Robinson worries these joint resolutions could potentially take away early voting or mail-in ballots. 

“I don’t see how that helps Ohioans be able to have their voice heard at the ballot box,” he said. 

McColley, however, said there are no plans to get rid of early mail-in voting or absentee voting in Ohio. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The analysis also found that detainees are moved around frequently and often to faraway places, making it difficult for them to maintain contact with legal counsel and families.

And despite President Donald Trump’s claim that his immigration crackdown was aimed at “the worst of the worst,” less than 5% of those detained had been convicted of violent offenses, the report said.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance analyzed ICE data that had been obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and processed by the Deportation Data Project. 

It found that while 117 people were detained in Ohio on the average day in 2024, that number soared to 656 in 2025 — the first year of Trump’s second administration. During the same period, the number of local jails under contract with the federal government to hold ICE detainees tripled from two to six.

The analysis also found that people were detained for weeks and that detainees were moved frequently. That could cause them to lose jobs — in addition to making it hard to stay in touch with their families and their lawyers.

For example, 535 detainees were moved from the Butler County Jail in Hamilton to a detention facility in Alexandria, La., the report said.

“The findings reveal a detention system defined by frequent transfers, relatively short detention periods for many individuals, and a detained population overwhelmingly composed of people without major criminal convictions,” it said. “Across all cases analyzed, the average length of stay was 55.71 days, while the median was 30.68 days, indicating that most individuals spend weeks in county jails and federal facilities before their cases are resolved.” 

The report added that the Ohio jails act as an entry point to a system from which detainees might find it difficult — if not impossible — to escape.

“These patterns point to a highly networked federal detention infrastructure in which Ohio’s facilities function as intake and transfer nodes within a much larger national system, with long-distance pipelines connecting Ohio facilities to staging centers in Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere — effectively isolating detained individuals from their families and legal counsel,” it said.

Immigrant advocates have taken legal action to keep detainees out of that system.

In March, the ACLU of Ohio sued the federal government, arguing that ICE habitually violated the law and its own rules by arresting people without warrants — and without doing anything to determine whether the person was a flight risk. 

And earlier this month, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that immigrants who had long been in the United States were entitled to a bond hearing. If such immigrants can raise bonds, they can stay out of the detention system at least temporarily. 

The three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based appellate court upheld federal courts sitting in Michigan.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

And most have been fairly recent purchases. The companies acquired more than 1.7 million of those, or 57%, since 2018, and about 45% of them since 2021, the report found.

More than two-thirds of those units are located in just 10 states: Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, New York, Arizona, Virginia and Washington.

Texas has the highest number of private equity-owned apartments, the analysis said, with more than 1,900 properties and nearly 580,000 units. 

Private equity firms own nearly 1 in 3 apartment units in Georgia and almost 1 in 4 in North Carolina, the report found. 

Private equity firms use pooled investments from funds, endowments and wealthy individuals to buy a controlling stake in a company, try to maximize its value — often by cutting costs — and then sell it at a profit.

The metropolitan areas of Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas-Fort Worth; and Orlando, Florida, have private equity ownership shares above 30%. 

Many of the states with the highest private equity ownership also have seen some of the largest increases in “cost-burdened” renters, the report said, meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Texas and Florida were among the six states with the biggest increases in such renters. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@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.

Matthew L. Hoke, 42, was booked into the Lorain County Jail at 1:17 p.m. on May 16 on one count of engaging in prostitution, a third-degree misdemeanor under Ohio law, according to sheriff’s office records. He posted a $2,000 cash/surety bond and was released the same evening.

The charge is an allegation, and defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.

The Lorain County Sheriff’s Office is the lead agency for the H.E.A.L. Human Trafficking Task Force, one of eight regional task forces that took part in Operation Spring Cleaning. The H.E.A.L. Task Force’s operation included a search warrant executed at King Me Spa, 35111 Royalton Road in Grafton, where deputies seized $18,622 in cash. The sheriff’s office did not specify where Hoke was arrested.

The statewide operation ran May 13-20 in 15 Ohio counties and was led by Yost’s Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission. Of those arrested, 84 men were charged with engaging in prostitution or solicitation in the misdemeanor-level portion of the sting. The remaining 38 faced felony counts including promoting prostitution, compelling prostitution, attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, trafficking in persons and drug-related offenses.

Law enforcement executed 15 search warrants in connection with suspected trafficking at massage parlors in Akron, Columbus, Dublin, Grafton, Powell, Toledo and Willoughby, the attorney general’s office said. More than $120,000 in cash was seized along with evidence for ongoing investigations.

Officers referred 42 human trafficking survivors to healthcare and social-services organizations during the weeklong operation.

“This operation brings us to 1,065 arrests since our statewide stings began in 2019,” Yost said in a statement. “It shows the problem isn’t going away, but perpetrators are getting increasingly skittish as our message reverberates – Don’t buy sex in Ohio.”

Operation Spring Cleaning is the ninth statewide trafficking sting Yost has led since 2019. The announcement comes just over two weeks before Yost resigns as attorney general on June 7 to take a job as vice president of strategic research and innovation at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization. Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Public Safety Director Andy Wilson to serve as interim attorney general through the end of the year. Voters will choose Yost’s successor in November, when Republican state Auditor Keith Faber faces Democrat John Kulewicz, an Upper Arlington councilman.

How to report suspected human trafficking

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office operates a statewide tip line for reporting suspected sex and labor trafficking. Tips can be submitted by calling 844-END-OHHT (844-363-6448), texting “ENDOHHT” to 847411, downloading the END OHHT app, or submitting information online at ohioattorneygeneral.gov/ENDOHHT. In an emergency, call 911.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Retired U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges said in a complaint in federal court that Jan. 6 rioters, nearly all of whom received a pardon from President Donald Trump on his first day back in office last year, could benefit from the fund and use the money to organize more violent activity.

“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name,” the first paragraph of the complaint reads.

The complaint lists Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as defendants.

The Justice Department, which Blanche has led since last month, announced the creation of the fund on Monday in conjunction with Trump dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.

Claims by victims of ‘weaponization’

The fund would use money from a pool designated for settling legal claims against the federal government to compensate people who were “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” Blanche said in a press release.

Trump has long complained that the Biden administration targeted him, his allies and supporters for prosecutions that were not supported by facts on the ground. That claim was part of his rationale for pardoning people convicted of crimes on Jan. 6. 

The press release explicitly says there is no partisan test to benefit from the fund, but the structure gives Trump and Blanche, who was Trump’s criminal defense attorney before joining the government, near total control.

Payments from the fund would be decided by a five-member panel, which the attorney general would appoint. Only one appointment would require “consultation” with Congress and the president would be able to fire any member. The fund would dissolve in December 2028, the month before Trump’s term ends.

Dunn and Hodges said in Wednesday’s challenge that Trump’s IRS lawsuit was frivolous from the start because the president was suing a government agency that he controlled. The suit also came after the statute of limitations expired, they said.

The settlement “is a corrupt sham,” they said.

Jan. 6 injuries

Dunn and Hodges both deployed to the Capitol during the 2021 attack. The lawsuit describes the danger they faced and injuries they incurred. Hodges said a rioter tried to gouge out his eyes and that he thought he would die while crushed between metal doors.

Investigations of the attack showed that it was a “planned insurrection” by paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys, the suit says.

Many of the people Trump pardoned for crimes connected to the attack, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for sedition, have expressed a desire to exact revenge, according to the suit.

On Jan. 6 of this year, Tarrio said on the podcast of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that after his pardon, he was “searching for … retribution, retaliation.” 

Fund called ‘stupid on stilts’

The fund is illegal, Dunn and Hodges’ lawsuit says. No law authorized its creation, and the appropriation creating the judgment fund that is used to pay out other settlements does not apply when no settlement has been reached, they said.

Members of Congress, including Republicans, have major reservations about the fund.

Blanche pitched a group of Senate Republicans during a two-hour meeting Thursday, but didn’t appear to change many minds.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said the meeting was a “spirited discussion.”

Shortly after the meeting, the chamber’s GOP leaders told members they would not vote this month on a $72 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement and security upgrades to Trump’s proposed White House ballroom. Senators sought to insert guardrails on the DOJ fund into the bill.

In a Wednesday interview with Spectrum News, retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the fund “stupid on stilts.”

“It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayers dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned, and now we are going to pay them for that,” he said. “That’s absurd.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, has also voiced her objection. Blanche testified at a Senate Appropriations hearing Tuesday, when Collins questioned him about the fund. She later said his answers did not win her support.

“After my exchange with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, I do not support the creation of the proposed Anti-Weaponization Fund,” she said in a written statement that also noted no court had approved it.

Dunn also a candidate

A White House spokesperson deferred a message seeking comment Thursday to the Justice Department. Spokespeople for the department did not return messages.

Dunn, who is running as a Democrat for a Maryland U.S. House seat, told Maryland Matters the fund did not come as a surprise.

“This was a promise to his supporters,” Dunn said. “When it was finally announced, there was no doubt in our minds to stop this.”

Ashley Murray and Will Ford contributed to this report.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The event is open to all residents and will include updates on city initiatives along with time for residents to ask questions and raise concerns.

“This Town Hall is an opportunity for residents to connect directly with city leadership and have meaningful conversations about the issues that matter most to our community,” Wilkinson said. “I encourage everyone to attend and be part of shaping Tiffin’s future.”

No registration is required to attend.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio’s biggest tax break for data centers is more expensive than once thought. A lot more expensive. 

In 2024, the state sales tax exemption for data centers cost Ohio about $555 million in revenue, four times more than the state Department of Taxation forecasted.

In 2025, it cost a whopping $1.6 billion, eleven times more than the original estimate of $136 million

And that’s to say nothing of the local sales taxes – another $166.8 million in lost revenue in 2024, according to new actual cost data provided this week by Ohio Department of Taxation spokesperson Andrea Lannom. 

The tax department’s biennial forecasts of the size of the controversial tax exemption shared with the public amount to jarring lowballs of the actual figure, even when accounting for the imprecise nature of budget forecasting and the novel technology at hand. 

And the massive savings, realized as an exemption to Ohio’s 5.75% statewide sales tax, flow to some of the biggest companies on the planet, including Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Amazon, all of which have recently built or are building arena-sized data center warehouses here. 

In 2024, the sales tax exemption cost Ohio $554.9 million, Lannom said. One year later, that snowballed to $1,568,700,00. 

Lannom said the department could not share data prior to 2024 out of a privacy concern because less than 10 companies claimed the exemption at the time. This, coupled with the accelerating use of the tax break, hampered department estimates. 

“We are unable to provide any calculated actuals prior to 2024 due to taxpayer confidentiality,” she said. “There has been significant growth in the data center industry and in the use of the data center exemption since the publication of the Tax Expenditure Report in November 2024.”

Debating data centers with inaccurate forecasts

State lawmakers rely on tax department predictions when crafting Ohio’s two-year operating budgets. And in the most recent budget legislation, lawmakers voted to end the data center tax break to help finance another round of income tax cuts. Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the proposal, insisting the tax exemption is needed to lure data center developers to the state. 

A DeWine spokesperson declined to comment until after this article published Thursday morning.

“Our office continues to monitor and analyze the efficacy of this and all tax incentive programs,” said DeWine spokesperson Dan Tierney. “I will note that during 2025, the entities that received the $1.5 billion in sales and use tax benefits reported a total capital investment of $27.2 billion, showing a significant return on investment for Ohio. During 2024, the entities that received the $554 million in sales and use tax benefits reported a total capital investment of $9.6 billion.”

House Speaker Matt Huffman, a Republican, has said he would like to muster the three-fifths vote required to override DeWine’s veto but has indicated he lacks the political support. 

The new information vindicates the claims of Zach Schiller, a progressive economist with think tank Policy Matters Ohio, who has long maintained that the tax department estimates on data centers have been lowballs. 

But even he was surprised by how big the tax break had gotten, he said in an interview. He worried whether Ohio is legally able to get out of its long-term contracts with the developers, or whether lawmakers will at least halt any new tax breaks. 

“The thing that’s problematic is, what can be done about this?” he said. 

The scope of the tax department’s 2024 underestimate was first reported by News 5 Cleveland. 

Tax exemption dates back to 2010s

Republican lawmakers established the tax exemption in the early 2010s to lure technology companies to Ohio. The era predates the modern hyperscale and electric-intensive data centers that facilitate the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency boom. 

For facilities that cost $100 million or more to build, the exemption allows developers to waive up to 100% of Ohio’s 5.75% sales tax for up to 15 years. And it can apply to capital-intensive, private natural gas plants some developers are building to fuel their operations. 

Use of the exemption started in 2016 at a modest $4.4 million scope in an era of far more humble data center operations. But since then, the project ambitions have ballooned and the math has added up quickly. Consider that federal officials recently touted what they described as the world’s largest data center in Scioto County, expected to cost $33 billion to build. 

Data centers have grown controversial in the U.S. given the exponential demand growth they place on the electric grid, the resulting increase in prices, the environmental concerns associated with the diesel generators and natural gas-fired power plants they keep on site, and their public subsidization versus the lack of post-construction jobs they offer. 

A recent report from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce estimated data centers have received $2.5 billion in public subsidies (including local property tax abatements) between 2017 and 2024. The same report states they’ve contributed $3.7 billion toward Ohio’s GDP if you include “direct” and “indirect” inputs.  

While lawmakers haven’t overridden DeWine’s veto of the data center tax break, they have responded to the political pressure in part by forming a special legislative committee broadly focused on data centers.

Rep. Adam Holmes, a Muskingum County Republican and chair of the committee, said he didn’t have any immediate knowledge on how or why the Ohio Department of Taxation’s numbers were so far off, but said the panel will soon field testimony from state officials. 

“I mean, that is the whole purpose of it. Let’s figure out what the heck is going on, and do it in a public forum,” he said. “But that tax [break], that needs to be explained.”

Sen. Kent Smith, a Cuyahoga County Democrat, said the new figures from the tax department means the data center tax exemption is one of the most lucrative incentives the state offers.

“There’s not a lot of things that take over $1 billion of our money, but holy crap the biggest tech companies in the world are one of them,” he said. “What might have been a well-intended privacy concern [from the tax department] just can’t hold water to $1 billion in tax breaks going to some of the biggest corporations in the world.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The justices diluted a major part of the Voting Rights Act in their 6-3 decision on April 29 that declared Louisiana’s congressional map that created a second majority Black district an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Speaking to the crowd Wednesday, Louisiana native and resident Kentravius Coleman said “we are not a powerless people.”

“Black people in Louisiana may feel defeated because on a random Wednesday we learned we’d have less reflective representation,” said Coleman, 27, who works as an administrative coordinator at the progressive organization United for Democracy, which hosted the rally.

“We need to demand accountability from all three branches of government. As the nation watches Louisiana, we need to focus on the aspect that there is no more business as usual,” Coleman, who lives in the state’s central city of Alexandria, added.

State legislatures across the South quickly began work to draw new congressional districts following the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said voters are “angry.”

“When you see respected, leading Black members of Congress who win, and have enjoyed the respect of their states, redistricted out of their office by political manipulation, that gets you mad,” Whitehouse said.

“Whatever they may gain in redistricting mischief, let’s make sure that they lose where they can’t redistrict, like in Senate races … and governor’s races,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., said the country is at a “crossroads” and urged rallygoers to remember Civil Rights Movement leaders.

“Let’s be good ancestors for those who will come later, who will say in a moment in which a despotic authoritarian and his cowardly lackeys attempted to revert to, frankly, pre-Civil War or Jim Crow-era level of politics, that we stood up and we stood strong and we said, ‘Oh hell no,’” said Mejia.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio House Bill 324 was brought by Republican sponsors to create “greater oversight” over medications that are determined to have “a high risk of severe adverse effects,” according to bill sponsor state Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon.

The bill passed the Ohio House in November along party lines, 60 to 28.

Using insurance claims data, patient reporting, and “applicable data” from the FDA, the bill would require in-person appointments for medications that have caused complications that required hospitalization like sepsis or hemorrhaging, cases of organ failure, or death, in more than 5% of its users.

“The rise of mail-order medication and telehealth has transformed how Ohioans access prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” Mathews told the Ohio Senate Health Committee.

“While telehealth often is beneficial, offering increased access to care and convenience, it may fall short when high-risk medications are involved.”

The measure’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Meredith Craig, R-Smithville, said requiring in-person consultations and banning mail-order sales of “dangerous drugs” through the bill “protects Ohio’s citizens from the risks associated with inadequate oversight in mail-order and telehealth systems.”

The bill does not single out one medication specifically, but it was criticized in the House for the consequences it could have on medical access to necessary medications like diabetes prescriptions and blood thinners, and also the data that could be used to declare a medication in-person only.

Even before a national battle over the medication abortion drug mifepristone came to Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, H.B. 324 heard from reproductive rights advocates who said the bill could create an avenue for debunked or medically unsound studies to be used to argue that medication abortion drugs have too many adverse effects. The drug has been approved by the FDA for decades and has seen decades of peer-reviewed medical studies showing serious complications to be statistically rare.

If mifepristone and its companion drug misprostol were required to be prescribed only during in-person appointments, abortion access could be impacted in low-income areas, and areas of the state where clinics and medical facilities are limited, advocates told House Health Committee members last year.

Anti-abortion advocacy groups spoke in support of the bill while it was in the committee, saying the bill would provide “necessary safeguards” specifically for medication abortion pills.

In the recent Ohio Senate hearing, physician and state Sen. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, pointed to national drug safety data collection and peer-reviewed scientific journals “that do a broad analysis of drug safety.”

“But you’re excluding them from being used (in the bill),” she said to the co-sponsors.

Craig said discussions were had while the bill was considered in the House, and “ultimately, the language in the bill includes strong measures,” including the use of insurance claim data and patient reports.

“Quite honestly, looking at actual insurance claims, I think, is where we’re going to find the most concrete data in this,” Craig said.

She added that 30 other states use insurance data to “establish and try and figure out the value of care.”

“You have to look at what the cost of care is,” she told Liston. “Insurance claims paying for that is a big part of that.”

Liston pushed back on the argument, saying insurance claims don’t point directly to the outcome of drugs and their safety.

“No one uses insurance claims to look at health outcomes when you have other mechanisms specifically to do so, especially when there’s no real transparency publicly on Medicaid data, Medicare …,” Liston said. “Whereas, there is a national drug safety database and surveillance system that captures that.”

The senator noted data on blood thinners and diabetes medications that show they can have the severe adverse effects the co-sponsors noted as part of the bill’s focus, and asked if regulating those types of medications was part of the aim of the bill.

“You have very strong medications treating very difficult situations,” Mathews said. “But you want to have in-person checks rather than just having telemedicine without having any in-person evaluation.”

H.B. 324 will now be open for hearings in the Senate Health Committee to hear from those who support and oppose the bill. The next hearing on the legislation has not been scheduled.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The session came as Kevin Warsh, whom President Donald Trump nominated to chair the Federal Reserve, predicted a “good family fight” over cutting interest rates, CNBC reported.

It also came after the federal government last week reported that inflation hit a three-year high in April — and some economists were warning it could stay high for the foreseeable future.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee raises and lowers interest rates based on economic conditions. 

Lowering them can goose a sluggish economy by effectively making money cheaper and spurring economic activity, experts say, while raising them can cool an overheated economy and ease inflation.

Presidents can have a political interest in lowering interest rates because it can make borrowing cheaper, create jobs, and make voters happier — at least over the short run. 

But if interest rates are lowered amid high inflation it can push inflation still higher — and undermine faith in the central bank, experts warn.

Trump relentlessly pressured former Fed Chair Jerome Powell — whom he appointed during his first term — to lower interest rates. The Trump Justice Department even opened a criminal probe into Powell, only to drop it in April.

Powell has stood his ground, and he took the unusual step of remaining on the Fed’s board of governors even after his second term as chairman expired this past Friday, allowing him to still fight interest-rate changes he believes are unwise.

Amid the changes, the Cleveland Fed organized an expert panel to talk about why it’s important for the system to be accountable, but also insulated from political interference. It was organized by the bank’s Center for Inflation Research.

“I’ve always believed that an independent and accountable Federal Reserve is essential for policymaking,” said Beth Hammack, president and CEO of the Cleveland Fed. “Monetary policy independence is important in achieving our dual mandate goals of maximum employment and price stability.”

