On December 26, 2024 — while still serving as co-chair of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — Ramaswamy posted a lengthy argument on X defending tech companies that hire foreign-born engineers instead of Americans. The reason, he argued, was cultural failure.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit,” Ramaswamy wrote. “A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

He added: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

The post aligned him with Silicon Valley’s years-long push to expand the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to hire foreign nationals in specialty occupations — primarily technology and engineering. CNN reported that Ramaswamy and Musk used the moment to defend companies that depend on H-1B workers, arguing tech firms cannot operate without importing foreign labor.

His own company filed 29 H-1B applications

Ramaswamy’s defense of the practice was not abstract. According to federal records from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-1B Employer Data Hub, Roivant Sciences — the pharmaceutical company Ramaswamy founded — had 29 H-1B visa applications approved between 2018 and 2023, as first reported by Politico. Ramaswamy stepped down as Roivant’s CEO in February 2021 but remained chair of its board of directors until February 2023.

When Politico asked his campaign about the gap between that record and his stated immigration policy positions, press secretary Tricia McLaughlin did not dispute the filings. “The system is broken and needs to be fixed,” she said in a statement, comparing it to using electricity while criticizing energy regulations. “Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector are badly broken, but he still uses water and electricity,” she said. “This is the same.”

’Indentured servitude’ — but keep the pipeline open

Ramaswamy has publicly called the H-1B program “indentured servitude” and pledged to gut its lottery-based selection system. But he has never called for ending the importation of foreign tech workers. His stated goal is to replace the lottery with what he describes as a merit-based model — one that, under his own framing, would accelerate the flow of foreign engineers into American workplaces rather than stop it.

“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission,” he told Politico. “It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it.”

Critics from the left and right noted that his proposed solution addresses the mechanism of the H-1B program, not its core economic effect on American workers. A 2020 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that the structure of the H-1B program has allowed employers — including major tech firms — to pay visa workers at wage levels set below the local median for their occupation. A separate EPI analysis in 2023 found that the top 30 H-1B employers laid off at least 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023 while simultaneously filing for 34,000 new H-1B hires.

Bipartisan pushback

Ramaswamy’s December 2024 comments drew immediate backlash from across the political spectrum. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his onetime rival in the 2024 Republican primary, responded directly: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

Pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley wrote on X: “I always love when these tech bros flat out tell you that they have zero understanding of American culture and then have the gall to tell you that YOU are the problem with America.” Steve Bannon, on his War Room podcast, called the pro-H-1B arguments a “total scam.”

The public blowup over the comments contributed to reported tensions between Ramaswamy and both Trump and Musk. Ramaswamy departed DOGE on January 20, 2025 — Inauguration Day — and formally launched his Ohio gubernatorial campaign the following month.

What it means for Ohio workers

H-1B is a federal visa program; Ohio’s governor has no direct authority over it. But Ramaswamy’s ideological alignment with the tech industry’s preferred approach to labor supply — importing credentialed foreign workers rather than investing in domestic workforce development — is a contrast that his opponents in the May 5 primary have already begun pressing.

Republican primary challenger Casey Putsch has made it a centerpiece of his campaign. “Our kids are denied high-paying jobs due to foreign H-1B visa labor,” Putsch’s campaign website states, positioning Ramaswamy implicitly as part of the problem he’s running against.

Ramaswamy has offered no state-level workforce or labor development policy addressing how Ohio workers — particularly in manufacturing communities already hammered by plant closures and job losses — would compete in the technology economy he describes as essential to the state’s future.

Attempts to reach Ramaswamy’s campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Seneca County Board of Developmental Disabilities placed Superintendent Lewis Hurst, 60, of Republic, on paid administrative leave following a special meeting Saturday, March 28, according to a statement reported by the Advertiser-Tribune. The board described the action as a “private personnel issue” that is “not otherwise related to Mr. Hurst’s leadership” and declined to elaborate. Natasha Nichols, Director of Service and Support Administration, has been named interim superintendent.

Hurst faces one count of theft under Ohio Revised Code 2913.02, a fifth-degree felony, according to court records and a Perkins Township Police Department investigation report obtained by TiffinOhio.net. The alleged offense occurred January 24, 2026.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/seneca-county-opportunity-center-superintendent-on-leave-faces-felony-theft-charge/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Senators voted down the measure, 47-52, with a similar partisan breakdown as earlier votes that saw one Republican and one Democrat break with their parties.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who previously sponsored one of the Iran War Powers Resolutions, again split with his party to oppose Trump’s military actions in Iran, which the president launched without approval from Congress. 

As he has previously, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to support Trump continuing the war in Iran.

Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., did not vote.

Senate Democrats have vowed more votes ahead to rein in Trump’s joint operations with Israel in Iran.

Wednesday’s War Powers Resolution was sponsored by Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

Fourth failed vote

Prior votes to cut off Trump’s unchecked military operations in Iran were held March 18, March 4 and June 27, when the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last year.

The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran has claimed the lives of 13 American troops, and as of Wednesday injured 395, according to the Pentagon. Thousands of civilians in Iran and across the Middle East have been killed and injured in the shelling on both sides.

Meanwhile, the war has set off an oil crisis across the globe as Iran and the U.S. vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea that moves one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas.

A gallon of regular gas peaked at $4.16 on average across the U.S. last week, while diesel reached nearly $5.97, according to AAA. As of Wednesday, a gallon of regular gas sat at $4.10 on average, and diesel at $5.63.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed voters held Trump responsible for the spike in gas prices by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Democrats on the panel were highly critical of that proposal, which lawmakers will debate in the months ahead and is unlikely to be approved in full.  

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member on the committee, said the administration’s request to increase defense spending so significantly while not bolstering health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid or helping people pay for child care “is a reflection of priorities that are out of whack,” with what Americans truly need. 

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said during the three-hour hearing that the administration believes a significant boost to defense spending “is meant for significant paradigm-shifting investments.”

“For instance, the president and his Department of War are exhibiting tremendous leadership to build ships, planes, drones, munitions and satellites faster without the backlog of status quo,” he said. “For the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities, not just add shifts, it requires multi-year agreements to purchase into the future. That cost has to be booked in this first year.”

Vought said the administration’s preference is that Republicans place about $1.15 trillion in the annual Defense spending bill, which will require bipartisan support to move through the Senate, and put another $350 billion in a budget reconciliation bill, which Republicans can advance on their own.

He believes that will avoid Democrats demanding that each $1 increase in defense spending be matched by a $1 increase in domestic spending. 

