U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, was one of 45 House members who cosponsored House Bill 412 in 2002, a measure that folded nursing homes and residential care facilities into Ohio’s legal definition of a “medical claim.” That change cut the window for filing suit against them from two years to one and barred state inspection findings from being introduced in court. Husted has since accepted more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the nursing home industry, its executives and lobbyists, NBC4 in Columbus reported this month.

He faces former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

What inspectors found

The pattern was documented in April by Signal Ohio, which reviewed federal inspection reports and interviewed long-term care advocates. Reporter Jake Zuckerman found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had cited Eastland Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Columbus and six other Ohio facilities over efforts to discharge patients to shelters, most of which went through.

At Eastland, a woman was involuntarily discharged after being caught drinking beer. Staff could not find her a substance-use treatment bed and never called the county’s psychiatric bed board, inspectors wrote after an Aug. 3, 2023 visit. They took her to a shelter instead, where roughly 100 people were already on the waiting list. She arrived using a walker, incontinent, carrying a large bag of medications, managing diabetes, a tibia fracture and alcohol-related dementia. The shelter initially refused her and left her outside in late-summer heat before relenting and calling a city rapid response team. Neither the facility nor the inspectors could locate her by the time the report was written.

Three other cases run through the reporting. A man who had lived at the Laurels of Hillsboro for 22 years — diabetic, with glaucoma, cataracts and suspected autism — was taken to a shelter after his insurance stopped paying, according to a Dec. 29, 2025 inspection. Federal law entitles residents to 30 days’ notice. He got none, was never taught to manage his own medications, and arrived without needles. The facility was sold in July 2025 and now operates as Hillsboro Health and Rehab; a receptionist told Signal the facility is in substantial compliance with the state.

Meadowbrook Manor in Trumbull County gave a resident a 30-day notice and moved him out in 20, a July 2025 inspection found. He left with two weeks of medication, no prescriptions, no appointments and no care plan, and the shelter flagged a mismatch because he could not climb to a top bunk. The facility refused to take him back. At New Lebanon Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, a woman with spinal and neural disorders, depression and arthritis was discharged to a shelter on roughly 24 hours’ notice after her insurer cut off her treatment.

The industry’s answer

Scott Wiley, chief executive of the Ohio Health Care Association, the state’s largest long-term care trade group, told Signal the situation reflects a national trend.

“This issue has been growing as more residents face unstable housing. State oversight and resources are needed to help tackle the issue on a larger scale to find meaningful, long-term solutions for Ohioans who struggle with homelessness. It will require a collaborative approach that a single nursing facility provider is not equipped to manage on their own.”

OHCA has spent decades building the political relationships that shape that oversight. Between 2016 and 2020, Ohio’s nursing home industry put roughly $6.1 million into state politics through trade association PACs, a nonprofit linked to OHCA and facility operators themselves, an Ohio Capital Journal analysis found. The DeWine-Husted ticket took about $331,000 of it.

Neil Clark, the Republican lobbyist indicted in the FirstEnergy bribery investigation who died in 2021, described OHCA’s fundraising reach in a posthumous memoir quoted by the Capital Journal: “If FirstEnergy were a bank, then the nursing home industry is like having 500 ATM machines located around the state. Walk up, punch in a number and take out what you want. They have perfected the art of keeping politicians happy.”

The association also runs an awards program. Its published list of quality award winners shows Arbors at Sylvania receiving a Bronze Quality Award in 2024. That September, according to a wrongful death lawsuit Signal reviewed, a resident at that facility was left in the same position through 33 consecutive eight-hour shifts and developed a pressure ulcer that exposed bone and led to a fatal infection. The suit is pending and has not been ruled on. Prestige Healthcare, the Louisville company that operates the Arbors chain, declined to comment; a spokesperson said the company’s position is no comment.

Across the chain’s 16 Ohio facilities, at least 11 plaintiffs have filed suits since Jan. 1, 2024 alleging negligence or medical errors that caused deaths, and CMS inspectors concluded that care at three Arbors homes — Milford, Stow and Minerva — contributed to residents’ deaths. CMS has fined Arbors facilities more than $648,000 over the most recent three-year period. Medicaid paid the chain $233 million over three years.

How Ohio measures quality

The state’s system for rewarding good care has been questioned for years. Experts interviewed for a January 2022 Ohio Capital Journal investigation said the quality incentive metrics written into state law are easily gamed, letting substandard homes collect incentive payments.

“If you set the bar so low that everybody can meet it, then you haven’t differentiated anyone,” said Jane Straker, director of research at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University. “You’re not paying for quality; you’re just paying everyone for checking a box.”

The federal record is not reassuring either. ProPublica’s database of CMS inspections, updated in July, shows 191 of Ohio’s 922 nursing homes — about one in five — were cited for a serious deficiency in the past three years, meaning inspectors found immediate jeopardy to resident health or safety. Ohio homes have drawn $21.2 million in penalties and 172 payment suspensions.

Locally

Seneca County has five nursing homes. One has been cited for a serious deficiency in the past three years, and four have been cited for infection-related deficiencies, according to the same data. Total penalties across the county come to $14,400, with no payment suspensions.

The discharge rules at the center of the statewide reporting have been enforced in Tiffin. In a June 2024 complaint inspection, Autumnwood Care Center on East State Route 18 was cited three times over a transfer: for discharging a resident without an adequate reason or the required documentation, for failing to give timely notice of the transfer and appeal rights to the resident and the ombudsman, and for failing to let a resident return after a hospital stay that exceeded the facility’s bed-hold policy. Inspectors graded all three as causing no actual harm. The record contains no finding that anyone was sent to a shelter. Autumnwood has no fines or payment suspensions on file for the past three years.

The money and the vote

Ohio Secretary of State campaign finance records covering Husted’s state committees from 1999 through 2026 show the Ohio Health Care Association’s political action committee gave him $39,250 across 17 contributions, beginning three weeks before the 2000 general election and running through June 2014. Two more of the association’s own people gave $2,500 on top of that — including Peter Van Runkle, listed in the filings as the association’s president, who gave in 2006, 2007 and 2015. Together, OHCA’s PAC and its executives account for $41,750.

A second nursing home trade group, the Ohio Academy of Nursing Homes, gave another $17,500 through its PAC between 2001 and 2009. Counting both associations and OHCA’s executives, the trade groups that speak for Ohio’s nursing homes have given Husted’s state campaigns $59,250.

The operators themselves gave far more. Across the same records, contributions from nursing home chains, their owners and their executives total roughly $449,000 from about 84 donors. The largest are familiar names in the industry: Ronald Wilheim of CommuniCare Health Services and his wife, Dina, gave $15,499.69 each on July 12, 2023. Chris Chirumbolo, chief executive of Carespring Health Care Management, gave $10,000 on Aug. 1, 2023. Brian Colleran, who the Capital Journal reported operates Foundations Health Solutions and manages 57 Ohio nursing homes, gave $45,145 across five contributions between 2004 and 2010. Gerald Schroer Jr. of the Schroer Group, which operates the Altercare chain, gave in 11 separate years, most recently $1,000 in August 2023.

The giving continues at the federal level. Federal Election Commission records show the American Health Care Association’s political action committee — OHCA is that group’s only chartered Ohio affiliate — gave Husted for Senate $1,000 on Aug. 26, 2025 and another $1,000 on June 15, 2026. NBC4 reviewed Husted’s most recent campaign finance report and found more than a dozen nursing home PACs or lobbyists have given at least $34,000 to his Senate campaign so far.

The example was raised by Norm Wernet, president of the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, a labor-affiliated group that pushes for home- and community-based care and argues the nursing home industry lobbies against it.

“Wrong to see that somebody like Sen. Husted, when he was in the legislature, would co-sponsor a bill that, in fact, avoided the liability on the nursing homes,” Wernet told the station. “So that, that’s one example of how the politicians get continued support again and again.”

Husted’s office responded to NBC4 on a different question — the federal budget law — saying nursing homes received no net cash infusion or additional federal dollars under H.R. 1, and that the law made it easier for states to move toward home- and community-based care. The statement did not address the 2002 state legislation.

That distinction matters for the people at the end of these inspection reports. Medicaid, not Medicare, pays for most long-term care in Ohio, and the same federal law is squeezing the home-based programs that keep people out of facilities in the first place. Nearly 140,000 Ohioans rely on Medicaid-supported home care and face uncertainty as the deepest cuts take effect Jan. 1. Disability advocates have warned that the shift could push people back into institutions. Husted has also voted against amendments that would have directed federal investigations into insurance denials and Medicaid coverage losses — the same insurer cutoffs that preceded several of the shelter discharges.

Leilani Pelletier, Ohio’s statewide long-term care ombudsman, estimated roughly 13,000 Ohioans are discharged from a nursing home every month. Involuntary discharges to shelters are rare, she said, but facilities are legally required to ensure a discharge is safe and appropriate and do not get to decide unilaterally where someone goes.

“The real issue is when people are discharged to a homeless shelter and there’s been no work or investigation done on if that would be a safe or appropriate discharge,” she said.

Chip Wilkins, who runs Dayton’s long-term care ombudsman program, put it more plainly. Residents sent to shelters typically end up in a hospital within days because the shelter cannot meet their needs, he said, and he has seen an uptick over the past six months.

“It is as cruel as it sounds,” he said.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

An invitation reviewed by TiffinOhio.net shows that House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri and Rep. Max Miller of Ohio invited donors to an event supporting Carey today, Monday, Aug. 17, at the GBX Group offices at 2101 Superior Ave. in Cleveland. The schedule runs from a 4 p.m. chair committee reception through a 5 p.m. general reception and a 6:30 p.m. private dinner. Giving levels start at $500 for an attendee and climb to $25,000 for a seat on the chair committee. The invitation says the event is paid for by the Carey Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that federal records confirm is registered with the Federal Election Commission.

Miller is the sitting congressman whose ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has accused him of throwing hot water at her, holding a gun to her head and fracturing their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone. He denies every allegation. He has never been criminally charged, and prosecutors brought no charges in connection with the injury that prompted a police investigation. Earlier this month the House Ethics Committee announced it would review whether Miller may have “engaged in domestic violence and abuse or illegal drug use.” Miller requested that review himself.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, Miller’s former father-in-law, has said publicly that Miller is dangerous and should not serve in Congress. Sen. Jon Husted has called on him to resign. Neither man is a Democrat. Both are the sitting Republican senators from Miller’s own state, and both said what they said before this invitation went out.

Carey is not a bystander in this

It would be one thing if Carey were a rank-and-file member who happened to accept a check. He is not. Carey’s own campaign site describes him as a deputy whip and an NRCC co-chair — a member of the whip organization that counts Republican votes and an officer of the committee that exists to elect and protect Republican incumbents. He sits on Ways and Means with both Smith and Miller.

The money has also moved in both directions, in amounts that match almost to the dollar and dates that match almost to the day.

Federal Election Commission filings show Miller’s leadership PAC, the Dependable Conservative Leadership PAC, has given Carey for Congress $11,200 across four contributions: $2,900 in June 2022, $2,500 in March 2023, $800 in June 2023 and $5,000 in May 2025.

Carey’s own leadership PAC, Carry On PAC, has given Max Miller for Congress $11,200 across four contributions: $2,900 in June 2022, $2,500 in March 2023, $800 in June 2023 and $5,000 in June 2025.

Same amounts. Same three dates in 2022 and 2023. A $5,000 pair four days apart in the spring of 2025. This is not a donation Carey received and can shrug at. It is a standing arrangement between two members who have been funding each other for four years, and Carey is the one hosting.

Other Republicans have handled Miller’s money differently. Minnesota Rep. Brad Finstad’s campaign returned its $5,000. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s campaign said it would give the money to charity. New York Rep. Mike Lawler said he is keeping his, arguing the allegations belong in family court. Carey has not been reported to have done any of the three. He scheduled a fundraiser, and it is tonight.

The third name on the invitation

Smith’s presence carries its own weight. As Ways and Means chairman he controls the committee Carey and Miller both sit on, and a chairman’s name at the top of an invitation is the most valuable thing a member can lend a colleague’s finance operation.

It is also worth knowing how Smith has voted on the federal law written for the people making the allegations in this case. Smith voted against final passage of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act in April 2019 and again in March 2021. VAWA funds legal aid, emergency housing, victim advocacy and law enforcement training for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking. Both bills passed the House over his objection.

Carey and Miller were not in Congress for either vote. Smith was, twice.

What the party says versus what the party does

Speaker Mike Johnson has declined to push Miller out. Asked about the allegations, Johnson said, “The key word there is allegation,” and pointed to the Ethics Committee process. Miller himself has been blunter about where he thinks he stands. Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, he said, “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else, they’re standing behind me.”

The Ohio Republican Party let the replacement deadline pass without a substitute candidate, locking Miller onto the November ballot. Vivek Ramaswamy, the party’s nominee for governor, has kept Miller listed among his endorsers, even after removing other endorsers within 48 hours of critical coverage. And through most of this, as TiffinOhio.net has reported, Ohio Republicans said very little at all.

That is a pattern, and the fundraiser is its logical end point. Silence is passive. Buying a ticket is not.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has moved Ohio’s 7th District from Solid Republican to Likely Republican to Toss Up in the space of a summer. That is the measurable cost of the party’s choice, and it is the only language in which this appears to register.

The part that isn’t about the horse race

While all of this has played out, Ohio’s domestic violence system has been failing the people it exists to serve. TiffinOhio.net reported Sunday that more than half of Ohio survivors seeking shelter last year were turned away, with centers in Miller’s own district reporting double-digit increases in demand. Constituents in that district have said plainly that they want consequences.

Those are the same survivors VAWA money reaches. The gap between a $25,000 chair committee seat in a renovated Cleveland warehouse and a shelter bed that does not exist is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a set of priorities, written down on an invitation with three congressmen’s names on it.

Carey is entitled to raise money from whomever he likes. Miller is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and this newsroom has said so in every piece it has published on him. But entitlement is not the question. The question is what a party does when its own senators say one of its members is unfit, and the answer, in Cleveland tonight, is to sell tickets.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The other candidate hasn’t responded to questions about the matter.

John Kulewicz, the Democratic nominee for AG, last week amended his complaint to Ohio Inspector General Randall J. Meyer with details of other possible conflicts of interest on the part of Josh Rubin, a lobbyist who chairs the board of JobsOhio, that were reported last week by the Capital Journal. 

The latter calls itself a private corporation. But it was created by the General Assembly and Gov. Mike DeWine appoints its board. 

JobsOhio was allowed to lease the state liquor franchise for far less than it was worth. It has since disbursed more than $2 billion in what at least used to be public money to businesses in the form of incentives.

Kulewicz’s complaint says that Rubin’s dual roles raise questions about whether he’s using JobsOhio funds to benefit his lobbying clients.

The Capital Journal’s new reporting showed that “Mr. Rubin continues to lobby for Intel even during his tenure as chairman of the board,” the amended complaint said. “Mr. Rubin was actively lobbying the governor on Intel’s behalf as recently as April 2026.”

It added, “This conduct continues to raise ethical questions about Rubin’s ability to serve the interests of the People of Ohio versus the interests of his clients and his own pecuniary interests as CEO of the CJR Group.”

A spokesman for Keith Faber, Kulewicz’s Republican opponent in the attorney general’s race, didn’t respond to questions for this story.

Last week’s analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records showed that Rubin was registered to lobby both JobsOhio and the governor on behalf of Intel from the time Gov. DeWine appointed him to the JobsOhio Board in September 2023 until the beginning of this year. 

They also show that Rubin actively lobbied DeWine for Intel through that period and into 2026. 

The state has awarded Intel more than $600 million for construction of what is now a long delayed chip-making plant northeast of Columbus. JobsOhio has awarded at least $27 million for the project.

With the project delayed by at least five years and its future uncertain, Rubin is in a position likely to have some authority over whether to try and claw back some portion of the money JobsOhio has awarded. The agency won’t answer questions about the matter.

A spokesman for DeWine said Rubin’s multiple roles didn’t amount to a conflict. Despite being registered to lobby JobsOhio for Intel, his “activity and expense” filings show he actively lobbied the governor’s office on the Intel project, while he made no such filings regarding JobsOhio, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney said.

In emailed responses to written questions, Kulewicz disagreed, saying, “This is an apparent conflict of interest. And at a time when we urgently need to restore public confidence in government, this also creates a clear appearance of impropriety. When you take on a job like this and answer the call to public service, you do so knowing that you can only serve the People of Ohio. You can’t serve both the public and the powerful.”

Faber’s spokesman was sent the same questions as the Kulewicz campaign. He didn’t respond.

With narrow exceptions, JobsOhio was exempted from the state’s ethics laws when it was created in 2011. 

Paul Nick, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, said that his office for the most part doesn’t have jurisdiction over Rubin, the rest of the JobsOhio board, or its staff. However, he said, Rubin’s roles as a board member and an Intel lobbyist appear to contradict his pledge to the governor to “cease services for any clients on matters in front of JobsOhio…”

Nick said that when JobsOhio was created, the Ethics Commission advocated that it be subject to the same ethics laws that state agencies are. Kulewicz said that should happen now.

“JobsOhio replaced several functions of the Ohio Department of Development,” he said. “It serves a public purpose doing work on behalf of the People of Ohio. It would function better if it were subject to the same ethics rules and laws as everyone else who works on behalf of the People of Ohio.”

DeWine’s office and JobsOhio say JobsOhio’s ethics policy requires board members to declare possible conflicts and for the board to vote whether to recuse them. Both said it’s a strong policy.

A review of the few board records that are public apparently held no instances in which Rubin, a lobbyist with dozens of clients, declared a potential conflict. Asked multiple times to share documents showing that Rubin had ever declared a potential conflict, JobsOhio didn’t respond.

Kulewicz said that shows JobsOhio’s dealings need to be investigated by a third party. That’s why he filed his initial complaint regarding another Rubin client, utility giant AEP.

Kulewicz added that subjecting JobsOhio to open-meetings and records laws would allay suspicion and prevent the need for outside investigation.

“None of this would be necessary if the legislature were to remove this veil of secrecy,” he said. “That is my preferred method to correct this. We already have sufficient protections for trade secrets and certain business information in Ohio — JobsOhio does not require near-complete exemption from our public records laws. I would advocate for that change.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Miller requested an ethics probe from the U.S. House after he was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, daughter of Ohio GOP U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Two other women have leveled allegations against Miller. The congressman has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and said he believes the ethics investigation will end in his favor.

Even as fellow Ohio politicians on both sides of the aisle expressed concerns about Miller staying in the reelection race for his seat representing Ohio’s 7th district in Congress, Miller has vowed to remain in the fight. The deadline for him to withdraw from the race and allow Ohio Republicans to replace him was Aug. 10.

In a 20-minute live stream on his X account earlier this month, he pushed back against the claims and public opinion of them.

At one point during the live stream, Miller said “if I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?”

“Would she have invited me to spend an afternoon at the playground with her and our daughter,” he went on. “Would she have written that we were in a friendlier place? No, she wouldn’t have, ladies and gentlemen.”

Domestic violence resource providers in the state say complexities about the issue can often be oversimplified in public conversations. Abuse can come from many sources, including physical violence, but also financial control, isolation from friends and family, and emotional manipulation.

“Survivors often continue to care for or stay with a partner between incidents out of fear, love, hope for change, or to protect their children, but that is not evidence that abuse didn’t happen,” the Ohio Domestic Violence Network said in a statement after Miller’s comments. “It’s one of the most common ways survivors are discredited when they come forward.”

In Miller’s district

Resource centers in Miller’s 7th Congressional District are providing services to a diverse and ever-increasing population.

In the first half of 2026, the Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center that serves Summit and Medina counties saw a 27% increase in responses to hospitals for reports of intimate partner violence.

The center, which provides services at no cost, has seen an increase in clients served, and 23% more participants in their domestic violence prevention and outreach programs.

Already since January, the 24/7 support and crisis intervention hotline hosted by the center has received more than 3,500 calls.

“So, across the board, we’re just seeing an increase in demand,” said Teresa Stafford-Wright, chief executive officer at the center. “We have constantly seen an increase year after year for our services.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse:

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233, or text BEGIN to 88788

Ohio Domestic Violence Network

The Ohio Domestic Violence Network’s 76 local programs provided services to nearly 75,000 survivors in 2025, with more than 120,000 call, texts, and chats answered, according to the network.

State shelters housed nearly 9,500 individuals, with half of those being children. But shelters are reaching capacity levels and lack  staffing to serve all those asking for help.

According to the network, more than 50% of all Ohio survivors seeking shelter were turned away last year.

Stafford-Wright said the survivors coming into shelters in Summit and Medina counties are dealing with more complicated needs on top of the trauma of domestic violence.

“There’s a lack of affordable housing that we’re seeing, which keeps survivors from being able to get away, there’s a lack of income, and on top of that you can have substance abuse issues as well,” Stafford-Wright said.

The impact of domestic violence is felt among all cultures and populations, creating a need for resources to help with language barriers, navigation of immigration issues and other legal hurdles amid domestic violence issues.

“A lot of the community members, if they’re dealing with domestic violence or human trafficking, they may need family law, they may also need victims of crime law, they may need assistance with immigration law,” said Anna Chen, manager of communications and civic engagement for Asian Services in Action.

“A lot of these survivors are, unfortunately, heavily taken advantage of by their abusers.”

Asian Services in Action is a social health and legal services agency that has a strong immigrant and refugee population. It’s also located in Miller’s district.

The organization staffs a federally qualified health center, provides civic engagement, and voter education as well.

Also included in their services is Ahimsa, a confidential service for survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault. Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word for the concept of avoiding harm and violence.

“We were seeing that there were a lot of survivors in the immigrant-refugee population, and they are barred out of a lot of the resources in Northeast Ohio, just because they don’t have the language accessibility that we do,” said Emily Henthorn, manager of government affairs for Asian Services in Action.

Helping survivors may even mean the identification of cultural norms that might cause hesitation in reporting intimate partner violence, from patriarchal beliefs and downplay of abuse, to a religious aversion to divorce.

“So there’s a lot of coaching these women to believe that the abuse is happening, and it is real, because they tend to downplay, and … also we have to be very careful with confidentiality,” Henthorn said.

Looking ahead

Many centers rely on federal grant funding for the vast majority of their revenue, and some receive state funding, along with individual donations.

The Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center’s funding is made up of about 75% grant funding, and without that funding, the center would have a lot of trouble continuing to provide the services, especially at no cost to the individuals.

“We’re hoping that in this new climate that we remain an organization that is seen as competent and is able to maneuver through the changing times,” Stafford-Wright said.

Henthorn said even more of their funding comes from grants, and they receive some from the Violence Against Women Act. But because of the population they serve, they’ve also seen a decrease in federal funds specifically going to their immigrant and refugee services.

“If we’re going to make it through the next few years of the Trump administration, we’re going to have to have more donations,” Henthorn said.

Advocates see the increase in public attention as a way to perhaps show those dealing with violence – or who may know someone that might be experiencing it – a way forward.

While headlines can bring attention to one particular case, Stafford-Wright said it’s important to remember that the person next door may be dealing with the same thing, and having someone that can help when the time is right will be vital.

“Try not to tell the person what they need to do in this moment, because sometimes you may alienate them,” Stafford-Wright said. “Definitely know the resources, be a listening ear, and stay close to that person.”

High-profile accusations can result in more people coming forward with their own experiences, and Henthorn warns against narratives that experiences are fictional or used for attention. Many times, it’s as simple as a lack of recognition of the problem, or the resources available.

“On average, it takes seven attempts to leave an abusive situation before a survivor gets out,” Henthorn said. “And a lot of times in those seven times, they’re seeing health care providers for injuries, they’re filing police reports, but people just aren’t seeing the signs.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Activists didn’t call it a “funeral.” Yet no one underplayed the latest reversal of progress for Blacks, Latinos and other people of color in this nation’s long, tortured and oft-racist history.

The hollowing out of the Voting Rights Act reveals again how too many white Americans abhor notions of equality with Black Americans, and the steps they will take to hinder equitable Black and Latino representation in Congress and at the state and local levels.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation on Aug. 6, 1965, several months after Alabama state troopers pummeled peaceful marchers on “Bloody Sunday.” Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 and earlier this year, though, have gutted one of the landmark achievements of the civil rights era.

The former decision ended federal preclearance that state and local governments – mostly in the South – had needed before changing voting procedures. (A 2023 analysis found that at least 29 states had passed 94 restrictive voting laws in the decade following that decision.) 

The latter Supreme Court decision said Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – thus making it difficult to create a second majority-minority district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“As a direct result” of Chief Justice John Roberts’ court’s “decades-long quest to undermine the right to vote, our nation is experiencing a modern-day political Jim Crow where too many Republicans act with impunity to dilute the voting power of Black and Latino communities across the country,” said Eric Holder, a former U.S. attorney general and chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, led passage of a Virginia Voting Rights Act in 2021 while in the state Senate. It created new protections against voter discrimination based on race, color or language. It made the commonwealth an outlier across the South when providing equal access at the polls.

Virginians should feel confident about enfranchisement, McClellan told me in an interview. “But I’m fighting at the national level so that everybody’s right is protected,” she said.

However, McClellan noted of the federal law: “It’s on life support.” 

That’s much too optimistic.

Henry Chambers Jr., law professor at the University of Richmond, told me the violence that was once commonplace against African Americans before the VRA became law is basically non-existent today.

State legislatures, though, can often draw districts that negate the will of voters – and keep people of color wondering whether their votes have any meaning. 

“It’s possible you get people who say voting is pointless,” Chambers added. “The clearer it becomes people of color will be ignored,” the more likely they might stop heading to the polls.

That’s exactly what conservatives – including today’s Republican Party – would love to see.

Other factors include voter identification requirements and felon disenfranchisement, issues that tend to affect African Americans and Latinos moreso than whites. Virginia has been one of the toughest states for freed felons to regain civil rights. It could finally change that process – born in racism during the 1901-02 Virginia constitutional convention – through a referendum this fall.

Chambers said that If more nonwhites voted for Republicans, voter suppression tactics would decrease. Blacks and Latinos, however, usually select Democratic candidates overwhelmingly because of the party’s agenda and its embrace of their concerns.

Still, the professor added: “Blacks have historically been treated differently by the government.”

When African Americans advance in the United States, too often there’s a virulent white backlash – and not just regarding voting. It seems as if the majority wants to dehumanize people of color just to prove a point: You will never be equal.

Examples are painfully easy to cite.

Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” didn’t even want freed slaves to remain in the country. I guess Lincoln saw no use for Black Americans after they weren’t working for free any more.

Before the Civil War, he discussed plans to export Black people to Liberia. After the war’s start in 1861, the year he became president, Lincoln explored options to extradite freedmen to Panama and an island near Haiti.

Then in August 1862, he invited five Black men to the White House – not including Frederick Douglass, the most prominent abolitionist of the day – to urge an exodus. 

“But for your race among us there could not be war,” Lincoln said, “although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another,” according to David W. Blight in “Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom.”

Victim-blaming at its absolute worst. Black activists and abolitionists excoriated the idea, and it never gained much traction.

The war’s end led to Reconstruction, the period from 1865 to 1877 that saw African-Americans gain political and economic clout. The reaction to the Black empowerment was swift, violent and merciless:

Jim Crow. Lynchings. Black codes. Second-class citizenship in education, employment, housing and human decency. Verdicts in criminal cases, including the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, that blessed white killers.

Where violence wasn’t an issue, African Americans still got the shaft. Among the most notable was the passage of a GI Bill toward the end of World War II that, in practice, denied mortgages to Black veterans. Urban Renewal projects, time and time again, destroyed Black communities for a perceived “greater good” for cities. 

President Donald Trump now has the gall to continue advocating for a nearly $1.8 billion, taxpayer-backed slush fund to “comfort” his supporters – including those who attacked the U.S. Capitol while trying to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

Meanwhile, the few surviving victims of the racist siege of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 – which killed as many as 300 Black people – never were able to collect reparations in court. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their lawsuit in 2024.

With the weakening of the VRA, people of color will keep fighting for voting rights and fair representation. They fear regression.

The regret is that, in this country, it’s always been this way.

This story was originally produced by Virginia Mercury, 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.

“We’re no longer talking about hypothetical situations,” said Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, noting the president’s push to nationalize election administration and to question the integrity of upcoming elections.

Brown is among the many Democratic state officials raising alarms over how Trump may seek to interfere with or challenge the results of November’s midterms. At stake is not only whether Republicans will maintain their grip on Congress, but also the control of state legislatures across the country. Democratic gains at either the state or national levels could provide a new check on Trump, who has sought to significantly expand executive power in his second term.