Hers is one of 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve system. It encompasses all of Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Michael Bordo, an economic historian at Rutgers University, said the decentralized aspects of the system mean that regional banks are in touch with local conditions all over the country.

The Cleveland Fed conducts surveys and interviews and publishes regular reports on those conditions, for example.

The regions also do their own economic research, Bordo said, and have made huge contributions to the central bank’s policymaking.

For example, in the 1960s the St. Louis Fed was closely involved in developing policies to measure and manage the money supply.

Bordo said the regions’ independence has allowed for an honest, public debate that has led to sound policies. 

“The regional feds should be insulated from both outside political pressure and undue dominance by the Federal Reserve Board in Washington,” he said.

Athanasios Orphanides, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that in a democracy, it’s important that institutions like the Fed are responsive to society’s preferences. But he said it’s also important to insulate them from one group’s political whims of the moment. 

“The challenge is that politics can sometimes distort decisions, necessary but unpopular decisions can get postponed,” he said. “Things that we wish were taken care of don’t get done because they might compromise short-term electoral considerations.” 

He added, “And this is why it is desirable to delegate some decisions to independent institutions protected from shortsighted political influence. This is where central bank independence comes in.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

He shared his love of reading with me, and we read Harry Potter together. I saw the first movie in the theaters when I was five years old, and I wanted to read the books. I was in kindergarten at the time and only learning how to read, so my dad read the first book to me. As I slowly learned to read, my dad and I would take turns reading to each other. We read most of the series together and even went to the midnight book release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” As the movies came out, we would go to the movie theater to see them. My dad was not a big movie or pop culture guy, so this was a big deal. 

Even before Harry Potter, I remember my dad reading to me before I went to bed. He was such an avid reader. His favorite author was Tom Clancy, which made it easy to know what to get for him for his birthday or Christmas. I even read Patriot Games when I was growing up because of my dad. 

We loved to spend time together outdoors. We spent hours playing catch — mostly softball, but occasionally football — in our backyard. He taught me the rules of baseball and football, and helped me start my baseball card collection. We were regulars at the batting cage and often went on bike rides together around town. We occasionally camped in the backyard in the summer and even set up the tent inside during the winter. I remember him always being at my sporting events, cheering me on. 

My dad had a 30+ year career in the Toledo Police Department and retired as a lieutenant. He would even occasionally pick me up from school in his police car. 

He taught me how to drive, how to use tools, and how to shoot a gun — aim small, miss small. 

But our relationship was complicated. We stopped talking Thanksgiving 2013, and we were estranged for nearly a decade. I didn’t think we would ever reconnect. 

In 2019, I started working through forgiveness and then the journey to reconnecting soon began. I tried sending emails and eventually called him. But my attempts to reach out went unanswered for years. 

He turned 70 in 2022, and I decided to reach out one final time. I couldn’t keep reaching out and not hearing anything back. The silence was deafening. 

I mailed him a card for his birthday and heard nothing. I decided my last attempt would be dropping off a letter at his house. He had moved since we last spoke, but I had his new address. I was going to be driving near his house on my way to a week at the lake with my friends. 

A couple of days went by, and I didn’t hear anything from him, so I started to think that was going to be it. But then he called.

I was out on the dock, so I left my phone inside, and I had a couple of missed calls and a voicemail from my dad on May 16, 2022. I immediately called him back, and we talked for a few minutes on the phone. We both expressed that we wanted to be in each other’s lives and how much we loved each other. I couldn’t believe it. 

We talked again on the phone the next day, and that’s when I started wondering if something was wrong. He repeated a lot of the same questions over and over. At first, I thought it was maybe because we were nervous, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was wrong. 

I tried calling him the next day, but the number had been disconnected. I left the lake that week feeling even more confused. 

A couple of months later, I was back driving near his house again, this time to volunteer at a middle school summer camp through my church. One of my good friends asked if I was going to stop at his house to try to see him. I don’t know about that, I said at the time. But I ultimately decided to go to his house on my way back from camp — maybe it was all the lack of sleep.  

I knocked on the door, not knowing what to expect. He opened the door and let me in — this was the first time seeing each other since I was 17 years old. We started talking, and his wife soon came into the room. She told me how my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s back in 2017, explaining the lack of response when I reached out.

She told me I was always welcome to visit, so that’s what I did for the next four years. Reconnecting looked very different than what I ever imagined. My dad didn’t know who I was, but I always got the sense he knew I was someone important in his life. 

I was grateful for every visit I had with him. One time, he showed his stamp collection. On another visit we took his dog for a walk in their backyard. I’ll never forget how excited he was when he held my hand shortly after I got engaged and felt my ring. 

“Are you married?” he asked. 

“I’m getting married,” I said, holding up my hand. He reciprocated by showing me his own wedding ring. 

My dad even got to meet my husband during Thanksgiving weekend of 2024. 

By March 2026, he was nearing the end. I had just seen him in February and was shocked at how quickly he declined in such a short amount of time. But that’s what this cruel disease can do to a person. 

Knowing this would be the last time I would see my dad, I had some words prepared to tell him how much I loved him and that it was OK to let go. 

He was asleep when I came to visit him on a Wednesday morning, which didn’t surprise me, but that didn’t stop me from saying what I wanted to say to him while he was resting. 

His wife came into the room about 15 minutes later and woke my dad up, giving me a chance to say goodbye again. The first time was merely a rehearsal, something I can chuckle about now. As a good friend of mine likes to say, “If we’re not laughing, we’re crying.” And trust me, there have been a lot of tears, too. 

When it was time for me to leave, I kissed my dad on the forehead. My hand was resting on top of his and he kissed the back of my hand. I like to believe that at that moment, he knew I was his daughter. 

I like to think my dad would be so proud of me today — proud of my career reporting on state politics and proud of the woman I’ve become. 

I’ll miss you, Dad. 

If you need support, call the Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline at 800-272-3900. 

More than 7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease and that number is expected to rise to nearly 13 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. 

About 11% — or 236,200 — of Ohioans ages 65 and older have Alzheimer’s as of 2020. 

Alzheimer’s was the six-leading cause of death in Ohio with 4,966 deaths in 2024. It was the fifth-leading cause of death nationwide among people ages 65 and older in 2024.

The lifetime risk for Alzheimer’s at age 45 is 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 10 for men, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. 

Nearly 13 million Americans provide unpaid care for a loved one with dementia, which is valued at $446.3 billion, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. In Ohio, there were 490,000 caregivers and 705 million hours of unpaid care, valued at $15.5 billion. 

A little more than half of primary care physicians across the country say there are not enough dementia care specialists in their communities and 71% of rural primary care physicians reported shortages of dementia specialists, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.  

The lifetime cost of care for someone living with dementia is estimated at $405,262 in 2024, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.  

Several FDA-approved treatments for Alzheimer’s are available. There are two drugs — lecanemab and donanemab — that change the underlying biology of Alzheimer’s and could slow cognitive decline while the rest treat the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.  

Ohio currently has a couple Alzheimer’s-related bills. 

Ohio House Bill 254 would require the Ohio Department of Health to incorporate Alzheimer’s awareness information into public health outreach. 

Companion bills Ohio House Bill 474 and Ohio Senate Bill 314 would create mandatory dementia education for nurse aides.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The ministry Voice for the Voiceless believes it has a strong case because Utah is one of four states — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri are the others — that have both a “fetal personhood” law and a civil wrongful death law that, the group contends, might apply to frozen embryos.

Other states offer opportunity for similar lawsuits: At least 10 have either a fetal personhood law — giving a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg the same legal rights as a person who has been born — or a wrongful death statute that might include frozen embryos, according to Pregnancy Justice, a group that tracks the issue and advocates for the rights of pregnant women, including the right to abortion.

“There’s a number of states that have laws like Utah’s that find that a person exists at a certain point, and that is conception,” said Frank Mylar, the attorney representing Voice for the Voiceless. He also represents another plaintiff, an anonymous woman from Ogden, Utah, who alleges in the lawsuit that she underwent an IVF procedure at one of the seven fertility clinics and was not informed that unused embryos would be discarded or about options to put her embryos up for adoption.

“Once that egg is fertilized, it actually at that point becomes a human being that’s entitled to rights,” Mylar said in an interview. “So every state that has that as a law, what we’re doing in this lawsuit would be very much applicable.”

The lawsuit illustrates the divide among many in the anti-abortion movement. Followers of a conservative philosophy known as “pronatalism” believe it’s imperative for Americans to have more babies. They want easier access to IVF, and President Donald Trump campaigned on making IVF more affordable.

So far, he has negotiated steep discounts on three IVF drugs and proposed allowing employers to provide separate health insurance coverage for fertility benefits, including lab tests, medications, genetic testing and IVF.

But the IVF process often involves discarding embryos, creating a conundrum for people who support IVF but believe that life begins at fertilization and oppose abortion. For anti-abortion purists, those embryos are unborn children, so disposing of them is no different from abortion.

The split on the political right drew attention in February 2024, when the Alabama Supreme Court, which consists of nine Republicans, ruled 8-1 that the state’s wrongful death statute applied to embryos. That decision cleared the way for couples to pursue lawsuits if their frozen embryos were destroyed. It temporarily halted IVF at Alabama clinics. It also ignited a national uproar and prompted the Republican-led Alabama legislature to immediately step in to protect IVF providers from legal liability.

But court cases and legislative efforts in multiple states show that the IVF debate is ongoing.

In Indiana and Ohio, courts have weighed whether frozen embryos are people or property in cases involving former partners who disagreed on what to do with their embryos when they separated.

In Kentucky, a judge earlier this month struck down language in the state’s abortion ban defining human life as beginning at conception, handing a victory to a Jewish woman who argued that the ban violated her religious freedom by putting her at risk of prosecution if she pursued IVF. The state has appealed the case.

In Kansas, a proposed bill this year would have made it illegal to destroy a fertilized embryo, though it died in committee. And Tennessee last year became the first state in the South to enact a law explicitly affirming the right to access IVF and birth control.

Kulsoom Ijaz, a senior policy counsel for Pregnancy Justice, predicted that IVF opponents will continue to use fetal personhood language to challenge the fertility procedure. Ijaz said that when fetal personhood language appears in one area of state law, “it inspires legislators to align their laws across the board, with these equal-protection-for-the-unborn bills.”

Then, she said, “courts use these definitions to then make case law in other areas of the law.”

Risa Cromer, an anthropology associate professor at Purdue University who focuses on medicine and reproductive politics, described personhood language as “a threat for broad swaths of reproductive health care needs that remain highly popular, IVF being one of them.”

“Personhood doesn’t explicitly implicate abortion miscarriage management, treatment for ectopic pregnancy, contraception, or IVF. In judicial interpretation, it absolutely is proving to be a threat,” Cromer said.

Utah lawsuit

IVF involves retrieving a woman’s eggs from her body and then fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory. Any embryos that result can then be either transferred to her uterus or frozen for future use. Unused embryos can also be adopted, but many are discarded. And storing frozen embryos can be costly, from hundreds to thousands of dollars per year.

Louisiana is the only state that bans the destruction of IVF embryos. But fertility clinics have gotten around the 1986 law by shipping unused embryos out of state for storage.

Voice for the Voiceless Lawsuit

The lawsuit says Voice for the Voiceless is morally opposed to IVF. But it also claims the clinics could perform IVF without discarding embryos by only creating as many embryos as will be implanted into their clients.

Mylar, the attorney, said defendants could change their clinic policies to comply with the state’s wrongful death statute “if they basically said, ‘Our intent is that you have every one of these fertilized eggs, and we’re not going to willingly or negligently or intentionally let them die.’”

Voice for the Voiceless President Kriss Martenson, named as a plaintiff, said in an interview that he does not believe IVF could be practiced without violating the law. He said the lawsuit is a strategic effort to apply fetal personhood language to IVF and to abortion at all stages. The lawsuit says the organization, which it describes as a nonprofit, has legal standing because of its efforts opposing abortion in Utah.

Martenson said he was inspired to file the Utah lawsuit by the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision and by the combination of Utah’s fetal personhood and wrongful death laws.

A victory in the lawsuit “could strengthen the legal arguments that the state has a constitutional obligation to protect human life from the moment of fertilization,” Martenson said. “So that’s what I’m showing in Utah, and I think that could affect other states.”

Discarding embryos

Disposal of embryos is common in IVF because for each single fertilization effort, multiple embryos are created to maximize the chance of success. Typically only one or two are transferred to a patient’s uterus, however, to prevent high-risk pregnancies of multiple fetuses. Some embryos are discarded because of chromosomal issues or genetic diseases, discovered during genetic screening in the lab. The Utah lawsuit charges that this is “akin to eugenics.”

Stateline contacted all of the clinics named in the lawsuit, but one declined to comment and the others did not respond in time for publication. The defendants have not yet filed written responses to the lawsuit. The seven clinics are: Conceptions Fertility Center, East Bay Fertility Center, Reproductive Care Center, Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine, Utah Fertility Center, Utah Fertility Specialists and Wellnest Fertility Clinic.

Susan Crockin, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center who teaches assisted reproductive technology law, said it is standard practice to inform IVF patients about their options around unused embryos. If the lawsuit is successful, Crockin said, it could severely curtail patient choice.

“The one thing that I think gets lost in this debate often is that a number of embryos that are not used for procreation … because they potentially have a genetic anomaly that is incompatible with life,” Crockin said. “So if every IVF embryo is considered a legally recognized person, I don’t understand what these anti-abortion, anti-IVF advocates would have us do with these embryos that will be sitting in cryopreservation tanks, or will not be making a viable human being.”

She added that “conflating every attempt to have a family with ‘every embryo in a freezer deserves to be put into a deserving womb’ feels very dangerous.”

Cromer, of Purdue University, noted that “the vast majority of religious Americans are supportive of access to IVF.” Cromer is a fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute, which found in a 2024 survey that majorities of white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants and Latter-day Saints both oppose laws that would make IVF illegal and strongly support laws declaring that human life begins at fertilization.

“So, these kinds of lawsuits, while there might be political opportunity for particular jurisdictions, such as the state of Utah, (are) completely out of step with what most Americans — religious Americans — want for themselves, their families and their neighbors,” Cromer said.

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@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.

Ramaswamy’s news conference, reported by The Associated Press, came one day after Vice President JD Vance directed the federal anti-fraud task force he leads for President Donald Trump to turn its sights on Ohio. Vance’s announcement followed an investigation by the conservative Daily Wire that alleged rampant abuse within the state’s Medicaid-funded home health program.

Ohio Medicaid covers more than a quarter of state residents and operates on a $43 billion budget. The program has been overseen by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for more than seven years.

Running mate’s budget killed the oversight panel

At the heart of the story is a contradiction the AP laid out plainly: Ramaswamy’s running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, held key decision-making power over the state budget that last year eliminated Ohio’s Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee, known as JMOC.

The bipartisan panel — five senators and five representatives — had served as a single legislative checkpoint on Medicaid since 2014. Its dissolution was slipped into House Bill 96, the state’s biennial operating budget, in the final hours of negotiations.

According to Bloomberg Law reporting, JMOC was actively probing multi-billion-dollar contracts with Gainwell Technologies — the nation’s largest processor of Medicaid claims — at the time the provision was inserted. The committee had spent months pressing Ohio Medicaid officials over delayed reimbursements to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and other providers.

State Rep. Jennifer Gross, a Republican from West Chester who served on JMOC and chairs the House Medicaid Committee, told the AP on Tuesday that the panel could have helped accomplish exactly the fraud-fighting goals that Vance and Ramaswamy are now promoting.

“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.

Ramaswamy declines to assign blame

Asked by the AP to what extent the Republican establishment that has controlled state government for more than 15 years should be held accountable for failing to catch more Medicaid fraud, Ramaswamy declined.

“I’m not playing that game, OK?” he said. “I think we need a fresh approach, and what my candidacy represents is, I believe, a bottom-up movement and a demand for change, positive change in the state. A movement beyond the status quo that takes a lot of this for granted.”

Ramaswamy’s plan, which his campaign estimates would save $3.1 billion, is modeled on a Medicaid waiver Tennessee negotiated during the first Trump administration. It would renegotiate Ohio’s agreement with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to increase the share Ohio receives in fraud-fighting incentives and streamline the program’s bureaucracy.

DeWine administration pushes back

DeWine’s office defended the state’s record. The governor announced a new series of Medicaid fraud prevention initiatives on May 13, including pausing new enrollments in the home health program cited by the Daily Wire.

“A general sentiment that Ohio was not working to combat or prosecute Medicaid fraud prior to the publication of the Daily Wire stories is just not true,” DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney told the AP. “There may be people who were unaware of Medicaid fraud prior to that, but Mike DeWine was not one of them.”

Tierney noted that Ohio is consistently ranked among the top states in the nation for prosecuting Medicaid fraud, with 2,300 indictments, 2,200 convictions and $644 million recovered since 2011.

Auditor: findings brought to Medicaid director before her departure

Republican Ohio Auditor Keith Faber, who is running for attorney general in 2026, told the AP that the Medicaid fraud Ramaswamy is highlighting was not a surprise to state officials. Faber said his office brought numerous findings to DeWine’s previous Medicaid director, Maureen Corcoran, who left her position last fall after more than six years.

Records obtained by the AP through a public records request show that Corcoran was fighting JMOC shortly before it was disbanded over access to the fiscal experts critical to Ohio’s budgeting process. Those inquiries ended when the committee was eliminated.

Acton campaign: ‘scam policies’

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton’s campaign rejected Ramaswamy’s plan.

“As governor, Dr. Amy Acton will prioritize rooting out Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse while ensuring that Ohioans can access affordable, quality healthcare,” campaign spokeswoman Addie Bullock said in a statement to the AP. “Dr. Acton is fighting to lower healthcare costs, protect Medicaid and Medicare access, and end the rampant corruption in Ohio’s Statehouse that has allowed fraud, waste, and abuse for far too long.”

Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health director who became a national figure during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, won the Democratic primary on May 5. Ramaswamy won the Republican primary the same day. The two will face each other in the November general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, signaled that Republicans will target majority-minority districts in blue states as they seek to maximize their opportunities to reshape the political map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. GOP-controlled Southern states are already rushing forward gerrymanders.

Schmitt urged the Department of Justice to crack down on states with maps drawn to protect majority-minority districts. A top DOJ official has suggested the agency supports scrutinizing the districts. The demand seems to extend the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision that limited states from using race to draw districts.

“These maps do not become constitutional because they’re already in use,” Schmitt said. “They do not survive because politicians call them voting rights maps. Yet, they will not disappear on their own. The Department of Justice has an obligation to act.”

The court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision gave states the OK to eliminate districts where most residents belong to racial minority groups in the pursuit of a partisan advantage. Alabama, Florida and Tennessee have advanced new maps, and Louisiana is expected to follow soon. South Carolina is debating its own gerrymander.

The new district lines, along with gerrymanders enacted before the Callais decision, could ultimately provide Republicans with a net gain of upwards of 10 seats.

The seats could prove critical as Republicans face political headwinds approaching the midterm elections amid sagging approval numbers for President Donald Trump. A successful legal campaign that forces Democratic states to break apart majority-minority districts could create additional competitive House races.

Breaking up Democratic districts

About one-third of all House districts drawn following the 2020 census were majority-minority, according to a Ballotpedia analysis — 148 in all. Democrats held 122 as of 2024. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote on social media on April 30 that the department continues to prioritize equal protection under the law, including in voting. Dhillon’s post came in response to a letter Schmitt sent to DOJ raising similar points to what he said on Tuesday.

“Senator — we are ON IT!” Dhillon wrote.

Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat and the subcommittee’s ranking member, said the Supreme Court’s decision leaves many communities of color with few enforceable tools to fight unfair maps. He called on the Senate to act by passing a federal ban on mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.

“Our democracy depends ultimately on protecting and preserving the right of individual citizens to pick their politicians, not intensifying the control that politicians have about who the voters are that they will permit to be involved in the election,” Welch said.

‘The definition of racism’

Some Republicans have begun to cast majority-minority districts as racist. The loaded rhetoric suggests eliminating these districts is not just politically useful but also a legal and moral imperative.

Missouri, where Republicans hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts, exemplifies the new reality under Callais. The Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a map in September that divides Kansas City in a bid to oust Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has long represented the city core. 

State lawmakers left in place a St. Louis-area district held by Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell where fewer than half of residents are white. But some Missouri Republicans have called the district a racial gerrymander and want the General Assembly to split it apart, too.