“This Congress has changed the way we can spend money through the reconciliation process to avoid the pitfalls that really caused two decades of not being able to accomplish anything,” he said. “And I think you should be commended for that.”

Republicans used the complex budget reconciliation process last year to enact their “big, beautiful” law and are looking to advance another reconciliation bill in the coming months that would further bolster spending on immigration enforcement activities. 

No numbers on Iran war spending

Vought testified before the committee that he isn’t yet able to provide a ballpark estimate for how much in additional defense spending the administration plans to ask Congress to provide for the war in Iran. 

“We’re not ready to come to you with a request. We’re still working on it,” he said. “We’re working through to figure out what’s needed in this fiscal year versus next fiscal year.”

The current fiscal year will end on Sept. 30. 

Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee raised concerns about what such a steep increase in defense funding would mean for a department that has consistently struggled to account for all of its spending during several audits. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal questioned whether the Trump administration was serious about addressing fraud in every department, given its proposal to bolster funding for the Defense Department by more than half a trillion dollars. 

Vought responded that the “department is making progress towards the audit.”

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman was even more frustrated with leadership in the Defense Department, saying that there “is so much arrogance in that agency.”

“I keep holding my nose because defense is the most important thing. And they just say, ‘We don’t have to do an audit. We’re so damn important. We don’t care what Congress thinks,’” Grothman said. “I hope that they dial up this audit and have the guys work around the clock, complete an audit by July 31 or before we eventually have to pass this stuff.”

Vought sought to reassure Grothman and other lawmakers on the panel that the Trump administration does want to address how DOD spends money. 

“The notion that we’re not trying to find any kinds of inefficiencies at the Department of Defense is not true,” Vought said. “Our view is that we would want to plow those into being able to invest in procurement and research.”

What’s next

The House Budget Committee won’t actually draft the dozen annual government funding bills. 

That is up to the Appropriations Committee, which will hold hearings with Cabinet secretaries and agency leaders in the coming weeks to hear more about the president’s budget request for the fiscal year set to begin Oct. 1. 

The Appropriations subcommittees will then draft and debate the spending bills that account for a fraction of the $7 trillion federal budget. A much larger chunk of annual funding, about $4.2 trillion, goes to mandatory programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Another $970 billion goes to interest payments on the debt. 

While defense spending predominantly goes to the Pentagon, with a bit going to the Energy Department for nuclear security programs, domestic spending that the administration wants to cut overall is allocated among dozens of agencies. 

The departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, State, Veterans Affairs and numerous smaller agencies all share the total spending level for domestic programs.  

During fiscal year 2025, which ended last September, defense spending totaled $893 billion, while non-defense programs received $980 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio colleges and universities are required to cut any undergraduate degree programs that produce on average less than five degrees annually over a three-year period. 

The Ohio Senate Bill 1 law also bans diversity efforts, regulates classroom discussion, prohibits faculty strikes, creates post-tenure reviews, puts diversity scholarships at risk, and creates a retrenchment provision that blocks unions from negotiating on tenure.

Cleveland State University and Miami University have not eliminated any degree programs because of Senate Bill 1. 

Youngstown State University has not yet announced which programs will be cut. 

“We will not have that data until the June (Board of Trustees) meeting as the answer requires us to evaluate based off of the number of graduates in each program which we will not have until after graduation,” university spokesperson Rebecca Rose said in an email. 

The University of Akron and Central State University have not yet finalized a list of degree programs to cut.  

“We will specifically need to wait until after graduation, as this year’s graduates count toward the 3-year average for established programs,” University of Akron spokesperson Margaret Thresher said in an email.

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green is eliminating six degree programs starting with the Spring 2027 semester. 

1. Associate of Applied Science in human service
2. Bachelor of Arts in geography
3. Bachelor of Musical arts
4. Bachelor of Musical composition
5. Bachelor of Science in individualized planned program
6. Bachelor of Science in physics

Kent State University

Kent State has eliminated the most programs with 19 and the last admission term for these programs was fall 2025. 

1. Bachelor of Arts in Africana studies
2. Bachelor of Arts in chemistry 
3. Bachelor of Arts in classics 
4. Bachelor of Science in community health education 
5. Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance 
6. Bachelor of Arts in dance studies 
7.  Bachelor of Arts in earth science 
8. Bachelor of Science Education in earth science
9. Bachelor of Arts in French 
10.  Bachelor of Applied Horticulture in horticulture 
11.  Associate of Applied Science in horticulture technology 
12.  Bachelor of Science Education in life science 
13. Bachelor of Science Education in life science/chemistry 
14.  Bachelor of Arts in mathematics
15.  Bachelor of Science Education in physical science
16.  Bachelor of Arts in physics 
17.  Associate of Technical Study in radiologic technology 
18.  Bachelor of Science in respiratory care 
19.  Bachelor of Science Education in school health education, effective fall 2026.

Ohio University

Ohio University is eliminated 16 programs. 

1. Associate of Applied Science in aviation flight technology 
2. Associate of Applied Science in child development 
3. Associate of Applied Science in electronic media
4. Associate of Applied Science in equine studies
5. Associate of individualized studies
6. Bachelor of Arts in African American studies
7. Bachelor of Arts in chemistry
8. Bachelor of Arts in dance 
9. Bachelor of Science in Education in family and consumer sciences education in teaching
10. Bachelor of Arts in French 
11. Bachelor of Applied Science in hospitality management 
12. Bachelor of Arts in geological sciences
13. Bachelor of Fine Arts in interdisciplinary arts 
14. Bachelor of Arts in mathematics 
15. Bachelor of Music in music therapy
16. Bachelor of Arts in physics

Ohio State University

Ohio State is getting rid of eight degree programs. 

1. Bachelor of Arts in music theory
2. Bachelor of Arts in musicology 
3. Bachelor of Arts in medieval and renaissance studies 
4. Bachelor of Science in integrated major in mathematics and English (College of Arts and Sciences)
5. Associate of Science in sustainable agriculture
6. Associate of Science in biochemical sciences 
7. Associate of Applied Science in landscape horticulture 
8. Bachelor of Science in sustainable agriculture (College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences)

Shawnee State University

Shawnee State has already eliminated four degree programs and an additional seven programs will be cut later this year. 

Programs that have already been cut:

1. Bachelor of Science in business administration with a health care administration concentration 
2. Bachelor of Science in Education in education studies
3. Associate of Technical Study degree concentrations 
4. Associate of Science in natural science

Programs that will be eliminated before August: 

1. Associate of Applied Science in plastics manufacturing
2. Bachelor of Science in natural science, with integrated sciences grade 7-12 teaching licensure
3. Bachelor of Fine Arts in art education
4. Bachelor of Arts in social sciences
5. Bachelor of Arts in political science 
6. Bachelor of Arts in history
7. Bachelor of Arts in sociology

University of Toledo

The University of Toledo eliminated nine programs.