State lawmakers have introduced new legislation this year with the aim of protecting polling places this November. And behind closed doors, Democratic attorneys general and local election officials have sought to anticipate and prepare for ways the federal government could interject itself into local elections.

In recent months, Democratic attorneys general have been meeting to prepare for worst-case scenarios — including the possibility of federal immigration officers patrolling polling locations or the FBI visiting county election offices. Those AGs are gearing up to immediately fight potential intimidation or interference efforts in court, Brown said, and are working to educate local election administrators on basics of election law.

“Absent some very unusual circumstances, you can’t send the military to polling locations just to hang out. You can’t do those sorts of things,” he said.

The White House did not respond to Stateline’s questions. Republican state officials told Stateline they will respect voting laws and the outcomes of local races — no matter how the president reacts. Some Republicans have opposed Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting and resisted requests for private voter data.

Brown said he’s less worried about a White House effort to cancel or attack the legitimacy of elections across the country. Rather, he fears a more targeted effort to interfere with or challenge results in a few states that could determine the balance of federal power.

The president still refuses to acknowledge his 2020 electoral defeat, and Brown noted some fellow election deniers now hold power in state and local governments. At least 25 county election officials who align with the broader election-denier movement have taken office across the country since the last federal election in 2024, according to a recent New York Times analysis.

“That is what worries me, is a half a dozen local elected officials saying I have doubts about the election because the president said there was something shady, and I’m not going to certify it,” Brown said. “And we’re just in a chaos moment. And I think that’s a very real possibility.”

He added: “The struggle I have often in this job, and particularly on this issue, is raising the alarm for people about these possibilities, while not sounding like an alarmist, but I think we really need to in this circumstance.”

Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said elections have always had “some issues,” but he said there’s no evidence of anything coming close to major voter violations of election laws in the recent past. He said he expected Republican and Democratic secretaries of state to continue their long tradition of conducting elections with integrity.

“I feel confident in the election system in this country, and I hope that politicians will be responsible,” he told Stateline, “that you’ll win the right way, and there’s a right way to lose, too, and I hope we’ll see more of that.” 

Election officials preparing

Midterms generally favor the party that doesn’t control the White House, but this cycle looks particularly competitive for Democrats as the president’s popularity sinks and consumer angst grows over high prices. 

In New Hampshire, both Republican-controlled legislative chambers are considered competitive this November, along with key U.S. House and Senate races. 

New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan said voters in his state generally trust local election officials to administer and count ballots. And he said the Trump administration would have to “have facts” to refute any unfavorable results.

“The results are going to speak for themselves,” Scanlan told Stateline. “And the results are factual.”

Scanlan has heard concerns about the prospects of federal agents showing up at the polls, but said he has no indication that will actually occur. While federal officials could arrive unannounced, he said he’d expect some kind of communication from Washington.

“At this point, if something were to happen, we would be prepared for it. I won’t say what that preparation is at the moment, but when you conduct an election you have to be ready for whatever gets thrown at you, whether it’s a fire in the polling place, or really bad weather, or some type of natural disaster. We prepare for those things.”

Katy Owens Hubler, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said local election officials have spent months running through tabletop exercises about all manner of potential disruptions, including the potential for federal involvement. 

“There is more rhetoric coming from the federal government than we have typically seen,” she said. 

While federal law prohibits ordering armed forces to polling places in most circumstances, lawmakers in multiple states this year introduced and passed legislation to prevent the presence of immigration officers or troops at voting locations, according to NCSL tracking.

Democratic governors in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia signed new laws this year to limit law enforcement and military presence at voting sites and ensure more protections against voter intimidation.  

Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they were not planning an aggressive campaign at voting sites. In a statement to States Newsroom, the agency said it conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement” that could bring officers to polling places if they were endangered by a public safety threat.

“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the statement said. 

Broad election concerns

Many Republican lawmakers have embraced the president’s push to purge noncitizens from voting rolls. Experts say noncitizen registration and voting, already illegal under federal law, are rare. But since 2018, 15 states have adopted constitutional amendments to verify citizenship status, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And several states have passed similar laws this year.

Those include a Mississippi law signed in April that requires election officials to verify proof of citizenship with documents such as birth certificates and passports when registering voters — which raised major concerns from voting rights advocates about restricting voting access for citizens without the proper documentation. 

Republican state Sen. Jeremy England, who sponsored that measure, said he sought to balance election security against voting access. He said media attention of even one case of a noncitizen voting in an election can cast doubt on the entire election system.

“At least the last couple of presidential elections have really led to a lot more questions,” he said, “and a lot of I would say probably a lot less confidence by the people.” 

Still, England rejected Trump’s call for the federal government to take over elections. The U.S. Constitution grants states primary responsibility for election administration.

“This idea of federalizing the election system, I don’t think the people of Mississippi would support that,” England said. “And we’re a red state with a Republican president.”

In July, Trump raised the alarm over election security in a primetime address from the White House. The president said Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and some other groups could compromise the country’s election infrastructure. Without evidence, Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral race and the state’s recent gubernatorial race. 

And in an interview with a conservative commentator this week, the president did not rule out declaring a national security emergency and federalizing control over November’s elections. 

England was among a bipartisan group of state leaders who discussed election preparations at last month’s National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Chicago. Joining him on a panel discussion was Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.

Fontes urged state leaders to exercise more self-discipline when talking about and regulating elections.

“This should not be a partisan issue. That’s the hill that I’m willing to die on,” he said during that panel.

If states want to beef up election integrity, Fontes said lawmakers should provide local election officials with more funding to improve security — rather than making it more difficult to vote. And he held up the right to vote as among the most sacrosanct in society, giving ordinary people their constitutional right to check government power.

“That’s the real issue here,” he said. “The one chance citizens get, the one chance the governed get to keep us in our place, is being the most heavily regulated.”

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The updated criminal complaint increased the number of charges filed against the SPLC from 11 to 14 and included another defendant, Heidi Beirich, who managed the covert program the civil rights group operated to obtain intelligence from extremist groups dating back to the 1980s.

“The indictment unsealed today reflects the continued work of federal investigators and prosecutors in examining this alleged scheme,” said U.S. Attorney Thomas Govan, in a statement published Wednesday. “We look forward to presenting the evidence in court and allowing the judicial process to determine the facts and the defendants’ responsibility for the alleged crimes.”

The SPLC said in a statement Thursday that confronting extremist groups “is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do.”

“The actions taken by the DOJ will not shake our resolve,” the statement said. “We remain steadfast in our fight for justice and in our commitment to ensuring the promise of the Civil Rights movement becomes a reality for all. We are confident in our position and look forward to presenting the evidence and making our case in court.”

Michael Procter, an attorney for Beirich, said in a statement that Beirich was innocent,” and this case is without merit.”

“We believe the charges against her and the SPLC are politically motivated, and Dr. Beirich has been targeted in this case because of the important work she has done to combat hate groups and extremists,” the statement said.

He added that “violent extremists have not prevented Beirich from continuing her work.”

“Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now,” Proctor said. “She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”

A message was sent to Proctor on Thursday seeking additional comment.

DOJ alleges that a now-discontinued paid informant program run by SPLC, intended to monitor and disrupt the activities of white supremacist and terrorist groups, amounted to material support for those groups and fraud on SPLC donors.

The U.S. Justice Department alleges in the indictment that Beirich and the civil rights group opened bank accounts for various shell companies that the SPLC used to pay individuals embedded with white supremacy groups

The money the SPLC used to pay informants came from donations collected by the organization for the stated purpose of dismantling such groups. However, the government said in the indictment that the money was used for a different purpose.

“However, unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance,” the superseding indictment said. “The SPLC’s paid individuals (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”

SPLC says the program was necessary to obtain information on the plans of such groups. According to SPLC, the materials were passed on to law enforcement to assist with investigations and were used as content in various publications that informed the public about the activities of the groups. The fictitious companies also protected the identities of their informants.

SPLC moved to have the case dismissed this spring, arguing the DOJ was pursuing vindictive prosecution for SPLC’s opposition to the actions of President Donald Trump. A federal judge last week denied the motion.

Bryan Fair, who was then the president and CEO of the nonprofit, pleaded not guilty to the 11 charges in May. The trial is tentatively scheduled for October.

SPLC Second Superseding Indictment

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.

Ohio fantasy author Rae Carson launches her newest novel, “Monster, Monarch, Maiden,” at the bookstore on Saturday, August 22. Horror novelist Markus Redmond follows on Sunday, August 23, with a talk and signing that kicks off a mini book crawl through downtown businesses.

Both events are free and open to anyone, though the store encourages reservations.

Saturday: Rae Carson and Mindy McGinnis

Carson will take part in a moderated conversation and book signing from noon to 1 p.m. at Pan Yan Bookstore, 144 S. Washington St., in conversation with Ohio author Mindy McGinnis. Copies of both authors’ books will be available for purchase.

Guests can also join the authors for a cocktail “hour” from 12:30 to 1 p.m. at The Empire Bistro, 138 S. Washington St. Readers can reserve a spot or set aside copies through the store.

“Monster, Monarch, Maiden” is a stand-alone fantasy from Greenwillow Books, priced at $19.99 in hardcover. The main character loses everything and pledges herself to a secretive young man on a perilous quest in order to survive, in a story built around gods, monsters, magical gifts and life-or-death stakes.

Carson is the author of two bestselling, award-winning trilogies and the stand-alone novels “Any Sign of Life” and “The Empire of Dreams.” Her debut, “The Girl of Fire and Thorns,” was a finalist for both the William C. Morris Award and the Andre Norton Award, and “Walk on Earth a Stranger” was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award and won a Western Writers of America Spur Award. She has also written for the Star Wars universe, including the novelization of “The Rise of Skywalker.” Her books, as she puts it, tend to contain adventure, magic and smart girls who make mostly smart choices.

Originally from California, Carson now lives in Ohio with her husband.

McGinnis is an Ohio author and former school librarian whose Gothic historical thriller “A Madness So Discreet” won the 2016 Edgar Award for best young adult novel.

Sunday: Markus Redmond and a mini book crawl

Redmond will speak and sign copies at The Empire Bistro, next door to the bookstore, in conversation with Columbus author D.M. Guay, who writes the 24/7 Demon Mart horror-comedy series. Drinks and light lunch options will be available to order.

That session doubles as the kickoff for a book crawl. Guests move to other downtown spots to grab a drink or a snack and sit and read for a while — Bailiwicks Coffee Company from 1:20 to 2:05 p.m., Pan Yan Bookstore from 2:10 to 2:55 p.m., and The Renaissance of Tiffin from 3 to 4 p.m., where the authors will mingle with readers.

An optional $25 Book Crawl Pass bundles a voucher at each stop: a drink at Bailiwicks, an appetizer, flatbread or cocktail at The Empire Bistro, and a glass of wine, two beers or two mocktails at The Renaissance. RSVPs and book reservations go through the store’s event page.

One scheduling note for readers heading downtown Sunday: Pan Yan Bookstore will be closed from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a private event before it opens as a crawl stop.

“Blood Rising” is the sequel to Redmond’s debut, “Blood Slaves,” and is published by Dafina at $28 in hardcover. It is a blend of supernatural horror and alternate history in which a vengeful vampire tribe formed of formerly enslaved Africans wages war across the Southern colonies. The publisher pitches the series to fans of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and to readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones. Publishers Weekly gave the first book a starred review.

Redmond is an actor, director and screenwriter turned author. His work draws on an interest in history and how it shapes the present, along with a fascination with supernatural creatures and what they represent in the real world. He is also, by his own account, obsessed with Singaporean television dramas. Originally from Philadelphia, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Isis.

Pan Yan Bookstore is an independent shop selling new and used books, coffee and snacks in the heart of the downtown district.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

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

The room turned on him. He tried to push through, asked who still believed in capitalism, told the ones who clapped they would be carrying everyone else on their backs, said “Peace out, see you guys” and walked, roughly 16 minutes ahead of schedule, to another wave of boos. It happened July 29 at the Young Americans for Liberty national convention, held on Xavier University’s campus in Cincinnati. TiffinOhio.net covered the appearance and the week of backlash that followed it.

The consensus reading was that Ramaswamy misjudged the room. That is too generous. He did not misjudge the room. He described, in one sentence, the arrangement that made him a billionaire — and a room of 20-year-olds who have spent their lives on the wrong end of arrangements like it recognized the shape of it immediately.

The structure, not the gaffe

Two weeks after the boos, the investigative newsletter Oligarch Watch published the most detailed account yet of how Ramaswamy actually made his money. Caleb Ecarma’s Aug. 12 investigation is a case study in who absorbs a loss.

In December 2014, Axovant — a subsidiary of Ramaswamy’s Roivant Sciences — bought the rights to an experimental Alzheimer’s drug from GlaxoSmithKline for $5 million. Glaxo had already given up on it. The drug, later named intepirdine, had failed multiple Phase 2 trials, including two involving 576 and 684 patients.

Then, according to Oligarch Watch, the failed data got a second look. Axovant hired Ramaswamy’s mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, as vice president of medical and scientific strategy in 2015. Oligarch Watch reported that she had never conducted a clinical trial, and that within weeks of the company’s record-setting initial public offering she had co-published two reanalyses of Glaxo’s failed 684-patient study — one that sorted patients into pass-or-fail buckets rather than measuring cognitive performance, and one that simply dropped the more than 30% of patients who left the study before it ended. Both methods are long-criticized in the medical research literature for producing biased results. Both produced numbers Axovant could sell.

The IPO raised $315 million on a $1.4 billion valuation, with no revenue and, as the trade press noted at the time, not a single patient recruited for a future trial. Ramaswamy went on television and told investors the drug could help millions.

Oligarch Watch reported that when rival drugs in the same class began failing, Ramaswamy could not quietly dump 75 million Axovant shares on the open market without tanking the price and triggering disclosures. So Roivant’s position was monetized privately instead, through a $1.1 billion SoftBank transaction disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2017. Less than a month later, intepirdine failed its Phase 3 trial. The stock fell about 70% in a single day. The company was eventually renamed, lost nearly all its value and shut down.

Ramaswamy made an estimated $260 million from Roivant, per Forbes. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System — a pension fund for schoolteachers, in another state, whose members had no idea any of this was happening — watched its Axovant stake fall from about $1.2 million to about $68,000, according to SEC filings cited by Oligarch Watch.

David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati, gave Oligarch Watch the cleanest description of the arrangement: it was, he said, “heads I win and tails I also win.” Ramaswamy has told BioPharma Dive there was “probably nothing in a meaningful way” the company could have done differently.

Writing for TiffinOhio.net in May, Randy Kemp argued that a business model that pays the founder whether or not the product works is a scam in every sense that matters to the people on the losing end, even when it is entirely legal. The new reporting on how the underlying data got massaged does not soften that judgment. It sharpens it.

The same arrangement, now on the ballot

The Xavier speech was not a one-off embarrassment. Every major plank of Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor has the identical structure: he names an upside, and someone else carries the risk. It is the Axovant arrangement, scaled to a state.

The tax plan. Ramaswamy has pledged to eliminate Ohio’s personal income tax, which raises roughly $10 billion a year — about a quarter of the state operating budget, funding K-12 schools, Medicaid, public universities, prisons and services for seniors, veterans and disabled Ohioans. He says growth and spending discipline will close the gap. He has not said which programs get cut. Outside analyses have been consistent: the benefits flow to wealthy Ohioans and corporations, and replacing the revenue through property taxes would require an increase of roughly 20% statewide. Heads he wins. Tails your school levy.

The data centers. Ramaswamy wants to accelerate Ohio’s data center buildout and has called the boom good on tape at least 10 times, with no conditions attached. What he offers the communities absorbing it is free electricity and lower property taxes for the people who live nearest the facilities. Call that what it is: a scam. A single hyperscale data center can draw as much power as 100,000 homes, according to the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, and new baseload generation takes years to bring online. Ramaswamy has never said where the surplus that makes anybody’s power free is supposed to come from. Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern called the plan unserious. Meanwhile a May report from the group found Ramaswamy’s personal holdings span every tier of the industry he would regulate — chip makers, cloud and data center operators, industrial real estate, crypto — and McGovern said he is too entangled with it “to make sure it does right by our communities.” As governor he would appoint all five members of the Public Utilities Commission, the body that sets the rates. He has also taken nearly $100,000 from energy interests while Ohioans’ electric bills climb.

The crypto push. Ramaswamy has praised House Bill 18, which would let the state treasurer and five public pension boards put money into bitcoin-tied funds. He holds a stake of roughly $69 million in Strive, a leveraged bitcoin treasury company that lost $257.6 million last quarter. He faces no legal requirement to divest. The people whose retirements would ride on that bill are teachers, firefighters and public employees — which is to say, the same category of person who held the Axovant shares.

The campaign itself. Ramaswamy has put $25 million into his own campaign, about 83% of what it raised this year. It is structured as a loan, meaning donors’ money can be used to pay him back. The super PAC behind him has been financed overwhelmingly by a handful of out-of-state billionaires, including Elon Musk. Even the money is a downside-protected position.

‘Your generation’

The rest of the record fills in the line about generations.

Ramaswamy told Ohio parents in November 2025 that the fix for child care costs was to keep kids in school year-round and until 4 p.m. Then the video came down, without explanation, and the proposal has not resurfaced. In December 2024 he argued that tech firms hire foreign-born engineers over Americans because American culture “has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long” — while the company he founded had filed for 29 H-1B visas. On July 4 this year he worked a parade in Lancaster, shook hands in Upper Arlington, and then boarded a private jet to Paris, his fifth international trip of the year on a plane he has flown more than 50 times during the campaign.

None of that is illegal. Little of it is even unusual for a very rich candidate. The Xavier crowd was not booing a policy disagreement. It was listening to a man explain, without apparent embarrassment, that he had already collected and they had not.

Why that room

Young Americans for Liberty grew out of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns and organizes college students around limited government and free markets — the exact principles Ramaswamy built a national brand on. This was not a hostile crowd bused in by the opposition. It was his own coalition, in the city where he was born.

The complaints shouted from that floor were about bills. Attendees heckled him over data centers and energy prices — the same two complaints that moved Tiffin City Council to vote 6-0 on Monday, April 20, to freeze data center development inside city limits for a year. No data center had even been proposed here. Council wanted to know the cost first. That instinct — find out who pays before you say yes — is the same instinct that filled the Xavier hall with noise.

Democratic nominee Dr. Amy Acton has been making the out-of-touch-billionaire argument for months against his jet travel and his self-funding. What changed on July 29 is that a room full of Republicans and libertarians made it for her, louder.

The race remains close. A Fox News poll of 1,008 Ohio registered voters conducted Aug. 6 through 10 put Ramaswamy at 50% and Acton at 48%, a two-point margin inside the error bars, with the poll finding cost of living dominating voter concerns statewide.

Ohioans vote Tuesday, Nov. 3. When Ramaswamy says his generation has already made it, he is not speculating. He is reporting a result. The unsettled question is who holds the bag the next time one of his ventures does not work out, and whether Ohio wants to volunteer.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

He was the pastor from Vickery.

The small-town preacher who spent nearly two decades leading Fremont Baptist Temple before carrying that identity into the Ohio Statehouse. His political brand was built around ministry, faith and the image of a local pastor who happened to become a state representative.

That version of Gary Click is increasingly out of date.

Click is no longer leading a local church. He has been traveling around the country. He has moved deeper into national Christian political organizations. He says he has established a nonprofit of his own. His legislation is being promoted beyond Ohio. And campaign finance records show thousands of dollars spent over the course of his legislative career on conferences, flights and hotels — including stays at luxury resorts.

Taken together, the pieces show a striking transformation in Click’s public life.

The pastor-legislator from Sandusky County is increasingly operating in a much bigger world.

The pastor quietly leaves the pulpit

The most consequential change happened almost completely out of public view.

Click stepped down as lead pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple at the end of March 2025 after 19 years in the position, according to his later account.

But constituents did not learn about the change from Click.

TiffinOhio.net discovered and reported the pastoral transition in February, nearly 11 months later. At the time, Fremont Baptist Temple’s website was still presenting Click as its active pastor even though his official Ohio House biography had been changed to say he had “recently stepped down and assumed the honorary title of pastor Emeritus.”

Click quickly disputed the characterization that he had left quietly.

“Actually, it was very public. You just missed it,” he wrote on X after the story spread.

When asked to identify the public announcement, no further response was identified.

Days later, Click discussed the departure in a damage-control interview with the Advertiser-Tribune. The church’s website was also updated after TiffinOhio.net’s report to reflect Rick Ash as pastor and Click as pastor emeritus.

But Click’s explanation for leaving day-to-day church leadership revealed something much more significant than a pastoral retirement.

He was making room for something else.

California. Colorado. Alabama.

Click said his new emeritus status had freed him to expand a speaking ministry far beyond Fremont.

He told the Advertiser-Tribune he had preached in California, Colorado and Alabama, along with Springfield, Kettering and Cincinnati in Ohio.

The subject was not simply traditional evangelism.

Click said he was preaching about what he called “the justice and biblical role of Christians in civil government.”

And he disclosed another development: Click said he had filed paperwork to establish a nonprofit called “We the Church” to advance that work.

For nearly two decades, Click’s religious authority was rooted in one congregation in Sandusky County. The operation he described after leaving the pulpit has no such geographic boundary.

It involves interstate speaking engagements, politics, religious advocacy and an organization of his own built around Christianity’s role in government.

By this summer, that national network was becoming even more visible.

From Fremont to a national political network

Click is now a leader in the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an organization that brings Christian elected officials together around public policy.

The group currently lists Click as vice chair of its Ohio organization and vice chair of its national Committee on Education.

In June, the organization held its National Policy Conference at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The three-day gathering, themed “America’s 250: Save the Nation,” brought together conservative elected officials, pastors and activists for committee meetings, panels and political programming.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a keynote address. The organization’s own description of the conference invited “Christian elected officials” to gather with faith leaders and supporters from around the country.

Click’s involvement is not merely ceremonial.

His work in the Ohio Statehouse is beginning to travel through the same national network.

Click is a primary sponsor of House Bill 486, the “Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act”, which passed the Ohio House last year and would expressly permit instruction about what the legislation calls the positive influence of Judeo-Christian values on American history.

National reporting this year found that the National Association of Christian Lawmakers was interested in sharing Click’s legislation with members in other states as possible model legislation.

That represents a considerable change in scale.

Click is no longer simply introducing bills in Columbus.

He is participating in a national organization capable of carrying those ideas into statehouses around the country.

The travel started before the nonprofit

There is another part of Click’s changing life that became visible much earlier: the travel.

A February TiffinOhio.net investigation of Click’s complete campaign finance history found $19,055.33 in conference travel and related expenses during his legislative tenure.

The destinations included Scottsdale, Denver, Orlando, Chicago, Washington and Texas.

And some of the accommodations were decidedly upscale.

In December 2024, Click’s campaign paid $1,204.14 for lodging at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Arizona, a AAA Five Diamond resort. The campaign reported another $1,043.45 American Airlines transaction connected with travel to the conference.

There was an $881.91 stay at the Hyatt Regency Denver.

A $772.89 stay at a Marriott in Orlando.

A $376.62 hotel stay in Chicago.

Campaign records also show expenditures connected with national organizations including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Family Research Council and WallBuilders, the Texas organization founded by conservative Christian activist David Barton.

In September 2025, Click’s campaign paid $307.97 for what the filing described as a “Legislative Conference” at WallBuilders in Aledo, Texas.

There is an important distinction: the records do not establish that the campaign paid for every trip Click has described as part of his new speaking ministry, and those two categories should not be conflated.

What the records do establish is that extensive travel through national conservative political circles was already part of Click’s life well before he publicly explained that leaving day-to-day church leadership would give him more freedom to travel and expand his ministry.

Four hotel stays labeled ‘Non legislative’

Some of Click’s campaign-funded lodging raises a separate question.

Four Columbus hotel stays in late 2025 were explicitly described in his own campaign filings as “Non legislative.”

They totaled $572.09.

The campaign paid $313.48 for one stay in September, followed by stays costing $129.80, $77.29 and $51.52.

TiffinOhio.net’s review found no corresponding reimbursement to the campaign for those expenses.

That stood in contrast with how Click handled a personal campaign-account transaction much earlier in his political career.

In October 2020, Click took $200 cash out of his campaign account for personal use, returned it three days later and documented exactly what had happened.

“CASH TAKEN OUT, BUT PUT BACK IN 10/8/20,” the filing said.

Five years later, four hotel stays were described by his own campaign as non-legislative.

The money stayed spent.

Then there is the golf

Travel is only one part of the more comfortable political world surrounding Click’s career.

TiffinOhio.net’s review found another $12,044.72 in expenses connected with campaign golf outings since he entered the Ohio House.

The 2025 outing alone cost the campaign $5,653.85.

That included $3,140 to Mohawk Golf and Country Club in Tiffin, $1,944.39 to Ironwood Steakhouse for catered food and drinks, $383.16 for custom signs, plus purchases from Walmart and Ideal Bakery.

The campaign has held a golf outing every year.

Campaign golf outings, political conferences and donor-funded travel are hardly unique in American politics. But the significance here is not that Click attends a fundraiser or gets on an airplane.

It is what those expenditures look like alongside everything else that has changed.

The local pastorate is gone.

In its place are national conferences, interstate speaking engagements, political networking, upscale travel and a nonprofit venture.

A different Gary Click

None of this happened overnight.

Click had relationships with national Christian conservative organizations long before leaving Fremont Baptist Temple. His official House biography notes more than 30 years in ministry and his past work lobbying Congress on behalf of churches and Christian schools.

But the pieces increasingly fit together in a way they did not when Click first ran for the Ohio House in 2020.

He gave up leadership of the church that anchored his public identity for nearly two decades.

He says doing so freed him to preach around the country.

He created “We the Church.”

He holds leadership positions within a national Christian lawmakers organization.

His Ohio legislation is being discussed for use in other states.

And years of campaign records document nearly $20,000 in conference travel, five-figure spending on golf outings and stays ranging from ordinary hotels to a Five Diamond Arizona resort.

Meanwhile, the political base back home has shown signs of strain.

Click survived his Republican primary by just 599 votes in May, losing Seneca County to challenger Eric Watson. Watson later said he would “never” endorse Click. Click now faces Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin in the Nov. 3 general election for what would be Click’s fourth and final consecutive House term.

That puts two versions of Gary Click side by side.

One is the political identity District 88 voters were introduced to six years ago: the longtime Fremont-area pastor who became their representative in Columbus.

The other is taking shape now: a national speaker, nonprofit founder and Christian political organizer whose travel schedule and political network increasingly extend far beyond Sandusky and Seneca counties.

Click himself supplied perhaps the clearest explanation for the transformation when he finally discussed leaving his church.

The new arrangement, he said, gave him greater freedom to travel and expand his ministry.

Less than a year and a half later, it is becoming increasingly clear what he meant.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

OEA represents roughly 120,000 teachers, education support professionals and higher education faculty across Ohio, including educators in the public districts serving Seneca and Sandusky counties. According to the campaign, the association notified Jones in a letter from OEA President Jeff Wensing, a Parma City Schools math teacher elected to lead the union in 2025. The endorsement followed a review by an OEA screening committee of Jones’s written responses on public education issues.

The union’s endorsement process runs through its members rather than its officers. Candidates seeking OEA’s backing complete a written questionnaire covering school funding, employee rights, retirement and privatization, and are screened by committees made up of members from the local associations in the district.

The endorsement makes Jones the choice of both of Ohio’s major teachers organizations. The Ohio Federation of Teachers endorsed his campaign in June, in a letter from OFT President Melissa Cropper.

“I’m a Clyde High School graduate, and the people who taught me set me up for everything that came after,” Jones said in the announcement. “The teachers and support staff in this district are folks I know by name. When they tell me what’s happening in their buildings, I listen. Having them behind this campaign matters to me.”

Jones has made public school funding a central issue of his campaign, tying decisions made at the Statehouse to local classrooms and local tax bills.

“Those decisions get made in Columbus, but they show up here,” Jones said. “They show up in classrooms, and they show up on property tax bills. I want the people making them to hear from the folks doing the work.”

A district where school funding is already on the ballot

Jones faces three-term Republican Rep. Gary Click of Vickery in the Nov. 3 general election. TiffinOhio.net has reported that Click cosponsored House Bill 186 and voted for House Bill 129 — two measures signed into law that are projected to cost Tiffin City Schools roughly $1.2 million a year beginning in tax year 2026 — and that he has since introduced House Bill 420, which would force all continuing property tax levies in Ohio to expire after 2029.