“That’s the definition of racism, is drawing districts based on the color of one’s skin,” Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins told reporters last week. “We don’t want that in Missouri.”

The Supreme Court in the Callais decision did not formally strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race and other characteristics. In practice, however, it may be effectively impossible for gerrymandering opponents to prove discrimination, voting rights experts say.

“It begs the question whether or not lawmakers will have to say, ‘not only do I not like Black voters, but this is the reason why I’m drawing up this piece of legislation,’” Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of the nonpartisan voting rights group Fair Elections Center, said in an interview with States Newsroom days after the release of the Supreme Court opinion.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court cleared away a court order that had blocked Alabama from implementing a map passed by state lawmakers in 2023 that could hand Republicans another seat. A lower court had found the map violated Section 2.

In Louisiana, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s ongoing congressional primary election in anticipation of a new map that will likely eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The Supreme Court fast-tracked paperwork in its Callais decision to clear the way for state lawmakers to act quickly.

Obligation to act

During Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project, a conservative legal group, said all states with maps drawn to protect minority representation have a “clear duty” to redraw them using race-neutral criteria. 

The calendar should be no obstacle, he argued, saying state legislatures can be called into special session and primary elections delayed until new maps are in place.

“The fact that we are well into the 2026 election cycle provides no blanket exemption from these constitutional obligations,” Chamberlain said.

Callais has unleashed chaos and already undercut fair representation for Black voters, Todd Cox, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, told the subcommittee. But he argued the decision doesn’t call into question the constitutionality of majority-minority districts or other districts that give voters of color an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Cox cautioned against using Callais to justify targeting majority-minority districts that provide that opportunity, saying it might indicate that states intentionally discriminated against minority voters.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The lawsuit — filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — challenges a portion of the incoming federal student loan system overhaul that sets stricter loan caps for students partaking in postbaccalaureate degree programs that do not fall under the department’s “professional” classification, such as nursing, teaching and social work.

The department finalized regulations, published May 1, that implement the student loan overhaul outlined in congressional Republicans’ mega tax and spending cut bill signed into law by President Donald Trump last year. Most of the student loan provisions will take effect July 1. 

The forthcoming regulations eliminate the Grad PLUS program, which allowed graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance. 

Graduate student loans will have a $20,500 annual limit and $100,000 aggregate cap. Professional student loans will have a yearly limit of $50,000 and aggregate cap of $200,000. 

However, the programs that fall under the department’s “professional” category — and thus are eligible for the higher borrowing limit — are limited to pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology.

‘Professional degree’ definition at issue

The states allege that the department “unlawfully altered” the “professional degree” definition “by adding new requirements and narrowing eligibility in ways Congress never authorized,” per a press release regarding the lawsuit. 

The states also argue that the “professional degree” definition will harm them by “reducing funding for many State institutions of higher education and impeding the States’ abilities to meet critical workforce needs and provide services to their residents.” 

The states also allege that the regulations will threaten their “ability to meet critical workforce needs, especially in healthcare,” and that the forthcoming reduced loan limits will “likely cause students to graduate with more debt, discouraging them from finding less remunerative jobs in rural areas or the classroom.” 

The lawsuit included attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, in addition to the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Administration defends loan caps

Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said that “after decades of unchecked student loan borrowing that gave schools no reason to control costs, these commonsense loan caps — created by Congress — are already incentivizing colleges and universities to lower tuition,” in a statement shared with States Newsroom. 

“Clearly, these Democratic governors and attorneys general are more concerned about institutions’ bottom-line rather than American students and families’ ability to access affordable postsecondary education,” Kent added. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The richest 0.1% of Americans have seen their cumulative wealth spike by 53% between 2018 and 2025 — to $22.48 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data analyzed by the Institute for Policy Studies.

That means the richest 343,000 Americans control 5.5 times as much of the national wealth as the 172 million who make up the bottom half of the income distribution.

Put another way, the average person in the richest 0.1%, has as much money as 2,782 people in the bottom half. 

As the labor and consumption of people in the bottom half make the rich ever richer, average Americans are burdened with growing costs for healthcare, childcare, groceries, housing, and now gasoline, according to various inflation measurements.

At least a majority of Americans in the bottom half is one $15,000 expense away from poverty, Dayton data analyst Eric Pachman has found.

New data confirm the economic trend in Ohio.

Columbus-based Scioto Analysis this month crunched 2023 census data to update a 2022 analysis it had done of 2018 data.

By some measures, there was improvement between 2018 and 2023 — a period that bookended the coronavirus pandemic and government programs aimed at propping up the economy by putting money in people’s pockets.

In 2018, the bottom 50% of Ohio earners got just 13% of total state income. By 2023, that figure had risen to 18%.

But by another measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, things had gotten worse. Named for Italian statistician Corrado Gini, the system ranks inequality on a scale of zero to 100. Zero means that everybody has the same income and 100 means one person gets all the money — a state of perfect inequality.

In 2018, Ohio’s Gini coefficient was 45. Five years later, it had risen to 46.6. 

By way of comparison, the national Gini coefficient in 2023 was 48.6. So Ohio is somewhat more equal than the United States as a whole.

To illustrate Ohio’s inequality, the latest Scioto Analysis report compared the federal poverty level to the wealth of the richest man in Ohio.

“In 2026, the federal poverty threshold for a family of four is $41,250,” it said. “Someone making a poverty wage would need to work about 225,000 years and not spend a dime over that period to accumulate a fortune the size of Les Wexner’s.”

In Ohio, 1.5 million people fell below the poverty threshold in 2023, according to the Ohio Housing Finance agency.

The level of inequality varies around the state, with it being greatest in the urban centers of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, as well as in the Appalachian region of Southeast Ohio, the report said. 

Members of some demographic groups are more likely to be nearer the bottom of the inequality curve, with minorities and young Ohioans being overrepresented.

“Income inequality in Ohio translates into housing inequality, where homeownership rates and housing-cost burdens vary sharply by demographic,” the report said.

“Housing-cost burden” refers to households that spend more than 30% of their income on housing. It is often expressed in terms of the share of a given group facing that situation.

“White Ohio residents have a 73% homeownership rate and a 21% rate of housing-cost burden,” the Scioto Analysis report said.

“In contrast, Black Ohio residents face a 37% homeownership rate and a 42% rate of housing-cost burden. Homeownership rates are highest among older and higher-income Ohioans, and housing cost burdens disproportionately affect younger and lower-income Ohioans.”

The report said that a negative income tax would be an effective tool for addressing Ohio’s inequality. Under such a system, the government would pay people falling below a certain income level.

However, Ohio’s Republican leadership did something to the contrary when it adopted the flat income tax that took effect this year. By passing it, “state legislators ensured that in 2026, Ohio’s millionaires will pay the same state income tax rate as public school teachers, child care workers, firefighters or any Ohioan with income over $26,050,” Policy Matters Ohio said earlier this year.

The Scioto Analysis report said the expected increase in inequality brought about by the flat tax can be measured.

“… Ohio is currently moving in a more regressive direction with recent changes to the tax structure,” it said. “The transition to a flat income tax structure in 2026 will eliminate most of the equality gains from Ohio’s 2023 income taxes, increasing the Gini coefficient back to 43.6. Reverting to Ohio’s more progressive 2003 income tax structure would lower the Gini Coefficient to 43.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio Senators Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Township, and Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, introduced Ohio Senate Bill 348 earlier this year and gave sponsor testimony last week in the Ohio Senate Small Business and Economic Opportunity Committee.  

“This legislation is vital towards creating common-sense safety measures to ensure that Ohio’s nightlife and hospitality industry is safe for its patrons,” Blessing said. 

The testing device would use test strips or something similar to detect any potential drugs in a drink. The test kits can detect at least 10 controlled substances — including ketamine, GHB, and Rohypnol — in less than five minutes. 

“Within those five minutes, we can save someone from facing a lifetime of trauma,” Blessing said. 

About 1 in 13 college students reported having a drink spiked at some point and about 15% of those who had their drink spiked reported a sexual assault happening afterward, according to a 2016 study from researchers at the University of South Carolina. 

“This legislation empowers individuals to know whether their drink has been spiked, enabling them to better protect themselves and their peers,” DeMora said. 

Bars and restaurants would be required to post a sign informing patrons about the availability of the testing kits. 

“Having a sign in a bar that says we have these strips, it might stop some idiot from trying to do this,” DeMora said. 

“Every Ohioan deserves to feel safe when they go out.”

The bill, however, does not have any penalties for not offering testing kits. 

“A lot of this is up to the bar owner — how they want to implement this or not at all,” Blessing said. 

The lawmakers argue people will feel safer going to a bar that has the testing strips. 

“When customers feel safe, they’re more likely to come back and spend more at that business,” DeMora said. 

An establishment could provide a drink testing device for free or charge a fee “not to exceed a reasonable amount based on the wholesale cost of those devices,” according to the bill’s language. 

A single Think Twice drink test strip costs $1.49 per test. 

A bar or restaurant would not be held liable for defective tests or inaccurate results, like false positives or negatives, according to the bill.  

“The goal of this legislation is not to penalize bars and restaurants that play such an integral role in the Ohio hospitality scene; it is to make sure those patrons have a safe environment to enjoy Ohio’s bars and restaurants,” Blessing said. 

Ohio Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, asked the bill’s sponsors if they thought about putting drink testing strips in vending machines. 

“I love that idea,” Blessing said. “I mean, even if it’s not required, the fact that it’s there is a good thing.”

The Ohio Bar Owners Association has not yet taken an official position on the bill. 

Executive Director Andy Herf supports the idea behind it, but has some issues with how the bill is written. 

“The safety of the patrons is the main concern,” he said. “I think the spirit behind this is good.” 

His primary issue with the bill is bars being unable to restock the drink testing strips if there is a distribution in the supply chain. 

“We don’t want to get in trouble for not being able to comply,” Herf said.

Instead of being in bars, he would like to see drink testing strips available at university wellness centers. 

California has mandatory drink testing strip requirements and requires establishments that serve alcohol to notify patrons that they have drink testing strips.

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.

Nobody sees them, said Vance. But a former reality TV star convinced them that he did. The pretense made Donald Trump the president of the United States in 2016 and again in 2024 — despite normally disqualifying baggage of two impeachments, a felony conviction, a jury verdict of liability for sexual abuse and defamation and, of course, attempted overthrow of a free and fair election.

Vance, who shape-shifted from Never Trumper to Die-hard Trumper and rode his born-again sycophancy into the office of vice president, kept his boss’s charade.

But the farce isn’t landing in Ohio like it used to and Trump’s approval rating is under water here because the economic pain of his voters is real.

In a state Trump won handily three times, 56% percent of Ohioans say he’s made their financial situation worse over the past year.

Indiscriminate tariffs slapped on longtime U.S. trading partners jacked up prices across the board for consumers. Trump’s import taxes are passed onto you in added costs for everything from clothing to cars.

In the first year of Trump’s second term, his tariffs cost the average U.S. household an estimated $1,745. Those same tariff-related price hikes are on track to cost families more than $2,500 on average this year. 

Compounding price pressures from broad tariffs is Trump’s impulsive war with Iran.

The attacked Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz. Global energy markets constricted. Gas prices in the U.S. climbed to their highest level since July 2022. The national average of more than $4.50 per gallon strained already stretched budgets and with the vital shipping artery in the Persian Gulf still shuttered, economists warned Americans they have not seen the worst of inflated prices at the pump or grocery store.

New data released last week showed inflation jumped to 3.8% in April, the highest it’s been since May 2023.

The invisible Americans who once felt seen by Trump take a few items off the belt at the checkout line. Fill up only half the tank. Hold off on big purchases. Stop eating out. Those that earn the least suffer the most.

Inflation is the decision financially-strapped families make in the middle of the store. The jet-setting Mar-a-Lago bunch, for whom money is no object, cannot relate.

The unequal burden of Trump’s economic policies — driven by price-inflating tariffs and whimsical military conflict in the Middle East is borne by lower and middle-income families — not the wealthy.

Those at the lower rungs of the 99% barely afford the basics which take up most of the paycheck. There is no category to cut when everything goes up at once. There is no flexibility to save when you’re paying more for rent, food, utilities, and gasoline on flat pay.

Weekly wages in Ohio have not risen to meet the cost of living that ballooned under the billionaire head of state whose net worth has nearly tripled in his historically corrupt regime.

In a state Trump swept by over 11% two years ago, people face severe financial distress with some of the highest gas prices in the country, skyrocketing diesel and fertilizer prices, and tough trade-offs in especially car-dependent rural areas between daily commuting needs and household necessities.

They are the ones absorbing the most economic damage from the unforced errors of the clown Ohio returned to the White House by the widest presidential margin of victory since Ronald Reagan. 

Like millions across the country, Ohioans are racking up huge credit card debt to cover what their wages won’t. They’re begging for a life raft (temporary suspension of the federal and state gas?) to get through the turbulence of Trump’s “Golden Age.”

But their leader who promised “to bring prices down” at his inauguration, apparently doesn’t care if they go under because of him.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” Trump said last week. “I think about one thing: You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Never mind that he repeatedly bragged about obliterating Iran’s nuclear facilities a year ago. But the serial liar finally told the truth about you. He’s “OK” with higher gas prices if it helps the U.S. achieve its on-the-fly goals in Iran.

Shapeshifter Vance defended Trump’s callous remarks about Americans’ worsening finances with spin that denied his boss said what he did. On video. That went viral.

Other Ohio Republicans on Capitol Hill were equally flippant with the truth. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted suggested constituents buried under oppressive bills and sticker shock prices (while Trump fiddles) should just “earn more, keep more of what you earn, and drive down prices.”

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan was similarly blasé about soaring fuel prices that eat up half a week’s income in his state: “That’s life, that’s the world we live in.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno dismissed Trump’s costly war as “a momentary blip” and claimed, “as quickly as gas prices went up, they’ll come back down.”

The political elite do not give a damn about your maxed out credit card, Ohio. Not their problem. But at least the Nero building monuments to himself sees you, right? 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The study, published May 18, found a shift away from managing miscarriages with a two-drug approach that includes mifepristone — which has been the subject of numerous legal battles that are still playing out in federal courts — and toward approaches that include only misoprostol, which has a lower rate of effectiveness.

The states with abortion bans had a nearly 3% increase in expectant management, the study showed, which means a health provider monitors the condition without prescribing any form of treatment to see whether the condition resolves without intervention. The study was conducted by researchers in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University.

Among those patients who received medication, there was a nearly 14% increase in the use of misoprostol-only regimens, which goes against the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ recommendation of using a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol as the most preferred method of managing miscarriages. Used together, the medications are the most effective at completing expulsion of pregnancy tissue and reducing side effects such as bleeding and cramping.

The expectant management approach, the study said, could increase the risk of hemorrhage and retained pregnancy tissue, which can cause infection if it is not removed.

The method of treatment for a miscarriage is the same two-drug regimen that is used to terminate a pregnancy before 12 weeks. A group of anti-abortion doctors unsuccessfully tried to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone altogether in 2023, and government officials in Louisiana are trying to strike down a 2023 rule enacted by the FDA that allows the drug to be prescribed by telehealth and mailed to a patient. That case is ongoing.

Using healthcare claims data, the study included nearly 123,600 commercially insured patients who had a miscarriage before 77 days’ gestation between the beginning of 2018 and the end of September 2024. That time frame includes 53 months of data from the years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022 to allow states to regulate abortion access, and 27 months after at least a dozen states implemented abortion bans.

The states with bans that affect pregnancies at six weeks of gestation or earlier are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. They were compared with 18 other states that do not have bans before fetal viability, which is generally considered to be about 24 weeks.

Some of those states with bans have gone further in adding criminal penalties to the use of mifepristone for abortion, which doctors have said affects abortion patients as well. Louisiana classified mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances in 2024, which meant providers had to start treating the storage and access to the medication much differently. Patients have tried to fill a prescription for misoprostol at major pharmacies in Louisiana, only to be told it’s unavailable, Louisiana Illuminator reported.

“It’s definitely getting more and more challenging to provide for patients and provide for them adequately,” Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB-GYN in New Orleans, told Stateline in March. “That criminalization, more than anything, has created so many problems, because so many providers are just afraid to act.”

Mississippi enacted a law in April adding mifepristone and misoprostol to the state’s drug trafficking law, making it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to distribute or intend to distribute the drugs. Lawmakers said the law would help limit the number of people sending the medications through the mail.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@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.

From local streets in small towns to major urban corridors, transportation agencies are grappling with deferred maintenance, rising construction costs and limited revenue streams. Even as federal infrastructure dollars increased in recent years, some transportation officials and infrastructure experts say the need continues to outpace available funding.

Gas taxes, which historically have largely gone to road repairs, have not kept up with inflation or shifts in vehicle efficiency, including the growing use of fuel-efficient and electric vehicles. The federal gas tax, at 18.4 cents per gallon, has remained unchanged since 1993. President Donald Trump has proposed temporarily suspending the federal gas tax to provide relief from surging fuel prices because of the Iran war.

“What states end up doing, partly because resources are limited, is they’re sort of triaging the system,” said Rocky Moretti, the director of policy and research at TRIP, a nonprofit research group focused on transportation issues.

For drivers, the cost of deteriorating roads often becomes clear only after damage occurs. At a time when many Americans are already feeling squeezed by fluctuating gas prices, tire blowouts, bent rims and suspension repairs can turn potholes into costly and unexpected expenses.

At the same time, some state and local governments are struggling to keep up with repairs while exploring new technologies — including artificial intelligence-powered road monitoring systems, sensors and camera-equipped vehicles — to identify road damage and respond more efficiently.

Federal transportation data shows that U.S. road conditions have changed little over the past three decades. Nationwide, the share of roadways rated in acceptable condition peaked at about 91% in 1999, but has since declined and averaged around 80% in recent years — leaving roughly 1 in 5 roadways in poor condition.

In 2024, the latest year with available data, the share of road miles rated in poor condition ranged from 34% to 89% in the five states or jurisdictions with the worst roads: the District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Hawaii, California and New Mexico. By comparison, the share of roads rated in acceptable condition ranged from 94% to 97% in the five best-performing states: Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Wyoming and Vermont.

With spring bringing warmer weather and heavier traffic, many transportation agencies have ramped up seasonal repair efforts by launching “pothole blitzes” aimed at rapidly filling road damage ahead of the busy summer driving season.

Just last month, West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey pledged to have potholes across the state filled by the end of May, saying road crews had already patched more than 18,000 miles of potholes since January.

New York City also hit a milestone in April, filling 100,000 potholes in the first 100 days under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. New Yorkers called in at least 19,406 reports flagging potholes in fiscal 2026 through April, up roughly 88% from at least 10,297 reports during the same period in fiscal 2025, according to the city’s 311 data.

In Baltimore, crews filled at least 32,000 potholes from late February through mid-March, and the city aims to fill another 25,000 potholes and resurface 10 lane miles by mid-July, according to Veronica McBeth, the director of the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. The agency repaired more than 134,000 potholes in 2025, she said.

“(Potholes are) one of those things that is a real pain,” McBeth said. “City services are out here trying to get the work done, and we are actively trying to grow deeper partnerships with the state to get larger pots of money to do bigger and more robust infrastructure investments.”

A growing maintenance gap

Potholes form when water seeps into cracks in pavement, freezes and expands, then melts and leaves gaps beneath the road surface. As vehicles repeatedly drive over those weakened areas the pavement breaks apart, creating potholes. The cycle is especially common in regions with frequent freeze-thaw weather swings.

“Years of that combination of traffic and climate action will cause you to have to do maintenance. Things will break down,” said Bill Buttlar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri.

Poor drainage is also a major factor, Buttlar said, as moisture and stormwater can significantly weaken pavement over time. The aging transportation systems in many parts of the country can make the problem even worse, as older roads are often more vulnerable to cracking and deterioration.

Responsibility for repairing potholes depends on who maintains the roadway. Local streets are often maintained by city or county public works departments, while state departments of transportation typically oversee highways and major roads.

Many agencies rely heavily on resident complaints submitted through 311 systems or online reporting tools to identify new potholes, alongside routine inspections and maintenance crews.

State and local governments increasingly rely on a patchwork of federal funding and local revenue sources to cover maintenance costs. Research from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that state roadways face a combined maintenance and repair shortfall of $86.3 billion over the next decade.

“(Transportation agencies) don’t have the budget to do proper maintenance practices and stay out ahead of things, just with the increase of costs and the lack of funding that we’ve been putting into the roads as a nation over the last 30 years,” said Richard Willis of the National Asphalt Pavement Association. Willis is the industry group’s vice president for engineering, research and technology.