1. Bachelor of Arts in Africana studies
2. Bachelor of Arts in Asian studies
3. Bachelor of Arts in data analytics
4. Bachelor of Arts in disability studies
5. Bachelor of Arts in Middle East studies
6. Bachelor of Arts in philosophy
7. Bachelor of Arts in religious studies
8. Bachelor of Arts in Spanish
9. Bachelor of Arts in women’s and gender studies

University of Cincinnati

Cincinnati has eliminated two programs. 

1. Bachelor of music in composition 
2. Associate of science in public health at University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College

Wright State University

Wright State had already identified 14 programs that would be eliminated before Senate Bill 1 passed last year. One more program was added to the list because of the new requirements — bringing the total to 15, university spokesperson Deena John said. 

1. Bachelor of Arts in African & African American Studies
2. Associate of Science in biological sciences
3. Bachelor of Arts in chemistry 
4. Bachelor of Arts in classical languages & cultures
5. Bachelor of Arts in comparative religion
6. Associate of Science in earth & environmental sciences
7. Bachelor of Arts in earth & environmental sciences
8. Bachelor of Arts in economics
9. Bachelor of Arts in mathematics
10. Bachelor of Arts in philosophy
11. Bachelor of Science in Education in physical education & health education
12. Bachelor of Arts in physics
13. Associate of Arts in psychology
14. Bachelor of Science in Education in wellness studies
15. Bachelor of Arts in women & gender studies

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.

As they do, news comes that most of the money being generated flows out of state. And that’s before you count the social costs inflicted.

Ohio legalized online sports betting in 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead in 2018. 

Since then, there have been accusations that it’s corrupted big-time sports. Two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians are charged with throwing wild pitches to rig bets. 

In addition, the number of Ohioans seeking help for problem gambling is way up, sports betting has been linked to increased crime and more suicides.

The UCLA Anderson School of Management in April reported that entire states’ average credit scores took a hit when sports betting was legalized.

That’s not just the average credit scores of gamblers, but of everybody in the state.

The problems have gotten bad enough that Gov. Mike DeWine in November said he regrets ever signing Ohio’s sports-betting law.

Last week, three Republican lawmakers announced legislation intended to mitigate some of the worst harms done by the state’s sports-betting businesses.

State Reps. Riordan McClain, R-Upper Sandusky, Gary Click, R-Vickery, and Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, called a press conference and said sports betting was a loser for the average Ohioan.

“The fact is that most betters do not win,” McClain said.

He said only about 5% of sports betters actually make money over the long term.

It appears to also be a losing proposition for the state as a whole.

The Center for Addiction Science, Policy and Research’s Online Gambling Research Center in February estimated revenue flows for every state that allows online gambling. 

It found that in 2025, online gambling generated $888 million more for gambling companies in Ohio than they paid out to bettors — and after the $178 million they paid in taxes.

Of that revenue, $533 million flowed out of state, while just $355 million stayed in Ohio.

The 40% share of the revenue that stayed in Ohio was less than in 10 other states, but more than in 19.

The $178 million in taxes and the $355 million in gambling revenue that stayed in state sounds like a lot of money. 

But a 2023 study estimated that in New Jersey, online gambling created $350 million in annual social costs.

Ohio’s population is about a quarter bigger than that of New Jersey.

So if the 2023 study is correct, Ohio’s social costs would be about $438 million.

That’s 2.5 times the taxes collected, and 1.2 times the business revenue that stays in the state. 

The bill announced last week would limit the frequency and size of bets, the marketing practices of gambling companies, and it would prohibit putting bets on credit cards. But its sponsors conceded that it faces a difficult road to passage.

Aaron Baer leads the Center for Christian Virtue. He said Republicans and Democrats should support the bill because both can see the “exploitative nature of the gaming industry.” The human cost and the economics make it hard to justify, he said.

“Americans are projected to lose $1 trillion in personal wealth to gambling by 2030,” Baer said in an email.

“In Ohio alone, about $1 billion in personal wealth was lost last year. Even more staggering is that 81% of people with a gambling addiction experience suicidal ideation and 31% attempt suicide. Given these numbers, I don’t see how anyone could possibly argue that the ‘economic benefits’ of sports gambling outweigh the catastrophic financial, mental, and social consequences.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

This comes off the heels of a high-profile ruling that found Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and Google liable for creating social media sites that were intentionally addictive and that led to mental health problems for a child.

A large body of research asserts that social media can have addictive properties and has caused problem addiction among large swaths of the general population.

In a 2021 meta-analysis of 63 studies on social media addiction, an international team of researchers found as much as a quarter of people in studies across 32 countries qualified as at least moderately addicted to social media.

Warning labels are a tried and true practice in public health prevention.

As early as 1906, the federal government was holding companies accountable for not disclosing product information to consumers.

The first required warning labels were applied to regulation of poison adopted federally in the late 1920s. 

From an economic standpoint, warning labels help promote more efficient markets.

Consumers cannot make informed consumption decisions if they are not aware of the potential harms of goods.

In theory, clear labels about potential harms can protect consumers from purchasing or misusing goods and prevent both misallocation of resources and dangerous accidents.

A meta-analysis by Canadian marketing researchers of 66 studies on warning labels finds warning labels are at least somewhat effective at shifting consumer behavior.

Labels could be a tool for helping consumers control their own well-being.

Many studies have made a connection between mental health issues and social media exposure. Some researchers, however, have questioned this body of research.

A group of Norwegian researchers reviewed 79 studies on the association between social media use and mental health for adolescents.

They found that three-quarters of the studies they reviewed focused on some sort of connection between social media use and some sort of pathology.

Researchers were much more likely to ask if social media hurt than to ask if it helped.

Their takeaway: researchers are finding what they are looking for, and the literature may be more reflective of a “moral panic” perpetuated by the media than a true public health crisis.

On the other hand, some researchers are finding evidence social media use could be eating away at our economy.

A study last year by an Argentinian economist estimated that smartphone checking could be eating up as much as 13% of the Argentinian economy by cutting into productivity, with the heaviest losses coming from high-distriction jobs like office work, finance, government, and service jobs.

Personally, do I want to get a warning message shown to me every time I open TikTok on my phone? Not really.

But I understand the concern people have with social media and what it could be doing to public health and the state economy.

There may be reckoning coming soon where the public sector figures out where its place is in the regulation of social media.