District 88 has long been considered safe Republican territory, but Click emerged from his May 5 primary severely bruised. He defeated challenger Eric Watson by fewer than 600 votes, 6,859 to 6,260, or 52.28 percent to 47.72 percent, according to returns from the Sandusky and Seneca county boards of elections. Click carried his home county of Sandusky but lost Seneca County — where Jones lives and was elected — and Watson declined to endorse him afterward.

Labor and veterans backing

The OEA endorsement adds to a list that already included organized labor. The United Auto Workers endorsed Jones in July through the executive committee of the UAW Ohio State CAP Council, on the recommendation of the Fostoria Area UAW Community Action Program, which represents members in Seneca County. VoteVets, which backs Democratic veterans running for office, is also listed among the campaign’s endorsements.

Jones, a 1991 graduate of Clyde High School, served four years as an Airborne Infantryman with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — The Old Guard — in Washington, D.C. He has represented Tiffin’s 1st Ward on City Council since 2024. He and his wife, Tracy, live in Tiffin and have four grandchildren.

He has worked for more than 20 years as a production supervisor at JVIS USA (formerly Toledo Molding & Die), the Tiffin auto parts plant on North Maule Road.

The campaign says it does not accept corporate PAC money. More information is available at jonesforohio.com.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Four days later the Erie County Board of Elections refused to certify him, splitting 2-2. And now the Republicans who spent a decade holding this seat are turning on him in public, under their own names.

The sharpest of them is Jon Paul Morrow, the political consultant who worked on the 2014 campaign that put the 89th District in Republican hands in the first place. In a long public post this week, Morrow argued that Stidham should have walked out of the room, and that by staying in it he may have cost his party the seat.

“In 2014, Steve Kraus won Ohio’s 89th House District and put the seat in Republican hands. It has stayed there ever since,” Morrow wrote. “Now Caleb Stidham may have found a way to hand it back to the Democrats.”

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

That answers a question nobody is asking. Huron County Republican Chairman Sven Stahl did chair the Aug. 10 meeting, precisely because Stidham was a candidate. Stidham was sent out of the room while his rivals made their pitches. Then he came back in for deliberations, and he voted.

‘Not picking a Lincoln Day Dinner speaker’

Morrow’s case is not that Stidham broke a rule. It is that the missing rule was never the point.

“A candidate for the nomination sat on the committee deciding who should receive the nomination, participated in the process, and then voted in a contest he won,” he wrote.

Ohio’s vacancy statute contains no recusal requirement for a committee member who is also an applicant. Morrow’s answer to that defense is blunt. “The fact that a statute does not contain the words ‘you cannot vote for yourself’ does not automatically settle every question about self-interest, public authority, and the integrity of the process,” he wrote.

He then drew the same line the Erie County elections board chairman would draw a day later — the line between a party’s own housekeeping and a job the legislature handed it.

“This committee was not picking a Lincoln Day Dinner speaker. It was not deciding party bylaws. It was not issuing an endorsement that voters were free to accept or reject in a primary,” Morrow wrote.

Republican voters had already picked D.J. Swearingen in the May 5 primary. When Swearingen walked away from the ballot on Aug. 4, state law handed six county party officers the power to decide whose name replaced his. Ohio courts have found that party officials can take on a public character when the state gives them that kind of power: in 1962 the Ohio Supreme Court held that county central committee members act as public officers when they exercise the statutory authority to fill vacancies in county offices. Morrow argued the same logic reaches this committee.

He was careful about what he could not prove. Republicans in the district have questioned whether Erie County Republican Party bylaws would even let someone serving in the Ohio House stay on as county chairman. “I have not independently verified the controlling bylaw language, so I am not presenting that claim as fact,” Morrow wrote. “But somebody should verify it.”

And he put his own interest on the table. “For disclosure, I worked as a consultant on Steve Kraus’s campaign,” he wrote. “Readers are free to take that into account. They should.”

The bill comes out of the campaign account

Much of the post is aimed at Republicans on money, not ethics. A fight over the nomination means lawyers, filings and hearings — paid for out of the same account that is supposed to be reaching voters before Nov. 3.

“Every dollar spent defending the nomination process is a dollar that is not being spent communicating with voters and defeating the Democratic nominee,” Morrow wrote.

His point is that none of it had to happen. “He should have left the room during deliberations and abstained from voting on his own nomination,” Morrow wrote. “A victory secured without his own vote would have been easier to defend politically and far less damaging to the legitimacy of the process.”

The obvious rebuttal is arithmetic: Stidham’s vote was needed to get to four. Morrow dismissed it. “The problem is not simply whether his vote supplied the winning margin,” he wrote. “The problem is that a candidate reportedly participated as one of the judges in the contest he was trying to win.”

He closed on the line he used as his title: “What Steve Kraus giveth, Caleb Stidham may yet taketh away.”

Who signed on

Then came the comments, and that is where the damage shows.

Ottawa County Auditor Jennifer Widmer — one of the three Republicans who applied for the seat Stidham voted himself into — thanked Morrow publicly and drew a contrast with how it was handled.

“I was among the group of Ottawa County Republican Women in 2010 who set out to change the perception of what it meant to be Republicans,” Widmer wrote. “We contrasted our service with the slimy politics of the other side. Ottawa County continues to hold those same principles because we know that doing the right thing matters.”

Marcell Strbich — the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who took 29.79% against Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague in the May Republican primary for secretary of state — endorsed the post from his campaign account, writing that Morrow had made the case that “there is no excuse not to recuse yourself.”

One commenter went further and pointed Republicans at the Democrat. “Support Retzke for Representative,” the person wrote. “I’d bet Retzke would have recused himself. #charactermatters”

The November math

Republicans were warning each other about the cost of this before the committee ever met.

Ron Coop, who posted publicly hours before the Aug. 10 vote, argued the bill would come due statewide rather than locally. “The 89th District is a solid 10 point Republican district. A point or two of grassroots staying home will not change local results,” Coop wrote. “However, it takes away votes from State wide candidates. This year will be a tough election for Republicans. They need all the votes they can get.”

Polling taken while the district committee was meeting suggests he was reading the year correctly. A Fox News survey of 1,008 Ohio registered voters conducted Aug. 6-10 found Democrat Sherrod Brown beating Republican Sen. Jon Husted 53% to 45% — with 11% of Republicans crossing over to Brown, and 25% of Republicans who do not identify with the MAGA movement doing the same. Republican Vivek Ramaswamy led Democrat Amy Acton 50% to 48% in the governor’s race. Fifty-four percent of Ohio voters said they view the Republican Party unfavorably; 57% said the same of the MAGA movement. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

He is still not on the ballot

For all of it, Stidham has not been certified.

The Erie County Board of Elections deadlocked 2-2 on Friday, Aug. 14, its two Democrats voting against certification and its two Republicans voting for it. Under state law a tie at a county board goes to the secretary of state, who decides the question summarily and whose decision is final.

Board Chairman Edward J. Leonard said both sides agreed to file written position statements with Director Alexander W. Jones by 9 a.m. Friday, Aug. 21, so he can send them up the same day. The statutory outside deadline is Friday, Aug. 28.

The Republican who decides is Frank LaRose, term-limited as secretary of state and his party’s nominee for state auditor on the same Nov. 3 ballot.

Waiting on the other side is Easton Retzke of Sandusky, who has had the Democratic nomination locked since May 5 and has spent the summer campaigning while Republicans fought over who would face him. An Ohio State political science graduate, Retzke has been endorsed by the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the UAW’s Tri-County CAP Council and has run on public school funding, utility rates, the tax treatment of data centers and an overhaul of JobsOhio.

Swearingen carried this district with 58% of the vote in 2024.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

One vehicle was diverted during the two-hour operation, according to the Patrol. The release does not say why.

The checkpoint ran from 7 to 9 p.m. near the intersection of South Shaffer Park Drive, with the Patrol working alongside the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office and the Tiffin Police Department. The Ohio Department of Transportation assisted with traffic control.

The operation was paid for with federal grant funds and was held in coordination with saturation patrols working nearby, the Patrol said. Those patrols are intended to reach impaired drivers who never pass through the checkpoint itself.

The Patrol’s results release does not include any figures from the saturation patrols, and it does not report whether officers working them made arrests.

The agency has run joint enforcement campaigns in Seneca County before, including a month-long effort with the Sheriff’s Office targeting failure-to-yield violations.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The 60 Plus Association was created in 1992 as a far-right alternative to the AARP. The group claims to represent the interests of American retirees over 60. It was started with seed money from conservative megadonors Charles and David Koch.

In 1997, the 60 Plus Association boasted that it was “the first national senior citizens group to endorse privatization of the Social Security program.” More recently, it has backed efforts to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

Health policy experts warn that these changes could force seniors to spend more out of pocket for health care and imperil the long-term solvency of both programs. The 60 Plus Association acknowledged in 2011 that its goal was to gradually phase out Medicare for future generations.

California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who caucuses with House Republicans, accepted awards from the 60 Plus Association in 2025 and 2026. The award, which recognizes lawmakers as “Guardians of Senior Citizens,” is essentially a campaign endorsement. On both occasions, Kiley posed for photos with 60 Plus Association President Saul Anuzis.

Other recipients this year were Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, Michigan Reps. Bill Huizenga and Tom Barrett, New York Rep. Mike Lawler, and Pennsylvania Reps. Ryan Mackenzie and Scott Perry.

All of these lawmakers also posed for photos with Anuzis.

Past recipients include New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr., Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, and Texas Rep. Monica De La Cruz.

Virginia Rep. Rob Wittman received the award in 2025. In June, Wittman was caught faking a phone call to avoid answering a reporter’s questions about Republican proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare.

The 60 Plus Association has also made several social media posts recognizing the birthdays of various Republican lawmakers, including Virginia Rep. Jen Kiggans, California Rep. David Valadao, Florida Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Maria Elvira Salazar, Minnesota Rep. Brad Finstad, Ohio Reps. Mike Turner and Mike Carey, Pennsylvania Rep. Rob Bresnahan, and Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil.

Anuzis has also advocated for repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has included all of these lawmakers on its list of most vulnerable incumbents facing reelection in 2026. All of these Republicans supported the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which will impose a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over the next decade.

“Slashing Medicaid, cutting the ACA tax credits, and shutting down rural hospitals was just the warm-up act for House Republicans’ true mission: ending Medicare and Social Security as we know it,” said DCCC spokesperson Liam Buckley. “They’re beholden to their dark-money backers and they can’t be trusted in November.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a report that aired this week, NBC4 in Columbus reported that Husted, as a state lawmaker, cosponsored a bill to shield Ohio nursing homes from liability, including in wrongful death and abuse cases, and that he has since accepted more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the nursing home industry, its executives and lobbyists.

Husted’s office pushed back in a statement to the station, though its response addressed the federal budget law rather than the state legislation. Nursing homes did not receive a net cash infusion or additional federal dollars under H.R. 1, the office said, adding that the law actually made it easier for states to move toward home- and community-based care.

The station separately reviewed Husted’s most recent campaign finance report and found that more than a dozen nursing home PACs or lobbyists have given at least $34,000 to his Senate campaign so far.

The example came from Norm Wernet, president of the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, a labor-affiliated group that advocates for home- and community-based care for aging Ohioans and argues the nursing home industry lobbies against it. Wernet told the station that big-dollar giving distorts state policy, saying $100 million campaigns exert a corrupting influence and do not address the changes Ohio needs.

“It is wrong to see that somebody like Senator Husted, when he was in the legislature, would co-sponsor a bill that, in fact, avoided the liability on the nursing homes,” Wernet said, according to a transcript of the segment circulated by the Ohio Democratic Party. He called it one example of how politicians keep drawing industry support.

What the 2002 law did

Neither the broadcast nor the station’s written report named the bill. Ohio legislative records identify it as House Bill 412, enrolled as Amended Substitute House Bill 412 in the 124th General Assembly and titled “Residential care facilities—liability.” It took effect Nov. 7, 2002. Husted, elected to the Ohio House in 2000, was one of 45 House members listed as cosponsors, alongside 10 senators. Then-Rep. Bill Seitz was the primary sponsor.

Rex Damschroder, then a Fremont Republican in the Ohio House whose district covered Sandusky County and part of Seneca County, was also among the cosponsors.

The law rewrote how Ohioans sue nursing homes in three ways.

It added nursing homes and residential care facilities to the state’s legal definition of a “medical claim,” which cut the deadline for filing suit from the two years that applies to ordinary negligence to one year, with an outer bar of four years. It also folded lawsuits brought under Ohio’s nursing home residents’ rights law into that same definition. Those are the claims families bring over care inside a facility, and they can be filed by an estate after a resident dies.

It set new rules for punitive damages. When a jury weighs punitive damages against a nursing home, the law directs it to consider whether the home can afford to pay, whether the award is enough to deter future conduct, and whether the home would still be financially able to provide housing, personal care and skilled nursing care.

And it restricted the use of state inspection findings in court. The results of Ohio Department of Health inspections of nursing homes, including statements of deficiencies, generally cannot be used or admitted as evidence in court proceedings, with narrow exceptions. The act created a parallel restriction for the Medicaid surveys that regulators run on nursing facilities.

Democrats push the segment into the Senate race

The Ohio Democratic Party circulated the segment Friday, along with a clip the party posted to its own YouTube channel, and a statement from senior communications adviser Tony Wen.

“Jon Husted said Ohioans’ work ethic is broken and championed legislation to slash Social Security and Medicare — and now reporting reveals he protected the abusive nursing home industry after taking more than $1 million from its lobbyists. Jon Husted sided with special interests over Ohio seniors, and he can’t be trusted.”

The work ethic reference points to a January radio interview in which Husted, discussing his Upward Mobility Act, said the country’s work ethic is broken and that the federal government pays people more to stay home than to work. TiffinOhio.net covered those remarks and the criticism that followed.

Husted went on to lead the Ohio House as speaker from 2005 to 2009, served in the Ohio Senate, became secretary of state in 2011 and later served as lieutenant governor, according to his official Senate biography. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January 2025.

Medicaid, the long-term care bill payer

The dispute lands on top of the federal budget law Husted voted for. The Senate passed H.R. 1 on a 50-50 vote on July 1, 2025, with the vice president breaking the tie. Husted was recorded in favor.

Medicaid is the primary payer for long-term nursing home care in Ohio, which is why cuts to the program and the fight over home- and community-based services run through the same set of facilities. The law reduces federal Medicaid and CHIP spending by $911 billion over a decade. A Public Citizen analysis published in March identified nine Ohio hospitals at heightened risk of closing or cutting services, and an Urban Institute projection found Medicaid work requirements could strip coverage from as many as 356,000 Ohioans, on top of roughly 113,000 who lost Affordable Care Act coverage after enhanced tax credits expired. States can direct Medicaid dollars toward home- and community-based care, but those services are optional, and analysts expect them to be squeezed first as funding tightens.

Seneca County residents have already seen what strain inside a nursing home looks like. In June, an HVAC failure at Spring Creek Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Green Springs forced a full-day evacuation involving more than 30 agencies, with ventilator-dependent and bariatric residents moved to Bellevue Hospital. Statewide, a Signal Ohio investigation this summer documented wrongful death suits and regulatory penalties against facilities in one large Ohio chain, with families alleging thin staffing led to fatal falls and pressure ulcers.

The most expensive Senate race in the country

NBC4 reported that the Democratic Senate Majority PAC will spend $64 million backing Democrat Sherrod Brown and that the Republican Senate Leadership Fund is investing $79 million behind Husted, in what is expected to be the most expensive Senate contest in the nation.

Brown has his own organized-interest money. The station reported that his most recent filing shows $220,500 from 33 labor union PACs. His campaign said most of his money comes from more than 80,000 small-dollar donors and said that while Husted fights for special interests, Brown fights the rigged system, pointing to nearly $700,000 Husted has taken from insurance companies. Brown outraised Husted by roughly two to one in the second quarter.

Wernet, for his part, spent years in the labor movement raising money for his national union to back political campaigns. Asked about that, he told the station it seems to be the only way workers can get a voice in a difficult time.

Husted and Brown meet on the ballot Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Board Chairman Edward J. Leonard, a Democrat, said he and fellow Democratic member MaryAnn Groot voted against certification because the Republican district committee that selected Stidham on Aug. 10 should have met in public, and because Stidham, who had applied for the vacancy himself, should have stepped away from the deliberations and the vote.

“After reviewing the circumstances of the Republican District Committee meeting at which Caleb Stidham was selected, I have concluded that the meeting was not conducted in accordance with Ohio law,” Leonard wrote in a position statement he read to the board before the vote and provided to TiffinOhio.net. “The meeting should have been an open public meeting. Additionally, because under Ohio law the committee members were public officials for this purpose, Caleb Stidham should have recused himself from deliberations and voting during the meeting.”

Stidham, the Erie County treasurer and chairman of the Erie County Republican Party, has publicly rejected the conflict-of-interest criticism. “There seems to be some confusion; there is no conflict of interest because I did not lead or chair the meeting that selected me as the candidate,” he told NBC4 in Columbus this week, before the board voted.

Stidham’s statement addressed who ran the meeting, not who voted in it. One of the six committee members, Ottawa County Republican Party Secretary Toni DeLuca, says he did both deliberate and vote.

“The Chair of Erie County, Caleb Stidham, was asked to leave when other candidates spoke,” DeLuca wrote in a letter released to the public. “However, he joined the committee for deliberations. I found it odd that a candidate for a position was given the right to deliberate on other candidates.” The committee took a voice vote, she wrote, and it was 4-2.

DeLuca wrote that Huron County Chairman Sven Stahl was chosen to chair the meeting because Stidham was a candidate, and that Stidham ran things until the session began. She described a process she found lopsided: “It is a flawed process that allows a candidate to vote for himself on a committee of 6 people.”

The board’s two Republican members, John C. Adams and Gary L. Smith, voted to certify. Leonard said in an interview that they took the position that the board’s job did not extend to the question he was raising — that the certificate had been notarized and filed on time, and that this was the limit of what the board should weigh.

Leonard said he put two questions to his colleagues before the vote. He asked whether it was correct that the committee meeting had not been an open public meeting, and he said Adams answered that it was not. He then asked whether the committee’s vote had been 4-2, and said Adams confirmed that as well.

What happens next

Ohio law gives the tie to the state’s chief elections officer. Under section 3501.11 of the Ohio Revised Code, when a county board splits and cannot reach a decision, the director or the chairperson must submit the matter to the secretary of state within 14 days. The secretary “shall summarily decide the question,” the statute says, “and the secretary of state’s decision shall be final.”

That puts the outside deadline at Aug. 28. Leonard said the board is moving faster than that. Director Alexander W. Jones asked at the meeting that the matter be expedited because of ballot preparation, Leonard said, and both sides agreed to have their written position statements to Jones by 9 a.m. Friday, Aug. 21, so he can forward them to the secretary of state that day.

Under the state’s election official manual, Leonard said, the members on each side of a tie write their own statement, and those statements, any evidence, and the minutes of the meeting where the tie occurred go to the secretary of state together. Leonard said his submission will be longer than the statement he read Friday, with full case citations added.

He described the choice in front of LaRose as binary: side with the two Republican members and certify Stidham, or side with the two Democrats, in which case Stidham would not be certified to the ballot. Asked what remedy would follow if the certification fails, Leonard said he was not aware of one and that it would take more research on his part.

Leonard also said he is not aware of anyone having filed a complaint with the Ohio Ethics Commission over the committee vote, or planning to, and that he believes he may have been the first person to raise the issue. On the notice question, he said he is accepting the certification’s statement that the required notice was sent.

LaRose, a Republican, is not a neutral bystander in this year’s election. He is term-limited as secretary of state and is his party’s nominee for state auditor on the same Nov. 3 ballot the Erie board was voting on Friday.

How the seat came open

The vacancy dates to Aug. 4, when state Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, delivered a letter to the Erie County board withdrawing from the November ballot after four terms, saying he was being considered for a new role and that continuing his campaign would not have been fair to voters.

Because House District 89 covers Erie, Ottawa and Huron counties — more than one county but fewer than all of them — state law handed the replacement decision to a six-member district committee made up of the chairperson and secretary of each county Republican central committee in the district. The statute requires the chairperson of the most populous county, which is Erie, to call the meeting and give members at least two days’ notice of its time, place and purpose. That chairperson is Stidham.

The committee met the afternoon of Aug. 10, hours before a 4 p.m. statutory deadline. Stidham was one of three applicants and one of six people entitled to vote. Republicans in the district, including Ron Coop and former state Rep. Steve Kraus, objected publicly before the committee met, calling the process rigged.

Leonard’s argument

Ohio’s Open Meetings Act generally does not reach political parties, which courts have described as voluntary associations governed by their own rules. Leonard’s statement turns on an exception: that a party committee performing a function assigned to it by statute is acting as a public body, and its members as public officials, for that purpose.

“Filling a vacancy created by the withdrawal of a candidate who has already been chosen by voters at a primary election is not a purely internal party matter, but is rather a public governmental function,” Leonard wrote. “The district committee is given the authority by statute to direct the board of elections who to put on the ballot in place of the withdrawn candidate.”

He pointed to the notice requirement in the vacancy statute as evidence that lawmakers intended an open meeting. “The fact that the statute dictates that notice of the time, place and purpose of the meeting be given is indicative of the fact that the meeting should be open,” he wrote. “The legislature would not require notice be given for a meeting that is not open to the public.”

Leonard drew a line between that and ordinary party housekeeping. “Examples of purely internal party matters include appointing members to central committee vacancies, selecting chairs, vice chairs and executive committee members, adopting by-laws, and endorsing candidates,” he wrote. He also noted that the same certification-under-oath process governs party central committees filling vacancies in countywide elected offices, which must be done in open session.

On the recusal question, Leonard wrote: “Based upon publicly reported accounts of the meeting, the vote on the certification of Caleb Stidham was 4-2 which would indicate that Caleb Stidham participated in the vote for his own certification in violation of Ohio Ethics rules.”

The tally was 4-2, and Stidham cast one of the votes. The breakdown was not available on Aug. 10, when the committee acted. Ohio’s vacancy statute contains no recusal requirement for a district committee member who is also an applicant, and it does not say who runs the meeting once it has been called.

DeLuca, who cast one of the two votes against, wrote that she is “confident the decision was made before we met, making the entire process meaningless,” and called for a new procedure. “This process was terribly flawed, and did not seem fair,” she wrote.

Leonard closed his statement to the board this way: “For these reasons, I will not be voting in favor of certifying Caleb Stidham to the ballot.”

The race

The Democratic nominee in House District 89 is Easton Retzke of Sandusky, who won his party’s nomination in the May 5 primary. Swearingen was unopposed for the Republican nomination in that primary and appeared on the ballot as DJ Swearingen.

The general election is Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The checkpoint is scheduled to run from 7 to 9 p.m., according to a news release the Patrol issued the same day. The Patrol placed the location on West Market Street near the intersection of South Shaffer Park Drive, on the city’s west side.

The operation is paid for with federal grant funds and is intended to deter and intercept impaired drivers, the Patrol said. Saturation patrols will run in the surrounding area at the same time, targeting impaired driving beyond the checkpoint itself.

Drivers who plan to drink should arrange a designated driver or another way home before they start, the Patrol said.

The agency has run joint traffic enforcement campaigns in Seneca County before, including a month-long effort with the Sheriff’s Office targeting failure-to-yield violations. The Patrol’s Norwalk Post also investigates fatal crashes across the county.

The Patrol typically releases checkpoint results, including the number of drivers screened and any arrests, after the operation concludes.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The vote came on Wednesday, June 28, 2017, when the Ohio House passed House Bill 49, the state’s two-year operating budget, by a margin of 59 to 40. Merrin, then a first-term Republican from Monclova Township, voted yes. Among the hundreds of statutes the bill amended was section 122.175, the provision that exempts data center equipment and construction materials from Ohio’s sales and use tax.

Four years later, in 2021, Merrin accepted $1,000 from the American Electric Power Ohio Committee for Responsible Government, according to Ohio Capital Journal’s review of state campaign finance records. As of September 2024, AEP had collected more than $6 million in Ohio data center tax breaks, per Policy Matters Ohio’s accounting of the exemption.

The next year, he accepted $500 from a Windstream Holdings PAC. Windstream that year advertised eight “key data center locations” in Ohio. Two of them, the Capital Journal reported, sat inside facilities operated by Cologix and CyrusOne — companies that had drawn more than $6 million and more than $5 million in the same state break.

The contributions total $1,500. They arrived four and five years after the vote, and nothing in the public record establishes that one had anything to do with the other. What the record shows is a lawmaker who helped widen a subsidy and then took money from the industry drawing it — a sequence voters in the 9th District are entitled to weigh as they decide whether to send him to Congress on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

What the break became

Ohio’s data centers collected $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives between 2017 and 2024, according to a 2025 report by SRC EvalMetrics prepared for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. Then the AI buildout arrived and the numbers stopped resembling anything the state had budgeted for.

Signal Ohio reported in May that the sales tax exemption alone cost Ohio about $1.6 billion in 2025 — roughly 11 times the state’s own forecast. Six days later, on Wednesday, May 27, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine directed the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to stop accepting new data center exemption requests. The authority met one last time on Monday, June 1, and approved a $42.3 million exemption for two Cologix projects in Delaware and Licking counties — a deal DeWine carved out of his own moratorium. That approval pushed the running total of exemptions issued since 2025 to nearly $2.17 billion.

The Cologix deal is a useful measure of what Ohio buys. In exchange for $42.3 million in forgone revenue, the company committed to create 90 full-time jobs. That works out to about $111,000 per job.

Merrin was not the only northwest Ohio Republican in the yes column in 2017. Bill Reineke, then the state representative for the 88th District covering all of Sandusky County and most of Seneca County, also voted for HB 49. Reineke is now Ohio Senate president pro tempore and sits on the joint legislative committee reviewing whether the exemption should survive at all.

The bill Ohioans are paying

The case against the exemption is no longer theoretical. Grid operator PJM’s capacity prices, driven primarily by data center growth, jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day in 2024 to $329.17 — a 1,038% increase, Reuters reported in July. Average industrial electricity prices in Ohio rose 26% in the year ending December 2025, against a 7% national increase for industrial users. Residential customers absorbed 9%.

Ohio households were projected to spend about $745 on electricity this summer, up from $691 a year earlier, with the National Energy Assistance Directors Association pointing to data center demand as one driver.

AEP, which gave Merrin the larger of the two contributions, has been raising rates on Ohio customers through the same stretch.

His own township hit the brakes

The backlash in northwest Ohio has not come from the left. It has come from township trustees and small-city councils in some of the most Republican terrain in the state — including Merrin’s own.

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026, the Monclova Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously — Barbara Lang, Deborah Stevens-Laux and Chuck Hoecherl, all yes — to impose a 12-month moratorium on the approval, establishment or construction of any data center in the township. Monclova Township is where Merrin lives.

Maumee City Council had passed its own 12-month moratorium on Feb. 2. Waterville Township trustees, next to the city Merrin served as mayor from 2008 to 2011, voted unanimously for one on Dec. 17, 2025. Richfield Township followed the same night as Monclova.

The same instinct reached Tiffin. On Monday, April 20, Tiffin City Council voted 6-0 to adopt Resolution 2026-42, freezing data center development inside city limits for up to a year. No data center had been proposed in Tiffin. Council wanted zoning tools in place first.

The position he holds now

At a VoteRPac debate in Toledo before the May 5 primary, the Capital Journal reported that Merrin said data centers do not need to be subsidized and don’t need tax breaks.

It is a defensible position. It is also the opposite of the policy his 2017 vote helped carry, and he has offered no account of the distance between the two — or of the contributions he accepted from the industry in between.

He has not been pressed on it. Merrin did not respond to the Capital Journal’s questions for its Aug. 10 story on the race. A local outlet covering his primary win noted he had not answered a single question or responded to a single inquiry during the campaign.

Silence may be a sound strategy in a district redrawn to favor him. The 9th was reconfigured in October 2025 into materially more Republican territory, though the Cook Political Report still rates the race a toss-up. Merrin took 44.1% in a five-way primary. He lost to U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in 2024 by about 2,400 votes.

Kaptur has taken the opposite tack, and loudly. “How much more will our citizens be forced to pay for power and water?” she asked on the House floor late last year. “They have a right to know.” Her campaign told the Capital Journal that data center companies “should pay their fair share — not force hardworking people and local municipalities to subsidize billions in tax breaks for wealthy CEOs and shareholders who can easily afford to pay their own way.”

Voters in Lucas, Erie, Ottawa, Fulton and Defiance counties settle it in November. They will do it while their electric bills climb, their township trustees hold the line, and the man asking for their vote declines to say a word about the subsidy he helped widen or the money he took from the companies collecting it.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Haitians in Springfield are getting letters telling them to report to the ICE office in either Blue Ash (near Cincinnati) or Westerville (near Columbus). 