The lack of funding often creates a cycle of reactive maintenance, according to experts. Delaying repairs can worsen deterioration as water continues penetrating cracks and weakening pavement foundations, leading to more costly reconstruction later.

“The last thing you want to do is try to save a buck here and there, kind of kick the can down the road, and pushing the maintenance back,” Buttlar said. “It turns out, it’s less expensive to do light maintenance more often.”

Innovative tools

Some states and cities are turning to technology to stretch maintenance dollars further.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, City Councilor Satya Mitra said he wants the city to become the “city with no potholes.” Since joining the council earlier this year, Mitra said he has heard repeated concerns from residents about road safety and infrastructure conditions and is pushing for the city’s transportation officials to explore whether artificial intelligence could help detect potholes earlier.

“It is not only the damage to our vehicle that happens, but also it is a potential health risk,” Mitra told Stateline. To underscore how seriously he takes the issue, Mitra even made a T-shirt that reads, “Proud to live in Worcester, a city with no potholes,” which he said he would like to distribute to residents if the city reaches that goal.

Worcester is far from alone. Transportation agencies across the country are increasingly experimenting with AI-powered cameras, sensors and predictive software to identify road damage before it worsens. Supporters say the technology can help agencies prioritize repairs, respond faster and potentially reduce long-term maintenance costs. But for many cities already struggling with limited budgets, the systems can also come with significant upfront costs.

Last week, Chicago announced a partnership with tech company Samsara to test artificial intelligence tools designed to improve road operations. The system will use sensors and video technology to detect and log potholes.

Similar technology is also being tested in more than a handful Massachusetts communities through a pilot program using pothole detection software.

In Hawaii, the state Department of Transportation has expanded its “Eyes on the Road” initiative, which relies on volunteer drivers equipped with free dash cameras to collect roadway footage statewide.

Last year, San Jose, California, released results from an AI-powered road safety pilot project that found the technology identified potholes with 97% accuracy and roadway debris with 88% accuracy. The pilot, launched in 2023, uses cameras mounted on city vehicles to detect potholes, illegal dumping and other infrastructure problems.

In recent years, some municipalities have upgraded their 311 systems with mobile apps, photo uploads and GPS-based reporting tools aimed at making them easier and faster to use.

But some researchers warn that complaint-based systems can leave behind communities that are less likely to engage with local government reporting tools. A 2024 study published in the Policy Studies Journal found that in Houston, lower-income neighborhoods and communities with larger Black and Hispanic populations submitted fewer 311 pothole complaints despite often having worse road conditions.

Rather than waiting for roads to deteriorate into major reconstruction projects, focusing on preventive measures such as crack sealing, resurfacing and rapid pothole patching could help more. Experts say addressing smaller problems early can extend the lifespan of roads, reduce long-term repair costs and help prevent more dangerous driving conditions.

“If we invest in maintaining what we have, that’s the most effective way to preclude the formation of potholes,” said George Conner, the deputy director for operations at the Alabama Department of Transportation. Conner also serves as the chair of the committee on maintenance with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

“A prioritized overall preservation is probably the best starting point. But there is no single fix for potholes, especially if you want the repair to last,” Conner said.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The line came during an appearance on Northeast Ohio’s “Strictly Speaking Unfiltered” with host Bob Frantz, one of two Ohio podcasts Husted used Tuesday to defend the conflict. Hours later, the senator again voted against a resolution that would have forced President Donald Trump to seek congressional authorization to continue it.

That resolution advanced anyway, 50-47 — the first time after seven failed attempts that a Senate war powers effort cleared the procedural hurdle. Four Republicans crossed over to join nearly all Democrats: Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Husted was not among them.

‘What do you want me to do?’

On the Frantz show, Husted framed constituent concerns about gas prices as a dilemma with only one acceptable answer — continuing the war:

“I have been urging the president and the team to make this brief and successful because you talk to people and you say, you know, they’re concerned about their gas prices, and I’m concerned about their gas prices, but then you go the next level, and you say ‘Well, what would you do? What do you want me to do? Should we walk away from the situation? Do we let the leading sponsor of state terrorism just go back to the process of having a nuclear weapon?’” and [they] say, ‘Well, no, I don’t think you should do that either.’ So, it’s a dilemma that we need to bring to a quick end, and I believe the president is sensing the urgency.”

Absent from Husted’s framing was the option in front of the Senate that same afternoon: requiring the president to come to Congress for authorization, the constitutional path supporters of the war powers resolution say would force a clearer strategy and a defined endpoint. Husted voted to block it.

Ohio’s costs

Ohio drivers have been paying roughly $2 more per gallon for gas than they did before the war began Feb. 28, according to CNN. Three Ohio service members have been killed in the conflict. Ohio Capital Journal reporting republished on TiffinOhio.net has placed the cost to American taxpayers at more than $1 billion a day. A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll cited in that reporting found just 33% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the war.

On a second podcast Tuesday — the Findlay-based “Good Mornings Podcast Edition” with host Chris Oaks — Husted recounted what he described as a conversation with a truck driver to illustrate the same framing:

“I talked to a truck driver the other day, and he told me, he’s like, ‘Hey, we need to get these diesel prices down.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you think about, you know, the- Iran being a nuclear power? What do you think about that?’ and he’s like, ‘Well, we got to do- we got to get the Strait of Hormuz open, we got to get gas prices down, and we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’ I think that that’s what I want to hear from a lot of folks.”

’Weekly conversations’ with the administration

Later in the Good Mornings interview, Husted said he is in regular contact with the Trump administration about the war — though he did not say whether those talks have included any push for the kind of congressional authorization Tuesday’s resolution would require:

“Well, in my- I’m in my Senate office right now, so I’m not going to talk about politics, but I can talk about timing, and that is the sense that, yeah, I believe that this could be something that’s resolved soon, but I don’t know that Chris, like that’s why we’re going to have a conversation. I’m going to continue to have conversations, weekly conversations with the administration, urging them to articulate the plan to the American people and to resolve this quickly.”

The Tuesday appearances mark a notable shift after weeks in which Ohio’s two Republican senators were characterized as “mum” on the war in earlier TiffinOhio.net coverage. Senate roll call records show Husted voted against the previous war powers attempt on May 13, part of a consistent pattern of opposing every such resolution since the conflict began.

Political stakes

Husted, the former lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike DeWine, was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 to fill the seat vacated by JD Vance when Vance became vice president. He faces former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in a November special election. Brown has made the war’s economic and human costs a centerpiece of his campaign.

“It’s clear this war is hurting people financially and in other ways. There’s no end in sight,” Brown said at an Austintown campaign stop earlier this month, according to the Tribune Chronicle. “(Republicans) have no idea how to end this war. They didn’t plan anything. Husted hasn’t raised one voice against this war or any idea about how to end it.”

The war powers resolution Husted opposed Tuesday now awaits a final passage vote in the Senate, the timing of which has not been announced.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization moved to drop the $10 billion suit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, with prejudice — meaning he cannot revive it in the future. 

Shortly after Trump’s filing hit the court docket, the DOJ announced the creation of a $1.776 billion settlement, not to be paid to Trump or his family, but to be divvied up among “others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” according to a department press release.

Democrats swiftly denounced the settlement as a “slush fund.”

The move presumably means those pardoned by Trump for crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could seek money from the government. The DOJ’s announcement did not specifically mention President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Merrick Garland or the Capitol riot, and noted there are “no partisan requirements to file a claim.” 

Trump campaigned on pardoning anyone prosecuted by the Biden administration for crimes related to the 2021 attack, describing them as “patriots” and “hostages.” He pardoned roughly 1,600 defendants on the first night of his second term, and the White House published a dedicated web page to those targeted by “a weaponized Biden DOJ.”

In addition to monetary relief, eligible claimants will also receive a formal apology from the government.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, said in a statement, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

“As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” he added.

Trump, his family and the Trump organization will also receive a formal apology but no monetary damages as part of the arrangement, according to the DOJ.

Trump tax info leaked

The president and his family had filed suit in January against the IRS for the leak to news media of their tax information by a contractor in late 2019. The contractor was sentenced for the leak in early 2024.

When questioned by the press Monday afternoon, Trump said he knew “very little about” the creation of the fund. 

“These were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt, with corrupt people running it, and they’re getting reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer,” Trump said.

A committee of five “very talented people, very highly respected people” will decide how to distribute the money, he said.

Funding an ‘insurrectionist army’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the plan Monday afternoon as “one of the most depraved” uses by Trump of the Justice Department.

“This weekend, Trump worked up a plan to shake hands with himself in order to fund his insurrectionist army to the tune of billions,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

“Donald Trump sued his own government. Trump’s DOJ settled with Trump. And now Trump gets a nearly $2 billion slush fund to reward his own allies, loyalists, and insurrectionists. That is not justice. That is corruption happening in broad daylight,” he continued.

In an amicus brief filed Monday afternoon, 93 House Democrats urged U.S. District Judge Kathleen Mary Williams, nominated by President Barack Obama, to immediately dismiss Trump’s “collusive lawsuit” for lack of jurisdiction.

The Democratic lawmakers argued in the filing the fund is “plainly unlawful” for numerous reasons.

“(F)iling a collusive lawsuit only to immediately dismiss it in order to produce a collusive settlement that is illegal multiple times over would not only be legally barred; it would also raise serious questions about whether the parties have manipulated the court system to achieve illicit ends,” according to the brief.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Introduced in February, Ohio House Bill 698 — the S.B. 1 Compliance Supplemental Appropriation Act — would link a portion of public higher education funding to institutions’ compliance with the Ohio Senate Bill 1 law that bans diversity efforts, prohibits faculty strikes, regulates classroom discussion of “controversial” topics, and blocks unions from negotiating on tenure.

State Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Township, is H.B. 698’s primary sponsor, and said in his opening statement to the Ohio House Workforce and HIgher Education Committee that while the bill is not a “reiteration” of SB 1, it intends to strengthen accountability and transparency to ensure institutions’ adherence to the law. 

“This bill does not dictate curriculum, it does not eliminate academic freedom, it does not create political litmus tests, and it is not intended to relitigate the debate surrounding SB 1,” Young said. “What it does do is reinforce public accountability for institutions that receive taxpayers dollars and ensure the law passed by this General Assembly is implemented as intended.” 

Young said purported efforts at universities to “work around the intent” of SB 1 have been “astounding,” but did not provide any specific examples of institutions working to do so. He praised university presidents and administrators who have moved forward in complying with SB 1. 

“I understand that large institutions are complex, with many departments, employees and moving parts, and at times it can be difficult to be sure every individual within a university is operating consistently with the law,” Young said. “That is precisely why the additional provisions in HB 698 are necessary.”

Young’s new bill would require universities to create a “justification report” for university employees who formerly worked in DEI positions as of Jan. 2025, including their names, new salaries, responsibilities, and proof that their reassignment does not include DEI- related initiatives. 

The state’s higher education department would be required to review these reports under the bill, leading the reports to become public record. 

Last week was the second hearing for the bill, and the first time opponents were allowed to share their opinions on the bill. Seven opponents testified in person, while many more submitted written opposition. Lawmakers capped the session at an hour and a half. The bill is slated to be picked up again by lawmakers this week.

Opposition

Critics raise concerns that the bill will expand government overreach and, strip labor protections for faculty and staff.

Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said during her testimony the bill would have detrimental effects on labor protections for higher education’s faculty and staff. 

She said the bill represents a “dangerous escalation” of political interference within the state’s institutions of higher education. 

“H.B. 698 is not about accountability, it is about control,” Cropper said. “And to be blunt, this bill is anti-labor, anti-educator, anti-student, and fundamentally anti-education.” 

Cropper said the threat of lost funding is causing over-compliance with SB 1, and this supplemental bill would pave the way to broaden state overreach into unions’ collective bargaining process. 

“At its core, House Bill 698, attempts to weaponize state funding in order to force conformity onto the highest institutions of higher education,” Cropper said. 

She said the bill’s reporting requirements are designed to “intimidate” faculty and staff into “silence and submission.” 

“This should concern every worker in Ohio, educators and non educators alike,” Cropper said. “When the state begins stripping bargaining rights from one sector of workers, it creates a blueprint for broader attacks on organized labor across the state.” 

Steve Mockabee, the director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati, spoke on behalf of the Ohio AAUP, a labor union representing over 6,000 faculty and staff members from Ohio’s institutions of higher education. 

Mockabee said the bill’s reporting requirements raised “serious constitutional questions.” 

“HB 698 would create a system where Ohioans who were doing perfectly legal jobs in good faith would be placed on a watch list and monitored by the government in perpetuity,” Mockabee said. 

Mockabee criticized the bill’s language surrounding retrenchment, and said broad terms such as “organizational restructuring” and “strategic alignment” would enable administrators to shut down programs and terminate faculty at any time.

“After SB 1, job security for Ohio faculty is on life support,” Mockabee said. “HB 698, would pull the plug.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Lawmakers in the Ohio House Education Committee recently approved changes to Ohio Senate Bill 19 that would excuse Ohio’s classical schools from having to teach the science of reading, which is based on decades of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. 

“This legislature and the governor placed a major emphasis … on science of reading to great effect, and now is not the time to start carving out loopholes for certain schools,” said Devin Babcock, senior legislative director for ExcelinEd in Action. 

Ohio school districts were required to teach the science of reading curriculum starting with the 2024-25 school year after the law took effect in 2023 through the state’s two-year operating budget. 

The budget gave $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.

“We’ve held the line as a state for the last few years, as have all the other states that have made this move,” Babcock said.

“If you’re a public school taking public money, then let’s do the best thing for kids and use the science of reading that we’ve adopted here as a state.”

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based instruction since 2013, according to Education Week. Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state for fourth-grade reading in 2013 to being ranked 21st in 2022 after implementing science of reading policy. 

Ohio has eight classical schools that follow the K-12 curriculum of Hillsdale College, a Christian liberal arts college in Michigan. 

Some tenets of classical school curriculum include teaching Latin and a close reading of Western classics, among other things, according to Hillsdale College. 

Ohio S.B. 19 — which passed unanimously in the Ohio Senate in November — originated as an academic intervention bill to help students who score below proficient on state assessment tests. 

The bill would allow a public school student who scored below proficient in a state assessment test in math or English language arts to receive academic intervention services at no cost. 

The Ohio Education Association testified in opposition to the bill in March, 

“The bill is well-intentioned, but the details matter,” OEA President Jeff Wensing said in his testimony. “These tests provide useful information, but classroom educators have more information about a student’s knowledge and abilities in the subject.” 

The bill would require school districts or individual schools to come up with a math achievement improvement plan if 51% or less of the district or school’s students who took the third grade math achievement assessment scored at least a proficient score on the assessment.

Under the bill, schools would be required to develop math improvement and monitoring plans for each student that qualifies for math intervention services within 60 days after getting the student’s third grade assessment math results.

A math improvement and monitoring plan would identify the student’s “specific math deficiencies,” describe the additional instructional services they will receive, offer a chance for their parent or guardian to be involved, outline a monitoring process and offer high-dosage tutoring at least three days a week.

“From the experience of Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plans (RIMPs), I can tell you that this is an onerous task that will often fall on classroom teachers,” Wensing said in his testimony. “Educators’ time is in too short supply to add more paperwork, administrative tasks, and exercises in compliance.”

Ohio Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, introduced the bill, which has had five hearings in the Ohio House Education Committee.

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.

That rule has gone final and is expected to take effect July 13. Some Ohio families will the be hardest hit in the United States.

In the midst of an already-existing affordability crisis, the government on Tuesday reported that inflation had spiked to its highest rate in three years. The spike has been driven by gas prices inflated by Trump’s war with Iran — and before that by massive tariffs levied on trade with most of the rest of the world. 

At the same time that Trump last summer cut $1 trillion in taxes on the richest 1% of Americans, he cut health and food benefits for the poor by a similar amount. Trump and Republicans in Congress also allowed healthcare subsidies to expire, which is expected to cost 356,000 Ohioans their coverage.

In the midst of all that, the administration moved in January to scrap a 2024 attempt by the Biden administration to cap the cost of childcare for families making $77,000 or less a year. The Trump administration did that by proposing a rule that goes beyond the 7% cap.

“The rule rescinds the requirement to cap child care copayments at 7% of household income, rolls back the use of grants and contracts for care that the market doesn’t readily provide for (like care for infants, toddlers, and kids with disabilities), rescinds prospective payments to providers and also enrollment-based pay, which risks destabilizing provider payment schedules, since they rely on predictable, reliable payments to cover fixed operating costs,” Hailey Gibbs of the Center for American Progress said in an email.

An analysis by her organization showed that some Ohio families will be hardest hit by the loss of the benefit. The researchers estimated that without the 7% cap, some eligible Ohio families are paying as much as 27% of their income on daycare.

For the maximum-earning family of three, that’s $1,700 a month. Under the Biden cap it would have been $452.

In other words, some Ohio families will now have to pay nearly $15,000 more for childcare than they otherwise would have. That’s nearly $4,000 more than the next-closest state, Vermont, the analysis said.

An extra bill of that size would plunge a huge number of Ohioans into poverty.

An analysis of government data earlier this year found that a $15,000 surprise expense would swamp the resources of virtually every single-earner, median income household of four in the Buckeye State.  

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Enquirer’s April 2023 analysis of state lawmakers’ driving records placed Click among the three most-cited members of the Ohio General Assembly. Only two state lawmakers — Niraj Antani with 14 tickets and Rep. Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) with 13 — had more.

The newspaper reported that Click, identified at the time as the pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple, “holds a commercial driver’s license for transporting passengers, according to state records.” Click has since stepped down from active pastoral leadership, quietly assuming a pastor emeritus title in 2025 without a public announcement.

‘More important issues’ than tickets, Click said

Asked about his record by the Enquirer, Click did not dispute the citations.

“There are more important issues than lawmakers’ speeding tickets,” Click said, according to the newspaper’s reporting.

He did not offer further explanation in the published article. Edwards, the Nelsonville Republican who outranked Click in citations, took a different posture in the same Enquirer report. “This isn’t something I’m proud of but I accept responsibility,” Edwards said in a written statement, noting he had driven nearly 300,000 miles across his southeastern Ohio district and to Columbus. “I’m certainly not above the law. I have tremendous respect for those who work to keep our roadways safe and will continue to support law enforcement.”

‘Look very hard at your driving behaviors’

The Enquirer’s analysis included a response from Ohio State Highway Patrol Superintendent Charles Jones, who said traffic laws apply regardless of occupation. Jones specifically singled out lawmakers in Click’s tier — those with 10 or more tickets — saying they should “look very hard at your driving behaviors.”

The BMV data showed most Ohio lawmakers had clean or near-clean records. Of the 129 state legislators examined, 52 had no traffic tickets in the decade reviewed and another 28 had only one. Three lawmakers — Antani, Edwards, and Click — had 10 or more citations, placing them in roughly the top 2 percent for traffic violations among their colleagues.

A 2023 snapshot heading into November

The Enquirer’s review remains the most recent comprehensive public accounting of Ohio lawmakers’ driving records.

Click won a contested Republican primary on May 5, 2026, defeating Tiffin entrepreneur Eric Watson by a 52-48 margin while losing Seneca County to Watson and holding the seat only on the strength of Sandusky County. He now faces Democratic nominee Aaron Jones — a U.S. Army veteran, Tiffin City Council member, and longtime manufacturing supervisor — in the November 3, 2026 general election. Jones lives in Seneca County and graduated from Clyde High School in Sandusky County.

Click currently chairs the Ohio House Community Revitalization Committee and the Ohio Christian Legislators Caucus and serves on the House Ways and Means, Education, and Children and Human Services committees. He is seeking what would be his final term under Ohio’s four-term legislative term limit.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

An afternoon rally in Montgomery that drew over 5,000 people featured politicians, activists and civil rights dignitaries as of the All Roads Lead to the South campaign, aimed at organizing voters to offset the advantages Republicans may gain from redistricting.

“Our democracy is on the line,” said Victor Coar, who traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery. “Our rights are on the line. They are trying to take it all away. They are suppressing our vote, trying to keep us quiet, trying to silence our vote.”

The events on Saturday deliberately invoked the Civil Rights Movement in cities that featured some of its most famous moments, and came just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court targeted one of its major legacies. In Louisiana v. Callais, decided last month, the nation’s high court weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting and election laws, by saying plaintiffs challenging maps under Section 2 would have to prove intentional discrimination, a significantly higher standard than the prior one.