I figure we still have a long way to go before we get there.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In the center of the map’s biggest sea of red is Illinois, outlined in green — showing it’s a state with strong abortion access — surrounded by several states that ban or severely restrict abortion. Illinois is the destination for nearly 1 in 4 people traveling to another state for abortion care, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy and research organization that supports abortion access and tracks data nationwide.

“Illinois really became kind of a haven state for the Midwest and much of the South immediately post-Dobbs,” said Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, which provides logistical and financial support to people who need abortions.

The state’s geography explains part of its popularity; in five of the six border states, abortion is either banned or largely inaccessible. But Illinois also is among the states that have put in place new policies — along with millions of dollars — to welcome patients who aren’t their residents. Advocates and providers say other safe-haven states should replicate the investments.

That’s happened most recently in Maine and Washington state, where governors approved funding to support family planning and abortion care, including for out-of-state patients.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion and allowed states to regulate the procedure, 13 states have implemented near-total abortion bans, and seven others have bans after six to 12 weeks. Although about one-quarter of people who need an abortion now obtain medication by telemedicine, many who live in states with bans still have to travel elsewhere for various reasons, including fear of prosecution.

Guttmacher’s data showed that fewer people traveled for care in the past two years than the peak of 170,000 who traveled in 2023, the year after Dobbs.

That number fell to about 155,000 in 2024, including 35,000 who went to Illinois, the data showed. Last year, an estimated 142,000 abortion patients traveled out of state, with a fairly consistent number, about 32,000, going to Illinois.

The next-highest destination after Illinois was North Carolina, followed by New Mexico and Kansas.

Guttmacher and other advocates attribute part of that decrease in the national numbers to wider availability of telehealth access to abortion medication that can be mailed to patients in other states. There were an estimated 1.1 million abortions across the United States in 2025, about the same amount as 2024 but the highest number since 2009, according to Guttmacher.

Shield laws protect health care providers in many states, including California, Illinois and New York. Those laws have prevented Republican attorneys general in other states, such as Texas and Louisiana, from trying to punish providers who prescribe the drugs.

Louisiana has unsuccessfully tried to charge and extradite doctors from California and New York, and is also suing the federal government to remove the provision that allows abortion medication to be prescribed by telehealth. A federal judge put the case on hold for now as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a safety review.

Policy changes in Illinois

Illinois’ “haven” status is derided by anti-abortion groups, who call the state’s policies extreme.

“The abortion industry in Illinois is the wild west, which is clear by these numbers,” said Mary Kate Zander, president and CEO of Illinois Right to Life, to the Chicago Sun-Times, speaking about the Guttmacher report.

One state changing its laws to restrict abortion access can lead to a significant influx of patients traveling to clinics in other states. Dr. Allison Cowett, chief medical and advocacy officer for Family Planning Associates, said when six-week abortion bans went into effect in Florida and Georgia in May and October of 2024, respectively, many more patients from the South started coming to Chicago.

“Within the first few months after Dobbs, we had more than 1 in 3 patients coming from outside Illinois, and that has maintained for those three, almost four years,” Cowett said.

Illinois also borders Indiana, which has a near-total abortion ban in place. Cowett said Indiana residents were the largest percentage of out-of-state abortion patients at her clinic before 2022, and it has stayed that way.

Jeyifo said when she started as a volunteer with the Chicago Abortion Fund in 2016, the organization couldn’t financially support large numbers of out-of-state patients because Illinois didn’t invest in access the way it does now. The biggest change came in 2018, when Illinois allowed its state Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures.

“We would not have been able to expand our support outside of Illinois residents without that coverage,” Jeyifo said.

Nineteen other states allow their Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures, according to KFF, a health policy research group.

In 2023, Democratic lawmakers in Illinois allocated $10 million from the state health department to establish the Complex Abortion Regional Line for Access, known as CARLA, a hotline for the Chicago Abortion Fund and four area hospitals to help coordinate care. Jeyifo said more than 1,000 people have received assistance through that hotline in the years since.

The state has also helped fill in lost Medicaid funding after Congress passed a provision blocking federal Medicaid payments to certain abortion providers, mainly targeting Planned Parenthood, and it has helped pay for training and other programs that help connect people with care.

In January, the state launched a new partnership with the Chicago-based Michael Reese Health Trust to establish the Prairie State Access Fund, which will provide aid to out-of-state patients in need of reproductive and gender-affirming health care.

“(Illinois) is this model for other receiving states around the country to take up and learn about, because the proximity on a map is important, but the resources that are available once you get to a place are so much more important,” Jeyifo said.

Finding nearby states

The Guttmacher report showed 62,000 of the 142,000 people who traveled came from states with near-total bans, more than double the number who traveled from those states before 2022. But it has declined over the past year, down from 74,000 who traveled from those states in 2024.

The next-highest state for travelers, North Carolina, is relatively close to Georgia and Florida. The number of out-of-state travelers has remained steady there since 2024, even though North Carolina has a 12-week ban and a three-day waiting period for abortions.

In New Mexico and Kansas, about two-thirds of all abortions provided were for people traveling from outside the state, but those numbers are going down. New Mexico is often a destination for people from Texas, and Kansas borders Oklahoma, two states with strict bans. Kansas also borders Missouri; voters in 2024 passed a constitutional amendment legalizing abortion, but access has not returned, and lawmakers are trying to reverse the amendment in this year’s midterm elections.

A staff member at Family Planning Associates in Chicago gathers supplies from a room in the clinic stocked with toiletries, basic clothing, shoes and other items for patient care packages. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Allison Cowett)

Family Planning Associates is one of the largest independent abortion clinics in Illinois. It expanded its staff — including doctors, nurses and front desk workers — during the first year after Dobbs from about 40 people to more than 70 to handle the new patient volume, Cowett said. The clinic also expanded its physical space by about two-thirds.

Many of those who come from the South have never left their home state, Cowett said, and it can be overwhelming for them to come to a big city during an already emotional event. The abortion fund and others help supply a closet in the clinic that is stocked with toiletries, basic clothing, shoes and other items to assemble care packages for patients.

The state has also provided security infrastructure grants to nonprofits to protect against potential attacks, such as a clinic firebombing in Peoria, Illinois, in 2023, two days after Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed abortion protections into law. No one was in the building at the time.

Such aid was especially important for the Choices: Center for Reproductive Health clinic in Carbondale, a city at the southern tip of Illinois and the intersection of neighboring states with strong anti-abortion laws: Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.

It’s a much shorter drive to Carbondale for people in those states than it is to Chicago, said Jennifer Pepper, Choices president and CEO, and it’s a more familiar, smaller area.