“When they do, their passports are collected,” said Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church. 

“They’re fitted with ankle (monitors); I call them ankle shackles.” 

This is happening after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that President Donald Trump can end temporary protected status for the 330,000 Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.

TPS officially ended for Haitians on July 27 and a court lifted an injunction last week.

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

Even though about 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio, only Haitians in Springfield are being asked to wear the ankle monitors as of now, Ruby said.

“What you’re seeing in Ohio is a Springfield focused effort,” he said.

He has gone down to ICE’s Blue Ash office with some Haitians to receive their ankle monitors, which can track where people are at any given moment and have about a 75 mile radius, Ruby said.

“The ICE officers indicated, ‘If you keep coming back every time we call you, that may help your immigration case,’ which I don’t believe,” he said. 

“I think it’s a means to round up people quickly, and that when they’re ready, they have the logistics in place to deport them. I think that’s what’s going to happen.” 

The Haitians are then told to report back to the ICE office when they are summoned, which is expected to be every three to four weeks, Ruby said. 

“It’s inciting a lot of fear,” Ruby said. “I think (ICE’s) real goal is for them to self-deport. … I think it boils down to they want to have complete control over them, so (ICE) can easily deport them as soon as they’re ready.”

Ruby is unaware of any Haitians from Springfield who have self-deported back to Haiti. 

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

“It just makes me sick thinking of the sexual violence that is the norm in Haiti,” Ruby said. “There there are kids who sat next to our kids in Springfield City Schools who are going to be raped if they’re sent back, and that’s just the truth.”

More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. Springfield City Schools declined to comment for the story.

ICE detained 35 people — including four Haitians — in central Ohio between Aug. 5 through Aug. 10, said Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin. Ruby said he has not noticed an increased ICE presence in Springfield. 

“They say they would come for the Haitians on this special task force, but they take any collateral damage people,” Eldredge said in a text message. 

The ICE office in Westerville was full of Haitians coming out with ankle monitors when Eldredge was there last week.

Many of their Brazilian clients in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were asked to start wearing ankle monitors in July 2025. She said they have a 16-year-old client wearing an ankle monitor in Pittsburgh. 

“It is very embarrassing to wear them,” Eldredge said in a text message. “(The) devices cause lesions, rashes and blisters, bleeding on their ankles.” 

She said it can be hard for their clients to sleep with the ankle monitors. 

“It beeps in the middle of the night and (it’s) hard to get comfortable,” Eldredge said in a text message.

The ankle monitors will start beeping if the battery is not functioning well, Eldredge said. 

“They break all the time and batteries malfunction and get very hot, some caught on fire when charging,” she said in a text message. 

Some people are afraid of going back to the ICE office, so Eldredge knows folks who have cut off the ankle monitors and leave the state or self-deport. 

“(Officials) follow up where they leave that monitor and sometimes just take some collaterals,” she said. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The decision put an Ashville referendum, which would strike down the village council’s approval of a local data center project, back on track to make Ashville’s ballot. It also makes municipalities that pass future emergency resolutions — which waive a 30-day grace period for standard resolutions — explain why they need to take effect immediately.

Brian Meyers, a plaintiff supporting the referendum and a bus technician for over 20 years, said the court’s decision felt like a statement against those who have tried to block their efforts, even if the referendum fails in November.

“If it goes on the ballot, and folks vote for [the data center project], then so be it,” he said. “That’s the will of the people, and that’s how it’s supposed to play out.”

The case started in April, when the Ashville Village Council approved a term summary for Virginia-based developer EdgeConneX to build two data center buildings and an 800-megawatt natural gas plant.

Ashville allowed EdgeConneX to start plans immediately by declaring an emergency, stating it was necessary for “the public peace, health, and safety” and adding that the council “needs to accept these terms as soon as possible so that this project is not unnecessarily delayed.”

Meyers said he learned about the new data center from an announcement on the back of his water bill. Alongside other Ashville residents, he helped gather enough signatures to petition for a referendum overturning the emergency resolution.

State law bars referendums from overturning emergency resolutions, and Ashville’s fiscal auditor blocked the petition. The petition’s supporters appealed to the state’s highest court in July.

“This is blatantly not an emergency,” Meyers said, “and luckily, the Supreme Court felt the same way.”

In a near-unanimous decision, the court ruled that the village’s stated reasons were not enough to be a valid emergency. The first reason “merely parrots” state law on emergency resolutions, and the second reason could apply to almost any emergency measure, the court wrote.

“All emergency measures are presumably designated as such because commencement of the underlying matter should not be delayed,” the majority said. “But Resolution No. 06-2026 does not explain why waiting 30 days for the resolution to take effect … would unnecessarily delay the EdgeConneX project.”

The village resolution is still in effect, and EdgeConneX’s plans are in motion. The natural gas plant portion of the project sits in front of the Ohio Power Siting Board for approval.

Meanwhile, the Pickaway County Board of Elections will now decide whether to validate the petition. At the end of its opinion, the court cautioned that the board of elections could deny the petition if it finds that the resolution was an administrative action that cannot be struck down by referendum. The board of elections is consulting the county prosecutor’s office on the issue.

On deck: A large-scale data center ban in Trenton heads to the Ohio Supreme Court

Another group trying to get data centers on their local ballot is also appealing to the Ohio Supreme Court, this time out of Trenton.

Organizers for Woodsdale and Trenton Environmental Resistance gathered 336 valid signatures for a local ban on new data centers that use over 25 megawatts of power, largely in response to an 880,000 square foot data center project in the city proposed by California-based developer Prologis.

From Cleveland to Clearcreek Township, dozens of Ohio municipalities have passed temporary bans on new data centers. City councils in Pataskala, Sunbury, Hubbard, and Urbana have approved ballot initiatives for permanent bans similar to the one proposed in Trenton.

Plaintiff and Trenton resident Barry Blankenship said the ban is meant to address hyperscale data centers, which are increasingly being used to train and power artificial intelligence models. He referenced low water pressure near data centers in Georgia and extreme pollution from a massive xAI data center in Tennessee as test cases against them.

“That’s not what we need in our communities at all,” he said.

Trenton City Council rejected their petition at an Aug. 4 meeting and passed an ordinance that set 10% of the city’s registered voters, or 820 people, as the required threshold for petition signatures.

The resistance group organizers filed a lawsuit against the city in the Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday. They argue that the city’s ordinance is overruled by a 1996 Ohio Supreme Court case that set 10% of voters in the last general municipal election, or 128 people in Trenton’s case, as the bar to clear.

Blankenship said the fight against his city council has left him with little faith in his local government.

“We knew we were in an uphill battle with them, but you still have to at the end of the day stand for something,” he added. “You’ve got to try to protect your community, one way or the other.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Green, a Democratic state representative in Idaho, knew that breast cancer ran in her family and she “just had an inkling” that she should be tested.

She was two weeks shy of the day her last remaining embryo would be implanted through in vitro fertilization. It was the one shot she had left to give her firstborn son a sibling, since it took several rounds of in vitro fertilization to get pregnant the first time.

The mammogram confirmed her fears: There was in fact a lump in her breast, and a biopsy of the tumor confirmed it was cancer. Worse yet, it was a type of cancer fueled by estrogen and progesterone, two of the main hormones that skyrocket during pregnancy. She likely could not get pregnant and be treated for cancer at the same time.

“The doctor’s file said if you had gotten pregnant, this could have been a disaster,” Green said.

Several years earlier, Green had cosponsored bipartisan legislation, enacted in July 2023, codifying the best practices already in use by surrogacy agencies in Idaho, a state that has been called the unofficial capital of surrogacy in the United States. Last year, she found herself calling one of the agencies she’d worked with on the bill to ask for their help, this time as a client. She hired a surrogate to carry her second child, another boy, who was born in June.

But opposition to the two ways that Green had her children, IVF and surrogacy, is rising.

In the past two years, Republicans in Idaho and four other states have added specific anti-IVF language to their state party platforms, and some anti-abortion groups, including Students for Life of America and Live Action, have become increasingly outspoken in their opposition to both IVF and surrogacy.

One reason is that many same-sex couples use both methods to have children, and many conservatives believe children should be raised by heterosexual married couples. Conservative critics also connect surrogacy to immigration, saying it facilitates “birth tourism” and birthright citizenship. And they note that IVF can involve the discarding of some embryos, which they say is akin to abortion.

The latter is connected to the idea that a fetus or embryo is a person, with legal rights.

As of June, lawmakers in at least 17 states had introduced 36 bills this year that would codify personhood rights for embryos or fetuses, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights advocacy group. Opponents were able to defeat them by arguing that they might limit IVF, which remains broadly popular.

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Republicans in Congress have blocked legislation that would directly protect IVF as a fertility treatment.

Elizabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born 44 years ago in Virginia, said she has been advocating against so-called fetal personhood bills for the past 15 years, but the rhetoric opposing IVF in particular is getting louder and the threats are growing.

“As somebody who is a product of this technology, I always think of it in terms of, ‘Geez, I hope I’m not the last first of something,’” Carr told Stateline.

Political attention

IVF and surrogacy as fertility treatments make up a small percentage of total births nationwide, but the number is increasing gradually every year, and IVF is the most popular assisted fertility technology. In March, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reported that for the first time, more than 100,000 babies were born with the help of IVF.

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, babies born through surrogacy represented about 14 out of every 100,000 deliveries between 2017 and 2020.

President Donald Trump has discussed supporting policies that would lower the cost of IVF treatment, which typically costs tens of thousands of dollars per cycle, but so far, the actions taken by the administration on the topic have been limited.

In June, however, the Texas Republican Party adopted language in its 2026 platform that opposes public funding for IVF, and calls for regulation of the assisted reproduction industry as a whole, including mandatory reporting on embryo creation and storage. It also says in one section that the Texas Legislature must “protect fetal life from destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy.”

“We support a ban on contract surrogacy involving foreign nationals, which may involve a form of trafficking and may lead to claims of citizenship. We also support prohibiting third-party egg and sperm donations and the commercialization of human reproduction in Texas; and support policies that promote the welfare of children, medical transparency, and the protection of biological parents,” another portion of the platform reads.

The Idaho Republican Party also added language to its 2026 platform saying it opposes “the destruction of human embryos.” Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina and Oklahoma adopted similar language in 2024 and 2025.

“Party platforms are mostly about intraparty politics and jockeying for position, but at the same time, you have to pay attention, because that symbolism matters,” said Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Green, the Idaho legislator, has put significant time and effort into developing relationships with Republicans, including by sharing her stories of fertility struggles and bringing her firstborn son to the Idaho Capitol during the legislative session.

She tried to pass a bill protecting IVF access in Idaho in 2024, but it failed. But another bill that would have established personhood from the moment of conception also failed after Green’s fertility doctor told a legislative committee it would threaten her clinic’s ability to continue to offer IVF treatments.

But Green thinks surrogacy is next on the list for Idaho legislators to try to limit in the 2027 session.

“We’re going to see them, I have no doubt,” Green said.

International implications

Some advocates for IVF say conservative opposition is just as much about trying to prevent same-sex couples from accessing fertility treatments as it is about an objection to embryo destruction. Tipton thinks that extends to the objection to surrogacy as well, but goes further in his criticism of groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for Trump’s second term.

“For groups like Heritage, (surrogacy) is a nice synergy that allows them to be xenophobic, homophobic and anti-choice all at once,” he said.

Emma Waters, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, refers to surrogacy as “baby selling.” She noted in a recent interview that people from countries that are enemies of the U.S. can hire a surrogate and obtain citizenship. She said the U.S. is in a cold war with China, and by age 35, a surrogate-born child from China could run for president. The group opposes allowing residents of other countries to hire U.S. surrogates.

“If (the American Society for Reproductive Medicine) spent less time lobbing insults and more time ensuring patients actually receive the care its own guidelines call for, American families would be better served,” Waters told Stateline, responding to Tipton.

Waters added that she thinks couples turn to IVF too early without exploring the underlying causes of infertility, an idea that ties back to a conservative philosophy called restorative reproductive medicine, which also discourages the use of birth control.

“We also make no apologies for raising serious ethical and policy questions about commercial surrogacy — including the commodification of women and children and the documented use of U.S. surrogacy arrangements to obtain birthright citizenship,” Waters said.

In a blog post last month, Waters said in the past six months, she has received more requests for help drafting legislation to regulate surrogacy than any other topic.

In November, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, introduced a bill that would prevent “adversarial nations” from hiring Americans as surrogates. The list would include China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. It has 13 Republican cosponsors, but has not advanced in the Senate.

A recent study found that between 2014 and 2020, about 32% of surrogate pregnancies were for international couples. About 41% of those were from China, where surrogacy is illegal. The next-highest percentages were France and Spain, at about 9% and 8%, respectively.

Ashley Kirk-Robertson, an Idaho resident who delivered Green’s newborn baby in June, doesn’t see it the same way. Green’s baby was her fourth surrogacy pregnancy. Her first was in 2019, for a single father from Spain, where surrogacy is illegal. The second was for a husband and wife from Israel, and the third was for a same-sex couple from Israel.

“They truly are just here because coming here for the surrogacy is cheaper or because in their country it’s not allowed,” Kirk-Robertson said.

Kirk-Robertson has two children of her own, but says her surrogate families — including Green’s — become extensions of her own family. She is currently pumping milk for Green’s newborn, because Green had a double mastectomy after discovering a second type of breast cancer shortly after her initial diagnosis in 2025.

“For people who I guess have never gone and walked through this experience, I have a hard time, because they sit here and try to say this is wrong or that is wrong, but until they’ve truly been in my shoes or those parents’ shoes, it’s just a whole different experience than what they see from the outside,” she said.

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.

Those states — California, Connecticut, Maine and New York — are among the states with the highest immunization rates, and they are among those that have been most successful in controlling the worst measles outbreak in more than three decades.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia require students to have certain vaccines before attending public school. All allow exemptions for children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Forty-six states plus the District of Columbia also allow exemptions for religious and/or personal beliefs.

Trump’s order, which he signed on Monday, says the attorney general will take legal action against states that do not provide “religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.”

Some health officials said that Trump’s order, which has questionable legal authority, is unlikely to prompt the states without nonmedical exemptions to change course. And any legal action would take years to wend its way through the courts.

But they criticized the executive order, and its legal threats, for contributing to the misinformation and skepticism that have lowered vaccination rates nationwide.

“It puts a lot of misinformation and a lot of fear and doubt in parents’ minds,” said Dr. Thomas Lew, clinical assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “It clouds the conversation around vaccines and their importance and their safety.”

Dr. Molly O’Shea, a pediatrician who practices in suburban Detroit, warned that nonmedical exemptions “increase the number of parents who opt to forgo one or more vaccines for any list of reasons.”

“The learning environment is then more fragile because of the risk of disruption by infectious illness,” she said.

At the same time, O’Shea said, public health requires empathy with parents who are sincerely worried about their children’s well-being and may have been misinformed about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

“Families who are opting not to vaccinate are doing it from the same place that we’re recommending vaccines. They want their children healthy and well,” O’Shea said. “Just because we come to the opposite conclusion doesn’t mean we didn’t start with the same values.”

In response to Trump’s order, political leaders and health officials in many states, including California, Connecticut,  Maine and New York, vowed to maintain their vaccination rules.

California currently has 52 measles cases, Connecticut has two, Maine has five and New York has 10. All four states have vaccination rates higher than 95%, considered critical to “herd immunity” that can protect the unvaccinated to some degree.

“Maine will continue to follow the science and the facts, and our approach to vaccines remains unchanged by yesterday’s executive order,” Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said in a statement published Tuesday.

As of early August, measles cases were at their highest level since 1991. The states with the highest numbers were South Carolina (670), Utah (524), Pennsylvania (216), Texas (216) and Virginia (176). All of those states allow families to opt out of the school vaccine requirement for personal or religious reasons.

Of the five states with the most cases, only Virginia has a school vaccination rate of more than 95%.

Virginia’s statewide rate was 95.6% for 2024-25, but the measles outbreak was in two rural counties west of Richmond, where measles vaccination rates are less than 75%.

Deaths from another vaccine-preventable childhood illness, whooping cough, also are on the rise. Last year, there were 32 whooping cough deaths, the most since at least 1999. Before vaccines became available in the 1940s, as many as 200,000 children contracted whooping cough every year and 9,000 died.

Whooping cough death statistics for every state were not available, but Kentucky reported three whooping cough deaths last year, its first fatalities in five years, while Louisiana reported two deaths.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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 U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to spend between $10 million to $20 million on a device from Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies, according to a recent notice. The Associated Press first reported about the upcoming no-bid contract. 

The devices the department is seeking are called “G.L.O.V.E,” which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. One review says the products “quickly and safely allow an officer to overcome the resistance of a non-compliant subject.” 

“While every situation presents its own unique challenges, the G.L.O.V.E has led to an exponential increase in safety outcomes,” another review says. “Notably, in several instances, its mere presence was enough to de-escalate conflict without the need for force.” 

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement to the Lantern that ICE is “constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.”

“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” the spokesperson said. 

Representatives of another central Kentucky company that provides training for the G.L.O.V.E., APB Consulting Solutions, demonstrated the G.L.O.V.E. last week for Kentucky lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee. A presentation said the product is used by various law enforcement groups, including sheriff and police departments, hospital security, juvenile detention centers, and military and federal agencies

Rep. T.J. Roberts, R-Burlington, was shocked by a G.L.O.V.E. during the demonstration. He told the Lantern that it “didn’t hurt that bad,” and he’s felt more pain “from minor gunsmithing accidents.” 

“Realistically, what it did is it just redirected my mind to the sensation I was feeling in my arm, to where I wasn’t even thinking of not complying or resisting,” he said.  

Roberts added that he had “no problem with ICE using this,” and added that the company has said “they don’t sell it to agencies until they’ve done the training protocol on how to properly use the device.”

“I don’t think there would be much newsworthiness about this if it were any other government agency that has law enforcement capability,” he said. “This is a good tool that I don’t think anyone can really object to.” 

Erin Petrey, a former congressional candidate and progressive advocate from Lexington, said she loves “ supporting local businesses, but not like this.” She is also concerned about how ICE agents would use the device. 

“We’ve already seen that ICE agents are undertrained. They are trigger-happy,” she said. “We’re seeing a significant amount of abuses of power, and giving another way for these undertrained, overarmed agents to terrorize our communities is disturbing to say the least.”

Petrey said that while the device has been described as “not lethal,” she has concerns that “it will be deployed and utilized much more freely because they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’”

“Anyone who’s using this will just feel more emboldened as a way to control people and hurt people in our community,” she added. 

The DHS spokesperson said its “officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training,” and referred to the latest use of force policy for ICE, which was issued in 2023. 

Eric King, a spokesperson for the ACLU 0f Kentucky, said in a statement the organization is “deeply concerned” about the plans to “provide ICE agents with another tool capable of inflicting pain on people in their custody or during enforcement encounters.”

“Before expanding ICE’s arsenal, the federal government should be demonstrating that existing safeguards, use-of-force policies and accountability mechanisms are meaningful and effective. We have seen little reason for the public to have that confidence,” King said. “Our concern is not where this product is manufactured or what other Kentucky companies may choose to do in the future. Our concern is whether an agency exercising extraordinary power over people’s freedom and safety should be given increasingly coercive tools without corresponding transparency, oversight and accountability.”

A representative for Compliant Technologies declined to comment Wednesday. 

This story has been updated with additional comments. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Justin Salsburey, 44, admitted in federal court in Columbus that he took part in a narcotics conspiracy involving bulk shipments of both drugs, WOSU reported, citing the U.S. Attorney’s Office. His wife, 39-year-old Ruthann Rankin, pleaded guilty to drug charges last week.

Each pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute at least 500 grams of methamphetamine and at least 40 grams of fentanyl. The offense carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life.

Salsburey worked for ARK Protection Group, the private firm that ran security for Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor. He was on the family’s detail until his arrest on December 30, 2025. Rankin taught in the Urbana City Schools; the district removed her from her job after the arrests.

The investigation started with a tip. Court documents state that in November 2025, the Logan County Sheriff’s Office told the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force that packages containing drugs were arriving at the couple’s Bellefontaine home. Authorities said roughly 260 packages came through the mail between August 2024 and December 2025.

Officers watching the house saw the pair collect the packages and stash the drugs in a cooler on the porch for customers to pick up, according to authorities. Salsburey also drove to a post office in Dublin to mail fentanyl and methamphetamine pills to buyers.

A search of the home turned up fentanyl and methamphetamine pills, suspected steroid vials and a dozen guns.

The quantities were substantial. Investigators who executed the search warrant on December 30 catalogued approximately 264 grams of blue pills that field tested positive for fentanyl, roughly 938 grams of orange pills that tested positive for methamphetamine, and about 19 grams of triangular orange pills that tested positive for MDMA, along with steroids and other suspected controlled substances, according to court documents described by WSYX.

The Drug Enforcement Administration considers 2 milligrams of fentanyl a potentially lethal dose — an amount that fits on the tip of a pencil. Measured against that standard, the 264 grams of fentanyl-positive pills seized from the Bellefontaine house amounts to roughly 132,000 potentially lethal doses, more than the combined populations of Seneca and Sandusky counties. That figure counts the full weight of the pills; field tests confirm fentanyl is present, not how much of each pill is fentanyl.

Rankin told investigators she helped Salsburey sell steroids and Adderall pills, and that her husband started with steroids before moving into other drugs.

What the campaign said — and what it did

Ramaswamy’s campaign has said it had no way to know. Spokesperson Connie Luck said in January that Salsburey had cleared multiple background checks — by the security company, the FBI and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation — before he was hired, according to the Associated Press. She said the most recent check was conducted by Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center in September, that Salsburey passed a pre-employment drug test, and that he never failed a random screening. Luck said in January that ARK Protection would be relieved of its responsibilities and the campaign would move to a new security provider.

Campaign finance records tell a more complicated story about the timing. As TiffinOhio.net reported in June, the campaign kept paying ARK Protection Group in the weeks after the arrest — $14,000 in all, including a final $2,000 payment that cleared four days after the campaign publicly announced it was cutting ties with the firm. ARK closed on January 21, 2026, one day after that last payment went through.

ARK founder Ron Gazboda said in a statement that he was sorry to have disappointed the Ramaswamy family.

A candidate running on the drug crisis

The pleas land less than three months before Ohioans vote. Ramaswamy faces Democrat Amy Acton on November 3 in a contest Cook Political Report moved to Toss Up in July, the first time the race has carried that rating since 2018.

The drugs did not stay in Logan County. Authorities said Salsburey mailed fentanyl and methamphetamine pills to a customer in Middleburg Heights, a Cleveland suburb, and that buyers collected packages from the cooler on the couple’s porch.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Tuesday order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order from taking effect anywhere in the country makes the administration’s request to the Supreme Court more urgent, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. 

“The district court’s new order confirms the urgent need for this Court to grant the stay of the permanent injunction and to explain its rationale for doing so,” Sauer wrote. 

Election Day is Nov. 3, less than three months away.

Decisions in two cases at district and circuit courts have reached different conclusions about whether the rulemaking could continue in the lead-up to this fall’s elections. 

That means the Supreme Court’s decision, now on its emergency docket, will likely determine whether the executive order can move forward. A decision could come any day.

The Trump executive order would limit vote-by-mail, the primary method of voting in several states, especially in the West. 

It would require states to send the federal government lists of voters who intend to vote by mail ahead of the election and restrict the U.S. Postal Service from delivering ballots to or from people not on the list, among other things.

The administration has sought to focus arguments on the narrow legal question of whether an executive order can be challenged before an agency, in this case the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security, issues a final rule. The government argues that the executive order only instructs the agencies to issue rules, and those rules are not yet final, and therefore cannot be challenged.

Trial court order

Talwani’s memorandum and order on Tuesday rejected that argument, and she expanded a previous injunction from just the 23 states and the District of Columbia that brought the suit to be effective nationwide. 

Talwani said — in her order published just 12 weeks before Election Day — she was only blocking the order with respect to the “fast-approaching” midterms. Further arguments over the merits of federal voting regulations could still happen, but federal law requires the status quo to be preserved this close to an election, she said. 

Because of the tight timeline and the assumption that a final rule will be similar to a June 2 notice of proposed rulemaking, Talwani said she could rule simply on the constitutionality of the executive order. It was an easy call, she said.

“The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections,” she wrote, citing the Constitution.

The administration has not shown how blocking the executive order would harm the public, as it has not documented any “illegal or fraudulent absentee voting,” while the voting rights organizations challenging the order have shown that voters with disabilities, in rural areas, who need translation help, attend college outside their home states and in other circumstances would be harmed, she said.

In fact, the organizations showed their members in states across the country are already being harmed by the uncertainty around what rules will govern the midterm elections, said Talwani.

“Where the (executive order) is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy, the court finds that enfranchisement heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation,” Talwani wrote. The proximity to Election Day “underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election.”

The Federal Voter Registration Act also prohibits states from purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election, Talwani wrote.

DOJ’s double bind

The nature of the argument puts Sauer and the U.S. Department of Justice in a seemingly difficult legal position, arguing both that the executive order cannot be challenged because it is not enforceable and that the administration must be allowed to put an enforceable rule in place before Election Day.

Sauer asked the court Wednesday to rule for the government and “make clear” that it was doing so “based on the uncertainty concerning the government’s future actions.”

But in the next paragraph, he said implementing the executive order was crucial to the public interest.

“In all events, it is critical that the Court act promptly on the pending stay,” Sauer said. “Otherwise, the district court’s erroneous orders will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement Section 3 of the Executive Order for the federal elections in November, thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity.”

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 post on Truth Social, the president praised Leavitt, the youngest person to serve in the role, as one of his closest aides in the White House and said she will move to an adviser role outside of government.

“Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump wrote.

“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections,” he added.

When asked whether the White House had chosen the next press secretary, a spokesperson pointed States Newsroom to Trump’s and Leavitt’s social media posts and did not provide additional comment. 

In a nearly 500-word statement on the social media platform X, Leavitt thanked the president “for granting me so many extraordinary opportunities,” which she said included spending “countless hours” in the Oval Office and meeting foreign leaders and Americans “from all walks of life.” 

“Most of all, I am thankful to the President for entrusting me with the distinct privilege of speaking on his behalf at the White House podium. I have spoken with great pride about the many historic accomplishments of this Administration, and I have relished holding the liberal media accountable and ensuring the American people hear the truth about President Trump’s successes,” said Leavitt, who was at times combative with journalists during routine press briefings.

Leavitt gave birth to her second child on May 1, and held her first briefing following parental leave less than a month ago. She described her decision to leave “one of the most demanding jobs in the world” as “bittersweet.”

Leavitt said she will “always remain a vocal advocate for MAGA and the Republican Party” and suggested she’d continue antagonizing the president’s political opponents.

“Our country is facing an existential threat from an increasingly extremist Democrat Party that seeks to destroy everything great about America, and I believe it is incumbent upon all of us who care about this country to fight back against that threat,” she wrote.

Leavitt credited White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who co-managed Trump’s 2024 re-election bid, for initially hiring her during the campaign.

Leavitt was 27 years old when she assumed the role of press secretary in January 2025.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a new rule to reduce the “federal burden” for Head Start programs.

In an announcement by the agency, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said that with the change, “we are removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands of children.”

The agency estimates the change would save the federal government $2.2 billion, with caps to “administrative overhead” and reductions in “compliance-driven activities.”

Under the proposed rule, which is still in its public comment period, the states would be given the responsibility of overseeing education requirements, background checks, transportation matters, and class sizes and ratios.

“The goal is to modernize safety standards by replacing rigid federal mandates with state flexibility and practical, competency-based alternatives,” the HHS release stated.

Head Start began six decades ago as part of a “war on poverty” launched by President Lyndon Johnson, aimed at helping children from low-income households obtain the education needed to start their development.

In 2023 data released by child advocacy group Groundwork Ohio, 5,900 of Ohio’s infants and toddlers were enrolled in Early Head Start, which serves children up to three years old.

Through Early Head Start, more than 128,000 home visits were conducted in that year, according to the data. The Ohio Head Start Association said programs across the state serve more than 26,000 children up to age five.

The proposed changes would eliminate federal requirements regarding “curriculum implementation, parent committees, family engagement procedures, and service delivery structures,” according to the language of the draft rule.

Julie Stone, executive director of the Ohio Head Start Association, said eliminating the federal standards mentioned in the rule would mean taking away developmental screenings, teacher qualifications, and mental health services, among other things.

“If the way we serve more children is by putting more infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with each teacher, we have to ask honestly what those children are losing,” Stone said in a statement.