The court’s decision led Republican-controlled legislatures across the South to introduce redistricting legislation targeting Black majority districts. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use a 2023 congressional map it had previously ruled racially discriminatory. Gov. Kay Ivey set special primary elections in four congressional districts for August, though plaintiffs in the state’s major redistricting case, known as Allen v. Milligan, have continued litigation. A federal court Friday set a hearing in the case for Friday.

A woman raises a fist as protestors march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Earlier on Saturday, faith leaders gathered at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma and offered prayers, criticisms of the Supreme Court and President Donald Trump and calls for voting rights protections for vulnerable communities.

After an hour, 400 people then marched silently from the church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protestors were attacked on March 7, 1965, an assault that eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“I know how important moments like these are, and I am here because I know that one of us can go far but we cannot go far enough,” said Rev. Cece Jones-Davis, who traveled from Washington, D.C. to participate in the day’s events, in an interview after the march. “It is going to take all of us, and so I am just here to add my voice to the collective.”

At the Montgomery rally, speakers spoke to several grievances aimed at the Trump administration and at the U.S. Supreme Court regarding voting rights, but also urged the crowd to have resolve during the current political climate.

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center, harkened to the past as a rallying cry for the present.

“Today we return to the very grounds where my parents and freedom families stood, when Black voter registration was scarce, when discrimination was the norm, and when violence was the price for seeking dignity. Their sacrifice opened the door to the Voting Rights Act,” she said.

Protestors step on a marker on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama marking the extent of the crowds in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march during the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Now, she said, people are called once again to act.

“Because the recent Supreme Court rulings demand our presence,” she said. “It was not only a legal decision, it is a moral disgrace and a shameless assault on Black political power.”

Lawmakers from Alabama took the stage to urge the crowd to continue their efforts to mobilize the vote.

“Sometimes I wonder what would I have done if I had been present and alive during the movement,” said Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove. “Would I have marched? Would you have marched? Would I have participated in a boycott? Would you have done that? Would I be one of the lawyers who filed one of those lawsuits? Would I have been a freedom singer, singing and moaning for the movement like my grandfather? We are here to tell you, you don’t have to wonder anymore. This is our time, right now, and we are fired up and ready to go.”

Then Alabama’s congressional delegation and their colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives took the stage to rally the audience and to meet the moment.

Changing Alabama’s congressional maps will significantly threaten the re-election prospects of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, and could eventually put U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, at risk.

“It is time to show up and show out, not just in one state capital, not just for one election but we need you to step up and show up for every one of our state legislators who are trying to get out the vote,” Sewell said.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, said that the freedom that we enjoy also requires responsibility.

Protestors enter the All Roads Lead to The South Rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

“We also stand here with the understanding that the freedoms we inherited from our ancestors are not possessions that we hold, they are rights that we hold in trust,” he said to the crowd. “That we were given to be stewards of. A lot of people are drinking deeply from wells of freedom and liberty that they did not dig. They are eating from banquet tables prepared for them by their ancestors, sitting back, getting dumb, fat and ugly, and happy and comfortable. This is one of moments where we understand our blessings come with obligations.”

Khadidah Stone, one of the Allen v. Milligan plaintiffs, criticized Ivey’s decision to schedule the special session during an interview at Saturday’s event in Montgomery.

“I would really like those legislators to focus on the quality of life of Alabamians,” Stone said. “We have a lot of rural hospital closures, we have the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, 50,000 Alabamians just lost SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, and most of the recipients are the elderly and children.”

Figures said after the rally that he was “inspired by what we see.”

“It is an incredibly humbling experience to see thousands come out and, in essence, help defend my seat, and defend Congresswoman Terri Sewell’s seat, so we can’t help but be overwhelmed by gratefulness and humility by what we are seeing, and encouraged because we think this is going to carry over until November,” he said.

Figures, however, said that he felt there were factual differences between the Callais case and the Milligan case, and expressed confidence that the Milligan plaintiffs could still win.

“The dispute with our district goes all the way back to the 2020 census, and the original maps that the state Legislature redrew, and the three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by Trump and one by (Ronald) Regan originally, they found that the state had engaged in intentional discrimination in how they drew those maps.”

Several of those who attended the afternoon rally criticized attempts by the various legislatures to reconfigure their district maps.

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile (third from left, in Blue shirt) addresses a crowd attending the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

“It is important for folks to understand what folks are getting taken away from them, and they are getting taken away their right to representation,” said former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to be governor, in an interview at the event in Montgomery. “We have come so far in the state of Alabama. We have 60 years of progress that has been thrown backwards by the Supreme Court and the Legislature just a few blocks from here.”

Reginald Mason, who also traveled from Birmingham, said voting is what matters.

“People who don’t actually vote are not informed, they don’t know about the struggle that our ancestors went through,” Mason said. “I never thought I would be standing here today fighting for what they have already fought for me.”

Religious and faith leaders expressed many of the same concerns when they led congregants in prayers prior to the morning march across the Edmund Pettus bridge.

“What I realize is that it is just our turn, and freedom is not fought for once, freedom has been fought for many times,” Jones-Davis said. “We are here to do our part.”

Corey Minor Smith of Canton, Ohio holds a “Black Voters Matter” sign while marching over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. Faith leaders gathered in Selma Saturday for a prayer event as part of the “All Roads Lead To The South” protests, aimed at mobilizing voters amid Republican efforts to eliminate majority-minority districts. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)

Faith leaders in the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church In Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, which drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

A speaker addresses the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The service was part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans. The events drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors gather in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors gather in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

A woman raises a fist as protestors march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of the All Roads Lead to the South rally on May 16, 2026. The two rallies, protests against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors attend the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors attend the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors attend the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors enter the All Roads Lead to The South Rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors attend the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors attend the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Protestors step on a marker on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama marking the extent of the crowds in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march during the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, addresses a crowd attending the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. To the right is Dee Reed of Black Voters Matter. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, addresses a crowd attending the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. To the right is Dee Reed of Black Voters Matter. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reedaddresses a crowd attending the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile (third from left, in Blue shirt) addresses a crowd attending the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. The event, a protest against redistricting efforts by southern Republicans, drew over 5,000 people. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the CEO of the King Center, speaks to the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. More than 5,000 attended the event, which protested recent moves by southern Republican governments to draw Black Democratic congressional members out of their districts. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the CEO of the King Center, speaks to the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. More than 5,000 attended the event, which protested recent moves by southern Republican governments to draw Black Democratic congressional members out of their districts. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the CEO of the King Center, speaks to the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. More than 5,000 attended the event, which protested recent moves by southern Republican governments to draw Black Democratic congressional members out of their districts. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the CEO of the King Center, speaks to the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. More than 5,000 attended the event, which protested recent moves by southern Republican governments to draw Black Democratic congressional members out of their districts. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the CEO of the King Center, speaks to the All Roads Lead to the South rally in Montgomery, Alabama on May 16, 2026. More than 5,000 attended the event, which protested recent moves by southern Republican governments to draw Black Democratic congressional members out of their districts. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

This story was originally produced by Alabama Reflector, 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.

Now, the Supreme Court is the one upending elections.

For the past two decades, the Supreme Court has advanced the idea that federal courts should not order major changes close to an election to limit voter confusion. Over time the doctrine, first articulated in the 2006 case Purcell vs. Gonzalez, became known as the Purcell principle. 

But election law experts and one of the court’s liberal justices say the Supreme Court is wielding — or disregarding — the principle unevenly in ways that aid Republicans.

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has effectively allowed last-minute election changes in Southern states that hold major consequences for what districts voters are assigned to and the future of Black political representation across the region.

These Republican-controlled states are racing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate majority-Black districts, many of which have elected Black Democrats to Congress. The gerrymandering rush has come even with early voting underway in some states.

Wilfred Codrington III, a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, who has studied the Purcell principle, said limiting voter confusion is common sense. But after that general idea, the principle “just falls apart” because the Supreme Court has never answered questions raised by the doctrine — like how close to an election is too close.

“The court has not thought through them and it seems like when the court applies them, they’re being applied in partisan ways,” Codrington said, about questions the doctrine raises.

April ruling OK’d redistricting

After the high court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act in Callais, a landmark decision on April 29 that found Louisiana’s map unconstitutional, it fast-tracked paperwork so the state could quickly redraw district lines. 

Voting had begun in the state’s congressional primary election, which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended, discarding 42,000 votes already cast.

A majority of the court voted to immediately certify its decision instead of observing its typical 32-day waiting period. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the justices were disregarding their previous insistence that courts shouldn’t risk assuming political responsibility for a redistricting process that often produces hard feelings.

“There is also the so-called Purcell principle, which we invoked only five months ago to chide a federal district court for ‘improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign,’” Jackson wrote. “The Court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power.”

The conservative justices on May 11 then cleared a path for Alabama to move toward implementing a Republican gerrymander that state lawmakers approved in 2023 but was blocked by a lower court. Their decision came a little more than a week before the state’s primary election. 

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has called an August special primary election for some of the state’s congressional districts.

“The United States Supreme Court’s decision is plain common sense and enables our values to be best represented in Congress,” Ivey said in a statement.

‘Like it doesn’t exist’

The Supreme Court’s actions this spring stand in stark contrast to its December decision to allow Texas’ gerrymander to take effect. After President Donald Trump urged GOP states to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, Texas was the first state to respond, enacting new lines that could help Republicans pick up five seats.

A three-judge district court panel ruled against the map, finding that it was racially gerrymandered. The Supreme Court paused the panel’s decision, finding that the panel likely made serious errors and that the district court was “causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections” amid the campaign season.

That language echoed the Purcell decision, which found that an appeals court had erred in blocking an Arizona law requiring a photo ID to register to vote. The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion cautioned that court orders affecting elections can cause voter confusion. 

“As an election draws closer, that risk will increase,” the 2006 opinion said.

Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court made no mention of Purcell in its Callais opinion, which dropped like a political bomb across the South. Since the decision, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee have either enacted new maps or are seeking to do so ahead of the November midterm elections.

Mark Johnson, a Kansas City-based lawyer with a long history of working on election litigation, noted that Callais was argued at the Supreme Court twice, first in March 2025 and again in October. The justices then waited a long time before releasing their decision, he said, adding that if they didn’t realize the implications of their ruling they were “asleep at the wheel.”

“That’s why the Callais case is so disturbing, because a Supreme Court that has by and large followed Purcell just acted like it doesn’t exist,” Johnson said.

Court legitimacy at stake

Several high-profile observers of the Supreme Court have been unsparing in their criticism of the justices’ approach. 

Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a foremost expert on the court, wrote in an online post that the court’s recent decisions “fatally undermine” the animating purpose of the Purcell principle.

“The Court’s own interventions are now wreaking havoc—and a majority of the justices either don’t think it’s their fault, or don’t care that it is. Either way, they don’t seem to mind the inconsistency—in a context in which it’s having the remarkably coincidental effect of benefiting Republicans,” Vladeck wrote.

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote on social media that the Supreme Court in Chief Justice John Roberts’ hands “has become a chaos agent in elections.”

Public support for the Supreme Court was dropping prior to Callais. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

In the wake of the decision, Democrats have renewed their calls for court reform. Some have proposed term limits for the justices or expanding the size of the court to dilute its conservative majority. However, major changes are unlikely to become law while the U.S. Senate retains the filibuster and Trump remains in office.

For his part, Roberts has taken pains to paint the court as outside of politics. But at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania in early May, Roberts acknowledged the public thinks the justices are expressing policy preferences rather than interpreting the law.

“I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts said, according to The Associated Press.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another of the court’s conservatives, has drawn a distinction between federal courts ordering last-minute changes to elections and states making changes themselves — suggesting that courts shouldn’t necessarily thwart state legislatures that alter rules and procedures in the run-up to elections.

In a 2020 concurring opinion about a federal judge who had altered Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kavanaugh wrote that it was one thing for state legislatures to change their own election rules “in the late innings” and bear responsibility for unintended consequences.

“It is quite another thing for a federal district court to swoop in and alter carefully considered and democratically enacted state election rules when an election is imminent,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Chaotic campaign season

But voting rights advocates say Callais is unleashing a wave of voter confusion as Southern legislatures rush to gerrymander.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a map May 7 that divides the Memphis area among three congressional districts. The move splits a majority-Black district in Memphis represented by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat. Cohen announced Friday he wouldn’t seek reelection.

The state’s primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.

“This is a year where we’re already in the cycle and they’re going to have to redo everything they’ve already worked on because these districts are completely different,” Matia Powell, executive director of the voting rights group Civic TN, told reporters.

The Tennessee Democratic Party and several Democratic candidates, including state Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Cohen’s current seat, have filed a federal lawsuit against the map. They argue the new map will cause “significant voter confusion” and severely burden the right to vote.

Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argues the Democrats have a solution in search of a problem. Tennessee lawmakers have provided more than $3.1 million to implement the new map and that state officials are already working to meet election deadlines, Skrmetti’s office wrote in a Wednesday court filing.

“At bottom, this suit is an invitation to play politics, not law,” Tennessee Senior Assistant Attorney General Zachary Barker wrote in the filing.

U.S. District Court Judge William Campbell, a Trump appointee, on Thursday declined to immediately halt the map.

The Supreme Court has sent states the message that “there are no rules” and that state legislatures are welcome to gerrymander Black representation at any point, said Anna Baldwin, voting rights litigation director at Campaign Legal Center, which has sued over Florida’s recent gerrymander.

And the way the court applies the Purcell principle encourages states to make changes close to elections — because courts are more reluctant to block them.

“The court is creating a perverse incentive structure that ultimately does make it harder for people who are trying to protect voting rights to prevail,” Baldwin said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The House Children and Human Services Committee brought Ohio House Bill 647 up for a hearing recently for the sole purpose of making changes to the bill. The committee’s chair, Republican state Rep. Andrea White, said she hopes to see the committee approve the bill soon.

The bill was initially introduced in response to a right-wing influencer’s claims out of Minnesota that federal funding was being fraudulently used by childcare facilities, particularly those managed and owned by Somali immigrants.

The Trump administration responded to the Minnesota claims by freezing childcare funding to that state, and other Democratically led states.

Ohio officials including Gov. Mike DeWine made comments at the time that the claims were made, hoping to avoid a freeze on federal funds coming to the state for its Publicly Funded Child Care program.

The sponsors of H.B. 647, Republican state Reps. Phil Plummer and Tom Young, defended the state’s oversight of the childcare system, while also introducing the bill to help prove enforcement of laws would be strong and swift, so the federal funding distributors didn’t take action.

“We can’t gaslight this and freak out the federal administration, and they pull our funding,” Plummer said in January when the bill was announced. “Because then we lose childcare centers.”

The bill focuses on increasing the state’s data analysis skills when it comes to childcare centers and funding. It would also put in a new oversight system, including not only county prosecuting attorneys who are typically the ones to investigate local childcare fraud allegations, but also the state Inspector General’s Office, and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office as well.

The legislation would base funding from the Publicly Funded Child Care coffers on a child’s enrollment in a childcare facility, rather than on a child’s individual attendance. It would also allow the Ohio Department of Children & Youth to suspend a childcare center’s license without a prior hearing “if DCY has reason to suspect that (the center) has engaged in the misuse of public dollars or acted with intent to commit fraud against the PFCC program,” according to bill analysis by the Legislative Service Commission.

H.B. 647 received the support of Kara Wente, director of the Ohio Department of Children & Youth.

Changes made this week by the House committee remove money for a pilot program that Republicans have been trying to enact for several years, a program that was an attempt to increase accessibility in a state that advocates say is in “crisis” when it comes to affordability and access to childcare.

The Child Care Cred Program was originally a standalone piece of GOP-led legislation, but had since been absorbed into H.B. 647. The program was sold by supporters as a cost-sharing model, one in which the state would contribute to the cost of childcare, while the remaining cost would be split between participating employers and eligible employees.

In the committee changes, an appropriation for the program of $600,000 for fiscal year 2026 and $4.4 million in 2027 was removed, among other changes.

“So, instead of using the Child Care Cred money, that money is going to stay in (the budget of the Ohio Department of Children & Youth), and then the department will use other funds that are within their budget,” White told the committee.

The most recent state budget put forth $10 million in support of the Child Care Cred program.

There were no objections to the changes made to the bill. State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, R-Ashtabula, said the bill changes were “a big improvement,” but commented on a different change, one in which the time period for childcare centers to “backdate,” or make changes to attendance records, was increased from seven days to 10 business days or 14 calendar days, whichever is later.

“I would prefer to see even tighter timelines,” Fowler Arthur said. “I think we really need to be making sure that we have the most accurate data possible.”

Another change made to H.B. 647 eliminated an increased to the Department of Children & Youth’s “community projects and assistance” funding by $2 million in 2026 and $3 million in 2027. In a previous version of H.B. 647, the money was required to go toward “enhanced data analytics for use in conducting automated attendance reviews of publicly funded childcare providers.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio state Rep. Adam Holmes, R-Nashport, and Ohio Senator Brian Chavez, R-Marietta, will be co-chairs of the committee. 

The committee will include Ohio reps. Thad Claggett, R-Licking County, Heidi Workman, R-Rootstown, and Chris Glassburn, D-North Olmsted. Ohio Sens. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, Shane Wilkin, R-Hillsboro, and Willis E. Blackshear Jr., D-Dayton, will also be on the committee. 

“The mission of this committee is to ensure that Ohio citizens have accurate, relevant and usable information concerning the economic, environmental, and security impacts of Ohio data center development,” Holmes said. 

The committee’s first two meetings will be May 27 and May 28 with the plan going forward to have at least one meeting a week, Chavez said. 

“We’re going to go until we get to a natural breaking point, and then we’ll let the information disseminate,” he said. 

“We intend to get this information out to council trustees, county commissioners, mayors, and concerned citizens. We want to make sure that folks are able to get information and be able to have critical conversations with the relevant information.”

Holmes said they have talked to companies like Meta and Google about coming to testify.

“They’re anxious to come,” he said. “I think they have a message they want to broadcast on exactly how they’re handling the concerns.”

Ohio has about 200 data centers, the fifth-highest state in the country. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 23, according to the Data Center Map. 

“Some Ohioans are troubled by reports of exorbitant water use, negative land and wildlife impacts, excessive sound light and electromagnetic emissions and increased local energy costs,” Holmes said. 

A large data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, according to the Office of Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

Data centers used 4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023 and that is expected to grow to 9% by 2030, according to the counsel. 

Virginia has a high concentration of data centers and electricity prices there have increased by up to 267% in recent years, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. 

“Energy and information are not only the economic drivers for the 21st century; they are also a national security imperative,” Holmes said. “It’s crucial Ohio establishes sound data center development policies that benefit all Ohioans.”

A group of Ohioans are currently collecting signatures to get a data center ban on the November ballot. 

The proposed constitutional amendment would prohibit building data centers with a peak load of more than 25 megawatts per month, but the amendment will need more than 413,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1. 

“We’re just trying to get information out so the folks can have critical thoughts and critical conversations,” Chavez said when asked about the amendment. 

The Ohio House unanimously passed Ohio House Bill 646, which would create a new data center study commission. The bill is now in an Ohio Senate Committee. 

“We took a look at (Ohio H.B. 646), and we felt like this was going to be a much faster process,” Chavez said when asked if this is replacing the data center study commission bill. 

“This doesn’t necessarily have to replace it, but it seems to be the quicker vehicle that we’re going to pursue right now.” 

Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, favors the committee over the bill that would create a data center commission. 

“We can be a little bit more prepared to delve deeper into the issues, rather than a commission that’s so broad that it can’t delve very deep into the issues at all,” he said. 

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, is optimistic about the work that will come out of the committee.  

“We definitely think that it’s important that we address some of the policy issues and safety issues, the environmental issues and local control issues around data centers,” she said. 

Lawmakers in at least 11 states — Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — have introduced legislation that would temporarily ban data centers. 

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.

Redistricting, the process of redrawing the geographic boundaries of U.S. House and state legislative districts, usually takes place every 10 years following the census.

Trump upended that schedule early last year, when he began pressuring state GOP officials to redraw their maps to help Republicans hold onto a slim, five-seat majority in the U.S. House ahead of potentially grim 2026 midterm elections for his party.

The Supreme Court recast the redistricting fight with its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. That decision all but nullified a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect their chosen candidates.