The state grant allowed them to harden the physical security of the clinic in Carbondale, Pepper said, which is something they haven’t been able to do for their sister location in Memphis, Tennessee. That clinic provides birth control, wellness exams and midwifery services, but receives no state support.

“We’ve never had state support in all of our 52 years in Tennessee,” Pepper said.

State assistance

Other states with Democratic leadership and protective abortion laws are starting to approve more funding to support reproductive health care.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed a budget bill Friday that includes funding for lost Medicaid reimbursements and creates an ongoing $5 million annual appropriation for family planning services. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a law in late March establishing a new revenue source for abortion care by implementing a tax on health insurance companies that is expected to generate about $10 million in the first year and about $2 million in each subsequent year.

Jeyifo, of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said she hopes to see more of those efforts in other states with laws that are supportive of reproductive health care, including ones with Democratic leadership that could be doing more to expand clinic availability and rescind waiting periods, such as the 24-hour waiting requirement that still exists in Wisconsin before a patient can get an abortion.

“So many states in our region could be doing more just for their own residents, let alone people traveling,” Jeyifo 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.

In the video, which had drawn more than 66,000 views by Wednesday, Putsch appears holding a lever-action rifle, says “Hey Vivek, you want to play Cowboys versus Indians?” and fires three shots. He then adds, “Don’t worry, it’s feather, not dot” — a slur that uses derogatory shorthand to distinguish between Indigenous people and people of Indian descent. The “dot” reference refers to a bindi, a forehead mark worn by some Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.

Forget politics… How about?

“Cowboy vs Indians” 😘

Vote Putsch, Save Ohio pic.twitter.com/R4VEvIjqOh

— Casey Putsch (@CaseyPutsch) April 15, 2026

Dr. Deepak Sarma, a professor of Indian religions and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University, told News 5 Cleveland’s Morgan Trau that the video constituted a clear threat.

“One hundred percent, it’s a threat,” Sarma said. “This person is perpetuating, is fueling xenophobia in the United States, and he’s doing it in the most egregious way possible.”

In an interview with News 5 Cleveland, Putsch denied that the video was racist or threatening, calling it a joke protected by the First and Second Amendments.

“I am also supporting the Second Amendment and exercising my First Amendment right to make a joke that lots of people think is actually funny,” Putsch said, adding that people were being too sensitive and that much of his social media content “shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

But Putsch went further in the same interview, questioning Ramaswamy’s citizenship despite the fact that Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to parents who immigrated legally from India. Ramaswamy’s mother is a naturalized U.S. citizen. His father never took the citizenship test, Ramaswamy said during his 2024 presidential campaign.

“He’s questionably American, and that’s a funny joke too,” Putsch told the reporter.

When Trau pointed out that Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati, Putsch responded: “Yeah, he was born to Indian foreign nationals who came here just to have an anchor baby.”

Putsch has routinely posted about deporting Indian people, including Ramaswamy — his own primary opponent. NBC News has previously reported that Putsch repeatedly calls Ramaswamy “an Indian Anchor baby,” a term that undermines citizenship guaranteed to U.S.-born children of immigrants under the 14th Amendment.

Ramaswamy’s campaign declined to comment on the video. His running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, addressed political violence generally but was unable to comment specifically on the attack due to rules around discussing campaigns while on the Senate floor.

“I think it doesn’t matter what party you’re in,” McColley told News 5 Cleveland. “Political violence should be condemned at every level.”

Sarma noted the irony that Ramaswamy himself has supported ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and has backed President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies.

“There is some irony to this, in that he has supported these positions, and he’s supported Trump, and he supported Trump’s rhetoric, and it has come back to bite him,” Sarma said.

Restaurant cancels Putsch fundraiser over Nazi ties

The video is the latest in a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric from Putsch’s campaign. On the same day the video drew national attention, a Columbus-area restaurant announced it had canceled a planned Putsch fundraiser.

La Chatelaine Bakery & Bistro in Worthington posted a statement on Facebook saying it would not host the event after learning of Putsch’s comments sympathizing with Adolf Hitler and Nazis.

“We unequivocally denounce those who express pro-Nazi opinions and beliefs, and will not host individuals who are at odds with our stance,” the restaurant said.

Putsch has previously faced scrutiny for posting a video in which he asked an AI chatbot to list good things Hitler did for Germany and criticized the chatbot for prefacing its answer with a disclaimer about the Holocaust. In a January interview with News 5 Cleveland and the Ohio Capital Journal, he was questioned about comments that Hitler had some good decisions and beliefs.

Putsch also drew controversy earlier this month after organizing a “beer hall rally” in Toledo — a phrase that many connected to his last name and Adolf Hitler’s failed 1923 coup, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. The candidate said he couldn’t help having a German last name.

As News 5 Cleveland’s Trau noted, however, double entendres are not unheard of for Putsch — a point the candidate himself illustrated with the “Cowboys versus Indians” remark.

Putsch faces Ramaswamy and Morgan County business owner Heather Hill in the May 5 Republican primary for governor.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In the roughly 80-second clip, Ramaswamy also claims Acton “shut down our economy” and made Ohio “the first state who shut down our public schools.” Gov. Mike DeWine, who appointed Acton as health director and has endorsed Ramaswamy, has publicly said those decisions were his — not Acton’s. “Decisions that were made were made by the governor,” DeWine told WCPO on Monday. “If there is a member of the cabinet who issues an order, that was at my direction.”

The video closes: “We have a chance to elect a governor — I hope I’ll lay it out for you — a positive vision for our state versus a governor who has none at all other than complain about what someone else did to her.”

The government we elect is the government we deserve. pic.twitter.com/l9Dm2bxs1d

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) April 14, 2026

A well-documented history

Acton is a childhood sexual abuse survivor. Her story has been publicly documented for years.

In a 2019 profile published by The Vindicator, Acton described being molested between the ages of 9 and 12 by her mother’s husband, who had prior accusations of molestation. Criminal charges were filed. Acton grew up on Youngstown’s north side in what she has described as conditions of neglect, abuse, and periods of homelessness.

In 1994, Acton disclosed on her medical licensure application that she had sought therapy for the childhood experience. That question has since been removed from Ohio medical license applications because it was found to deter applicants from seeking needed treatment.

The week leading up to the video

Ramaswamy’s video arrived at the end of a turbulent stretch in the governor’s race.

Last week, NBC News reported on a 2019 Bexley police report documenting a verbal dispute between Acton and her husband over her work hours while she was serving as Ohio’s health director. The Acton campaign said she had one drink at dinner, accidentally bumped a wall hanging that fell, and was asleep when police arrived. Officers found no evidence of physical violence.