“Young children need individual attention, qualified teachers, and the comprehensive supports that prepare them to succeed in school and life.”

Currently, Head Start requires teacher-to-child ratios of 1-to-4 for classrooms with children under the age of three, 1-to-8 for three-year-olds, and 1-to-10 for four-year-olds.

Those ratios are based on evidence and an expert consensus that “pre-K quality is higher, and children are safer, and develop more when there are reasonable limits to the number of young children per staffer in the classroom,” according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

“Substantial research demonstrates that maintaining low child-to-teacher ratios is critical for positive interactions and learning gains, meaning any weakening of Head Start ratio standards poses direct threats to child safety, development, and overall program effectiveness,” the institute said in a recent brief.

Moving the requirements to match state-by-state standards would mean Ohio Head Start classrooms would have one educator for every five children up to age one, and a 1-to-6 ratio for children aged one year to 18 months.

For children 18 months to 2.5 years, the teacher-to-child ratio in Ohio is 1-to-7, and 1-to-8 for students aged 2.5 to three years.

Classes with three-year-olds can have one teacher for every 12 children, and those with four and five-year-olds can have a ratio of one teacher for every 14 kids, based on data from the federal Administration for Children and Families.

National organizations like the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Center for Learning Disabilities and others, signed on to a letter urging the Trump administration to rescind the proposed changes, and for Congress to reject them as well.

The letter said the changes would “gut the Head Start program” and remove the “high-quality standards” that exist within the program, such as small class sizes, teachers trained in multiple languages, and medical screenings for school readiness.

“These quality standards are the hallmark of the Head Start program that ensure every child receives an early education and services that promote health child development,” the letter stated.

“Without them, Head Start will exist in name only, offering unequal services based on where the child lives.”

The organizations also said the proposal would make it more difficult for children with disabilities, and those experiencing homelessness to enroll in the program, along with disproportionately affecting minority children.

Stone said the Ohio Head Start Association will be working with its Head Start and Early Head Start network “to ensure Ohio’s experience and Ohio’s voice are heard.”

“Head Start has spent 60 years building a model around what young children and their families actually need,” Stone said. “We shouldn’t call it cutting red tape when what we’re really cutting is quality.”

The public comment period for the proposed rule-change ends Oct. 6.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The cheapest ounce of marijuana in Ohio is $112 while the cheapest ounce in Michigan is $6.99, according to the WeedBuddy Cannabis Price Index.

In Arizona, it’s $49.99, and in Colorado, it’s $16.73.

The median cost of an ounce shows far closer prices though Ohio still sits as most expensive among the four states at $147.35, compared to $99 in Michigan, $120 in Arizona, and $110 in Colorado.

Ohio’s median price for an eighth of cannabis flower is $35, compared to Michigan’s $20 for the same amount as of July 31, the index shows.

“Price is going to be one of the most important aspects in terms of determining where they purchase cannabis,” said Morgan Fox, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. 

“People were already used to driving to Michigan to purchase cannabis, so as long as there’s still a massive price differential, they’re probably going to continue doing so at least for the foreseeable future.” 

Marijuana is illegal for recreational use in West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. 

Ohio recreational sales started in August 2024, about nine months after Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana.

A new law passed by Republican state lawmakers took effect earlier this year that made a wide variety of changes to the voter-passed law.

Ohio Senate Bill 56 criminalized bringing legal marijuana from another state back to Ohio. 

“If you’re caught with cannabis that cannot be verified purchased in Ohio or verified grown in Ohio, then it’s the same penalties as it was under prohibition of pre-legalization,” Fox said. 

However, he was doubtful Ohio customers knew about the changes to Ohio’s law. 

“If people had gotten used to doing that when cannabis was not legal in Ohio, they’re probably going to continue to do so,” Fox said. 

The law also bans possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original packaging and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of their car while driving.

Furthermore, the law reduced THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracted from a maximum of 90% down to a maximum of 70%, capped THC levels in adult-use flower to 35%, and banned smoking in most public places. 

Ohio’s total recreational marijuana sales were $1.67 billion as of July 11, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control. 

The median price of a standard eighth of cannabis flower was $36.40 in Columbus, $32 in Cincinnati, and $30.80 in Cleveland at the end of July, according to the price index. 

Compared to cities in Michigan, the median price of the same amount of cannabis flower, according to the price index., cost $25 in Lansing, $20 in Detroit, and $20 in Monroe, Michigan which is about 12 miles from downtown Toledo.

There have been 32.5 million units of manufactured products that have been sold and 267,590 pounds of plant material, according to the division. 

There are 223 dual-use marijuana dispensaries in Ohio as of Thursday, meaning they can sell medical and non-medical marijuana, according to the division. 

More than 160 Ohio municipalities or townships that have moratoriums in place banning the sale of adult-use cannabis as of June 3, according to Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Michigan voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2018 and sales started in December 2019. 

“Michigan’s market is much more well established, and we’ve seen in most cannabis markets that prices tend to go down over time,” Fox said. 

Michigan has more than 800 active retail licenses as of June 2026, and Michigan marijuana stores reported about $3.17 billion in revenue in 2025, according to the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency. 

“Michigan also has a much bigger market in terms of the numbers of dispensaries and the number of licensed businesses than Ohio does, largely because Ohio artificially capped that, so that means that since there’s more competition between those businesses, they have to keep their prices a little bit lower to be competitive,” Fox said. 

Michigan is the second-largest adult-use marijuana market in the nation, behind California. 

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.

But the fascination also goes back to something more tangible — and to a place only yards away from the fairgrounds. To the grounds of the brutalist Ohio History Center that went up in 1970. 

Four years later, Ohio Village opened there — a recreation of an 1890 village. 

For an 11-year-old, it was history made flesh as I walked the grounds and through the buildings and talked with interpreters in period costume doing things like blacksmithing or cooking over an open fire.

It seemed so cool because it was so rustic. My suburban life couldn’t possibly compete.

Of course, I couldn’t know all the things I’d later learn about the sanitation, diseases, and social mores of the time. But it was a powerful connection to my grandparents’ parents — some of whom had lived within a half-mile of that very spot in 1890. 

I’ll never forget it — and I’ll bet the same is true for most kids and adults now. Only now, it will be an outdoor museum that has seen more than $20 million in improvements. 

It also has an expanded mission that seeks to encompass a much longer period. And it not only seeks to teach visitors, but to learn from them as well.

“It’s been open for more than 50 years,” said Neil Thompson, marketing manager for the Ohio History Connection, which operates Ohio Village.

“It’s been a beloved, iconic place for all that time. We want it to be a beloved, iconic place for the next 50 years. So we want to remain relevant. When you think about how you do that, you have to have some flexibility and versatility for different time periods. When it comes to interpretation, you want to tell different stories.”

Closed since 2024, the improved Ohio Village will permanently reopen next spring.

I’m fond of saying that everybody loves history, some people just don’t know it yet. In other words, they need a point of contact — a way in. A way to see themselves or people like them in that distant mirror, as Barbara Tuchman put it.

For many, places like Ohio Village are just that, a place you can go inhabit and get a sense of what it was like back when.

It’s crazy to contemplate (for me, anyway), but the opening of Ohio Village is 52 years from the present day, while in 1974 it was 84 years removed from the period it sought to recreate. So we’re more than half as far away from Ohio Village’s opening as that was from 1890.

Michael Fouts, interpretive supervisor at Ohio Village, said it was important that the museum expand its mission to accommodate all that additional time that has passed.

“There are so many stories we couldn’t touch on because it was 1890 specifically,” he said during a July 20 press preview at the village.

“The turn of the century was such an important time for Ohio history and American history. Now we get to expand out to really important events such as World War I, the passage of the 19th Amendment (acknowledging women’s right to vote), the Great Depression. There’s all this important history packed into the early 1900s, so we get to share that now and hear people’s personal connection to all these stories as well.”

One way the staff intends to do that is by placing period-specific items in buildings along with interpreters who can speak to them.

Instead of role-playing as if they’re from an earlier time, the interpreters will speak as modern people who are knowledgeable about the period they’re interpreting.

“So speaking of that World War I era, we have Taylor House that is in the back of the village,” Fouts said.

“People will come in and they’ll see a German-language Bible, they’ll see German-language newspapers, they’ll later know that it’s the World War I era and they’ll be able to experience what this family experienced in Ohio as this war was going on, to give a very specific example. Cues and clues are going to be throughout the village to give that kind of backstory.”

Such a setting is poignant because it doesn’t just illustrate the official narrative of the era — that the United States was joining the Great War to make the world “safe for democracy.”

Despite the progressive rhetoric, the government also engaged in some harshly repressive measures — including against Ohio’s large German-American population.

Fouts said countless Ohioans undoubtedly have family stories about these and other experiences from the eventful half-century running from the Gilded Age through the Great Depression.

The History Connection wants to gather these on “talkback boards” and during special programming and events.

“We hope that this will be open for folks to come in and have a lot more in-depth conversation about what went on,” Fouts said. “They can come in, share their stories about their family histories, tell us about things they know from their past.”

What exactly will be done with the stories that are gathered is still to be determined. But the idea is to expand the period to look for pieces of history that are more personal to modern Ohioans

Civil War generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, both Ohioans, “are really great histories to learn, but we want to dive into everyday life,” Fouts said. 

And of course, everyday life is what living-history museums specialize in — and that’s what gives the experience its power. 

I still go to them whenever I get a chance and I always remember my visits. Like that day about six years ago that I stopped into The Print Shop in Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park. 

An aging newspaperman in an old, old-time newsroom. It was a total nerd fest, and I learned a lot.

Fouts said his group would try to cultivate that for others, whether it’s through a toy shop for kids or classes and craft demonstrations in Ohio Village’s buildings or events in the new bandstand.

“There’s a human connection when you’re hearing it from another person,” he said. “It makes a deeper impact — and when you’re in the setting too.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But as school districts make decisions on which tools are safe and worth spending thousands or millions of dollars on, some officials feel overwhelmed by the array of choices. Some states and districts have begun offering guidance for vetting AI purchases, but educators and experts say districts are still carrying much of the burden on their own.

While school districts have long wrestled with education technology purchases, AI is different because the industry is moving faster than districts and states can keep up with, said Mark Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. 

“There’s always an asymmetry between what the providers know and what the districts know,” Schneider told Stateline. “And the question is, can we set up mechanisms for helping the districts understand what’s going on and choosing better.”

Billions of dollars are at stake. The overall U.S. education technology market, which includes computers, software and digital content, generated almost $48 billion in revenue in 2024 and is expected to reach more than $90 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. The AI in education market in the United States generated about $2.5 billion in revenue last year and is expected to exceed $15 billion by 2033, the group said.

Scott Langford, superintendent of Sumner County Schools in Tennessee, said his district decided to test AI to address plateauing middle school reading scores. Langford said the district wanted to know whether AI could give students immediate feedback and help teachers see, in real time, where students struggled during regular classroom instruction.

“You have to identify what you need,” Langford said. “The (AI edtech) market is so overwhelming for districts and for vendors. … Most of them don’t really do much that drives any kind of change for students.” 

Sumner first tried Coursemojo — an AI-powered literacy tool used to support classroom instruction and provide real-time feedback to students and teachers — in a five-day micro-pilot in a sixth grade classroom, then piloted the tool in half of its sixth grade classrooms. Langford said the strongest tools are not the ones that replace teachers, but the ones that “help them see student understanding more quickly.”

Sumner has continued using Coursemojo after the pilot, Langford said.

The Allentown School District, a large, urban district in Pennsylvania, uses a two-phase review process for AI programs that Superintendent Carol Birks said includes non-negotiables such as student safety and data security. Vendors must ensure that all user-generated data and chat logs remain the exclusive property of the district, and vendors must explicitly state that student data will not be sold or used to train AI models.

A significant challenge is that the onus of making these decisions is placed entirely back on the individual school district.

– Allentown School District Superintendent Carol Birks

Birks said that while districts are making these decisions on AI tools, state and federal guidance would be helpful. In addition to Coursemojo, the district also uses other AI platforms like Google’s Gemini.

“A significant challenge is that the onus of making these decisions is placed entirely back on the individual school district,” said Birks. “Although Allentown has built strong internal capacity to handle these responsibilities, guidance from the state level on artificial intelligence vetting or protections would greatly assist school districts.”

What vetting looks like

In most cases, vendors must sign a data processing agreement, complete a security questionnaire and pass legal, privacy and security reviews before a tool can be approved for use in schools. And some states already have laws governing traditional education technology purchases and student data protections. But many districts haven’t laid out best practices or recommendations for how school districts enter contracts with vendors or even bidding processes for certain tools. 

And some AI use in classrooms has drawn criticism and legal action. Students and parents in Arizona and Kansas have filed federal lawsuits challenging school districts’ use of Gaggle — a student-safety monitoring platform that scans activity on school-issued accounts and devices — saying it violated their constitutional rights. In Los Angeles, the superintendent of public schools resigned after the district paid $3 million for an AI chatbot from a company called AllHere, which later filed for bankruptcy and whose founder was charged with fraud.

State education boards and agencies, which already regulate contracts for textbooks, transportation and student data systems, have filled in some gaps with vetting and procurement guidance for districts.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education instructs schools to understand who controls the data entered into any AI tool, examine third-party data-sharing practices, limit data collection to what is necessary, keep a human “in the loop” if the tool is being used for grading and discipline, and assess whether it improves student performance. 

New York City Public Schools updated its privacy and security review process to include standards for AI, require vendors to disclose what their AI tools are capable of, prohibit the use of student data to train AI models and meet transparency requirements so tools can be explained to families and students. 

Chicago Public Schools released an AI Guidebook governing the use of AI software and models and in December began blocking unapproved third-party AI products from its network.

“Chicago Public Schools welcomes the promising innovation of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, while safeguarding the development of students’ foundational skills and critical thinking,” a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson wrote to Stateline. 

The U.S. Department of Education has provided little guidance to districts about AI purchases.

The Southern Regional Education Board — a consortium of 16 Southern states that provides guidance on school issues — published an AI procurement and evaluation checklist last year for K-12 schools. 

Leslie Eaves, program director of project-based learning at the board who co-led the AI commission, said districts should first let adults test AI tools before placing them in front of students. She cautions that teachers should review AI-generated material before using it in the classroom and they need to trust their experience and expertise. 

“Anything with AI is a risky click,” she said. “There’s a lot of tool makers out there that are going to sell you their product and they’re going to say it’s the biggest and best in everything … At the end of the day, humans are the ones who will know what’s best for their schools and students.”’

Janice Mak, an associate director of curriculum and pedagogy at Arizona State University’s Learning Engineering Institute, says districts should evaluate whether an edtech tool is accessible, explainable, grounded in learning science and solving a real educational need.

“State level policy or guidance only goes so far, and there’s also a research gap and there’s also a policy gap,” Mak told Stateline.

Mak said she heard from a middle school teacher piloting an AI tool who noticed English learners were being unfairly penalized or misread by the system. The students noticed the bias, she said, and the teacher used it to teach them about algorithmic bias and how AI systems are trained.

‘A tall order for districts’

Still, districts are being asked to do too much on their own, said Sue Thotz, director of outreach for Common Sense Education at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that researches and evaluates media and technology used by children and schools.

Thotz points to a California data privacy agreement, which districts can use to ensure vendors comply with the state’s student data privacy laws, as a way to take some burden off districts by creating a blanket agreement vendors sign onto. The California Student Privacy Alliance, which developed the agreement, gives school systems a searchable database of vendors that have signed, reducing the need for each district to negotiate privacy terms from scratch. 

“Placing the burden upon a district to make sure that every single vendor they’re working with is in full compliance with their state and federal laws when it comes to privacy,” she said. “That’s a tall order for districts that are already stretched very, very thin.” 

Districts may also be sorting an accumulation of a decade’s worth of technology purchases, said Tracy Weeks, senior director of education policy and strategy at Instructure, the education technology company that makes the Canvas learning management system. 

An Instructure report found districts had access to an average of 3,001 digital tools, while students and educators used only four of those tools on average. The report, based on Canvas launch data from more than 12.6 million K-12 users, said the volume of available tools has teachers navigating too many platforms and districts overseeing student data across vendors.

“What I think has happened is that I think we did a lot of digital hoarding,” Weeks said. Now, she said, districts are asking, “What are the things we should actually keep? What do we need to use? What can actually move the needle?”

Shrinking budgets and the expiration of federal pandemic-era funding has also forced districts to scrutinize purchases. 

Dacia Toll, co-founder of Coursemojo, the software used by Sumner County and Allentown, said districts should first ask whether an AI product aligns with what is known about cognitive science and strong teaching methods. 

“Education has had a long-standing issue with vetting edtech for safety, usability and efficacy, and I just think AI is making that more pronounced,” she told Stateline. “There are a handful of additional risks, and there’s so much hype right now that I think some districts are feeling like they’re behind if they’re not actively implementing AI.” 

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.

Emily Moreno, Miller’s ex-wife and the daughter of U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, brought the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on behalf of the girl, who is identified only by her initials. It names Miller, Cleveland-area attorney Aaron Minc and Minc’s firm, Minc LLC, and asserts claims under a federal law barring the nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images, along with state-law claims for civil liability for criminal acts, invasion of privacy, negligence and civil conspiracy.

Subodh Chandra, lead counsel for the plaintiff, issued the following statement:

This child is an entirely innocent victim who has become collateral damage to her father’s political ambition. In a desperate attempt to keep his job and attack his ex-wife, the suit alleges, Congressman Max Miller and his attorney Aaron Minc engaged in incomprehensible recklessness by blasting to hundreds of thousands of people on the internet a nude photo showing this helpless two-year-old girl’s genitalia. Any parent—and any lawyer—knows the grave danger of posting nude photos of a toddler on the public web for pedophiles and bad actors to download. They victimized an innocent child to score political points, and we intend to hold them fully accountable under federal and state law.

The filing describes a sequence that unfolded over a single Sunday morning. Miller, facing renewed attention to allegations that he abused Moreno and their daughter, livestreamed a roughly 20-minute defense on X and told viewers he would post the records behind it. At 10:23 a.m. he posted a link to a public Dropbox folder titled “Miller Media Folder,” writing, “Here is a Dropbox with all the records I referenced today. I invite everyone who is interested to take a look.” The complaint says Minc created and owned the folder, and that Miller urged viewers to look inside it at least seven separate points during the broadcast.

Inside a subfolder of custody-exchange records, according to the complaint, was a PDF of messages exchanged through the court-ordered co-parenting app the couple was required to use. On page 53 of that document, the suit says, was an unredacted nude photograph of the toddler. The child’s name appears unredacted in the same document more than 70 times, the filing states. The complaint also says the photograph shows bruising on the girl’s shoulders and was taken after she had been in Miller’s care; she was later diagnosed with a broken collarbone.

The link briefly went down. “Apparently, there are people who don’t want this information out. Strange. Don’t worry, Dropbox will be back up momentarily,” Miller posted at 11:12 a.m. Minc later wrote that members of the public had been granted editing privileges and had deleted the files, and that he restored the folder to an earlier saved state to bring it back. That restoration, the suit alleges, republished the unredacted image. Miller then posted the link a second time: “Dropbox back online. Take a look.”

Minc has not disputed that he was responsible for the folder’s contents. In an Aug. 3 email to Moreno’s lawyers, attached to the complaint, he wrote that he published a pre-redaction version of the document and did not catch the error until about 9:40 the next morning — roughly 23 hours after the folder first went live. “I was under an enormous amount of pressure to get the files and link live again as quickly as possible,” he wrote. He added: “I am truly sorry and deeply regret the error. It was completely my fault and unintentional. Max Miller did not know.”

What Minc has disputed is what the photograph shows. He told POLITICO the day after the release that there were no images of genitals and that the picture showed a 2-year-old with her shirt off, calling the opposite characterization “deliberately false, sensationalized, and disgusting.” The complaint attaches a letter from Bradley Gascoigne, a pediatrician who says he has practiced for 43 years and reviewed the image without charge. He writes that the photograph depicts the child’s external genitalia. Moreno’s lawyers say the folder contained two separate images and that Minc has been pointing to the wrong one.

The federal statute the suit invokes provides liquidated damages of $150,000 for each disclosure or transfer of an intimate image, plus attorney fees and injunctive relief. That makes the total exposure a function of how many times the file was accessed — a number the complaint says the defendants have refused to produce despite repeated requests for download logs. The suit also asks the court to order the material preserved. TiffinOhio.net first reported on the contents of the evidence dump in the days after the Aug. 2 broadcast.

Miller has denied every abuse allegation against him, including claims that he threw scalding water at Moreno, held a gun to her head and injured their daughter. He has not been criminally charged. He sued Moreno for defamation in May over a Daily Mail report on the hot-water allegation, a case Minc is handling and that Moreno has moved to dismiss under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP law. The complaint filed Wednesday argues the toddler’s photograph had nothing to do with that case and served no legitimate litigation purpose. Cleveland’s WOIO reported it had sought comment from Miller and Minc.

The suit lands in the middle of a campaign Miller has refused to leave. The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation this month, at Miller’s own request, into whether he engaged in domestic violence or illegal drug use. The window for Ohio Republicans to put a different name on the November ballot has closed. He faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker and Brook Park councilman, in a Cleveland-area district President Donald Trump carried by about 11 points in 2024 and that the Cook Political Report now rates a toss-up.

None of that is on a ballot in Seneca or Sandusky county. But Miller’s name still appears on the endorsement page of Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The extraordinary episode unfolded July 8 after Trump boarded the former Air Force One following the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, after concerns reportedly arose about his safety on a new Air Force One, a retrofitted Boeing 747-8 jet donated to Trump by Qatar.

Trump had ordered a fresh wave of military strikes on Iran while attending the NATO summit, breaking a brief period of peace negotiations.

According to unnamed officials who spoke to The Washington Post, shortly after Trump waved to cameras as he ascended the older Air Force One, he was secretly taken to the back of a catering truck and shuttled to a nearby smaller Air Force C-32A plane.

Upon arriving at the Royal Air Force base in Mildenhall in eastern England, Trump was clandestinely ferried back into the former Air Force One and shortly thereafter descended the stairs in front of cameras. 

Press corps members who routinely travel with the president, as well as White House officials, remained on the decoy flight from Turkey to eastern England under the impression that Trump was on board, according to officials. The Post granted the officials anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the incident.

The Pentagon referred States Newsroom to the White House, which did not respond for comment.

The U.S. Secret Service did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

The catering truck

Photos taken by the traveling press pool from the tarmac in Turkey show reporters boarding the back of the former Air Force One via stairs on the right side rear of the plane. A catering truck, with its rear container raised to plane level, can be seen toward the front of the jet on the opposite side.

Once on the plane, members of the press were instructed by the Secret Service to completely close their window shades, according to a July 8 press pool report and a later press account Tuesday. 

A pool report is an official dispatch sent to thousands of news organizations to keep journalists and the public informed about the president’s whereabouts and actions.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he was flying from Turkey to the United Kingdom on the old powder blue Air Force One “for old time’s sake” and so that U.S. forces stationed in England could tour the newly retrofitted Air Force One bearing a navy blue and deep red design accented by gold stripes.

According to official press reports from the night of July 8, the old Air Force One touched down at Mildenhall Air Force Base at 10:16 p.m. local time and Trump descended the stairs at 10:56 p.m. The pool report noted that neither the president or any White House officials had spoken to the press on board while in flight from Turkey.

After greeting service members, Trump then ascended the stairs to the new Air Force One and gave a wave to the cameras at 11:01 p.m. local time. The plane was off the ground at 11:14 p.m., according to official July 8 pool reports.

‘If I go, you go’

Trump spoke to reporters shortly after take-off from the United Kingdom and was peppered with questions about why he did not take the new Air Force One jet after the NATO summit concluded.

Trump denied any security concerns and said the new jet was sent early to the U.K., and “the whole base came out and saw the plane,” according to official pool reports.

When asked why reporters were instructed to keep their window shades shut on the old jet, which they were led to believe the president was also on, Trump said, “Well, yeah, because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with,” he said, referring to Iran, according to the pool reports.

Reporters then pressed Trump on whether he was aware of a credible threat on his life from Iran.

“Well, I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions,” Trump told reporters aboard the flight according to the pool reports.

The New York Times reported on July 8 that Trump had switched planes because of a security threat related to the conflict with Iran. The Trump administration swiftly served subpoenas two days later on the reporters in a sweeping effort to learn the identities of their confidential sources.

The administration dropped the subpoenas on July 27 after a federal judge sharply criticized the investigation.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio’s next governor will appoint the five members of the Public Utilities Commission, which sets utility rates and set the parameters for data centers opening in cities across the state. 

Ohio Democratic candidate for governor Dr. Amy Acton announced on July 27 she supports a conditional moratorium on data centers “if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met,” she said in a statement.

Innovation Ohio, a progressive policy advocacy organization, said Acton has a strong data center proposal. 

“Requiring data centers to really pay their own money in terms of electricity, electricity in terms of really protecting the environment, protecting water, making sure workers are getting a fair shake out of these fields, that to us is really leveling the playing field and ensuring that going forward,” said Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern. 

Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy announced his three-fold data center plan on Aug. 6.

“If a data center is built in your community, then (1) you will no longer have to pay for your home’s electricity, (2) you will pay lower property taxes, and (3) the data center will be required to abide by all air and water quality standards without exception, and we will take the necessary steps to protect Ohio’s fertile farmland,” he said in a post on X.

“If any one of these three conditions is not met, the data center won’t be built. Period,” Ramaswamy said in his statement.

McGovern called Ramaswamy’s idea for data centers to pay for citizen’s electric bills “utter nonsense.”

“We see Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan that’s just like absolute nonsense in coming up with these wild ideas that don’t make any sense and aren’t based in any actual policy research, and instead are sort of just these silly promises,” McGovern said.

Ramaswamy’s plan does not specify how many miles away from a data center someone must be living to get their electricity for free. 

“There’s no detail, there’s no substance,” McGovern said. 

Ramaswamy said last year it’s a “good thing” AI data centers moving to Ohio. 

“I want the sectors of the future to come here, but that will make a level of demand on our electric grid of a kind that we have not seen in the history of our state … right at a time when we’ve also cut off and reduced the supply of base load power generation, shutting down coal plants that, on my watch, would have remained open,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted to X in March 2025. 

Ramaswamy has a financial stake in data centers by having financial positions in the chips that power AI to the companies that run the data centers, according to a report released earlier this year from Innovation Ohio. 

“He has rolled out a plan that is unserious and does not really tackle this vital issue for Ohioans, and he is personally getting richer off of data centers,” McGovern said. 

“He’s making money here, and all of a sudden that’s a political problem, so he’s walking that back.”

Ohio has more than 200 data centers, the sixth-highest state in the country, according to Pew Research Center. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 22, according to the Data Center Map. 

Ohioans are seeing increased electric bills. The average Ohio residential utility bills are projected to be about $800 for the summer — a 17% increase compared to last summer, according to a report by Third Way. 

Lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse have yet to pass any data center legislation. 

Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind a proposed constitutional amendment to ban new data centers, is collecting signatures to make the 2027 ballot.

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.

U.S. Rep. Max Miller was a political appointee in the first Trump administration who promoted Trump’s false claims of a “rigged” 2020 election before being elected to Congress in 2022.

The 37-year-old has a history of alleged physical assaults against women dating back to high school. Recently, shocking new allegations of domestic violence surfaced.

His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused him of throwing burning water on her, holding a gun to her head, and possibly fracturing the collarbone of their two-year-old daughter.

Miller denied the accusations, rebuffed belated calls to resign, and vowed to stay in his 2026 reelection race.

In a damage control media tour (that backfired), Miller dismissed the wife-beating and child abuse claims raised in a contentious custody dispute as “politically motivated” allegations cooked up by his lying ex-wife and her father, Ohio U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

The embattled congressman compared his bad press and party badgering to quit with Trump’s bad press in the 2016 presidential campaign for bragging (on the infamous Access Hollywood video) about grabbing women sexually without asking permission and party badgering for him to drop out.

Miller said the (cringe) comparison bolstered his decision to remain the GOP nominee in Ohio’s 7th District.

If Trump could beat scandalous recordings of him laughing off predatory sexual assault, “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” his volatile former aide could be equally resilient with serious accusations of physical abuse, threats, and protective restraining orders. 

Trump reacted to those accusations the way a person found liable by a jury for sexual abuse and defamation might — with defensive praise of the former White House staffer.

“I know Max. He’s a good person. It’s a very sad thing to be going through that,” said Trump. “But it’s accusations.”

The convicted felon endorsed Miller in May and has not withdrawn support. He warned his one-time aide that he faced a tough reelection cycle with severe domestic and child abuse allegations hanging over his head but stopped short of asking the Ohio Republican to step aside.