A total of nine states — Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — have redrawn their maps since last year. At least three other states — Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — appear likely to follow suit, though Georgia’s new maps would not be in effect for the upcoming midterm elections.

As things currently stand, Republicans are likely to gain up to 17 seats, while Democrats are likely to gain up to six seats.

In the aftermath of the Callais decision, hundreds of protesters have gathered at statehouses in recent weeks, particularly in the South, to decry what they say is a concerted effort to dilute Black voting and governing power. Republicans argue that maps should be “colorblind.” Gerrymandering to benefit one political party over another is legal at the federal level, though some states have their own laws restricting it.

The latest redistricting efforts are changing elections that have already begun. Some candidates must now pivot to races in brand-new districts with just a few weeks until their primaries. They’ve spent money and time reaching people who can no longer vote for them, fighting opponents different from the ones they now face. At least one Tennessee Democratic candidate no longer lives within the new boundaries of the district he’s seeking to represent.

Voters in states such as Alabama will now be asked to turn out for primary elections in both May and August, in addition to the November general election.

Here’s where things stand now.

Nine states already have redrawn their maps

Alabama

Republicans could gain 1 seat.*

A 2023 court order required Alabama to draw a congressional map with a second majority-Black district. But after the Callais decision last month, Alabama’s Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let them reinstate the old map, which has just one majority-Black, majority-Democratic district and which the court had previously ruled racially discriminatory. The high court quickly agreed.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has announced new primary elections in August for the affected districts. These will be held in addition to next Tuesday’s statewide primaries for other federal and state offices.

Alabama is also appealing a separate ruling requiring it to redraw two state Senate districts. That case is still ongoing.

California

Democrats likely to gain 3-5 seats.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year led the Democratic response to Trump’s call for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps.

In November 2025, California voters approved Newsom’s proposal to temporarily override the state’s independent redistricting commission and instead to allow the Democratic-dominated legislature to redraw the maps to create districts more favorable to Democrats. The new map is valid through 2030.

Florida

Republicans likely to gain 1-4 seats.

Last month, the Republican-majority Florida Legislature approved Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new congressional map that could net the GOP up to four new congressional seats.

Both DeSantis and the voting rights organizations suing to block the new map agree it violates parts of the state constitution. But DeSantis argues the constitution’s anti-gerrymandering amendments, which were overwhelmingly adopted by Florida voters in 2010, are invalid, partly due to the Callais ruling.

Missouri

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s gerrymandered 2025 congressional map, handing Republicans a victory. Last summer, Trump pressured Missouri Republicans to help maintain the GOP majority in the U.S. House, so lawmakers met in a special session to draw a map that likely will give them an additional seat by carving off parts of Kansas City into surrounding rural districts.

The new map will be used in Missouri’s August primary, the state Supreme Court ruled this week, because it’s uncertain whether a referendum petition seeking to repeal the map will succeed.

North Carolina

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

At Trump’s behest, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional map last fall. It was an effort to make the state’s only competitive district solidly Republican. The maps passed strictly along party lines. The state’s congressional delegation is now likely to be 11 Republicans and three Democrats. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein is a Democrat, but redistricting isn’t subject to the governor’s veto.

Ohio

Republicans likely to gain up to 2 seats.

Last fall, Ohio Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman publicly rebuffed Trump’s national push to gain more seats in Congress, while state Democrats proposed their own maps. An Ohio redistricting commission eventually approved a new map last October that is likely to yield 12 Republicans and three Democrats, compared with the current 10-5 split. GOP and Democratic lawmakers called it a “compromise.”

That map will be in place for the next six years. But political operatives told the Ohio Capital Journal they expect to see more redistricting efforts in 2030.

Tennessee

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

In a chaotic special session earlier this month, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee redrew congressional maps to shatter the state’s only majority-Black, majority-Democratic district. The newly passed map now favors Republicans in all nine Tennessee districts. Hundreds protested at the Tennessee statehouse as House Republicans voted on the new map and House Democrats gathered at the front of the chamber, locking arms in a show of solidarity.

This week, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, punished his Democratic colleagues for their protests by stripping them of committee and subcommittee appointments. On Friday morning, longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen announced he would not seek reelection after his district was carved up in the redrawing of the maps.

Texas

Republicans likely to gain 3-5 seats.

The nation’s redistricting battle kicked off in Texas last summer, after Trump pressured the Texas GOP to redraw the state’s congressional map to add up to five more Republican seats. State House Democrats pushed back, fleeing the state temporarily in August to halt the vote. But the map eventually passed after they returned. Civil rights groups sued, saying the new map was racially discriminatory.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court permanently upheld the new map, ensuring it remains in place for the 2026 midterms.

Utah

Democrats likely to gain 1 seat.

In 2018, Utah voters approved an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure that created an independent redistricting process, but Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature repealed and replaced it in 2021. Voters rights groups sued, arguing the resulting new map was a partisan gerrymander.

Eventually, after a multi-year legal battle, a new court-ordered map in 2025 gives Democrats a chance to win one of the state’s four congressional districts. The Utah GOP proposed a ballot initiative this year to ask Utah voters to officially repeal the 2018 anti-gerrymandering law, but it failed last month after thousands of petition signers removed their signatures.

Three states are in the process of redrawing their maps

Georgia

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has refused to pursue redistricting ahead of this year’s elections, which are already underway. But Kemp announced Wednesday that he will call a special session to redraw the state’s political maps for the 2028 elections. Georgia’s congressional delegation currently has nine Republicans and five Democrats.

Louisiana

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s existing congressional districts as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primaries to give lawmakers enough time to pass new maps.

This week, in a nearly 10-hour overnight committee hearing, Louisiana lawmakers advanced a bill that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The new map, if it passes, likely would give Republicans another seat in Congress.

The new map must win approval from both chambers by June 1. Litigation over the decision to delay primaries is ongoing.

South Carolina

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

South Carolina legislators will gather Friday for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional lines just 12 days before early voting opens. Lawmakers have set a deadline of May 26 to pass a new map. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who previously said the matter was for the legislature to decide, called for the special session under pressure from the White House and state GOP.

The South Carolina GOP’s goal is to pass a bill that would delay U.S. House race primaries until August while keeping other primaries on schedule for June. One proposed map would cut South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, out of the seat he’s represented since 1992 and create all seven Republican seats.

At least a half dozen other states are interested in redrawing their maps

Mississippi

This week, Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session he’d called to redraw districts for the state’s Supreme Court. Some GOP officials had hoped he’d add congressional redistricting to the agenda. Instead, he said this week, he’s working with Trump and the White House on a plan to redraw Mississippi’s congressional districts and legislative districts in the future. Reeves wants a map that would boot the lone Democrat in Mississippi’s U.S. House delegation, Rep. Bennie Thompson, from his seat.

If that happens, Republicans would likely gain one congressional seat.

Virginia

The Virginia Supreme Court earlier this month struck down a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have given Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Virginia voters last month had approved a referendum that would have netted Democrats three or four additional seats. Earlier this week, Virginia Democrats asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the amendment, in a case that’s ongoing.

Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Washington 

Officials in Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Washington all have suggested drawing new maps following the Callais decision, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Colorado Voting Rights Act, passed last year by the state’s Democratic-majority legislature, will likely prevent the state from embarking on a redistricting effort. The state’s congressional delegation is currently split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans. But a Democratic-led group is gathering signatures for ballot measures that would allow the state to change its maps ahead of the 2028 election.

*Seat gain predictions from The Cook Political Report.

This story was updated to include the Friday morning announcement by Tennessee Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen that he will not seek reelection. 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.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued dissenting opinions.

In his dissent, Thomas said the rule violates the Comstock Act, a long unenforced 1873 law that bans the mailing of “obscene” material. During the 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump said he didn’t support using the Comstock Act to stop mail delivery of abortion pills, saying he thought the federal government should have nothing to do with the issue.

Mifepristone’s manufacturer “makes a passing reference to the possibility of lost sales,” Alito wrote in his dissent. “But lost sales in states where abortifacients are generally illegal are not ‘irreparable injuries’ that can justify granting a stay.”

Abortion-rights advocates around the country called the decision a relief after two weeks of uncertainty.

On May 1, the appellate court sided with Louisiana, where state officials sued the FDA in October, arguing that a rule allowing telehealth access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester or to treat miscarriage, undermines the state’s abortion ban. Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, two manufacturers of mifepristone, filed emergency appeals, leading the Supreme Court to issue a 10-day stay on May 4, extended until today.

“Though today’s decision means that mifepristone remains available through telehealth for now, this fight is not over,” said Dr. Camille A. Clare, president of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, in an emailed statement. “The chaos and confusion wrought by competing decisions and the revocation and restoration of access on an almost daily basis do real harm to patients and to the clinicians who care for them.”

Abortion opponents decried Thursday’s decision.

“Women deserve better than dangerous abortion drugs sent through the mail without physician oversight or in-person support,” said Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International, a major network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. “A state like Louisiana that values life in its laws should be able to protect its smallest residents as well as their moms.”

The FDA’s approved two-drug regimen via telemedicine is an increasingly common abortion method, especially for people living in parts of the country where abortion is banned or difficult to access.

Last month, a federal district court paused the lawsuit at the request of the FDA until after the completion of a safety review on mifepristone. That review was prompted by non-peer reviewed, anti-abortion research and in spite of the drug’s record of safety and efficacy since 2000. The state appealed to the 5th Circuit.

Due to multiple ongoing efforts to restrict or block mifepristone, abortion providers have told Stateline they are ready to eventually switch to a misoprostol-only method, which researchers have found to be as safe as the two-drug regimen but typically involves more symptoms and is slightly less effective.

National groups have tried to pressure the Trump administration to drop the Biden-era rule allowing telehealth abortion and called for the head of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for reportedly slow-walking a safety review of the drug until after the midterm elections. Makary resigned on Tuesday, and anti-abortion groups wasted no time in getting Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas on the phone.

Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, in a written statement, said she talked to the acting commissioner on Wednesday and that he said he was morally opposed to abortion. “Diamantas told me that reviewing the abortion pill is a top priority for him and the administration,” Rose posted on X.

Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins wrote a similar message to supporters in an email on Thursday, saying Diamantas will be the “most pro-life FDA commissioner in American history.”

But many doctors around the country say curbing access to telehealth abortion is likely to cause harm to people in states with bans who may face more barriers to obtaining an abortion without that option.

“Women will be forced to travel long distances — at times hundreds of miles — to access safe, essential health care at a doctor’s office, no longer having the option to receive mifepristone via telemedicine,” wrote Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, in a letter asking the Supreme Court to maintain access to telehealth abortion. The letter was cosigned by more than 2,200 physicians.

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.  Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@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.

Edwards, of Nelsonville, served four terms in the Ohio House representing the 94th District from 2017 to 2025, leaving office under term limits. He served as House majority whip from 2019 to 2020 under Householder and chaired the House Finance Committee in 2023 and 2024 under Speaker Jason Stephens. He defeated state Sen. Kristina Roegner 53% to 47% in the May 5 Republican primary, according to unofficial results reported by the Ohio Capital Journal. He will face Democrat Seth Walsh, a Cincinnati city councilmember, on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Edwards has not been charged with any crime in connection with the HB 6 corruption scandal or any other matter discussed in this article.

House Bill 6 and the Householder leadership team

In 2019, the Ohio House passed House Bill 6 — the $1.3 billion bailout for two FirstEnergy nuclear plants that federal prosecutors would later describe as the product of a $60 million racketeering conspiracy. The bill cleared the chamber 51-38. Edwards voted yes.

By that point, Edwards was a member of Householder’s leadership team. According to the Athens News, which described him in 2020 as a personal friend of Householder, Edwards was tapped by the Speaker to serve as majority whip in the 133rd General Assembly. The federal indictment against Householder later described a closed-circle “enterprise” that funded the campaigns of 21 candidates in the 2018 primaries with FirstEnergy money to build “Team Householder” in the chamber. Edwards’ 2018 campaign was not among those funded by Householder’s public-facing political action committee, the Athens News reported. He was not named in the federal complaint against Householder.

Trial evidence later presented at Householder’s 2023 racketeering trial included a July 21, 2019 text — two days before HB 6 cleared the House. According to Associated Press wire reporting on the trial, Householder texted an unidentified legislator: “The state plane has been arranged to come get you, Tom Brinkman and Bob Cupp on Tuesday morning at Midway and return you to Chicago that afternoon. Jay Edwards will be calling you.” The flight ultimately did not take place. Then-FirstEnergy vice president Michael Dowling, in a separate text quoted in the trial coverage, celebrated the planned flight with a one-word reaction: “Boom.”

In July 2020, federal agents arrested Householder along with lobbyists Matt Borges and Neil Clark, political strategist Jeff Longstreth, and lobbyist Juan Cespedes. U.S. Attorney David DeVillers called the scheme “likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” Edwards joined the unanimous House vote that immediately stripped Householder of the speakership. He did not, however, support removing Householder from the chamber.

The following month, the new Republican Speaker, Bob Cupp, asked Edwards and the rest of the Householder-appointed leadership team to step down from their positions, saying the move would “clearly demonstrate our resolve to start anew.” Only one member, Assistant Majority Whip Laura Lanese, complied. Edwards refused, telling the Athens News he saw no reason to step down from a position he had been elected to unanimously. Cupp then removed Edwards from the House Rules and Reference Committee, which sets the chamber’s agenda. Edwards eventually declined to seek another term as whip in the next General Assembly, taking a roughly $12,000 pay cut as a result.

The FBI-recorded dinner at the Aubergine

On Sept. 23, 2019, Householder attended a $2,400 dinner at the Aubergine Private Dining Club in Grandview Heights, a wealthy inner-ring Columbus suburb. According to trial reporting later published by CBS, Clark had arranged the dinner so two men he believed were potential clients could meet the Speaker; the two men were undercover FBI agents wearing recording devices. Clark had advised them to bring a $50,000 check made out to Generation Now, the 501(c)(4) dark money entity prosecutors say Householder used to launder FirstEnergy money.

Edwards was at the table.

In a 2020 interview with the Athens News, Clark identified Edwards as “Representative 8” in the federal affidavit supporting Householder’s indictment. The FBI’s affidavit specifically stated that “Representative 8” was “not known to be a member of the alleged criminal enterprise,” according to the Athens News, which reported Clark’s claim. Edwards declined at the time to confirm or deny that he was Representative 8 and said he did not recall attending the dinner. Clark died by suicide in March 2021 while awaiting trial.

The dinner became trial evidence in Householder’s 2023 racketeering trial, which ended with a conviction and a 20-year federal prison sentence. In a 2023 letter to ethics officials reported by Signal Ohio, Edwards acknowledged the dinner had been described in media reports as costing more than $2,400 and said that as soon as he became aware of that information, he contacted caucus legal counsel to ask whether he had a duty to amend his financial disclosure statement.

A $200 check to Generation Now

Four months after the Aubergine dinner, Edwards wrote a personal check to Generation Now.

The Energy and Policy Institute, citing bank records published in March 2023, reported that nine checks of $200 each — totaling $1,800 — were deposited by Generation Now in February 2020 from members of what federal prosecutors called “Team Householder.” Eight came from Republican Ohio House members, including Householder himself, Edwards, Jon Cross, Douglas Swearingen, Donald Wilkin, Philip Plummer, Jeffrey Lare, and Brian Baldridge. The ninth came from Brian Gray, a Householder aide.

Edwards’s check, written in January 2020, included the phrase “Brown Tix” in the memo line, according to the bank records. The memo lines on checks from Householder, Gray, Wilkin, and Plummer referenced the “Big 10” championship. Baldridge’s check said “Football.”

The federal racketeering indictment unsealed six months after Edwards’s check described Generation Now as the vehicle through which approximately $60 million in FirstEnergy money was laundered into political activity supporting Householder’s speakership bid and the passage of HB 6. The entity later pleaded guilty to racketeering and was dissolved.

The vote against expelling Householder

In an October 2020 interview with the Athens News — three months after Householder’s federal indictment — Edwards was asked about his relationship with the former Speaker.

“I’ll openly admit I still consider Larry Householder a friend,” Edwards said. “Am I upset by him and some of his actions? Yeah, absolutely, but I think he deserves an untainted day in court and we’ll find out what happens.”

Eight months later, on June 16, 2021, the Ohio House voted 75-21 to expel Householder from the chamber. Edwards voted no, joining 19 other Republicans, Householder himself, and one Democrat in opposition, according to the Ohio Capital Journal’s roll call of the vote. Householder had not yet stood trial. Of the 11 sponsors of HB 6, six voted against the expulsion.

Edwards declined to give interviews explaining the vote at the time.

Deleted texts and a denied records request

In February 2022, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Householder had texted Edwards from outside the chamber about a data privacy bill Edwards opposed — and that Edwards’ opposition stalled the bill that day. The next month, the Ohio Capital Journal filed a public records request for all text messages between Edwards and Householder dating back to June 2021, the month of the expulsion vote. Lawyers for the Ohio House denied the request, telling the outlet no responsive records existed.

Edwards offered a simple explanation: he deletes them.

“You’re going down the rabbit hole saying Jay Edwards deletes texts with Larry Householder. No, that’s not true,” Edwards told the Ohio Capital Journal, referring to himself in the third person. “Jay Edwards deletes all texts. To members, to other people; I go through at night and erase text messages I don’t find useful.”

Edwards said he and Householder — old friends from Perry County and Hocking College — usually avoid discussing the criminal case or public policy in their texts, and that he would have preserved any message he considered a public record. Ohio public records law generally requires elected officials to preserve communications conducted on personal devices when those communications concern public business.

The “Blue 22” speakership and a party censure

On Jan. 3, 2023, Edwards was one of 22 House Republicans who joined all 32 House Democrats to elect Jason Stephens as Speaker over Derek Merrin, the candidate Republican caucus members had endorsed in a closed-door November vote. Stephens won 54-43.

Edwards told the Statehouse News Bureau that he and other members felt Merrin had not been reaching out enough since the caucus vote. “People have been pretty upset and so that’s what led us to today. It didn’t have to be this way,” he said.

Eight days later, the Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee passed a resolution censuring Stephens and his 21 Republican supporters. The censure said the bipartisan vote “dishonors the historic brand” of the party. Edwards was named in the resolution.

Stephens served one term as Speaker. Matt Huffman replaced him in 2025.

On tape in the 2025 Dark Money Game documentary

In April 2025, the streaming service Max released “Ohio Confidential,” a documentary by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney examining the HB 6 bribery scandal as part of his two-part “Dark Money Game” series. The documentary featured previously unreleased FBI recordings of Edwards in conversation with Clark.

In one exchange aired in the film and quoted by WKYC, Clark told Edwards: “I don’t want to say he’s a pay-to-play guy, but he’s clearly influenced by his friends who have money.” Edwards responded: “Why the hell do you not run for office then?” Clark answered: “‘Cause I’m the son of a [expletive] convicted felon mafia guy. What are you, out of your mind? The attack ads would just write themselves.”

A separate recording, not included in the documentary but referenced in the WKYC report, captured Clark describing Edwards to an undercover FBI agent.

“He and I are the two principal advisers to the speaker,” Clark told the agent. “So having him, you know, there as a support device, yes. If you want to, if you want to get somebody that’s a member who has influence on the speaker, Jay Edwards would be the guy.”

That description sits alongside the FBI affidavit’s earlier statement that “Representative 8” was “not known to be a member of the alleged criminal enterprise.” Edwards declined to comment to WKYC on whether he ever received any benefit from money in the Generation Now account.

“The recent release of a docuseries has given this subject renewed interest with the press, but this has been exhaustively covered in the past and there is nothing new that was covered,” Edwards told WKYC by email. “It is time to move past this and focus on working to make our state a stronger place to live for hardworking Ohioans.”

Householder’s attorney, Scott Pullins, told WKYC that Clark’s description of Edwards as influential with the Speaker was not accurate, adding that Clark “would talk and exaggerate, especially late at night after drinks.”

The 2025 gift disclosures

In April 2026, Signal Ohio reporter Jake Zuckerman published a review of the financial disclosure Edwards filed as a statewide candidate, documenting more than 42 separate gifts of $75 or more that Edwards reported receiving in 2025. The total reached at least $3,100. By comparison, Signal Ohio’s review of every other statewide candidate’s disclosure found that gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy disclosed 24 gifts, Secretary of State Frank LaRose disclosed 23, and most other candidates disclosed none or only a handful. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton disclosed none.