In the days that followed, Ramaswamy’s allies amplified the police report and surfaced Acton’s 1994 medical licensure disclosure — weaponizing her decision to seek therapy after being sexually abused as a child.

Donald Trump Jr. posted that Acton should be “seeking help” rather than running for governor. Ramaswamy’s X account reposted that message.

On Monday — the day before Ramaswamy posted the video — the Acton campaign released a statement from Campaign Manager Phil Stein condemning the attacks.

“We were shocked and disgusted to see Ramaswamy’s allies shame Amy for being sexually abused as a child,” Stein said. “Amy is proud of the fact that she got the help she needed and encourages anyone with similar experiences to do so.”

“It’s shameful that Ramaswamy’s allies are attacking someone for seeking treatment after being sexually abused as a child,” the statement continued. “As a doctor, as a survivor, and as a mom, Amy is disgusted that Vivek would do anything but stand with childhood survivors of sexual assault.”

A broader pattern

The Acton campaign’s statement pointed to what it called a consistent pattern of Ramaswamy ignoring sexual abuse.

The campaign noted that Ramaswamy refused for months to call for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, accepted $100,000 from an Epstein associate accused of having sex with underage girls and never returned the money, and promoted the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria), who was accused of climbing into bed with a minor female relative while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents.

Ramaswamy’s campaign quietly removed Creech from its endorsements page earlier this month after TiffinOhio.net reported on the allegations. Creech’s name had appeared on the page for more than a year.

The Ramaswamy campaign did not respond to a request for comment from TiffinOhio.net.

DeWine also defended Acton’s record when asked about the police report. “Amy Acton — I thought did a good job as director,” he told WCPO. “I’m the one who appointed her.”

Ohio’s gubernatorial primary is May 5. Acton is unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Ramaswamy faces longshot challengers in the Republican primary. Recent polling shows the general election race within the margin of error.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The American Conservative Fund has placed at least six Facebook and Instagram ads promoting Creech’s re-election campaign in Ohio House District 40, according to Meta’s Ad Library. The ads, which began running as early as April 1, describe Creech as “a proven conservative fighting to lower taxes, defend the 2nd Amendment, and protect the unborn” and “the fighter Ohioans need and deserve.” Combined spending on the Meta ads ranges from approximately $4,300 to $5,900, with total impressions between roughly 250,000 and 290,000.

The PAC has also sent at least one physical mailer to voters in the district. That mailer — paid for by the American Conservative Fund, not Creech’s campaign — features a young girl in a martial arts uniform under the headline “America First Conservative RODNEY CREECH stands with our female athletes and their families.” It promotes Creech’s vote to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of the “Save Women’s Sports Act” and includes a family photo of Creech with his children.

“Children whom he has not contacted or seen in years”

Creech’s daughter responded publicly on Facebook on April 13.

“Is there something unusual about this? Perhaps the fact that our father, Rodney Creech, is using pictures of his children, whom he has not contacted or seen in years, on a political flyer being mailed out?” Creech’s daughter wrote. “Just because his children felt threatened and reported his disturbing behavior over the past couple of years, he claimed it was for political gain. However, it appears that he is the one who has made this situation political.”

“Once again, this seems to be a case of deception, and another reason why this individual is not suitable for public office,” she added. The post received 64 likes and 59 shares.

It is not the first time Creech’s daughter has publicly challenged her father. In a previous exchange on Creech’s official state representative Facebook page, she pushed back after he dismissed her statements about the alleged misconduct as “textbook parental alienation.” She responded that she was speaking about her “true feelings.” Those comments subsequently disappeared from Creech’s page.

The money trail

The American Conservative Fund is a federal super PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission on November 18, 2025. Its financial trail leads directly to the sports betting industry.

FEC records show the American Conservative Fund’s only reported income through the end of 2025 was $500,000 from another super PAC, Win For America. In turn, Win For America’s only reported income was $2 million from DK Crown Holdings Inc. — the Boston-based parent company of DraftKings — according to cleveland.com, which first reported on the PAC’s Ohio spending.

The American Conservative Fund has placed more than $1.1 million in ads backing Republican legislative primary candidates around Ohio, according to cleveland.com. The largest expenditures targeted high-profile races: more than $313,000 to help state Rep. Jim Hoops in the Senate District 1 primary, and roughly $225,000 on behalf of former state Sen. Frank Hoagland in House District 96.

Creech falls among what cleveland.com described as “lesser amounts on digital ads to aid nine other Republican legislative candidates in contested primaries.”

None of the ads mention sports gambling. DraftKings did not return cleveland.com’s request for comment on why the company is spending money on Ohio legislative races.

Why Ohio matters to DraftKings

The spending comes as Ohio lawmakers weigh major changes to the state’s sports betting landscape. Several Ohio House Republicans recently announced legislation that would impose significant restrictions on sports betting, including a ban on “prop” and parlay bets — two of the most profitable bet types for sportsbook operators.

Gov. DeWine, who has said his biggest mistake as governor was signing the bill legalizing sports betting, called last summer for a total ban on prop bets in Ohio after pitch-rigging allegations involving two Cleveland Guardians pitchers.

DraftKings has a clear interest in supporting lawmakers who will protect the status quo — and Creech has not been an outspoken critic of sports betting. The PAC’s support for Creech appears to fall in line with what cleveland.com described as backing candidates whose “moderate stance on the issue — no bans on prop bets or parlays, but also no expansion of other types of internet betting — aligns with DraftKings’ interest in maintaining the status quo.”

A pattern across states

Ohio is not the only state where the American Conservative Fund has deployed DraftKings money in state-level primaries. In Alabama, the PAC spent money on campaign mailers and TV ads without filing required state financial reports, according to 1819 News. In North Carolina, it ran ads and mailers for a Republican state House incumbent, prompting a local newspaper to trace the money trail back to DraftKings.

Nationally, the Sports Betting Alliance — DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, and Bet365 — has funneled approximately $48 million into Win For America, which has already spent more than $20 million on primary elections across at least six states, according to Axios.

The BCI investigation

Creech was accused in 2023 by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech admitted to investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations.

Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, serving as special prosecutor, declined to file charges but wrote that Creech’s behavior was “concerning and suspicious.” The Preble County Sheriff and county prosecutor both recused themselves from the case due to personal relationships with Creech. BCI did not begin investigating until November 2023 — four months after the allegations were first reported.

House Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of all four committee assignments in May 2025 and asked him to resign. Creech refused. In February 2026, Huffman reversed course, restoring Creech’s committee assignments and signing a letter requesting the Ohio Republican Party endorse him for re-election. The party obliged.

Creech faces former state Rep. J. Todd Smith and Lew Lainhart in the Republican primary for Ohio House District 40 on May 5. Smith held the seat before Creech defeated him in the 2020 primary. Democrat Timothy Hornbacker is running unopposed in his party’s primary.

Attempts to reach DraftKings and Creech’s campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe it at first,” Watson wrote in a Facebook post on April 13. “But I checked Vivek’s campaign website myself… and sure enough, Gary Click’s name and endorsement have disappeared. Almost like it was never there.”

Click has since been re-added to Ramaswamy’s endorsements page — restored within approximately two hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the removal. But at the time Watson posted, Click’s name was verifiably absent from the site, and Watson said he confirmed it himself.

Watson shared TiffinOhio.net’s report documenting that both Click and state Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria) had been removed from vivekforohio.com/endorsements/ within two days of TiffinOhio.net reporting on Creech’s BCI investigation and resurfaced video of Click describing conversations with “young girls” about their sexual experiences during Ohio House testimony.

“That tells you everything you need to know,” Watson wrote. “Gary Click has become a liability, and Vivek Ramaswamy made the right decision to step away.”

The Moreno comparison

Watson drew a direct line between the Ramaswamy removal and another high-profile distancing from Click earlier this year.

“Just like when Senator Moreno made the right decision to stay away from Gary’s kickoff event,” Watson wrote.

The reference is to U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH). In February, Click announced on Facebook that he was “looking forward to having Senator Bernie Moreno join me for my official campaign kick off on March 14,” calling Moreno “an amazing senator.” The event was rescheduled to March 28 — and when the updated flyer went out, Moreno was gone. In his place: Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, State Treasurer Robert Sprague, and Majority Whip Nick Santucci.

Neither Click nor Moreno publicly addressed the change. TiffinOhio.net reported on the swap at the time.

The timeline

Watson’s post went up at 1:05 p.m. on April 13 — roughly 90 minutes before Click’s name was restored to Ramaswamy’s endorsements page.

At the time Watson posted, Click’s name was verifiably absent from the page. A Web Archive snapshot from April 11 confirms Click had been removed. Watson said he checked the live site himself and confirmed it.

By approximately 2:30 p.m. — roughly two hours after TiffinOhio.net published its report and about 90 minutes after Watson’s post — Click’s name reappeared on the page. Click then posted to Facebook that “rumors that I have been removed from a list of endorsements Vivek Ramaswamy are greatly exaggerated,” with a grinning emoji and a screenshot of himself back on the page.

Click did not address the Web Archive evidence, who removed him, or who restored him.

A pattern of distancing

Watson’s “liability” framing comes as multiple Republican campaigns have moved to create distance from Click and Creech in recent weeks.

Ramaswamy’s campaign removed both lawmakers from its endorsements page after TiffinOhio.net reporting. OH-9 congressional candidate Josh Williams also removed Creech from his endorsements page, though Click remains listed on Williams’ site. Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign has promoted endorsements from both lawmakers but has not publicly addressed the scrutiny.

Watson closed his Facebook post with a direct appeal to primary voters.

“This race is about trust and real leadership,” Watson wrote. “We’re out here earning support every day, and the momentum is growing! May 5th, we take our district back!”

The Republican primary for Ohio House District 88, which covers Seneca and Sandusky counties, is May 5. Early in-person voting is underway. Democrat Aaron Jones, a U.S. Army veteran, production supervisor, and Tiffin City Councilman, will face the Republican nominee in the November general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Casey Putsch, a Perrysburg automotive entrepreneur and Tiffin native challenging Ramaswamy in the GOP primary, posted a roughly 44-minute video to YouTube in which he called the NRA to cancel his membership on camera, displayed personal firearms from his collection, and played clips from Ramaswamy’s 2023 speech at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis.

“When the NRA sells out the entirety of Ohio and our American values,” Putsch said early in the video, they “can go [expletive] themselves.”

The NRA Political Victory Fund recently endorsed Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial bid. NRA-PVF Chairman John Commerford said in a statement that Ramaswamy “has proven himself a fierce, unwavering champion of the Second Amendment.”

Putsch disputes that characterization. Much of his video centers on Ramaswamy’s own remarks at the 2023 NRA convention, where the then-presidential candidate told the audience he came from “an anti-gun household,” had visited a shooting range “probably less than I can count on two hands,” and told an attendee who quizzed him on what “AR” stands for in AR-15 that “it stands for freedom.” The initials actually refer to ArmaLite, the company that originally designed the rifle.

Putsch, who displayed several firearms during the video — including an M1 Garand he said belonged to his grandfather who served in the Battle of Okinawa, a 1911 Colt, a single-action revolver, a lever-action rifle, and 2 AR-platform rifles — argued that Ramaswamy’s limited experience with firearms disqualifies him from the NRA’s endorsement.

Canceling on camera

In one of the video’s most striking segments, Putsch called the NRA’s membership line and spoke with 2 representatives. He identified himself by name, gave his membership number, and told the first representative he wanted to cancel “in totality” because the NRA had endorsed Ramaswamy.

“There is nothing remotely American about him and he’s only a Trojan horse,” Putsch told the representative. “I am almost don’t have words for how absolutely disgusted I am with what the NRA has become.”

The first representative, who identified himself as working for a professional solicitation firm contracted by the NRA, told Putsch he respected his opinion and transferred the call. A second representative, identified as a membership specialist, told Putsch he would need to submit a written cancellation letter addressed to the “Office of the Secretary” and that contributions to the NRA are neither refundable nor transferable. Putsch said he would request a refund on the grounds that the endorsement constituted a “breach of the contract.”

Xenophobic attacks

The video also includes repeated xenophobic attacks on Ramaswamy’s Indian heritage — rhetoric that has defined much of Putsch’s campaign and drawn criticism from multiple news outlets.

Ramaswamy was born and raised in Cincinnati to parents who immigrated legally from India. He attended public schools, graduated from Harvard and Yale Law School, and has lived in Ohio for most of his life. Despite these facts, Putsch repeatedly referred to him as a “foreign national” and an “anchor baby” throughout the video, attacked his Hindu faith, and directed derogatory comments at Indian immigrants more broadly.