Trump’s political hand puppet in the U.S. House, Speaker Mike Johnson, likewise dodged questions about Miller being allegedly violent toward his ex-wife and daughter — “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time, it’s not my business to get engaged in it,” — and suggested Miller’s request for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the allegations be allowed to play out. Well beyond the November election.

That gives other House Republicans, desperate to retain their slim majority, an excuse to ignore the elephant in the caucus and pretend an alleged abuser of women and a toddler isn’t their problem. 

The deer-in-the-headlights approach to the Miller scandal is a political calculation to minimize the GOP fallout in the midterms. It is far from a principled stand against indefensible conduct.

Republicans are simply terrified of losing a solid red seat.

A smattering of Capitol Hill Republicans urged Miller to withdraw from the race while there was still time to replace him with a less flawed candidate. But otherwise, the response of Ohio Republicans, the state party, and local GOP chairs has been underwhelming.

No emphatic zero-tolerance messaging about abusive behavior with candidates. The GOP has to keep the R+5 district in its column. Alleged victims of an incumbent with a bad temper are not part of the calculus.

Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted stayed mum on the matter until last Thursday when he posted that Miller should resign in the best interest of his daughter. Initially, Husted had been satisfied to let Miller and his ex-wife “sort through this at a family level.” 

Sen. Moreno said nothing about his former son-in-law’s alleged violence against his daughter and granddaughter for years until publicly denouncing him a week ago.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune stuck to his “it’s a family matter” refrain about the searing accusations of domestic abuse leveled at Miller. But Thune could downplay the issue of a Republican congressman accused of violently abusing his ex-wife and child because it is no longer a disqualification for elected office.

According to a recent Politico poll, most of Trump’s MAGA base would vote for a GOP candidate confronted with an array of scandals from grift to sexual assault. A whopping 72% of those voters said they would support a GOP candidate accused of domestic violence.

Maybe that’s why Thune and his Ohio colleagues, Sens. Moreno and Husted, felt invincible confirming Trump’s openly corrupt henchman to head the Department of Justice.

When Moreno and Husted made Todd Blanche U.S. Attorney General, they surrendered the rule of law in America. But will it matter at the polls?

They endorsed the most reprehensible candidate ever for the job, a man facing multiple ethics complaints who had already used the DOJ (as deputy and acting AG) to shamelessly advance Trump’s breathtaking corruption.

Blanche is still ignoring the law on the Epstein files, still likely to fleece taxpayers of $2 billion in a slush fund (to reward Jan. 6 insurrectionists), still insulating the president, his family and businesses from IRS audits. So what?

Political tribalism absolves all; the moral rot destroying impartial justice, the domestic abuse allegations destroying a family. 

What should be disqualifying for positions of power is not. And here we are.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Republican Vice President Mike Pence, authored the Aug. 7 letter. It is co-signed by four major anti-abortion organizations, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Americans United for Life and Students for Life of America. The nearly 30 other signees include the North Carolina House of Representatives, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and The Conservative Caucus.

The Comstock Act, enacted in 1873, made it illegal to send “obscene material” by mail, which included any “article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion.” The Comstock Act is considered a “zombie law,” meaning it hasn’t been repealed, but has not been enforced in many decades. In 2022, during the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Justice issued legal guidance stating that Comstock did not prohibit the mail of certain abortion drugs when the sender does not intend for the recipient to use them unlawfully.

“Not only does this language appear nowhere in the Comstock Act but, as a practical matter, a sender’s subjective intent and a recipient’s intended use are unknowable, making the Comstock Act a dead letter,” the letter to Blanche said.

The groups thanked Blanche for pledging to evaluate the 2022 opinion and said they look forward to the result of his review.

In a conference call hosted by the White House Faith Office on July 30, Blanche told thousands of religious leaders that he was committed to advancing policies that would outlaw abortion in every state.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision cleared the way for states to regulate abortion access for the first time in 50 years, prompting more than a dozen states to enact near-total abortion bans. In the wake of that ruling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2023 changed its rules on mifepristone, one of two drugs typically used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages.

Mifepristone halts the pregnancy, while a second drug, misoprostol, physically clears the uterus.

The new FDA rules allowed mifepristone to be dispensed without a visit to an in-person provider, which made it easier for people in states with bans to obtain the medication from online sources and receive the pills in the mail.

According to the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report, 27% of all abortions in the first six months of 2025 were obtained through telehealth, adding up to more than 162,000 cases.

Anti-abortion groups and Republican state attorneys general have sued the FDA trying to reverse the 2023 rules or establish legal authority to enforce Comstock. A Texas judge in 2023 ruled that Comstock was enforceable, but the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned that ruling.

If the challenges to FDA rules around mifepristone are successful, abortion-rights advocates have said they would continue prescribing misoprostol, which is effective on its own.

But enforcement of Comstock would apply to any equipment needed to perform abortions. Abortion-rights legal advocacy organization Center for Reproductive Rights said that could make supplies difficult or illegal to obtain for any type of obstetrical care, including miscarriages and pregnancy complications.

Gavin Oxley, spokesperson for Americans United for Life, told Stateline by email that the restrictions should extend to those categories and not just mifepristone.

“Any drug or instrument mailed with the intention of abortion falls under the law’s authority, proactively protecting women from new or adapted abortion methods, including misoprostol-only abortions,” Oxley said. “Righting the politicized Biden-era OLC opinion denying the strict application of Comstock must be an immediate priority for General Blanche.”

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.

As of Aug. 1, 3,544 clinical cases of candida auris, or C. auris, have been reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with 4,262 the same time last year, according to the latest round of numbers from the agency’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. 

Cases had risen from 2022 to 2024, and seen a slight decline since then. But experts are still concerned, as Candida auris can be difficult to treat because it’s resistant to multiple antifungal drugs. 

The first U.S. case was first reported in 2016. Between 2019 and 2021, 17 states identified their first-ever candida auris case, according to federal reports, with experts calling the yeast an emerging, urgent threat for hospitalized patients. It was first described in Japan in 2009. 

People without risk factors generally don’t get infected, the CDC says. Risk factors include severe underlying medical conditions and people undergoing complex medical care. Candida auris symptoms can vary depending on the location of the infection — such as a superficial skin infection or widespread bloodstream infection — and its severity. While there isn’t a specific set of symptoms, people can experience fever or chills. 

The infection spreads more easily in healthcare or long-term care facilities among people who are already very sick with complex health conditions. Patients with breathing or feeding tubes or catheters have a higher risk.

The CDC identifies detections via two separate reports: clinical detections in people who are ill with candida auris, and screenings — public health investigation tests that detect fungal colonizations in patients who haven’t developed illness. As of Aug. 1, the nation has seen 3,325 screening detections, compared with 3,724 last year, in addition to the 3,500 clinical cases. People who have screened for colonizations can spread the fungus to other people and surfaces.

California reported the most clinical cases of any state this year, at 887.

States across the South have seen over 1,400 clinical cases, with Texas reporting the highest number in that region at 437 diagnoses, followed by Tennessee (293) and Georgia (193).

In the Northeast, only New Jersey and Pennsylvania reported cases — 55 and 131, respectively. 

Mountain states have seen 200 clinical cases — with the majority in Arizona, which has reported 171 clinical cases.

Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin have collectively reported 751 clinical cases, according to the CDC.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

On Tuesday, a Miami-Dade County judge granted the former Republican candidate for the Ohio House of Representatives something else: permission to move the house arrest he is serving in a second domestic violence case filed against him last month.

The order came a week after his kidnapping trial was postponed for the second time this summer.

A bond set on charges that no longer exist

Kalmbach was arrested in Miami on Feb. 23 on two third-degree felonies, and a judge set bond at $1,000 on one count and $4,000 on the other. He posted both on Thursday, Feb. 26, and has been at liberty since.

In April, prosecutors threw those charges out and filed harsher ones. The two original counts are now marked “no action” in the court’s charge tracker. In their place: kidnapping with a weapon and aggravated battery with great bodily harm and a deadly weapon. Because prosecutors allege a weapon was used, the kidnapping count was reclassified into Florida’s most serious category of non-capital offense, punishable by up to life in prison.

The felony docket reflects no change to Kalmbach’s bond since Feb. 26. Not after the new charges were filed. Not at his April 27 arraignment. Not after he was arrested again on July 14. Seven entry numbers are missing from the public docket in that case, and bond can be taken up orally in open court without generating an entry, so the record is not necessarily complete — but nothing in the file the public can see shows the amount was ever revisited.

His bond in the July misdemeanor case is $15,000. That is three times what he posted in the case that could put him away for life.

What the court did Tuesday

Kalmbach’s attorneys filed the motion on Tuesday, Aug. 4. A notice of hearing filed the next day by attorney Mark A.J. Shapiro identifies it as a motion to change the location of his pretrial house arrest to his permanent residential address, and shows it was served on Assistant State Attorney Olivia Callejo. County Judge Alicia Garcia Priovolos heard it at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center and granted it, entering an order changing the address.

That order is not available in the online case file, and the docket does not say where Kalmbach will now be confined. The entry recording the ruling is labeled as a motion for modification of bail or bond, but nothing in the file indicates the amount changed.

Two days before the motion was filed, on Thursday, Aug. 6, the circuit court reset his felony trial from Monday, Sept. 14, to Tuesday, Sept. 22. That docket entry does not indicate which party sought the delay. An earlier postponement, on July 9, moved the trial off its original July 20 date by stipulation of both sides. A report hearing in the felony case is set for Thursday, Sept. 3, and arraignment in the misdemeanor case for Wednesday, Sept. 16.

The July arrest

The following section describes allegations of domestic violence.

Miami Beach police arrested Kalmbach, 31, at 10:33 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, at a hotel on Collins Avenue, five days after the first trial postponement. He faces two first-degree misdemeanors: battery involving domestic violence and violation of a domestic violence injunction. A records check showed he was subject to a non-expiring protective order obtained by the alleged victim, according to the arrest affidavit.

He pleaded not guilty and demanded a jury trial on Friday, July 17, through attorneys Howard Srebnick and Shapiro, who also represent him in the felony case. He was booked at 3:35 a.m. Wednesday, July 15, and released Sunday, July 19, into the county’s Pretrial Services/Monitored Release program at the most restrictive monitoring level the program offers.

Kalmbach denied that anything happened. According to the sworn affidavit, he told the responding officer that he and his girlfriend had been sleeping and that no argument or physical contact had occurred. The officer wrote that he saw no visible injuries on Kalmbach.

The alleged victim, contacted separately inside the hotel room, also told officers that no threats or harm had been made, the affidavit states. She declined treatment from fire rescue and declined to have crime scene photographs taken.

The officer identified Kalmbach as the primary aggressor anyway. Officers were dispatched after the alleged victim’s sister called the hotel front desk to report a domestic dispute. Inside the room, the officer wrote, he observed redness on the left side of her face and on her left forearm that appeared recent, a broken cup on a dresser, and items scattered across the floor and into the bathroom. Two hotel employees reported hearing her screaming and crying. A state lethality assessment was completed. Seven officers at the scene were equipped with body-worn cameras.

What the February case alleges

Kalmbach was first arrested in Miami on Feb. 23 on charges of false imprisonment and battery by strangulation. In April, prosecutors replaced those counts with the charges he now faces. The charging document alleges he confined the alleged victim between Feb. 21 and Feb. 23 using scissors and a knife, and that he cut her hair and cut her with a knife, causing what the document describes as great bodily harm or permanent disfigurement.

The case is assigned to Circuit Judge Carmen R. Cabarga, with Assistant State Attorney Janeen Zamora as trial prosecutor. The state filed an amended discovery exhibit on July 8 listing six essential witnesses and disclosing that police reports, body-worn camera footage, crime scene photographs, a domestic violence assessment and 911 dispatch records had been turned over to the defense.

Ohio political connections

Kalmbach lost the 2024 Republican primary in Ohio House District 69 to incumbent state Rep. Kevin Miller. His campaign was endorsed by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and U.S. Rep. Bob Latta and backed by Americans for Prosperity and the Center for Christian Virtue.

State Rep. Gary Click, a Vickery Republican, donated $1,000 to Kalmbach’s campaign on Feb. 20, 2024, according to pre-primary campaign finance reports filed with the Ohio Secretary of State. The money ran in both directions: Kalmbach Feeds donated $250 to Click’s committee in 2021, Paul Kalmbach Sr. donated $250 in September 2024, and Daniel Kalmbach donated $350 to Click in May 2025.

Kalmbach is the son of Paul Kalmbach Sr., chief executive of Kalmbach Feeds in Upper Sandusky and a longtime Republican donor.

Kalmbach has not been convicted of any offense in either case. He is presumed innocent.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

He wrote the law that bans gender-affirming care for minors and named it the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act. He told a Senate committee that such care is child abuse. He signed onto a bill to ban drag performances where minors might be present, framed by its sponsors as a shield for children. He signed onto another that would put live, state-accessible cameras in every licensed child care center in Ohio. He introduced a bill this year that he says protects families from a government that would take their kids away.

Nearly every major bill of Click’s career carries the same justification: an adult, somewhere, is a danger to a child, and the state must intervene.

Then an adult in his own caucus was accused of exactly that — and Click’s approach changed.

What the record on Rodney Creech actually says

State Rep. Rodney Creech, R-West Alexandria, was investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation over allegations that he climbed into bed with his minor daughter while wearing only his underwear and having an erection, and that he touched her inappropriately. State investigative records describe the accuser as a minor female relative; she has since spoken publicly, and Creech has answered her on his official Facebook page as his daughter.

He was never charged.

Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, a Republican brought in as special prosecutor after the Preble County sheriff and prosecutor both recused themselves over personal relationships with Creech, closed the case in October 2024. Driscoll wrote that Creech’s behavior during the investigation was “concerning and suspicious” but that the evidence fell short of the threshold needed for prosecution. He added that he found the accuser’s statements persuasive but found no independent evidence supporting them.

Creech denies the allegations and has called them demonstrably false. In a recorded March 2024 interview with BCI agents, he told investigators, “No, you know, no sexual — nothing like that. It’s disgusting to even think about.” He acknowledged getting into bed with his daughter in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. In a 2025 statement he said, “Like President Trump, I am no stranger to false media attacks.”

None of that is a conviction, and this piece does not treat it as one. But it was enough for the leader of Creech’s own party in the Ohio House. When the BCI file became public in May 2025, Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of all four of his committee assignments, including his chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee, and asked him to resign.

Creech refused. Nine months later, in February 2026, Huffman put him back on all four committees and signed a letter asking the Ohio Republican Party to endorse his re-election. The party did.

Click never stopped legislating with him

Click has not been accused of any crime, and nothing in the BCI file concerns him. What the public record shows is a working partnership that the allegations did not interrupt.

Ohio House records list both men as cosponsors of House Bill 249, the Indecent Exposure Modernization Act, which its Republican sponsors describe as a measure to keep children away from obscene adult performances and which critics call a public drag ban. The House passed it in March and it now sits in the Senate. During committee testimony, Planned Parenthood of Ohio’s Danielle Firsich pointed at the cosponsor list directly: “You have a man who was just put back on his committees, who was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, who is a sponsor on this bill.”

Ohio House records also list both men as cosponsors of House Bill 649, the Child Care Fraud Prevention Act, which would require cameras at every entrance, exit and care area of every licensed child care center in Ohio, with live remote access for state officials. When TiffinOhio.net reported on that bill, hundreds of readers across the political spectrum reacted — and a large share of the anger was aimed not at the surveillance mandate but at who had signed it.

Both bills are marketed as child protection. Both carry Click’s name and Creech’s name.

The defense that became a bill

The sharpest overlap is a phrase.

Creech’s daughter spoke publicly about the alleged conduct. On his official Facebook page, Creech dismissed what she said as “textbook parental alienation” and said she was trying to make him look bad. She replied: “You continue to post trying to nail my mother and blame her, instead of taking blame for your own inappropriate actions.” And: “Heaven forbid a child speaks out about something like this, right?!” The comments later disappeared from the page. Creech denied removing them.

Parental alienation is the theory that a child’s allegation against a parent is really the product of manipulation by the other parent. It was developed by a psychiatrist who spent his career testifying, most often for fathers accused of sexually abusing their children. ProPublica has documented how it operates in family court. The 2023 report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women called it unfounded and unscientific. Major medical and psychiatric bodies do not recognize it as a diagnosis.

On Feb. 10, 2026, Click introduced House Bill 693, the Affirming Families First Act, with Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp. Among its provisions, the bill would write a statutory definition of parental alienation into Ohio law — describing it as a state in which a minor child, without valid reason, rejects a fit parent or guardian or allies strongly with another person or group who does not have legal custody, sometimes called “chosen family.”

Two honest limits belong here. HB 693 governs child welfare and custody proceedings. It would not have applied to a criminal investigation like the one into Creech, and no version of it would have changed Driscoll’s decision. And Click’s stated purpose for the bill is not Creech at all. It is government overreach against parents who decline to affirm a transgender child’s identity. “It is unconscionable to think that local government entities would flag a parent as being a danger to their son for declining to buy him a dress or call him her,” Click said when he unveiled it. “We will not tolerate such government overreach in the State of Ohio.”

But a definition, once in the Revised Code, is available to everyone who walks into an Ohio family court. And the man who publicly used that exact framework against his own child is the man Click keeps cosponsoring bills with. The bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 18 and got its first hearing March 11. Six months on, Click has not withdrawn it, amended the definition, or publicly addressed the fact that his closest legislative partner deployed the same concept against a teenager’s account of his conduct.

Pressed on whether a bill shielding non-affirming parents could also shield abusers, Click told the Ohio Capital Journal, “Abuse is abuse.”

The one thing he won’t say

Click is not a quiet politician. He answers his critics quickly and at length. When this outlet reported that his name had come off Vivek Ramaswamy’s endorsements page, the name was back within about two hours and Click told his followers the reports were exaggerated. When the League of Women Voters of the Tiffin Area held a candidates night he skipped, he disputed the account and the League publicly corrected him. TiffinOhio.net has documented a running series of Click claims contradicted by records and named sources.

On Creech, nothing.

No public call for Creech to step down from Click appears in any campaign statement, legislative release, social media post, or news coverage reviewed for this analysis. Ramaswamy’s campaign took Creech’s name off its endorsements page in April and, unlike Click’s, never put it back. Click has said nothing about that either.

Seneca County Democratic Party Chair Gina Grandillo raised it publicly in July, noting that Creech admitted to investigators that he got into bed with his minor daughter, that a Republican speaker stripped his committees and asked him to resign, and that Click has gone on campaigning on child protection without addressing any of it.

Why this lands in Seneca and Sandusky counties

Voters in House District 88 do not cast ballots in Creech’s district. They cast ballots for Click, and this is the last time they will get the chance. He is term-limited after the coming cycle and is seeking a fourth and final two-year term.

They very nearly did not give him a third chance at it. In the May 5 Republican primary, Click beat challenger Eric Watson by 599 votes out of 13,119 cast, holding the seat on the strength of Sandusky County while losing Seneca County outright. Watson declined to endorse him afterward. On Nov. 3 he faces Democrat Aaron Jones, a Tiffin city councilman, Army veteran and production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die.

Click’s pitch to those voters has never really changed: he is the one standing between Ohio’s children and the adults who would harm them. It is a serious claim, and it deserves to be measured against the whole record — including the part where the adult in question sat two seats over.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Heather Tuck-Macalla lives with her family in Bay Village, a town just west of Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie.

She’s a librarian who has worked for years in the Cleveland area, and she loves Bay Village, the town she shares with Miller. But she says that’s a fact she wouldn’t know just from living in the area.

“He’s almost not human to me because I’ve never seen him around and he lives two blocks away from me,” Tuck-Macalla said last week.

Miller represents Ohio’s 7th U.S. House district in Congress. The Northeast Ohio district goes from the west side of Cuyahoga County south down past the city of Wooster. It includes southern and western Cuyahoga County, all of Medina and Wayne Counties, and the northernmost part of Holmes County.

John Blockinger, a retired Parma resident, said he’s trying to stay positive, but has been discouraged by the actions of Congress, including Miller, even before he became front-page news for allegations of domestic violence.

“I can’t believe that they haven’t just kicked his butt out of there,” Blockinger said. “And the (fellow congressional) Republicans should be doing more to get him out, because he’s going to be a drag on them in November.”

Multiple allegations of domestic violence have been leveled against Miller including by his ex-wife, the daughter of Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Moreno denounced Miller, saying that Miller doesn’t meet “the basic criteria of serving in Congress,” but has received criticism for the time it took for him to release a public statement.

Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted has also called on Miller to resign and drop out of his race for reelection, as have several Democratic members of Ohio’s congressional delegation, U.S. Reps. Shontel Brown and Emilia Sykes.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico he won’t ask Miller to step down.

Miller has made no indication that he will drop out of the race, and has requested an ethics probe on himself, something he believes will clear his name. The Democratic candidate in the race is Brian Poindexter, and independent write-in candidates have also filed.

Congressional ethics investigation

Ethics investigations aren’t an uncommon thing for the U.S. House to deal with, though they are more commonly focused on campaign conduct or finance questions. But the discretion of a House ethics panel is broad, said Case Western Reserve University School of Law Professor Cassandra Burke Robertson.

“There’s really no limit, the committee can investigate pretty much anything that would be relevant to either somebody’s serving in the House, or there’s a very broad view of anything that could bring disrepute onto Congress, onto the House,” said Robertson, the director of the Center for Professional Ethics at the Case Western School of Law.

While many ethics investigations delve into the weeds of congressional procedure, something the public may or may not be interested in, the situation with Miller is bringing a lot of eyes to the proceedings, according to Robertson.

“I think what makes the allegations in this case so publicly interesting is that so many people have had experience with difficult divorces, with allegations of domestic abuse, either they’ve experienced it or they certainly know people who have,” Robertson said. “There’s just a lot more public attention, given the allegations.”

A resolution from the investigation will involve a lot of patience, as ethics probes tend to take time, she said.

The House panel will consider documents, gather data, possibly hold hearings, and then decide on the appropriate level of punishment, from no punishment at all, to censure or the worst-case scenario of full House expulsion.

Robertson said she wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation stretches past November.

“An investigation that serious would take some time, and if the investigation found serious consequences (were needed) and moved toward expulsion, I would be surprised if that could happen quickly, likely not before the election,” she said.

The political pressure surrounding the investigation could have a quicker timeline, with Republican members of Congress in particular seeing pushes for action.

“It’s got to be in the back of the minds of the other Congressmembers,” Robertson said. “I have no doubt that members are worried about disrepute, and about the political consequences of that.”

’Out of sync’

Constituents in Miller’s congressional district say they don’t feel like he’s representative of the needs of the region.

“I’d really like to get normal people, people who reflect our community better than a lot of these yes men for Trump,” Tuck-Macalla said.

With a Japanese American uncle who lived in internment camps during World War II, the Bay Village resident said she’s worried that patterns are repeating in Congress that lead to negative impacts on large groups of people, such as the immigration crackdown, and the lack of support for public education.

“I don’t feel like the policies Max Miller is supporting are doing what Americans want,” Tuck Macalla said. “Everything that I feel like is a baseline for a good quality of life is being taken away.”

Blockinger has reached out to Miller and the rest of his congressional representatives and senators, pushing back against immigration policies, cuts to Medicaid, and other government spending cuts to public services.

“It’s so out of sync with what we should be doing as a government,” Blockinger said. “I don’t feel represented at all by anyone.”

Hoping for a Democratic wave in the Nov. 3 general election, the Parma grandfather wants to see reversals of Trump executive orders and the Big Beautiful Bill as soon as possible, along with other policies that he saw Miller working “in lock-step” with the Trump administration to implement.

“I think we’ve got to stop basically just being nice guys, and keep pointing out the number of people who are hurt, and the money that’s being lost here,” Blockinger said.

Tuck-Macalla is hopeful the district can move on from Miller and the negative public attention.

“Max Miller does not represent who we are, and with him, I don’t feel very patriotic,” she said.

The Libertarian Party of Ohio released a statement on Aug. 3 “unequivocally” demanding the resignation of Miller, saying his continued presence in Congress “dishonors the district he was elected to serve and sends a dangerous message that powerful politicians are immune to basic standards of conduct.”

“The allegations surrounding Representative Miller reflect a disturbing pattern that goes far beyond partisan politics,” the statement read. “Ohioans in the 7th District deserve an elected official who respects the individual rights both in the halls of Congress and within their own home.”

The Capital Journal reached out for an interview with the Wayne County Republican Party, and the Republican Party of Medina County, both in Miller’s district, but did not receive a response.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But a humanitarian worker on the ground in the nation’s capital said it will only make a dire situation much worse — in multiple, mutually reinforcing ways.

And that’s aside from what it will do to the children, women, and men who have spent years as part of communities in Ohio and other states.

More than 350,000 Haitians are waiting to be deported to their home country after the Trump administration terminated their temporary protected status. It officially ended on July 27 and a court lifted an injunction last week.

As many as 18,000 Haitian former-TPS holders are in Ohio, with many concentrated in Springfield. But many others are in the Columbus area and elsewhere, said Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. 

As yet, mass deportations haven’t begun, but they’re widely anticipated. Haitians who have lost protections are being fitted with ankle monitors when they report to required check-ins with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. Many already lost their jobs when they lost the legal right to work.

Dire situation

As they wait, Ohio’s Haitians face going back to a country that may be even more dangerous than the one they left after a devastating earthquake in 2010.

Gangs control about 90% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and they’re spreading out into the rest of the country. As they do, they’re using rape, kidnapping, and violence to raise money and project power.

Rape is “being done by the gangs when they’re trying to take over a district,” Allie Pasieka, the International Rescue Committee’s Deputy Director of Programs in Haiti, said in a phone interview from Port-au-Prince last week.  “It’s being used as a weapon… It’s being used to send messages.”

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, reported a 1,000% increase in child rape in Haiti between 2024 and 2025. In a 2025 press briefing, spokesman James Elder said gangs had turned children’s “bodies into battlegrounds.”

Pasieka said the horror continues.

“We are seeing an enormous volume of sexual violence,” she said. “It’s used as a tool of fear and control in the parts of Port-au-Prince that are under gang control and the portions of Haiti that are increasingly under gang control.”

Among its other programs in Haiti, the International Rescue Committee provides support for victims of gender-based violence, operates health clinics, and tries to prevent the spread of diseases such as cholera. 

To support the International Rescue Committee go to its webpage.

It also operates programs aimed at keeping kids out of gangs and helping them when they leave.

Focus on Springfield

Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said there are former holders of protected status all over Ohio, and Columbus and the central region of the state are home to the biggest populations of Haitian descendants generally.

But, she said, ICE’s biggest target right now seems to be those with some connection to Springfield.

Springfield, Ohio was the object of then-candidate Donald Trump and then-Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance’s racist lies in 2024 that Haitians were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

“ICE is particularly focused on Springfield,” Tramonte said. “The call-in letters that people are getting to go to the field offices for check-ins, every single one of them has a nexus to Springfield. Even if people are being told to go to the Westerville office (in suburban Columbus), it’s all people who lived in Springfield at some point in time.”

When they’re forced back to Haiti, it will be to a place where kidnappings and other depredations are rampant.

Pasieka of the International Rescue Committee is reluctant to talk about the danger she faces. 

While she is in a relatively secure section of Port-au-Prince, she has Haitian colleagues “who have children who go to school every day and they wonder if something’s going to happen to them,” she said.

“The threat of kidnapping is very, very real for them. They are on the front line of the aid and of the danger.”

The problem is so bad, the International Rescue Committee reports, that 60% of households keep their kids out of school from fear of kidnapping and other dangers.

Because of their connection to the United States, people who are deported from Ohio are likely to be targets of kidnappings in the gangs’ relentless quest for cash.

“When it comes to kidnapping, everyone is potentially a victim. There are different ways they approach it, but everyone could be kidnapped,” Pasieka said.

“But because kidnapping can be based on perceptions of wealth, then anything that would lead you to be perceived as wealthy or even somewhat wealthy would lead you to be a potential victim.”

Tramonte said Ohio Haitians who lost their protected status are well aware of the dangers they’ll face when they’re forced back to their troubled country.

“Absolutely,” she said. “They were there, first of all, so they saw these things up close and personal. They’ve had family members and friends killed, sometimes right in front of them. And they talk to people every day about what’s going on.” 

Mass hunger

Beyond the profound trauma caused by all the violence, a related problem might cause even greater suffering: a humanitarian crisis afflicting nearly half of the nation’s people. 

“Five million people at the moment can’t feed themselves,” Pasieka said. “They aren’t able to reach the volume of food the (World Health Organization) recommends for a person. That is just a fact — 5 million people. Whether that’s going to come up, we don’t know. But based on the indicators we’re seeing, it’s likely to rise further.”