In an interview with Signal Ohio, Edwards said he had not actually received some of the gifts he reported.

“You don’t get in trouble by overreporting,” Edwards told Zuckerman. “I know for a fact I didn’t receive gifts from some of them.”

Asked about specific names on the list, Edwards said he hadn’t seen Cleveland restaurateur Robert “Bobby” George in roughly a year but listed him anyway. He said Scott Weisman, a jewelry store owner he golfs with, may have paid for some rounds but he could not remember. He said nursing home executive Steve Boymel had hosted a campaign event for him but he did not think Boymel had given him a gift. He said lobbyist Jett Facemyer — a former Edwards legislative aide who now lobbies for Intralot, the Greek-based vendor that contracts with the Ohio Lottery for its central gaming and video lottery terminal systems — “might have” paid for tickets to a Tim Dillon comedy show.

“I fill out these forms for the OEC,” Edwards told Signal Ohio, referring to the Ohio Ethics Commission. “I don’t fill them out for news reporters.”

The Ohio Ethics Commission requires elected officials and candidates to disclose all gifts worth more than $75 received in the preceding year. The rule exists, the commission says, to identify potential conflicts of interest and provide transparency about the relationships of people in or seeking government office. A disclosure of a gift not actually received raises the inverse problem: it makes it impossible to know who is actually buying gifts for the candidate.

The Bobby George listing and a familiar name

Bobby George, whose listed gift to Edwards was of undisclosed value, was originally charged in August 2024 with nine felony counts — one count of attempted murder, one count of rape, four counts of kidnapping, one count of felonious assault, and two counts of strangulation — in connection with the abuse of a woman he was in a dating relationship with between November 2023 and July 2024. The arrest warrant, obtained by News 5 Cleveland, described allegations including strangling, gun threats, and shoving a towel down the victim’s throat. On Nov. 3, 2025, after waiving his right to a grand jury and accepting an indictment by information, George pleaded guilty to a single count of attempted strangulation, a fifth-degree felony. He was sentenced to five years of probation in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Special Prosecutor Jane Hanlin, of Jefferson County, handled the case after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley recused.

The Bobby George listing on Edwards’ disclosure is notable for another reason. According to Cleveland Scene’s reporting on a deposition transcript made public in 2025, Bobby George’s father, Cleveland businessman Tony George, was identified as “Individual B” in FirstEnergy’s 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. The agreement, in which the utility admitted paying approximately $60 million to influence Householder on HB 6, used “Individual B” as a codename. A FirstEnergy controller’s deposition in a separate civil case identified Tony George as the person referred to by that codename.

Federal prosecutors and civil filings have described Tony George as the intermediary between FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Householder beginning in the fall of 2016, as Householder was planning his return to the Ohio House and his run for Speaker. A 2023 Columbus Dispatch story documented that George arranged for the FirstEnergy corporate jet to fly Householder and his son to Donald Trump’s January 2017 presidential inauguration and personally paid Householder’s $1,557 hotel bill in Washington. State audit records show entities controlled by George received nearly $11 million from FirstEnergy over the years.

Tony George has not been charged in the HB 6 scheme and has denied wrongdoing. He has continued to host fundraisers for Republican candidates, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, who has endorsed Edwards for treasurer. In Signal Ohio’s reporting, Edwards confirmed that Tony George has hosted fundraisers for him.

What the office holds and who is running

The Ohio treasurer manages the state’s roughly $280 billion in assets, oversees state investments, runs the STAR Ohio investment pool used by local governments, and signs the checks that disburse state spending. Robert Sprague, the term-limited incumbent Republican, is running for Secretary of State.

Edwards’ campaign website describes him as “a native son of Southeast Ohio” who flipped a Democratic seat to enter the House in 2016, served as Finance Committee chair, and sponsored a $3.2 billion tax cut and universal school choice. The site does not mention HB 6, Householder, or the gift disclosures. Edwards has been endorsed by Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Democrat Seth Walsh, a Cincinnati city councilmember and former community organizer, was unopposed in the May 5 primary and advances directly to the general election. Walsh has said the treasurer’s office should leverage its $280 billion portfolio to direct investment toward community-focused banks and has said the office has a “fiduciary responsibility” to oppose the diversion of state unclaimed funds to finance the Cleveland Browns’ new stadium — a use of public dollars currently blocked by a Franklin County judge.

Edwards has said the unclaimed funds “could have been spent a better way,” particularly for rural Ohioans facing rising property taxes and utility costs, but has not ruled out supporting stadium financing “if we can afford to do them, and if we’ve checked all the other boxes.”

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 5, and early in-person voting begins Oct. 6.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Times piece, published Wednesday by political reporter Reid J. Epstein, grouped Ramaswamy with Florida Rep. Byron Donalds in a category labeled “The Politicians Who Could Make a Quick Leap.” The Times wrote that the two Republicans “could bounce from running for governor to national campaigns” and noted that Ramaswamy “already ran for president in 2024.”

That framing arrives as Ramaswamy continues to dominate the Ohio race financially, largely on his own dime. He has loaned his gubernatorial campaign $25 million of his own money so far this year, a sum that accounts for roughly 83% of all the money his campaign raised in 2026, according to a fundraising report filed ahead of the May 5 primary. A federal super PAC supporting his bid, V-PAC: Victors, not Victims, has reported $29.5 million in fundraising this cycle, bringing the combined total behind his candidacy to roughly $80 million.

The four-year-term pledge

When Ramaswamy launched his campaign in February 2025, he told NBC News in a pre-launch interview that he was “fully committed to serving a full term” and said it was his “expectation that an agenda as ambitious as the one we’re pursuing will likely take two terms to fully implement.” NBC reported at the time that the pledge “would take a run in 2028 — and a potential primary clash with [Vice President JD] Vance — off the table.”

Ramaswamy has not publicly addressed the 2028 question since winning the May 5 Republican primary, in which he defeated political novice Casey Putsch 82.5% to 17.5%.

’Not a consolation prize’

Even before Ramaswamy launched his campaign, members of his own party were warning that his ambitions extended beyond Columbus. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who initially ran for the gubernatorial nomination before dropping out, told NBC News in February 2025 that Ramaswamy had spent the previous year cycling through bigger ambitions.

“He has wanted, over the last year, to be president, to have a Cabinet spot, to be co-leader of DOGE,” Yost said. “The governor of Ohio is not a consolation prize. … My concern is that what he seems to do best is to quit.”

Robert Alexander, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University, made a similar observation last month. Alexander told Newsweek that some voters may see Ramaswamy “as an opportunist who is settling for the Ohio governorship as a consolation prize, who may jump ship to run for president again in 2028.”

A national-tier campaign in a state race

The scale of Ramaswamy’s personal spending stands out even by the standards of expensive gubernatorial races. In July 2025, he told Fox News Digital that he was “prepared to invest at the same scale or greater” as the more than $30 million he poured into his 2024 presidential bid.

The campaign has spent more than $500,000 leasing a private jet since launching, with the aircraft leased through V Leasing LLC — a company Ramaswamy himself owns, according to filings reviewed by the Ohio Capital Journal. The campaign did not respond to the Capital Journal’s questions about whether V Leasing earns a return on the arrangement.

Acton’s campaign has leaned into the contrast. The Democratic nominee raised more than $10 million from roughly 76,000 first-quarter donors in 2026, with an average grassroots contribution of $29 and 95% of donations of $100 or less.

“He can continue throwing money at his campaign from the seat of his private jet, but Ohioans see right through his false promises,” Acton campaign manager Philip Stein said in a statement responding to Ramaswamy’s first-quarter figures.

What’s on the ballot in November

Recent polling has pointed to a close general election. A Bowling Green State University poll released in late April found Ramaswamy with a statistically insignificant 1-point lead over Acton. An Emerson College poll in December and a Quantus Insights poll in March both showed the candidates within a single percentage point of one another, while an EMC Research poll in February gave Acton a 10-point lead.

The general election is set for Nov. 3. Ramaswamy has not publicly addressed the 2028 question since the New York Times feature was published.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

JVIS, a Michigan-based automotive supplier, announced Friday that it has acquired the Toledo Molding & Die (TMD) operations in Tiffin and Bowling Green through its affiliate TNJ Ohio, LLC, doing business as JVIS Ohio. The deal retains 629 manufacturing jobs across the two facilities, according to JobsOhio.

The acquisition closes out a Chapter 11 sale process for the plants, which were owned by First Brands Group. First Brands filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2025 and announced on Feb. 27, 2026, that it would permanently close the Tiffin plant on April 30, eliminating 407 jobs, along with the Bowling Green facility, which employed about 302 workers. A U.S. bankruptcy judge approved the JVIS sale this week.

JVIS framed the transaction as its entry point into Ohio manufacturing.

“This acquisition represents an important milestone for JVIS as we establish our first manufacturing operations in Ohio,” said David Robinson, vice president of external affairs for JVIS. “TMD brings experienced employees, strong customer relationships, and manufacturing capabilities that align extremely well with our long-term strategy and operational approach. We are excited to build upon that foundation and continue supporting customers from these facilities.”

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/jvis-buys-tmd-tiffin-plant-retaining-hundreds-of-manufacturing-jobs/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

For voters in Seneca and Sandusky counties — and for anyone watching this corner of Northwest Ohio from elsewhere in the state — here’s a closer look at the Democratic nominee.

Rooted in Northwest Ohio

Jones was born in Tiffin, raised just outside Green Springs, and graduated from Clyde High School in 1991. He has spent most of his adult life in Seneca and Sandusky counties, the same two-county footprint he is now asking to represent in Columbus.

“I am a husband, father, grandfather, U.S. Army veteran, and factory supervisor who’s spent over 20 years on the line at Toledo Molding & Die in Tiffin,” Jones wrote in his Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey in January. “I’m running for Ohio State Representative in the 88th District — all of Seneca and Sandusky counties — because I know what it’s like to work hard, make ends meet, and fight for your family.”

Four years in the Old Guard

After high school, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army and served four years as an Airborne Infantryman with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — The Old Guard, the Army’s oldest active-duty infantry unit and its official ceremonial regiment, headquartered at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall outside Washington, D.C. The Old Guard provides the military funeral escorts at Arlington National Cemetery and serves as the official escort to the President of the United States.

Jones served from 1991 to 1995, according to his Ballotpedia filing. In March 2026, the national veterans organization VoteVets endorsed Jones, citing his record of service and his commitment to continued public service.

“Serving in the Army taught me that leadership means responsibility, discipline, and showing up for the people who depend on you,” Jones said in response to the endorsement. “Those are the same values I’ll bring to Columbus as I work to represent the people of Seneca and Sandusky counties.”

Two decades on the factory floor

Jones returned to Tiffin in 2006 and built a career at Toledo Molding & Die, the auto-parts manufacturer that operates a plant in the city. Now in his third decade with the company, he works as a production supervisor — overseeing the shift floor, not the executive suite.

“Most politicians in Columbus have never spent a day on a factory floor. I have,” Jones said in his January campaign announcement. “I know what it’s like to worry about healthcare bills, grocery prices, and whether your kids will be able to stay and build a future here. That perspective matters.”

That working-class biography is the through line of Jones’s campaign. At his April 16 kickoff at Reino’s Catering & Party Room in downtown Tiffin, Jones told supporters: “I’m not running because I’ve been planning a political career. I’m running because the people in this district deserve someone in Columbus who actually understands what it’s like to clock in every day, make ends meet, and fight for your family.”

A family man in Tiffin

Jones lives in Tiffin with his wife Tracy. The couple raised a blended family of five boys, and they are now grandparents to four grandchildren — all growing up in the same community where Jones spent his own childhood.

That continuity — same hometown, same plant, same community — is something Jones leans into when he talks about why he is running. He frequently frames the race not as a career move but as another form of service.

“Service doesn’t end when you take off the uniform,” Jones said. “I’m running to continue serving my community and to make sure the people of this district have a strong voice in Columbus.”

From city council to the Statehouse

In 2023, Jones was elected to Tiffin City Council representing the city’s 1st Ward — his first run for elected office. On council, he has focused on neighborhood-level issues including local jobs, public safety, infrastructure, and direct constituent access to local government.

He has also been a visible local voice on environmental concerns affecting Seneca County. At a March 19 candidate forum in Tiffin — which incumbent Gary Click did not attend — Jones spoke about residents who have brought concerns to Tiffin City Council about the Seneca Poultry CAFO and the neighboring Sunny Farms Landfill, which accepts out-of-state waste.

What he’s running on

Jones’s campaign platform, as outlined on his campaign website, centers on seven priorities:

• Lower costs for working families, including utility bills and property taxes
• Good jobs and safe communities
• Affordable and accessible healthcare
• Roads, bridges, and broadband infrastructure
• Strong public schools
• Helping seniors age in place with dignity
• Support for veterans

“My agenda is simple,” Jones writes on his campaign site: “doing what’s best for the hardworking people of the 88th District. I’ll fight to bring down costs — like utility bills and property taxes — protect and attract good-paying jobs, and hold Columbus accountable to Seneca and Sandusky counties.”

He said he will “put the 88th District first — not party leaders or corporate donors.” Jones has also pledged to not take campaign contributions from corporate PACs.

The road to November

Jones ran unopposed in the May 5 Democratic primary and is now the party’s nominee for the general election. He will face Gary Click, who survived a competitive Republican primary against Tiffin entrepreneur Eric Watson by 599 votes — losing Seneca County to Watson by 8.5 percentage points but holding his home county of Sandusky by 15.4 points.

The general election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

Learn more

More information about Jones and his campaign is available at www.jonesforohio.com. Voters can also follow the campaign on Facebook at facebook.com/JonesForOhio.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic minority leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and interest groups argued that, with the midterm elections less than six months away, there was no time to see how the Trump administration executes the order.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, argued the order had not been put into effect yet and therefore could not be overturned.

The groups are seeking a nationwide preliminary pause on Trump’s late-March order that U.S. citizenship and age data from the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security be provided to states.

The proposal would result in a “maximum amount of confusion” and be a “nightmare for election officials,” said Danielle Lang, who argued on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “Waiting will only erode public confidence in elections.”

Thursday’s hearing marked the first courtroom showdown over the executive order. A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general have also sued to block the order. At least five lawsuits have been filed in total.

Trump’s edict also orders the U.S. Postal Service to promulgate a rule that would design special envelopes for mail-in ballots, including a unique barcode. States, which the U.S. Constitution delegates authority over election administration to, have argued the order would restrict mail-in voting.

‘No one knows’

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, had tough questions for both sides. He suggested the Democrats’ and aligned groups’ challenges may be premature because a rule specifying how the order would operate has yet to be written, though he also grasped their argument that the order was inherently unconstitutional. 

“No one knows what’s gonna be in the rule,” Nichols told lawyers for the Democratic groups.

“I think it’s very clear from the EO (executive order) that we know exactly what’s gonna be in the rule,” said Lalitha Madduri, who represented the Democratic groups and congressional leaders.

After back-and-forth, Nichols conceded, “I agree with your point: There can be no rulemaking consistent with the EO that can be lawful.”

Madduri also argued there is “no way to repair that harm” of uncertainty for voters.

Department of Justice senior trial counsel Stephen Pezzi said the plaintiffs have a right to “prepare for the darkest fears,” but, he argued, they can’t win a preliminary injunction based on speculation of error-prone citizenship lists and a postal rule not yet created.

There’s “certainly no irreparable harm,” Pezzi said.

Of the lists of intra-agency government data compiling U.S. citizens and their ages, Pezzi said “it’s not a list of individuals to be targeted. It’s not a list of noncitizens.” He also said it’s “not a concern” of the federal government what states do with the lists, if they even decide to use them.

“No list’s ever going to be perfect,” Pezzi said, adding that “responsible” states would not blindly kick people off voter rolls if their names do not appear on the lists verifying citizenship.

Commitment to updates

Nichols told Pezzi in the event he denied a preliminary injunction, he would expect information sharing from the government as the case continued.

“Fair enough,” Pezzi said.

“I didn’t hear a commitment,” Nichols warned, prompting agreement from Pezzi.

Nichols said he would soon issue an order and opinion, but did not specify a date. 

“I understand the time pressure here,” he said.

He warned the government to notify him of “anything even approaching a material change” on implementing Trump’s executive order — though he stopped short of issuing an official order requiring updates. But, he said, “it would not be good for the government,” if they do not promptly inform him of new developments.

Trump’s elections push

Democrats and voting rights groups maintain Trump’s order is effectively compiling an illegal national voter list and usurping the state authority over elections. The order’s opponents accuse Trump of trying to unilaterally assert power over elections.

Trump and his aides say the order will help secure the midterm elections this November. While voter fraud is extremely rare, Trump has long promoted false conspiracy theories surrounding his 2020 election loss.

The executive order, signed by Trump on March 31, came amid a broader campaign by the president to influence how elections are run. 

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for sensitive voter data that it plans to use to identify potential noncitizen voters. 

Trump has demanded that Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, though the bill has stalled in the Senate. Last year, Trump signed an executive order to unilaterally impose similar requirements that was blocked in federal court.

“President Trump has tried repeatedly to rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage,” Madduri, an attorney at Elias Law Group, wrote in a court filing.

GOP officials defend order

Republican state attorneys general have intervened in the lawsuits on behalf of the Trump administration and have urged federal judges to uphold the executive order. They have cast the order as offering “optional” resources.

Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas intervened in the suit argued Thursday and were represented in the courtroom.  

The states “would like to access this resource so they may verify the accuracy of their own voter-registration lists. This flow of information between federal and state agencies is a common and critical feature of our federal system,” the Republican officials wrote in an April 20 court document.

The order requires lists of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state to be provided to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. 

The order does not tell states how to use the data, but it instructs the U.S. attorney general to prioritize investigations into state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters.

The list of citizens will be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It will also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The order also directs states, at least 90 days before a federal election, to tell the U.S. Postal Service whether they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

Opponents of the order argue that under federal law Trump cannot direct the postmaster general to take any action — on elections or any other matter. The Postal Service is overseen by a Board of Governors and the postmaster general reports to the board. 

Trump’s allies argue that the Constitution grants the president sweeping authority over executive branch agencies and that Congress cannot place agencies, like the Postal Service, beyond the president’s reach.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Lawmakers took specific aim at stricter loan caps set to be established for students pursuing advanced programs that do not fall under the department’s “professional” classification, such as nursing, teaching and social work. 

Members on both sides of the aisle voiced their criticisms during a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce, where McMahon defended the incoming federal student loan overhaul as well as President Donald Trump’s administration’s separate, ongoing efforts to dismantle the 46-year-old department. 

McMahon emphasized that her department is “not making any kind of a judgment relative to professional degrees” and instead is trying to “bring down the cost” of tuition. 

The secretary pointed to “exorbitant” college costs, noting that “students are burdened with debt.” 

Megabill provision

The imminent shifts to the federal student loan system stem from congressional Republicans’ tax and spending cut megabill that Trump signed into law last year. The department this month published the finalized regulations consistent with the law’s directive. Most provisions will take effect July 1.

The regulations eliminate the Grad PLUS program, which allowed for graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance. 

Graduate student loans will also have a $20,500 annual cap and $100,000 aggregate limit. Professional student loans will have a yearly limit of $50,000 and aggregate cap of $200,000. 

But the programs falling under the department’s “professional” category — and thus eligible for the higher borrowing limit — are limited to pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology. 

The agency has also clarified, in an agency fact sheet on the finalized regulations, that the “professional” student classifications “do not express a value judgment about the importance of any occupation or field” but instead serve a “loan-administration function.”

‘Tone-deaf’ message

Rep. Jahana Hayes said she was “very concerned” about the department’s “professional” student classifications, noting that these limits “make higher education, especially master’s degree programs, more difficult to afford for nursing, social workers (and) teachers.” 

The Connecticut Democrat clapped back at McMahon’s assertion that the overhaul is about bringing down college costs, saying: “The people who can afford it don’t apply for these programs, the people who can afford it don’t need student loans, the people who come from communities like mine and just want to go back and serve those communities are the ones who are going to be most affected, not the colleges, not the universities, not the board of directors, not the top 1%.”

Rep. Joe Courtney, also a Connecticut Democrat, blasted the regulations’ exclusion of nursing from the “professional” category as “one of the most insulting, tone-deaf messages to 5 million nurses imaginable across the country.” 

Courtney added that the exclusion “will, in fact, raise education costs for critically needed nurses,” and pointed to a petition from the American Nurses Association that received more than 245,000 signatures and urged the department to include nursing programs in its “professional” definition. 

McMahon defended her department’s “professional” classification to the panel, arguing that the agency “looked very, very carefully at the entire nursing profession,” and “95% of the nurses that are in programs do not exceed these caps.” 

The secretary added that “78% of the nurses that are moving for graduate programs do not exceed or come up to these caps.”

Even some Republican members on the panel, whose party championed the “big, beautiful” law that sets forth the student loan overhaul, called into question the new limits.  

Rep. Lisa McClain, chair of the House Republican Conference, asked McMahon “if there’s any way, or you had any thoughts on: Can we explore opening the nurse graduate programs up to expand these caps or lift these caps, because it’s a good return on investment, and we sure do need them?” 

In the GOP’s tax and spending cut law, “one of the things we did was we put the caps on, but we had some carveouts and caveats … and I think this sector of graduate nursing programs was just an unintended consequence, perhaps, that got overlooked,” the Michigan Republican said. 

“And what I’m here to do is really advocate for these programs, because I think they’re extremely important.” 

Legislation to reverse the caps

Bipartisan efforts are underway in Congress to both address the forthcoming loan limits and expand the “professional” student definition. 

Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, introduced a bill in December that would expand the “professional” definition to also include “nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, ministry, social work, audiology, physician assistant, public health, business administration and management, accounting, architecture, secondary education, and special education.” 

Rep. Tim Kennedy of New York brought forth legislation in December with fellow Democratic Reps. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii and Rep. Shomari Figures of Alabama that would ensure graduate and professional students are subject to the same annual and aggregate loan caps. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, introduced a bill that would “restore the full loan limits that were narrowed” under the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law. 

In the upper chamber, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat, introduced a companion bill to Torres’ in March, which has drawn more than a dozen co-sponsors.  

Meanwhile, a handful of Democratic lawmakers brought forth a resolution this month that seeks to reverse the forthcoming student loan regulations through the Congressional Review Act, a procedural tool Congress can use to overturn certain actions from federal agencies.

Those lawmakers are: Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Rep. John Mannion of New York, Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Alsobrooks. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

When Husted reached the Senate five years later, one of his first moves was to hire as a top advisor a longtime utility lobbyist. 

The lobbyist’s client made millions off the law at the heart of the 2020 utility scandal. The same lobbyist had also represented a massive drug wholesaler that had paid out millions to settle claims that it had negligently distributed vast amounts of opioids in addiction-ravaged Ohio.

He also represented many other clients, including Ashtabula County and AT&T, records show. He canceled all his registrations when he joined Husted’s team, said Tony Bledsoe, executive director of the Office of the Legislative Inspector General.

Critics said his hiring was part of a pattern in which Husted and some other Ohio Republican leaders hire people connected to utility interests to help them make policy.

“With utility folks, it’s not like the consumer advocates get hired,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, which advocates for accountable government. “It’s the ones that are promoting deregulation, better earnings potential… things that are cushier for the utilities.”

Husted’s decision to hire the lobbyist, Sean Dunn, has Turcer questioning whether average Ohioans’ welfare is Husted’s top priority.

“It’s tone deaf because he’s an elected official who doesn’t see how cozy relationships can compromise his decision making,” Turcer said. “Or he sees a benefit to these very cozy relationships.”

‘Public servant’

Husted’s office — of which Dunn is a member — didn’t respond to questions for this story. But less than a month after he took office in 2025, Husted announced that Dunn would be his senior advisor and counsel.

“Dunn brings decades of experience as a lawyer and public servant focused on technology, public utility, workforce and a variety of legislative issues,” Husted’s office said in a written statement distributed in February 2025. “He has held roles with the Office of Chief Legal Counsel to the Ohio Governor, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services and the Ohio Senate Majority Caucus.”

Dunn had also been a lobbyist for Virginia-based AES, which has 527,000 customers in the Ohio region that includes Dayton. 

According to disclosures filed with the Ohio Lobbying Activity Center, Dunn began lobbying for AES in 2009 and did so until February 2025.

During that time, Dunn lobbied the state legislature and the executive branch on numerous measures relating to Ohio House Bill 6, the 2019 law that was the product of what one federal prosecutor said was “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio.” 

Akron-based FirstEnergy was the major utility player in the scandal, in which putting $61 million in bribes won a $1.3 billion bailout financed by customers.

It was passed by the legislature and immediately signed by Gov. Mike DeWine, in whose administration Husted was No. 2.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, is now serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for his involvement in the scheme. A state trial of former FirstEnergy executives ended in a hung jury earlier this year.

$77 million to subsidize a wealthy utility

In addition to FirstEnergy, other Ohio utilities including AES also benefitted from the H.B. 6 law.

The law claimed to promote clean energy because it bailed out two nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy. But it gutted Ohio’s energy efficiency standards and it created a separate bailout for two aging coal-fired generators owned by a consortium of Ohio’s other utilities — including Columbus-based AEP and AES, for whom Dunn lobbied.

The group was called the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation and one of its 71-year-old coal plants isn’t in Ohio, it’s in Indiana.

There was no evidence produced as the federal trial in 2023 that AES executives knew about the corrupt scheme between FirstEnergy and Householder.

Subsidies from the bailout law stopped flowing to FirstEnergy after the FBI started making arrests in early 2020. But money continued to flow to the other utilities for years as the utilities fought their repeal. 

As AES’s representative, Dunn registered to lobby on H.B. 6 disclosures show. And he lobbied on numerous bills that would have repealed the coal subsidies, after the scandal broke. AES executives testified against repeal efforts.

It wasn’t until May of 2025 that DeWine signed a law ending the subsidies. 

By then, AES’s share of them was $77 million, according to a subsidy scorecard kept by the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. That’s part of $670 million in subsidies paid by customers that had gone to the consortium since 2017. 

While AES pleaded poverty to justify its share of the customer-financed subsidies, the company paid CEO Andrés Gluski $9 million last year.

The bribery and bailout scandal

Husted had exposure of his own in the scandal. In March, he was called as a witness in the state trial of FirstEnergy executives and at several points said he didn’t recall events he was asked about.

Emails have come to light in court indicating that shortly after he agreed to be DeWine’s running mate in 2017, he lobbied DeWine to support the massive utility bailout. 

And in 2024, Husted declined to say whether he knew that FirstEnergy was the source of a $1 million dark money contribution to a group supporting him back when he was still vying with DeWine for the Republican governor nomination.

There was also a meeting revealed in court documents that raised a lot of questions.

On Dec. 18, 2018, FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and VP Michael Dowling met with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Husted at the Columbus Athletic Club, the documents showed.

They discussed whether the executives wanted Sam Randazzo, a former FirstEnergy consultant, to be the top utility regulator in Ohio, according to the state indictment.

Jones and Dowling then drove a mile to Randazzo’s condo and negotiated what FirstEnergy later said was a $4.3 million bribe, according to a deferred prosecution agreement. DeWine nominated Randazzo to be chairman of the Public Utilities Commission six weeks later.

Even though he was supposed to be policing utilities on behalf of consumers, Randazzo helped write the bailout legislation, federal prosecutors revealed and the Public Utilities Commission confirmed. In 2024, facing state and federal indictments, Randazzo took his own life by hanging.

Others with close connections to FirstEnergy also played prominent roles in the DeWine-Husted administration.

Legislative Affairs Director Dan McCarthy was a FirstEnergy lobbyist when he set up one of the main dark money groups through which FirstEnergy would funnel millions in bribes. He joined the DeWine-Husted administration shortly thereafter.

And DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson, was married to a former FirstEnergy lobbyist whom a state indictment said had gotten a $10,000 loan from Randazzo a few years before DeWine took office. 

Dawson, the administration said, knew about the massive FirstEnergy payment to Randazzo, but didn’t tell DeWine about it for nearly two years. As of late last year, she still worked for DeWine.

Other lobbying

In addition to Dunn’s ties to AES, he also lobbied on behalf of Dublin-based Cardinal Health, one of the three largest prescription-drug wholesalers in the United States. Dunn’s engagement with the company ran from 2009 to 2019.

Federal enforcement actions and government lawsuits against the drug wholesaler alleged that Cardinal frequently ignored “blatantly suspicious orders” as it shipped billions of opioid pills into Ohio and other U.S. states.

In 2021, Cardinal and two other giant wholesalers agreed to pay $808 million to settle state allegations that the companies’ negligence fueled Ohio’s raging addiction crisis.

Disclosures also show that Dunn made $895,000 in the 15 months before he joined Husted’s team and was owed between $1 million and $5 million by his old firm. 

Ohioans

Median household income in Ohio is $72,000 a year and many say they’re getting crushed by the cost of utilities, prescription drugs, gasoline, healthcare and groceries. 

Husted’s office was asked what the senator was doing to relieve the affordability crisis, and to explain his decision to hire as a top advisor someone who’d grown wealthy lobbying on behalf of some of the industries driving the crisis.

It didn’t answer.

Turcer of Common Cause said Dunn’s hiring and the lack of a response may be a consequence of gerrymandering and longtime, one-party rule in Ohio.

“When power is really entrenched, (leaders) are not asking themselves the kinds of questions that voters would ask them,” she said. “They’re just not challenging themselves to do better for voters because they think they’re anointed rather than elected.”

In the November election, Husted faces former Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. The Cook Political Report rates the race a tossup.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Yost is arguing that any claims of abuse that happened before Oct. 21, 1986 should be thrown out, he said in a May 10 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Congress passed a law on Oct. 21, 1986 allowing states and universities to be sued in federal court for failing to prevent the sexual abuse of students. 

Yost’s motion applies to plaintiffs in three cases against Ohio State.

He is arguing 43 plaintiffs should have their claims dismissed entirely because the abuse happened before Oct. 21, 1986, and he is asking that 34 plaintiffs should have their claims dismissed in part for the abuse that occurred before Oct. 21, 1986, according to the motion. 

Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male victims between 1979 and 1996 during his time as a physician for Ohio State’s Athletics Department and at the university’s Student Health Center, according to an independent investigation commissioned by Ohio State University.

Strauss retired from Ohio State University in 1998 and died by suicide in 2005 when he was 67. 

Earlier this month, 30 former Ohio State football players joined a federal lawsuit against Ohio State for Strauss’ abuse.

At least three of the football players were part of the 1980 Rose Bowl team and played for coach Woody Hayes. 

Ohio State has reached settlement agreements with 317 survivors for more than $61 million, according to the university. The most recent settlement was with 13 survivors for $1.8 million in April. 

This motion comes days after Yost announced he would resign, effective June 7, to take a job with Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing Christian nonprofit law firm. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group.

Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, criticized Yost’s motion to dismiss the claims. 

“He is completely betraying the needs of survivors of sexual abuse as he heads out the door,” DeMora said in a statement. “This decision has nothing to do with the case against Ohio State and Dr. Strauss; it is purely Yost using every opportunity he has left to screw Ohioans and benefit the ultra-rich elite class that he has always worked for.”

Survivors of Strauss have said that Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan knew about the sexual abuse when he was an Ohio State assistant wrestling coach from 1987 to 1995. 

Jordan, who recently ran unopposed in the May primary for his Fourth Congressional District seat, has repeatedly denied knowing about any abuse. 

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.

In a filing with the Ohio Supreme Court, the ACLU of Ohio said Trumbull County Family Court Judge David Engler has “no standing” as a matter of law or fact.

Engler is arguing that the reproductive rights amendment of the Ohio Constitution passed by voters in 2023 keeps him from being able to properly judge cases in which a minor makes a legal request to have an abortion without the need for parental permission, a longtime legal method called judicial bypass.

The method requires judges to hold hearings, receive testimony, and assess the “maturity and voluntariness” of a request to bypass parental permission via the courts.

In April, Engler filed a request with the Ohio Supreme Court claiming that the reproductive rights amendment “is being applied to eliminate parental-consent requirements for minors and to render judicial-bypass proceedings unnecessary or unavailable,” according to the court document.

Engler is in his first year as a judge on the county court, but said that in the five years before he took the bench, Trumbull County’s juvenile court saw about two judicial bypass requests per year.

Since he became a judge on the court, Engler said the court has seen none, according to an affidavit submitted to the Ohio Supreme Court.

As a result, the judge claimed his judicial office “has been stripped of a statutory and historically exercised judicial function.”

The law requiring minors to have the consent of a parent before seeking an abortion goes back to 1998, when the law also allowed minors to utilize judicial bypass proceedings. The law was challenged, and eight years later, a federal appeals court upheld the law.

Engler asked the court to order that the amendment be administered and enforced “in a manner that preserves and does not eliminate or interfere with juvenile-court jurisdiction over judicial-bypass proceedings.”

He also asked the court to render the amendment “unenforceable to the extent it is construed or applied to eliminate or interfere” with juvenile courts and judicial bypass cases.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office filed a motion on May 11 asking the court to dismiss the request, calling the challenge to the amendment “untimely” because the judge “has not alleged an injury that is fairly traceable” to the state.

“Even if (Engler) correctly asserts the amendment ‘eliminates or interferes with juvenile-court jurisdiction over judicial-bypass proceedings,’ the constitutional provision prevails over any conflicting statute,” wrote Julie Pfeiffer, on behalf of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, in the motion to dismiss.

In their response, the ACLU of Ohio and the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative at Case Western Reserve University School of Law made a similar argument.

Attorneys wrote that the data presented by Engler does not warrant a change in the constitution, or provide evidence that the amendment should not be enforced.

“(Engler) has alleged only that fewer judicial bypass cases have happened to arise in Trumbull County recently,” wrote Margaret Light-Scotece, staff attorney for the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative.

“That allegation is manifestly insufficient to support an inference that parental consent laws for abortion are no longer being enforced in Ohio.”

The Ohio Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will take up the case.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Amya went over to her cousin’s house on Dec. 5 to play a video game when her cousin picked up his father’s unsecured gun. 

“Her cousin grabbed his father’s gun and decided to play with it due to his father’s negligence of leaving his gun lying around,” Amya’s mom Hope Frazier said during a recent press conference. 

“His child grabbed it and shot my 11-year-old daughter in the head and ended her life.”

Amya Frazier died on Dec. 8, 2025. 

“It is our responsibility as adults to store our guns correctly, place them in a safe place, and unloaded,” Hope Frazier said.

“Place the ammunition elsewhere, hidden so children can’t find it. Place the clip out of the gun.” 

Ohio state Rep. Darnell T. Brewer, D-Cleveland, is introducing Amya’s Law — a bill that would penalize adults who leave firearms accessible to minors. 

“This bill does not create a storage mandate,” Brewer said. 

“It does not restrict lawful self defense. It does not penalize gun ownership. Instead, it imposes accountability only when a minor gains access to a neglectfully stored firearm and harm results.”

The gun owner would face a fourth-degree felony if a child accesses a neglectfully stored firearm and causes serious harm, and it would be a first-degree misdemeanor if a child gains access to a neglectfully stored firearm and causes physical harm, Brewer said. 

“There is no violation unless the child actually gets a hold of the gun,” Brewer said. 

The bill would also have a sales tax exemption for firearm safety devices and a nonrefundable income tax credit of up to $250 for gun safes, lockboxes, and trigger locks.

This bill is not about punishing gun owners, but about preventing tragedies, said Amya’s grandmother Amy Zahrani. 

“A child finds a gun in a drawer, a friend brings a weapon into a home, a moment of curiosity turns into a lifetime of grief,” she said. 

“These are not criminals. These are children. … We must do more to ensure firearms are stored safely.”

The Columbus Division of Police indicted 33-year-old Matthew Seymour on involuntary manslaughter and endangering children charges after Amya’s fatal shooting.  

Seymour’s 14-old-son was charged with reckless homicide, according to Columbus Police. 

“Gun violence doesn’t just happen somewhere else,” Zahrani said. “It doesn’t just happen to other people. It doesn’t just happen to certain people. It is happening even in middle class homes and safe neighborhoods.”

Amya Frazier loved butterflies and wanted to be both a doctor and a professional soccer player, her family said. 

“She had her whole life ahead of her, and it was cut short,” Hope Frazier said.

“Don’t let my daughter be just a headline. Help her name mean something.” 

There were more than 48,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among children and teenagers ages 1-19, according to the CDC.

Brewer is also planning on introducing a bill that requires foster caregivers to safely secure firearms in their home and another bill that would require the state to create an Office of Violence Prevention within the Ohio Department of Health. 

“It’s now time to make this known — gun violence should be eradicated here in Ohio,” he 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.

What happens to a society when selfish, short-sighted, narrow-minded, egomaniacal, power-obsessed men cut down every tree in sight? And future generations will never know their shade?

History will recognize this generation of America as the one that rolled back the Civil Rights era. 

Our time will be known to posterity as a generation that did not plant trees of liberty and justice for all, but struck them down.

It’s shameful. It’s pathetic. And all of us, individually and collectively, must reckon with that.

And if we are ever to recover from this vicious injustice on future generations, we will have to spend the rest of our lives fixing the damage and rebuilding something better.

We have a long way to go. 

The destruction process is ongoing, and there’s no telling how much longer the destruction will last or how much worse it will get.

The U.S. Supreme Court in just the last 16 years has gutted campaign finance regulations, gutted regulation against gerrymandering, and gutted the Voting Rights Act, to name a select few and fundamental.

If you were setting out a plan to rob American voters of power and destroy representative democracy so that elections can be rigged, bought, and sold, and politicians run amok without consequence or accountability, you couldn’t do better.

If we can’t regulate obscene amounts of money buying elections, and we can’t regulate politicians from open partisan gerrymandering, and we can’t have the basic protections of the Voting Rights Act, American democracy is effectively neutered in favor of a rigged game.

Rich people and corporations spend unlimited money to buy candidates and elections. The politicians rig election outcomes with gerrymandering and eliminate competition. States and cities, town and country, carved into fiefdoms for political machines. Shameless propaganda propagated: At best, conditioning; at the least, mass confusion. The politicized courts a rubber stamp on the system. And representative democracy dies.

No individual policy or issue can overcome the primary injustice of rigged districts and bought-and-sold elections.

The pillars of the Republic are corrupted beyond legitimate function.

The “Republic” becomes in-name-only, a veneer masking corruption, oligarchy, lawlessness.

As I have long written, gerrymandering and the campaign finance/public corruption loop are the two central poisons in the bloodstream of America’s body politic.

If legislative outcomes are predetermined by gerrymandering, and all other races are tainted by the unlimited spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money by nefarious backroom actors, true representation of the people’s interest becomes a quaint ideal, instead of a foundational value that can never be compromised.

Faithful and honest representation of the people becomes the central lie instead of the central promise of our social contract.

Cynicism, corruption, backsliding, misrepresentation, abuse, carelessness, recklessness, deprivation, degradation, division, ignorance, hatefulness, these become our cultural and political masters.

The U.S. Supreme Court has unleashed a cascade of gerrymandering across the nation: Brazen public corruption of our elections in a rush of unprecedented scale and fury.

We are in a frenzy of blatantly cheating millions upon millions upon millions of voters out of fair elections in America. Tens of millions, twenties of millions? Thirties of millions? Hundreds?

It turns out that Ohio’s experience in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 with open unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering was not just a horribly embarrassing episode of cynical, feckless Ohio politicians debasing themselves in their lust for power, it was a trial run for the entire nation doing the same.

Ohio was a primer to measure how degraded politicians could get and get away with it.

Now they’re going hog wild, in some cases bringing voters along as accomplice, and in others politically assaulting and insulting voters outright.

Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, California, Washington; it’s actually almost difficult right now to keep track of how many of our nation’s state leaders have willfully fallen to prostrate themselves and crawl through the moral muck and patriotic treachery of cheating voters with gerrymandering.

But alas, in existence the only constant is change, and one day this destruction too will end.

We will eventually, collectively have to deal with the damage done.

One can only hope that some semblance of our constitutional Republic can be saved from the poisons and the depravity of our lawmakers and elected officials.

This generation of America has squandered our birthright.

At 250 years of age, we’ve turned the world’s oldest democracy into a jalopy for the next generation.

We’ve forsaken those who came before us, and the blood and tears they shed to win us the rights and freedoms that we now betray.

While the short-sighted cynics, the ignorant, and the debased celebrate, the rest will have to spend the rest of our lives trying to scrub away this awful stain, seeking solemnly to establish something somehow more just and honest and true than it’s ever been before.

Either we will, or some future generation — at likely great cost — will surely be forced.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.