While not yet technically a famine, people in Haiti are dying, said International Rescue Committee spokeswoman Sylvan Foley.

“Well before we get to famine, we’re already seeing people die from malnutrition, and we’re already seeing that on the ground in Haiti,” she said.

And, because the U.N. and non-governmental organizations like the International Rescue Committee are stretched to the limit, returnees from the United States can’t expect much help when they get to Haiti.

“The humanitarian funding is very insufficient for what we’re seeing in the country,” Pasieka said. 

People who lost protected status in the United States “have a specific vulnerability, but they’re not being prioritized as if we were fully funded. The needs are just enormous, and they’re just spilling out everywhere. We’re just trying to keep a lid on basic food distribution and health protection and other areas for those who are the most in need.”

Creating TPS hurt Haiti? And ending it will help?

In spite of the dire situation, one congressman said deporting former TPS holders to Haiti will actually improve the situation.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., this year led a delegation there. In an interview with Fox News, Mast acknowledged the deep poverty and rampant violence, but he said he didn’t think there was much the United States could do to help.

However, he said, ending TPS would improve a security situation in Haiti that TPS had undermined.

“One of the big things would be to take the able-bodied males and put them into the police and military, which are actively recruiting, which were so decimated by the TPS taking place in the first place,” Fox quoted him as saying.

“All of these people took the chance to say ‘Okay, I’m leaving,’ and it left their forces that are supposed to protect the country essentially with no forces, which is one of the other parts of how the gangs came to be.”

There are 350,000 or fewer former Haitian TPS holders. While it’s unknown how many of them are males of an age appropriate for military or police work, it’s questionable that their departure gutted the potential security workforce in a nation of 12 million. 

Mast’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Double whammy

The International Rescue Committee staffers weren’t asked about Mast’s statements, but what they said about conditions in Haiti contradicted what the Florida congressman said.

Termination of TPS will result in a major loss of revenue flowing into the impoverished country, they said.

It’s unknown how much in such “remittances” to family and friends have been coming from TPS holders alone, but in 2024, the Miami Herald reported, the amount of all foreign remittances was greater than the Haitian government’s entire annual budget.

With the termination of TPS, a large chunk of that money is being wiped out.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of returnees will only add to the humanitarian crisis in a country whose legitimate economy is on life support, the aid workers said.

“Haiti is not a safe place at the moment. We hope that it will be in the future,” Pasieka said. “But this is not a safe place to return to. Any way we can avoid adding people to the existing crisis can only be beneficial. So I believe ending TPS is not a good thing for the Haitians.”

Breaking faith

Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said that ending TPS not only breaks faith with Haitians, it also breaks faith with American ideals, she said.

“They saved their own lives,” Tramonte said. “They did the hard part. They escaped. They’ve established new lives here in Ohio. They’ve gotten jobs. They’ve taken care of themselves and they’ve taken care of people back home. They’ve sent money to their families and they’re often the only source of income for people in Haiti.

“To take that all away from them, from the people in Haiti, and to send them back into what Gov. (Mike) DeWine has called hell… If that’s what we’re going to do, then we are not who we say we are.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Industry spokespeople claim fracking oil and gas from state parks and wildlife areas is “responsible development” of Ohio public lands.

But parks don’t belong to one supermajority political party to lease, industrialize, monetize, and destroy. Ohio public lands belong to all Ohioans across generations. 

We have a collective responsibility to steward them wisely. 

Muckraker Upton Sinclair said it well: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding.”

An industry fueled by greed

Climate scientists, the United Nations and International Protocol on Climate Change have pleaded for decades for a fossil fuels energy phase-out. That phase-out has begun because energy markets want it.

Renewable energy is on course to meet almost half global electric demand by 2030, with solar leading the pack. 

Wind and solar are now cheaper, reliable with battery storage and have zero-carbon footprints.

This is great for Ohio pocketbooks, renewable energy jobs and hope for a livable planet. 

It’s not great for a greedy industry eager to lock in fossil fuel energy markets allowing them to power polluting AI data centers for the next 20 to 30 years.

Wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have damaged gas and oil production and transportation infrastructure throughout conflict areas. The Strait of Hormuz is now a flashpoint. 

India, Pakistan and Australia, which experience some of the worst droughts and highest temperatures as the planet warms, are racing toward renewables. And Germany, a longtime energy innovator, has embraced balcony solar.

Gov. Mike DeWine and Republican Party lawmakers captured by gas and oil and their 19th-century fossil fuels energy policy and are beginning to be exposed.

Save Ohio Parks research shows Ohio’s supermajority quashed the equivalent of 5.3 GW of renewable energy over the last 12 years while simultaneously creating or amending energy laws to expand natural gas fracking. 

This is intentional. And it’s killing our state and planet.

See how this works?

Since 2010, the oil and gas industry has donated the vast majority of its donation dollars to GOP candidates. Utility donations keep the GOP in power in Ohio, too— in gerrymandered voting districts the Republican Party selects. Supermajority lawmakers, including Gov. Mike DeWine, support and pass laws to frack Ohio.

The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) has rubberstamped fracking 22,000 acres of Ohio state parks, wildlife areas, and public rights-of-way since DeWine’s 2022 reelection as governor. Fracking pollutes the air; depletes and destroys our fresh water; endangers biodiversity; and increases greenhouse gas emissions that supercharge climate warming.

The question is, have voters had enough?

Interestingly, Ohio’s AI data center explosion has elevated public consciousness of industry threats to Ohio’s air, water and lands. 

Fracking used to be a NIMBY issue for Appalachian Ohio. Now, because of hyperscale centers using fracked gas plants and gas fuel cells across Ohio, it’s in everyone’s backyard. 

Yet the GOP is slow-rolling regulation of Ohio’s 240 already-sited data centers. Most will run on gas fracked from public lands.

This is a seminal election. The public needs to understand this. If we want clean air, fresh water and pristine parks, we need to vote only for candidates dedicated to protecting them.

Fracking’s Achilles heel: what do we do with the waste?

The public is just realizing fracking’s true, irrevocable harms: billions of gallons of toxic, radioactive wastewater are inexplicably deposited each year into U. S. injection wells for storage. Last month, Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) shut down four Class II injection wells in Washington County because pressurized toxic, radioactive wastewater brine migrated miles away from injection sites and contaminated conventional oil wells.

Frack waste now poses a serious threat to drinking water aquifers for tens of thousands of people in Marietta and surrounding communities— while lawmakers and regulators remain willfully oblivious to the looming catastrophe. 

Instead, the industry and lawmakers hope the toxic waste will stay underground.

But it doesn’t.

Search for terms like “Dimock contamination,” “Gasland” or “Texas Groundwater Contamination” to learn how fracking and reckless waste management in Ohio and other states have destroyed or threaten to destroy drinking water across the country.

To claim fracking public lands is “responsible” is a horrifying lie. 

Cheaper, reliable and zero-carbon wind and solar works for the rest of the world. 

It will work for Ohio, too. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Though it is striving to fulfill the White House’s demand for more arrests, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still falling short of the Trump administration’s announced goal of 2,000 arrests per day. And more arrests won’t necessarily translate into more deportations, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The focus is so much on the arrest numbers that the mission seems a little confused to the general public,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said.

She noted that many of the new arrests catch non-criminals in a legal “gray area,” such as having an expired visa while applying for another legal status. Such people are hardly the “worst of the worst” the Trump administration has identified as its top targets, she said.

“Meeting some arbitrary arrest quota doesn’t necessarily serve this larger purpose of deporting a larger number of people, so there’s a disconnect about what the mission really is.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told Stateline it arrested about 51,000 immigrants in July, up from 43,000 in June and the highest number recorded by the Trump administration. The administration did not release state specific numbers.

The department said that last month it arrested an average of 20-40 people per day at airports, as federal agents targeted passengers with expired visas.  According to media reports, those arrested last month  included a Cameroonian researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore  — a Fulbright scholar — and a University of Maryland instructor from Ethiopia who was detained as he returned  from a conference where he accepted a Teacher of the Year award. Advocates suggested immigrants with expired visas should not travel without consulting an attorney.

Arrests based on expired visas are likely to continue and will accelerate in September when a new rule takes effect that sets stricter time limits on visas for students, exchange visitors and foreign media.

Michael Clemens, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins, has estimated that by limiting the number of international STEM students, instructors and researchers in the U.S., the new rule could cost the nation’s economy as much as $145 billion per year by 2035.

“Implementation of the rule will cause large numbers of highly-skilled students and scholars to fall out of status. We’ll certainly be seeing a lot more cases like the seizure of Fatima Ameaka,” Clemens said, referring to the Johns Hopkins researcher from Cameroon, an expert in disease outbreaks.

In an interview, Clemens said federal immigration authorities “see airports as an easy bottleneck because everyone in there is ID’d, so it’s lower cost to seize people there than in any other place except a prison.”

Kate Angustia**,** supervisory policy and practice counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said it’s a “misconception” that the people being arrested at airports let their visas expire and therefore forfeited their legal status.

“Many of these folks are in a lawful period of authorized stay,” Augusta said. “This means that longstanding policy and practice has been, for decades, to allow these people to remain here as their legal processes continue to be processed by the government.”

DHS said in a statement to Stateline that “this administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

An asylum seeker from Zambia, working as a registered nurse at a Portland, Maine, hospital, was released Thursday after her arrest at Boston Logan International Airport sparked protests.

“Nurses in Maine found out one of their own was locked up and sprung into action to get her out,” Puneet Maharaj, a local nurse union representative, said in a statement.

On July 26, immigration agents set up a checkpoint near Wilson Creek in North Carolina, a site that is popular with Hispanic residents and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Federal agents  arrested 13 people, according to the local sheriff’s office.

There were local protests by Methodist clergy and relatives who said at least some of those arrested had no criminal record and entered the country legally, contradicting a social media post by Republican North Carolina Assembly Speaker Destin Hall calling those arrested “a gang of previously arrested illegal aliens.”

The Sierra Club also protested the arrests.

“Bringing immigration enforcement into public recreation areas undermines the sense of safety and belonging that these spaces provide and could discourage people from visiting national forests and other outdoor spaces altogether,” the organization wrote in a statement.

At the end of July, federal agents and state highway patrol officers conducted roadside checks of trucks in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio “to crack down on illegal, unvetted drivers and unsafe vehicles.” DHS said it detained 51 drivers who were in the country illegally.

The agency has said it is “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and other criminals.” But less than a third of current detainees have a criminal conviction and 40% have never been accused of anything but non-criminal immigration violations, according to statistics reviewed by Stateline through early July.

The statistics also show that about 2,000 detainees a month have been freed after court-ordered bond hearings as many federal judges, some of them Trump appointees, have ruled against the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention for many immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of the policy in its October term.

July also saw two immigrants shot and killed during traffic stops in Texas and Maine. After a brief pause, President Donald Trump ordered such traffic stops to continue, though ICE officers will now wear body cameras when they pull over drivers, according to border czar Tom Homan.

Also in July, a Mexican man who had a valid tourist visa was struck and killed by a truck after he fled ICE officers who pulled him over in St. Augustine, Florida.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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.

“There’s no sugarcoating the overarching message in the July jobs report,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a social media post. “The economy is struggling. Job growth is at a virtual standstill.”

Inflation could be taking a toll as employment in general merchandise retailing declined by 21,000 jobs and gas stations cut 5,000 jobs.  Employment in finance also dropped by 14,000, continuing a slide of 121,000 jobs since a recent peak in May 2025.

The number of health care jobs grew by 22,000 in July, but that was lower than the monthly average gain of 36,000 in the past  year.

The federal government also revised the job numbers for May and June, subtracting 66,000 from the May total and 37,000 from June, even though the World Cup boosted employment during those months.  The adjusted job growth numbers for May and June are 63,000 and 20,000, respectively.

Small businesses saw “a surprising and substantial tightening of the labor market” in July, according to a report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represents  300,000 small and independent business owners. In a survey, 27% of members cited labor supply and quality as their single most important problem, up from 19% in June and the 12% historical average.

The cost of health insurance also stood out as a top concern in a separate NFIB report. That was especially true in Texas, one of 10 states that has not  expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to provide coverage for a broader population of lower-income people. In Texas, almost 15% of NFIB members said health insurance costs were their single most important problem, the highest of any state, compared to about 10% nationally.

“I have yet to have a conversation with anyone who doesn’t think this is a problem and in most cases it’s their biggest problem,” NFIB State Director Jeff Burdett said.

Nationally, most small businesses can’t afford to provide health insurance at all, according to NFIB surveys, he said.

“They want to provide health insurance, they need to provide it to be competitive, it’s just cost prohibitive,” Burdett said. “What that means is that talented workers are bypassing small businesses entirely in favor of large employers.”

Another recent employment report from ADP, a payroll processor, also pointed to a sudden tightening of the labor market: The pay for job changers rose at the fastest pace in a year.

“Job changers are highly sensitive to real-time economic conditions, and their rapid pay growth implies supply constraints in parts of the labor market,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement.

This story has been updated to clarify the source of a survey about health insurance costs from the National Federation of Independent Business. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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 most recent to do it is a local councilman, and he did it in the comments of Click’s own campaign page.

“My focus is entirely on serving our community without partisan bias,” Tiffin 3rd Ward Councilman Kevin Roessner wrote. “Engaging with candidates and attending local events reflects standard civic participation, not an endorsement. I exercise independent judgment, decline to enter campaign disputes, and will not be endorsing any candidate in this race. Please adjust your messaging accordingly. Thank you.”

Adjust your messaging accordingly. That is a Republican officeholder in Seneca County asking a sitting Republican state representative, in writing, to stop putting his name in the campaign’s mouth.

599 votes in a 30-point district

Click has carried the 88th District by 25.8 points, 35.6 points and 33.2 points in his three general elections, according to Ballotpedia’s district records. In 2024 he beat Democrat Dianne Selvey 35,367 to 17,762.

In May, in that district, against a first-time candidate, he survived by 599 votes — 6,859 to Eric Watson’s 6,260, out of 13,119 cast. He lost Seneca County 54% to 46%. He held the nomination on the strength of Sandusky County, where he lives.

Nearly half the Republicans who voted in his district voted against him. Three months later, he has offered no public account of why, and no one who left has come back.

The councilman who would not be counted

On Friday, July 3, Click’s campaign page posted a photo captioned: “I am honored to have the support of Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner.” Roessner chairs City Council’s Finance Committee and is listed among elected Republicans by the Seneca County Republican Party.

Later that month Roessner told TiffinOhio.net he had not endorsed Click, said the shirt in the photo was supplied by the campaign for a community event marking America’s 250th anniversary, and said he keeps his voting choices private. The post stayed up, unedited, for three weeks.

Over the weekend of Saturday, Aug. 8, Click escalated. He posted that “The Democrats have been peddling fake news for the last month that I somehow misled you about the support of Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner,” and added: “A picture is worth a thousand words. No one forced him to wear my T-shirt and hat or to pass out my merch. In fact he was eager to do it. That is support.”

Roessner answered underneath it. Click answered back, publicly, at a member of his own party:

“Kevin, I didn’t ask for an ‘endorsement’ and never claimed one. You could have declined to show support by wearing my gear, walking with the Republicans and passing out campaign materials if you truly wanted to be neutral. I would have respected that more. I would have even respected you more if you just came out and supported my opponent. But backtracking and changing your story to fit the democrats narrative is in itself partisan. If anything I said is factually inaccurate please say so. But making me out to be dishonest is not a neutral act. I value my integrity more than votes or an election. If you support the other candidate, just say so and wear his shirt. But don’t play these coy games.”

The words are worth pinning down, because Click is right about them and it does not help him. His July caption said “support.” It did not say “endorsement.” Roessner denied an endorsement in July and again in August, and never addressed the hat, the merchandise, whether he was eager, or whether he walked with an organized Republican contingent.

So the dispute is real and it is not a misunderstanding. Click’s position is that a Republican who wears the gear owes him the label. Roessner’s position is that he owes him nothing. And a state representative three months out from a general election spent a weekend instructing a councilman from Tiffin to either put on his opponent’s shirt or quit playing “coy games.”

The handshake that never came

Primaries end with a call and an endorsement. This one got the call.

Watson conceded on election night, confirmed he had phoned Click to congratulate him, and stopped there. “The topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time,” he said, closing with a line that has since aged into a standing threat: “This is not the last the people of District 88 have seen of Eric Watson.”

By late July it was settled. Watson said he would never endorse Click, describing a post-primary meeting that left him unconvinced on data centers and digital identification.

Click took the meeting and did not close it. The challenger listened, disagreed, and put the disagreement on the record.

Graded by his own side and found wanting

The organizational damage came first and none of it has been repaired.

Ohio Gun Owners, which calls itself the most aggressive Second Amendment group in the state, gave Click a C-minus while rating Watson its top-tier candidate, then dropped him to an F five days before Election Day, citing what it described as undisclosed money from gun-control lobbyists.

End Abortion Ohio endorsed Watson after he scored 100% on a candidate survey Click declined to complete. Click called the group “clowns” on Facebook and said he would not take its endorsement under any condition. Self-identified supporters argued with him in his own comment section.

In April, Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor removed Click from its endorsements page, restoring him roughly two hours after this outlet reported it. On primary night, all three down-ticket candidates Click endorsed lost.

Click has spent six years building a fundraising operation aimed elsewhere. A TiffinOhio.net review of his contributions found that less than 14% of his money since 2020 came from individual donors inside the district, with more than 65% from corporate PACs and industry groups. That is the machinery that got him to 52%. It is not the thing that gets a councilman in Tiffin to say a kind word about him.

He is fighting Democrats instead

Whatever Click has done since May, reconciliation with his own party has not been it.

On Friday, Aug. 7, he deleted a post that accused three named Democrats — Seneca County Democratic Party Chair Gina Grandillo, Democratic nominee Aaron Jones, and Fremont City Councilwoman Angie Ruiz — of donating to Watson’s campaign, and issued a correction calling the claim one “made in error.” The correction named no one. State campaign finance filings show none of the three gave a dollar.

“Eric Watson’s campaign finance reports are public. Aaron Jones isn’t on them, I’m not on them, and Angie Ruiz isn’t on them — not one dollar, from any of the three people Representative Click named,” Grandillo said. “He could have checked in ten minutes before he posted, and he didn’t.”

“Incumbents who feel secure don’t spend August posting about their opponents,” she added. “This just adds to a concerning pattern of Gary Click peddling lies and misinformation.”

Watson went at the logic.

“Gary Click loves to lie, but the math doesn’t add up here,” he said. “The number of voters who pulled a Democratic ballot in the district actually increased this year. If Democrats were supposedly crossing over in significant numbers to vote for me in the Republican primary, you’d expect the opposite.”

“Throughout the campaign, Gary portrayed me as ‘further to the right and in the ditch,’” Watson said. “Now he wants everyone to believe Democrats were secretly trying to help elect the candidate he claimed was even further to the right than himself. Which is it?”

And on the result: “The truth is much simpler: nearly half of Republican primary voters rejected Gary Click. We took Seneca County strongly, beating an incumbent state representative in his own backyard, and came within roughly 600 votes of defeating him districtwide despite being massively outspent. That wasn’t Democrats—it was Republican voters who wanted a change.”

The crossover post was the fifth Click claim since February contradicted by church records, archives or named sources. It was the first one he took down.

The pattern he cannot post his way out of

Every one of these fights has the same shape. Click makes a public claim about who is with him. Someone with a name and a title says otherwise. Click responds by questioning their motives rather than withdrawing the claim.

The gun group said he was not what he said he was. The abolitionists said it. The governor’s campaign quietly took his name down. Watson said it after taking a meeting. Roessner has now said it twice, the second time on Click’s own page, and Click’s answer was to tell him to wear the other guy’s shirt.

An incumbent who had made peace with his party would not need to keep introducing his allies to the public. Click is still doing it in August, and they keep declining the honor.

He faces Jones on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Erie County Treasurer Caleb Stidham, who also chairs the Erie County Republican Party, was certified Monday as the Republican nominee in Ohio House District 89, according to a copy of the completed certification form. He was one of three people who applied for the vacancy. He was also one of six people the law entitled to vote on it.

The seat opened Tuesday, Aug. 4, when state Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, delivered a letter to the Erie County Board of Elections withdrawing from the November ballot after four terms. Swearingen told the Ohio Capital Journal he is being considered for a role that appears to involve the federal government, and that seeking another term while pursuing it would not have been fair to voters.

That handed the decision to a body created by section 3513.31 of the Ohio Revised Code: because the district spans more than one county but fewer than all of them, the chairperson and the secretary of each county Republican central committee in the district fill the vacancy. Erie, Ottawa and Huron each get two seats. A majority of the members present decides. The statute assigns the job of calling the meeting to the chairman of the most populous county in the district, which is Erie — Stidham.

The vote breakdown was not available Monday. It is not known whether Stidham voted on his own application, whether he abstained, or who presided over the meeting. Ohio law contains no recusal requirement for a committee member who is also an applicant, and it does not say who runs the meeting once it is called.

The objections came first, in public

The dual role drew days of public criticism from Republicans in the district before the committee ever met, and none of it was quiet.

Ron Coop, who posted about the meeting publicly hours before it convened, framed the choice as a cost the party would pay statewide rather than locally. “The 89th District is a solid 10 point Republican district. A point or two of grassroots staying home will not change local results,” he wrote. “However, it takes away votes from State wide candidates. This year will be a tough election for Republicans. They need all the votes they can get.”

He predicted the fight would not end Monday. “If Caleb is the choice, the next 2 years in the district will be ugly. The grassroots will be vocal, and every vote will be scrutinized. It will probably lead to a well funded primary challenger. An expensive primary is never good for the party,” Coop wrote. He argued the committee could avoid all of it by picking someone without a conflict of interest, and put the decision on Huron County: “Huron County has no dog in the fight. Huron County must decide if they are going to upset the base and vote for Caleb, or unite the party and pick someone the entire party can get behind.”

Former state Rep. Steve Kraus, who has said he wanted the seat, was blunter. “Chairman Calab Stidham actually did us a favor and let the ‘smoke filled room’ door open so you, ‘John Q public’ could actually see how the sausage is really made,” he wrote, adding that Stidham is “Speakers Huffman’s ‘choice’ because, after all, he’s one of them.”

Kraus also said he was cut out of the process. He wrote that he and Stidham were on the phone at 8 a.m. Friday, Aug. 7, and that Stidham did not invite him to the Huron County Republican lunch held that day, where the applicants addressed party members. “And why did my own chairman not invite me?” he wrote. “This is politics as usual and how the sausage is made.”

Kraus held the 89th District seat for seven months in 2015 and was removed after a jury convicted him of theft, a fifth-degree felony carrying an elderly-victim specification. He was acquitted of breaking and entering. A court later sealed the conviction, and the Ohio Supreme Court cleared him to appear on the 2024 primary ballot, where Swearingen defeated him.

Stephanie Stock, president of the anti-vaccine-mandate group Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, ran an email campaign at the two Huron County committee members over the weekend, publishing their addresses and a suggested message. “Please do not bend to the wishes of House and Senate leadership,” the draft read. It asked them not to replace Swearingen “with someone who will do the special interest bidding of Columbus rather than your citizens.”

A 10-year-old interview, back in circulation

Within hours of the selection, Republicans in the district were passing around a decade-old interview in which Stidham criticized the man who now defines the party.

In July 2016, Stidham was a 19-year-old Miami University sophomore from Huron who had traveled to Cleveland for his first Republican National Convention. WCPO in Cincinnati sat down with him and three other Miami students and reported that none of the four had voted for Donald Trump in that year’s Ohio primary on March 15.

Asked what he would say with 30 seconds of Trump’s time, Stidham answered: “I don’t even think there’d be anything worth saying.” He went on to say Trump had demonstrated he would not take direction from advisers, friends or committed supporters who had urged him to soften how he talked and carried himself, and that urging him to drop the border wall would go nowhere. Earlier in the same interview, Stidham called the race unconventional and said he was let down by how negative both campaigns had turned.

The exchange resurfaced Monday in a Facebook post by Mark Pukita, a Dublin technology entrepreneur who ran in the 2022 Republican U.S. Senate primary and who had already objected publicly to Stidham voting on his own application.

Stidham has since built his political career inside the Trump-era party. He chairs a county Republican organization, was elected treasurer in 2024 and has been among the more visible county chairs backing Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump endorsed for governor within hours of Ramaswamy’s announcement.

What TiffinOhio.net reported before the vote

Speaker Matt Huffman and Sen. Bill Reineke were working privately to get Stidham the nomination, a person familiar with the discussions told TiffinOhio.net last week.

Stidham managed Reineke’s 2020 Ohio Senate primary campaign, a bruising race against conservative activist Melissa Ackison in which Stidham issued a run of press releases attacking her business record. Reineke is now the sole declared candidate for Ohio Senate president and is expected to take the chamber’s top job when the next General Assembly convenes in January. His Senate district covers Seneca and Sandusky counties.

Stidham, 29, hosted what the Erie County party called its largest event ever, a Ramaswamy appearance at a Sandusky resort.

The applicants who did not have a vote

The other two applicants were Ottawa County Auditor Jennifer Widmer and Ottawa County Clerk of Courts Christopher Enoch. Neither held a seat on the committee.

Enoch is vice chairman of the Ottawa County Republican Party, but the statute seats only the chair and the secretary — in Ottawa’s case, Chairman Jill Stinebaugh and Secretary Toni DeLuca. Widmer holds no current office in the county party.

Both are also on the Nov. 3 ballot for county office, and under R.C. 3513.052 neither could have held both spots. Selection would have forced one of them to abandon a county race and forced Ottawa County Republicans to fill that vacancy under the same 4 p.m. clock. Stidham’s treasurer term runs through December 2028 and he was not on this year’s ballot, so he was the only applicant the committee could choose without a second scramble.

The county next door handled it differently

Northwest Ohio Republicans faced a similar conflict four months ago and resolved it another way. In April, the Sandusky County Republican Party Central Committee appointed its own chairman, Justin Smith, to a vacant county commissioner seat — but barred him from chairing the meeting because he was a candidate. Vice Chairman Ben Decker presided as acting chair specifically to avoid a conflict of interest.

Nothing in state law required that. It was a choice.

What Republicans are running against

The Democratic nominee, Easton Retzke of Sandusky, has held the nomination since the May 5 primary and has spent the summer building a campaign while Republicans had no candidate at all. A political science graduate of Ohio State, Retzke has centered his campaign on public school funding, housing costs, utility rates and campaign finance transparency. He has picked up endorsements from the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the UAW Tri-County CAP Council.

Swearingen won the district with 58% of the vote in 2024. Stidham inherits that margin, a general election 85 days out, and a bloc of Republicans in his own district who spent the weekend telling anyone who would listen that the process was rigged against them.

Coop wrote his warning before the committee voted. “For people who constantly talk about party unity, this should be a no brainer,” he wrote. “The establishment always tell us we must all come together. However, the establishment also will cause turmoil to make sure their candidates get their shot.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

U.S. Rep. Max Miller is the Republican nominee in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, and now he is stuck there. Under state law, Republicans had until Monday to certify a replacement on the November ballot. Because the county party chairs who would pick that replacement must be given two days’ notice before they meet, Miller would have had to withdraw by Saturday for the process to finish in time. He did not. His campaign spokesperson, Abigail Angelos, told The New York Times on Saturday that he was staying in.

He can still leave. If he does now, Republicans have no nominee at all in a district President Donald Trump carried by about 11 points in 2024, against Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker.

All of that was decided by Miller. What was decided by Vivek Ramaswamy is a smaller thing, and it is the thing this newsroom has been watching since last weekend: a name on a web page.

The one variable he controls

As of Monday, Miller’s name still appeared on the endorsements page of Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor, listed under “Ohio Congressional Delegation” alongside U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan, Dave Taylor, Michael Rulli and Warren Davidson.

Two headings above him on the same page are U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted.

Moreno is Miller’s former father-in-law and the father of Emily Moreno, whose court filings and police reports accuse Miller of holding a gun to her head and injuring their toddler. Moreno said Miller is a danger to his daughter and should not serve in Congress. Husted, in the middle of his own November race against Sherrod Brown, called on Miller to step aside as a candidate and to resign from the House.

So Ramaswamy’s endorsements page currently collects, in one column, a congressman accused of domestic abuse and the two Ohio senators demanding he leave public life. Gov. Mike DeWine, who called the allegations troubling, is on it too.

Ramaswamy has not resolved the contradiction. Asked about Miller at the Ohio State Fair on Wednesday, he said: “I wish everybody’s family well. My prayers are with the granddaughter who’s involved in that situation. And I think that is the most important thing.”

He did not say whether Miller should resign. He did not say whether Miller should leave the ballot. He did not say whether the endorsement still stands. It is worth being precise about direction here: Ramaswamy has never endorsed Miller’s re-election. Miller endorsed him. What Ramaswamy has done is keep publishing it.

April proved how fast the page can move

An endorsements page is among the cheapest things a campaign can change, and this campaign has already shown how quickly it changes one when a name becomes inconvenient.

In April, TiffinOhio.net reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign was promoting the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech, who was accused by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech denied wrongdoing and was never charged.

Two days later, Creech’s name was gone from the page — and so was state Rep. Gary Click’s. Web Archive snapshots captured both removals. The campaign announced nothing. Then Click’s name reappeared roughly two hours after this outlet documented the change, and Click told his Facebook followers that reports of his removal were greatly exaggerated. The archive said otherwise.

Creech has not been back on the page since. He is not on it today. That is the standard the campaign set for itself in April: a BCI file and a news story, and a name comes down inside 48 hours.

Since that standard was set, Miller has been the subject of a House Ethics Committee review, opened Tuesday at his own request, into whether he “may have engaged in domestic violence and abuse or illegal drug use.” The committee noted that opening a review does not itself indicate a violation occurred. He has been publicly told to quit by two U.S. senators from his own party and his own state, one of them his former father-in-law. A Strongsville GOP rally featuring Miller and U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, scheduled for Monday, was canceled after chair Shannon Burns cited the number and nature of threats. Miller told The Wall Street Journal he would loan his campaign $1 million.

Miller denies every allegation. He has not been charged with a crime, and he is suing his ex-wife for defamation.

Through all of it, the page did not change. Whatever else Miller was hearing last week, from the top of his party’s statewide ticket he was hearing nothing at all — and he could look at vivekforohio.com and see the light still green.

Why a Seneca County reader should care

Nobody here votes in the 7th District. But the same page carries names that appear on ballots in this part of the state, and it carries them under the same logic.

State Rep. Gary Click, the Vickery Republican who represents House District 88, is listed among Ohio state legislators — the endorsement he lost in April and got back the same afternoon. Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Reineke of Tiffin is listed by title. Seneca County Sheriff Fred Stevens is listed under Ohio sheriffs.

The endorsements page is the closest thing a campaign publishes to a public statement of whose company it will keep. Voters in Seneca County are being asked in November to hand the governor’s office to the person maintaining that list.

The pattern the opposition is betting on

The Ohio Democratic Party has spent a week demanding Ramaswamy reject the endorsement outright. “Vivek Ramaswamy’s silence regarding the horrifying abuse allegations against Max Miller is disqualifying,” ODP spokeswoman Katie Seewer said in a statement. “If Ramaswamy can’t even condemn Miller’s violent behavior, let alone reject his endorsement, how can Ohioans trust him to protect their families?”

Democrats are pressing the point because Ramaswamy’s handling of sexual violence has already been an issue in this race. In April, after his allies circulated Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s disclosure that she had sought therapy for childhood sexual abuse, Ramaswamy posted a video saying she had no vision for the state other than to complain about what someone else did to her. Acton has spoken publicly for years about being molested between the ages of 9 and 12 by her mother’s husband. Her campaign manager, Phil Stein, called the remark shameful.

Ramaswamy has also declined for months to call for release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Cook Political Report moved the Ohio governor’s race from Lean Republican to Toss Up in July. Spokespeople for the Ohio Republican Party and the Ramaswamy campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the USA TODAY Network last week.

What Monday actually settled

Ohio Republicans spent a week trying to get a different name onto the November ballot in the 7th District. Trump, who attended Miller and Emily Moreno’s wedding, told CBS News on Aug. 3 that Miller is a “very good person” and that he would let the families figure it out. Moreno and Husted said the opposite, loudly and by name. House Speaker Mike Johnson stood by Miller and pointed to the ethics process.

Miller listened to all of it and stayed. That was his call to make, and he made it.

Ramaswamy’s call was narrower and it was entirely his own. He did not have to hold a press conference or issue a statement or call for anything. He had to decide whether to leave a name up. He had until 4 p.m. Monday to make that decision quietly, the way he made the last one, and be able to say afterward that he had acted before the deadline rather than after it.

The deadline came. The name is still there.

Ohioans vote for governor on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Start with the instrument. House Bill 18, the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act, is described almost everywhere as a bill that would let Ohio put 10% of certain funds into crypto. That description is half right, and the missing half is the part that matters.

The 10% ceiling applies to the treasurer of state. Under the bill, the treasurer could invest interim money from the general revenue fund, the rainy-day fund and the lottery’s deferred prizes trust in digital assets, capped in the aggregate at a tenth of the fund balance at the time of purchase. The bill also restricts what qualifies: the asset must be an exchange-traded product whose average market capitalization over the preceding twelve months is at least $750 billion. Bitcoin, at roughly $1.33 trillion, clears that bar comfortably. Ether, at about $233 billion, does not. The bill never says the word “bitcoin.” It does not need to.

The pension provisions are built differently. Rather than authorize a capped allocation, the bill amends the investment sections governing all five of Ohio’s retirement systems to declare that nothing in those sections prohibits a board from investing in a qualifying exchange-traded product. It is a permission slip, not a budget line. There is no percentage limit written into the pension language. There is no market-cap floor attached to it either.

That distinction has been lost in the coverage, including in the widely repeated estimate that HB 18 would open the door to $27.5 billion in public money. That figure comes from applying the treasurer’s 10% cap to pension assets. The bill text does no such thing. Ohio’s five systems held roughly $284 billion as of Jan. 1, 2026, according to the Ohio Retirement Study Council, and the statutory ceiling on how much of it could go into bitcoin funds under this bill is not 10%. It is whatever eleven trustees decide is prudent.

What Ramaswamy actually owns

Ramaswamy co-founded Strive in Ohio as an anti-ESG asset manager. It is now headquartered in Dallas, and it is a bitcoin treasury company — a firm whose central business is accumulating bitcoin and measuring itself against bitcoin. Matt Cole is chairman and chief executive. Ramaswamy holds no executive role; his most recent securities filing lists his occupation simply as entrepreneur.

He remains one of its largest shareholders. His latest amended Schedule 13D, filed June 1 and reflecting positions as of May 28, reports beneficial ownership of 5,693,897 shares assuming conversion of his Class B stock — 7.6% of the class. That is down from 8.8% six weeks earlier, diluted by the company’s continuous at-the-market share issuance. At Monday’s close of $12.16, the stake is worth roughly $69 million. A separate family trust reported 1,418,942 shares in an earlier filing, and an investment company he controls holds another 106,245.

His April financial disclosure to the Ohio Ethics Commission also shows he personally holds bitcoin and ether.

Here is where leverage enters. Strive does not merely hold bitcoin; it funds bitcoin purchases by issuing perpetual preferred stock that pays a dividend every business day at a 13% annualized rate, with a redemption value and liquidation preference of $783 million as of June 30. Preferred holders stand ahead of common shareholders. That structure is designed to amplify: when bitcoin rises, the gain accrues disproportionately to the common equity Ramaswamy owns, because the preferred claim is fixed. When bitcoin falls, the same math runs in reverse.

It has been running in reverse. Strive reported Monday that it lost $257.6 million in the second quarter, with 94.1% of that loss attributable to markdowns on its bitcoin and a preferred-stock position. Six-month losses came to $523.5 million. Accumulated deficit stands at $1.04 billion. At June 30 the company held 19,864 bitcoin acquired at a weighted average cost of $94,793 apiece — against a fair value of $58,631 per coin. The cost basis was $1.88 billion. The holding was worth $1.16 billion. The gap was $718.3 million.

Bitcoin has recovered since, closing near $65,000 on Monday. That still leaves Strive’s position roughly a third below what it paid. For the company to break even on the bitcoin it already owns, the price would need to rise about 46% from here.

Large institutional buying is one of the things that moves that price. A state deciding to allocate even a modest fraction of a quarter-trillion dollars would be exactly that kind of buyer — and the announcement effect alone tends to arrive before the first purchase settles.

The levers a governor holds

Ohio’s governor does not run the pension funds, and it is worth being precise about what the office actually controls. The governor appoints one investment-expert trustee to each of the five retirement boards. On four of those five boards, an appointed trustee holds the seat through the end of a four-year term.

The teachers’ system is the exception, and it became the exception recently. The state budget signed in June 2025 and effective Sept. 30 rewrote the composition of the State Teachers Retirement System board. Elected educators, who once held seven of eleven seats, now hold three. The director of education and workforce and the chancellor of higher education — both governor appointees who serve in the governor’s cabinet or at the governor’s pleasure — sit on the board or send designees. And the budget added a sentence that appears nowhere in the law governing the other four systems: every appointed member of the teachers’ board serves at the pleasure of the appointing authority.

An appointee who can be removed at will is a different kind of appointee. That change was made in a budget bill, not in standalone pension legislation, and it was made before anyone knew who would win this November. But it is the law a new governor inherits.

The treasurer’s office matters at least as much. Under HB 18 the treasurer, not the governor, decides whether the state buys crypto at all. Treasurer Robert Sprague has been the loudest official voice for Ohio’s crypto push — “We chose to lead instead of follow,” he said last fall — and he was asked directly about being Ramaswamy’s running mate. “I don’t know about that,” he answered. “But I can say this: I think Vivek is a bold innovator, and he’s looking at the future of the state.” Sprague, now running for secretary of state, said he owns no digital assets himself. Ramaswamy ultimately chose Senate President Rob McColley.

Where the money came from

Ramaswamy has never hidden his enthusiasm. In January 2025, while still co-leading the federal Department of Government Efficiency, he called HB 18 “a thoughtful & powerful bill” and urged Ohio to “think creatively about hedging against government-created inflation risks.” Speaking at the Bitcoin Policy Institute two months later, he framed the asset in almost civic terms: bitcoin, he said, “helps fill that void, fill that hunger for a symbol, a reminder of what American greatness was all about.”

The industry has returned the affection. V-PAC, the super PAC supporting his candidacy, has raised roughly $42 million, and a handful of donors account for most of it. Federal filings show Pennsylvania trading magnate Jeff Yass gave $20 million across three checks. Ross Stevens gave $6 million; he founded Stone Ridge and, in 2017, NYDIG, a bitcoin-only financial services firm. Ratmir Timashev and Elon Musk gave $5 million apiece, and Bill Ackman gave $1 million.

To the candidate’s own committee, TiffinOhio.net reported in June that founders of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, their spouses and the chief executive of a major stablecoin company routed roughly $116,000 in maximum-legal contributions to Ramaswamy’s campaign, nearly all of it on primary day or the morning after.

None of that is illegal, and Ohio’s ethics statute says so explicitly: absent bribery or a purpose to defraud, campaign contributions are treated as accruing to a candidate in the ordinary course. The point is not that the money bought a position. Ramaswamy held this position before the checks arrived. The point is that the people writing them understood what they were buying access to.

The case against alarm

Several things cut the other way, and they deserve to be said plainly.

HB 18 has gone nowhere. It received five hearings in the House Technology and Innovation Committee and has never been reported out. Speaker Matt Huffman, a Republican, has been openly cold to it: “I think these kinds of risky things, we need to have a long, hard look at… I’m still scratching my head over cryptocurrency,” he told reporters last fall. House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn was blunter: “We have to be very careful with the crypto industry. We’ve seen a lot of abuse; Because of a lack of oversight, we’ve seen a lot of people losing their livelihoods.”

The retirement boards are also not free agents. Ohio law requires trustees to discharge their duties solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries, and to diversify investments so as to minimize the risk of large losses. A heavy allocation to a single volatile asset would sit uneasily against that standard, and trustees who tried it would be exposed. Ohio’s pension boards have lately been moving toward less exotic exposure, not more — the public employees’ system spent last year trimming its private equity holdings over fees and performance.

And Ramaswamy has been accused of nothing. He has not been charged, investigated, or found to have violated any rule. Backing legislation that happens to align with your portfolio is legal in Ohio, and common. Nothing in the state’s ethics chapter requires a governor to divest anything or to place assets in a blind trust. That is the actual gap: not a rule he has broken, but a rule that does not exist.

Why this is different from the data centers

Ramaswamy’s investments across the data center industry he would regulate raise a conventional conflict: he owns companies that benefit from policies he favors. The crypto position is sharper for three reasons.

First, it is directional and single-asset. A data center portfolio has many moving parts. A bitcoin treasury company has one. Second, it is leveraged, which means a given move in the underlying asset lands harder on his equity than on a plain holder’s. Third, and most important, it is currently underwater by hundreds of millions of dollars — which means the policy in question is not a way to grow a comfortable position. It is a way to close a hole.

We have written before about the echo of Coingate, the scandal in which Ohio workers’ compensation money flowed into rare coins controlled by a politically connected insider. The comparison has real limits: Coingate was theft, bitcoin is openly priced on public exchanges, and no one is alleging anything criminal here. But the structural lesson survives the differences. Ohio has been burned before when public money was steered toward a volatile asset class in which politically connected people already held positions.

The remedy available to Ramaswamy is not complicated, and it is entirely within his control. He could commit to divesting the Strive stake and the personal crypto holdings before taking office, or to a genuinely blind trust. He has not been asked to do so by any law, because Ohio has no such law. Voters get to decide on Tuesday, Nov. 3 whether that is good enough.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The grants will include $100 million from the Department of Energy spread across the 14 accredited mining schools in the U.S., while the Department of Defense will dedicate just over $80 million for three major schools of mining and metallurgy: the Colorado School of Mines, the South Dakota School of Mines and Johns Hopkins University. 

The Johns Hopkins University grant will help to create a new “multi-material recycling innovation hub,” while the South Dakota School of Mines’ funding will go toward establishing a consortium of workforce development programs alongside the University of Kentucky and Missouri S&T University.

Trump framed the announcement as part of his ongoing effort to rebuild the U.S. coal industry and reopen mines, a central pillar of his energy policy. He has previously sought to shorten the regulation process for new mines and limit the impact of environmental regulations. 

Trump stressed the national importance of funding mining programs, given that other countries, such as China, graduate students at a far higher rate. Accredited mining programs at U.S. educational institutions graduate less than 170 mining engineers each year, he said, while China graduates more than 3,000 annually. 

“We’re not doing you favors,” Trump told a crowd, including miners and many of the schools’ representatives, at a ceremony at the State Department building in Washington. “We’re doing ourselves favors. We need your industry.”

Half of the U.S. mining workforce is set to retire within the next three years, he added. 

“That’s why my administration is making an unprecedented financial commitment to our nation’s mining schools,” Trump said. “It’s going to keep us nice and young and vibrant.”

In addition to increasing support for mining education, Trump announced more than $2 billion worth of new mining contracts and projects. 

Those investments include $150 million for Minnesota-based Niron Magnetics to develop rare-earth-free magnets that are domestically produced to support the defense industrial base and $1.4 billion for Sila Nanotechnologies, a California-based firm, to “expand production of silicon-carbon battery anodes and build out a lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facility to strengthen the supply chains of satellite operations, unmanned aerial systems, and munitions,” according to a White House fact sheet.

Several of the speakers during the ceremony Friday, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, highlighted the national security benefits of increasing U.S. mine production. 

“At the core of this is our industrial strength,” Rubio said. “But also our national sovereignty — that we never depend on other countries for things we need to prosper and to defend ourselves as a people.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Incumbent Republican Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted played a pivotal role in bringing several billion-dollar data center projects to Ohio as lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025. He backed tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for past projects and consistently defends new data center development, arguing that they create construction jobs and broaden the tax base for rural communities.

“If you’re connected to a wire, you’re using the data center,” Husted said in a July 22 appearance on a conservative podcast. “So, understand that when we look in the mirror, we are the problem.”

Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown slammed Husted’s record of supporting tax breaks for data center developers in two July ads. In a third ad, he promised to make data centers pay the full cost of their electricity use.

He has also said companies should safely process water used to run data systems and that local communities deserve more transparency when making decisions about new projects. Brown has strong support from construction unions, including many that support data center projects because of the jobs they provide. Brown has called to end the data center tax breaks and says that local communities should have a say on whether to allow data center construction.

“Ohioans shouldn’t be forced to subsidize these costs and Ohioans — not Jon Husted and his billionaire friends — should get to decide if data centers are built in their community,” Brown said in a statement for this story.

Husted did not respond when asked to comment for this story.

One day after Brown’s ad was released, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, a U.S. Senate bill that would ask states to consider measures to make data centers pay for their electricity usage. Husted has otherwise said the federal government should not get involved, calling data centers a “local issue.”

Husted and Brown are part of a laundry list of politicians — including President Donald Trump, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and both parties’ nominees to replace him — who have expressed support for “ratepayer protection” policies. The proposals are also backed by a major data center lobbying group and tech companies like Microsoft that own data centers.

Multiple experts said most of the power to lower utility bills lies with regional brokers and state commissions, and federal legislation would do little to move the needle. Even so, Case Western Reserve University energy policy professor Joshua Basseches said the symbolic unity on the issue is encouraging.

“There’s so much partisanship in this country right now that if this could be a bipartisan issue, I think that would be great,” he said.

A full 71% of Ohioans are in favor of a temporary ban, also known as a moratorium, on new data center construction, according to a Bowling Green State University poll.

The Libertarian candidate for governor, Don Kissick, has called for a moratorium. Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said this week that if elected he wants to halt new projects until lawmakers require data centers to offer free electricity to nearby residents. Last month, Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton announced her support for a conditional moratorium on data centers if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met.

Austin Baurichter is a lawyer and volunteer for anti-data center advocacy group Conserve Ohio, which is gathering signatures to put a moratorium on data centers on the 2027 ballot. He compared Brown and Husted’s promises to regulate data centers to a politician handing an umbrella to someone drowning in a flood.

“Anything less than a full, 12-month moratorium on any advancement of any kind of a data center development falls short of what the people of this state are asking for,” he said.

Husted’s record on data centers

One month into Husted’s tenure as lieutenant governor, Google announced its first major data center in Ohio: a $600 million project in New Albany.

“Google investing in Ohio to open a new data center is great news for our state,” Husted said in a press release at the time. “Ohio is establishing itself as a premier destination for technology investment, and it further strengthens our case that Ohio is becoming the tech capital of the Midwest.”

The deal came with a reported 15-year, $43.5 million sales tax break from the state. Amazon got $81 million in state tax incentives for a data center in Hilliard in 2014, and Meta’s first data center in New Albany came with a 40-year, $37 million tax break in 2017.

The exemption on new equipment for large data centers flew under the radar when it was passed by the Ohio legislature in 2011.

Hyperscale data centers, or facilities that use more than 40 to 50 megawatts of power, were a small percentage of total data center electricity use at that time, according to an environmental advocacy group. Total electricity consumption across the U.S. grew at a slow 0.1% per year from 2005 to 2020.

A June 2023 press release by Husted touting a $7.8 billion investment by Amazon in the state cited a new use for data centers’ computing power: artificial intelligence.

The number of hyperscale data centers doubled worldwide between 2019 and 2024. Data centers could rise from accounting for 4% of total U.S. electricity consumption right now to 9% by 2030, according to projections by the Electric Power Research Institute.

Tech companies poured tens of billions of dollars into Ohio to build new data centers and expand existing campuses. That $600 million Google data center in 2019 has since ballooned into a project spanning sites in New Albany, Columbus, and Lancaster.

“Data centers are essential to our digital lives, and Google’s additional multibillion-dollar investment further establishes central Ohio as an important tech hub in America,” Husted said in June 2024 as Google announced another $2.3 billion investment in central Ohio.

His time as lieutenant governor ended when he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January 2025, reducing his public appearances at data center groundbreakings and his say in Ohio’s tax code.

“If Ohio wants to be a leader, a leading edge tech state in the Midwest, having those kinds of investments in the state is important,” he said in an interview with Signal Ohio in 2025.

Signal Ohio later reported that the state lost out on $1.6 billion in taxes from data centers in 2025, more than 11 times what they expected. Gov. Mike DeWine has since paused applications for new tax exemptions for data centers.

Meanwhile, U.S. electricity consumption rose 1.7% per year from 2020 to 2026. The average Ohio electricity bill grew by more than 53% from June 2021 to June 2026, far more than the national average, according to the Electricity Price Hub from Heatmap and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brown’s record on data centers

Brown’s record on data centers started before Ohio had a sales tax exemption for them. As a first-term U.S. senator in 2010, Brown secured $2.8 million in funding for a Dayton-area research center to develop water cooling technology for large data centers.

Today, water cooling systems make large data centers more energy efficient, but they created another problem: A large data center can use up to five million gallons of water per day, according to a 2025 report by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

That water must be cooled before it is put back in the environment, Case Western Reserve University environmental law professor Victor Flatt explained, or it can affect local wildlife.

Brown acknowledged this in a June interview with Spectrum News, saying, “They’ve got to make sure that they process the water right and recirculate it.”

Brown did not specify any stance on environmental regulations for data centers in a statement for this story. As a congressman from 1993 to 2025, his only public statement on data centers was a press release welcoming Amazon Web Services to New Albany in 2015.

On the campaign trail 11 years later, Brown has repeatedly criticized the “out-of-control” tax breaks under Husted’s watch and labeled him “the face of data centers” in ads.

Would the Ratepayer Protection Act protect ratepayers?

Both candidates promise to make data centers pay the full cost of their electricity usage.

The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which asks data center developers to pay for their utility usage, received commitments from about 200 entities and endorsements from several sitting governors, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

A companion bill to Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act passed out of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce by a unanimous vote in July.

Even so, experts say relief from the federal government in the near future is unlikely.

Public utilities are generally regulated by state commissions like the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, consultant David M. Klaus said. Klaus worked in the U.S. Department of Energy under three Democratic administrations and wrote a report about the limits of federal action to regulate data centers’ utility bills.

Case Western energy policy professor Basseches said that this is why Congressional legislation like Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act is narrow in scope.

“The federal government has never been involved in this way, certainly not in a legislative capacity,” Basseches said. “If this thing were to ever cross the finish line and become law, I expect there would be a lot of legal challenges and a lot of fights over authority between different states and the feds.”

PUCO allowed major utility provider AEP Ohio to treat data centers differently in 2025, but a June bill in the state legislature that would have extended the practice across the state didn’t reach the finish line before the legislature’s summer recess.

Other concerns about data centers: the environment and transparency

More power demand from data centers means more power plants, Flatt said. PJM Interconnection, a regional broker that makes sure there is enough power supply to meet demand in Ohio and 12 other states, came up 6.8 gigawatts short in its most recent auction. It warned that data centers may face involuntary outages as a result.

Flatt said new plants in Ohio are likely to be powered by fossil fuels. A 10-gigawatt data center project in Piketon — expected to be the largest data center in the world — will be powered by a new $33.3 billion natural gas plant.

Husted has expressed support for fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power data centers since 2023. He has also criticized wind and solar energy, saying they are “inadequate” to meet increased demand.

In most places, Flatt said solar energy with battery power backup is the cheapest, easiest, fastest form of energy production to build and permit.

“But some states like Ohio and the federal government have put some roadblocks in front of developing solar and certainly in front of developing wind, which would be the second-cheapest,” he added. “That’s going to lead to increased air pollution.”

Chevron donated $200,000 to a super PAC supporting Husted’s election bid in June, and a super PAC that backs nuclear energy spent almost $75,000 on ads supporting him in the second quarter. He also has deep ties to Ohio’s utility lobby.

While Brown has not directly addressed the intersection of data centers and energy production, he consistently supported clean energy initiatives while in the Senate.

Both candidates have otherwise said they see data centers as a local issue. At a July 11 stop in Ironton, Brown said the approval process should be “a local decision with everyone knowing what is at stake.”

The failed June bill included a provision stating that public records requests can supersede nondisclosure agreements, a common tactic used by data center developers to keep plans secret.

While Husted backs data centers, Brown is silent on the prospect of a moratorium

Hyperscale data centers bring jobs to local communities, leading many prominent Ohio labor unions to support them.

Dorsey Hager, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus-Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, estimated in May that data centers make up at least 40% of work hours by union members.

The Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council endorsed Brown in March. The president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, another large union backing Brown’s election campaign, also defended data centers because of the jobs they create.

Democratic nominee for Ohio governor Amy Acton said she would not allow data centers into the state if they do not meet several requirements, including stipulations on union labor, environmental standards, and more. Brown did not respond to a question for this story asking for his reaction to the policy.

Andrew Gula, a volunteer who gathers signatures for Conserve Ohio’s proposed data center moratorium, said he hears a variety of opinions from people who work on building and powering AI data centers. Some have told him they feel like they’re helping automate others’ jobs, and for others, “it is what it is,” he said.

Baurichter, another volunteer for Conserve Ohio, lives in Higginsport, a small village on the Ohio River. He said support for data centers because of the jobs they create in rural Ohio reflects a “corporate-centric” mindset that puts people second.

The lack of support among top Ohio politicians for a moratorium has made him increasingly disillusioned with the political system, he said, adding that Conserve Ohio aims to “take things into our own hands” by collecting signatures for its 2027 ballot initiative.

Baurichter estimated that around 65% of Conserve Ohio’s members are conservative or voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. In Ohio’s U.S. Senate election this November, he said “any reasonable person” opposed to data centers would vote for the “lesser of two evils.”

“But that misses altogether that this is nothing but a perpetuation of the same dysfunction that this government has exhibited for decades, that people are waking up to,” 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.

Derek Merrin, the Republican nominee and former state representative who is facing long-time Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in the November election, voted for Ohio’s data center tax breaks when he was an Ohio state representative in 2017. Kaptur has spoken out against data centers for draining power and water from local communities, saying the companies should pay for that, not the citizens.

Ohio’s data centers have received $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives between 2017 and 2024, according to a 2025 report by SRC EvalMetrics on behalf of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. 

Merrin, who served four terms as an Ohio state representative for the Toledo district from 2016 to 2024, did not respond to the Ohio Capital Journal’s questions for this story.

Merrin received a $1,000 political donation from the American Electric Power Ohio Committee for Responsible Government in 2021. AEP had received more than $6 million in data center tax breaks in Ohio as of September 2024, according to Policy Matters Ohio. 

Merrin received a $500 political donation from Windstream Holdings’ PAC in 2022. That same year, Windstream Holdings listed eight “key data center locations” in Ohio. 

One of the data center locations was operated by Cologix, which received more than $6 million in data center tax breaks as of September 2024, according to Policy Matters Ohio. 

Another one of Windstream’s Ohio data centers location was operated by CyrusOne, which received more than $5 million in data center break breaks as of September 2024, according to Policy Matters Ohio. 

Ohio has more than 200 data centers, the sixth-highest state in the country, according to Pew Research Center. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 22, according to the Data Center Map. 

Ohioans are seeing increased electric bills. The average Ohio residential utility bills are projected to be about $800 for the summer — a 17% increase compared to last summer, according to a report by Third Way. 

Merrin lost a close race to Kaptur during the 2024 election and the Cook Political Report says Ohio’s 9th Congressional District race is a toss-up.

Kaptur raised concerns over data centers at the end of last year.

“How much more will our citizens be forced to pay for power and water?” Kaptur asked, speaking on the U.S. House floor. 

“They have a right to know. Will our building trades be true partners in economic growth or just temporary labor while facing higher utility bills at home? And how many permanent jobs will these largely opaque facilities actually provide? … The American people deserve to know how AI data centers will affect their communities.”

When the Ohio Capital Journal asked if Kaptur supports bringing more data centers to Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, Kaptur’s campaign spokesperson Kylie Blitzer responded.

“Economic development should strengthen our communities, not drain their resources, and put added burdens on our people.

“If data center companies want to do business here, they should pay their fair share — not force hardworking people and local municipalities to subsidize billions in tax breaks for wealthy CEOs and shareholders who can easily afford to pay their own way,” Blitzer said in an email. 

Ohio Democratic candidate for governor Amy Acton recently announced she supports a conditional moratorium on data centers “if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met,” she said in a statement.

Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy’s data center plan is three-fold.

“If a data center is built in your community, then (1) you will no longer have to pay for your home’s electricity, (2) you will pay lower property taxes, and (3) the data center will be required to abide by all air and water quality standards without exception, and we will take the necessary steps to protect Ohio’s fertile farmland,” he said in a statement.

Neither candidate has laid out exactly how they intend to accomplish their promises, whether that be using the limited powers of the governor’s office or some combination of working with the legislature, data center operators, utilities, or utility regulators.

Lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse have yet to pass any data center legislation. 

Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind a proposed constitutional amendment to ban new data centers, are collecting signatures to make the 2027 ballot.

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.