The Dayton Daily News has characterized Putsch’s campaign messaging as carrying “an oft-racist, anti-immigration message.” NBC News reported in January that Putsch “constantly trolls Ramaswamy” on social media and has called him “an Indian Anchor baby,” a term NBC noted “is meant to undermine citizenship guaranteed to U.S.-born children of immigrants by the 14th Amendment.” In an interview with News 5 Cleveland and the Ohio Capital Journal, Putsch was also questioned about prior video comments regarding the Holocaust.

Putsch also referred to Ramaswamy as “Temu Obama” in the video, a term some of his supporters have used, and played side-by-side clips of Ramaswamy and former President Barack Obama that Putsch claimed showed Ramaswamy borrowing Obama’s rhetorical style.

Primary dynamics

Ramaswamy enters the final weeks of the primary as the dominant frontrunner. He holds endorsements from President Donald Trump, the Ohio Republican Party’s state central committee — which backed him in a 60-3 vote in May 2025 — the NRA-PVF, the Buckeye Firearms Association, and 10 major trade unions. His campaign reported raising nearly $20 million last year. Ohio Senate President Rob McColley is his running mate.

Putsch, whose running mate is conservative business executive Kim Georgeton, has built his campaign largely through social media and grassroots events in Northwest Ohio. He recently held a campaign event at a Toledo venue he billed as a “beer hall” gathering, which drew criticism over the name’s historical connotations given his surname.

A third Republican, Morgan County businesswoman Heather Hill, is also on the primary ballot. Hill has called Ramaswamy “an out-of-touch, billionaire scam artist” and criticized the state party for endorsing him before voters had a chance to weigh in.

On the Democratic side, Dr. Amy Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health director who rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, is running unopposed. Early polling has shown a competitive general election matchup between Ramaswamy and Acton.

Ohio’s Republican primary is open, meaning unaffiliated voters and members of either party may request a Republican ballot. The primary is May 5.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump’s latest budget proposes a federal “Make America Skilled Again’’ grant that would combine a dozen current programs and provide $3.4 billion in spending for certain employment and training programs, down from $4.65 billion anticipated this fiscal year.

The president’s plan would fund block, or general, grants to states, which could then tailor the spending to employment and training needs.

There’s no formula in the budget proposal detailing how or where the money would be distributed, other than a requirement that at least 10% be spent on an apprenticeship program and 3% on innovations. The secretary of the Department of Labor could also reserve up to 0.75% on “program accountability” and technical support.

Congressional Republicans are moving ahead with other ways to fund, and in some cases revamp, federal job programs, though they showed little interest in Trump’s MASA proposal that was also in his budget request last year.

The Trump plan

The MASA effort is another in a series of administration initiatives aimed at streamlining job training programs’ administrative costs and making them more responsive to changes in the workplace.

The Labor Department referred questions about the plan to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to questions.

At the National Skills Coalition, an advocacy organization for skills-based training, Megan Evans saw the MASA effort as a way of making deep cuts that ultimately hurt workers and employers, she said in an interview.

“The administration says it’s trying to streamline,” said Evans, the coalition’s senior government affairs manager. “But in reality it’s combining deep cuts with risky consolidations and rollbacks.”

The White House last year issued a detailed report and a video on its strategy, outlining how “workforce programs are fragmented across agencies, stifled by red tape, and too often misaligned with the skills employers need.”

These issues, it said, “pose particular risks as the United States advances toward a bold reindustrialization agenda and navigates the transformational impact of AI (artificial intelligence) on the workforce.”

In the budget released this month, the administration called the program “a key part of the administration’s strategy to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations,” along with some other programs, including the tax cuts enacted last year.

Changes in getting money and help

While MASA aims to reduce administrative costs, a long-sought goal of administrators across the country, popular programs would be consolidated under the block grant, including several with strong constituencies. 

Among them are programs for adult training and employment, youth training and employment, the Labor Department’s Re-integration of Ex-Offenders program, Native American programs and others.

The National Skills Coalition saw trouble in folding these programs into a single grant.

“These programs weren’t created in a vacuum,” it said in a blog post last year. “They each serve distinct populations.”

Merging them would be “making it harder for people to access training that fits their lives and needs,” the group said.

It also had doubts about whether block grants would in fact be more efficient.

“By combining multiple workforce programs into a single grant, it becomes significantly harder to track program outcomes, monitor equity and assess whether specific populations–such as veterans, youth, people with disabilities, or former incarcerated people–are being effectively served,” the coalition said.

Some state and local officials share the concern. 

“Washington state is already facing significant budget shortfalls, and this proposal would further widen that gap,” said Marisol Tapia Hopper, director of strategic partnerships & funding at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County.

She said combining the programs into a block grant “functions as a reduction in workforce investment, applying a one-size-fits-all approach to a system that is already chronically underfunded.” 

The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group comprising all the nation’s governors, has taken no position on the proposal.

“Workforce training is a huge bipartisan priority for governors,” said Jack Porter, NGA program director for workforce development & economic policy.

“Federal support is critical to standing up effective workforce programs, but the federally funded workforce system as it stands now comes with a lot of red tape that shifts time and focus away from the goal, which is (to) provide workers with training,” he said.

Congressional reluctance

Congress has shown little enthusiasm for the administration’s consolidation.

Earlier this month, the Republican-led U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee proposed a comprehensive job training blueprint.

Among its ideas: providing funding for on-the-job learning and strengthening the system that holds state and local workforce boards responsible “for delivering positive outcomes for workers and job seekers.”

The bill would have adult education programs governed by the Labor Department. The aim would be to “connect adult education to apprenticeships, sector partnerships, and employer-led training especially as artificial intelligence reshapes skill demands.”

Included in the legislation, which a committee spokeswoman says is clearly “in line with the broad goals proposed in the president’s budget,” is a Make America Skilled Again pilot program.

It would permit states to apply to combine different workforce funding streams and then spend them on programs that best suit their needs.

The bill, said committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., in a statement, “modernizes a struggling and underutilized workforce development system, delivering reforms that strengthen participant outcomes and ensure greater accountability for taxpayer dollars.”

In the U.S. Senate, Republicans began pushing changes that will help people get access to current programs.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Republicans’ aim is to “increase Americans’ access to job opportunities by eliminating red tape, increasing flexibility, and modernizing the workforce system.”

The goal is to create one-stop centers where people can get information about jobs and training. The measure would “help Nebraskans find great jobs more efficiently,” said Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Nebraska Republican who co-sponsored the bill.

Spending bill season

At the moment, Democrats and Republicans appear deadlocked on how to proceed. The House Appropriations Committee plans to write labor spending legislation in June. The Senate has not announced a schedule. 

The partisan lines are forming.

The Trump labor budget “attacks workers and small businesses by undermining workforce development programs at the Department of Labor,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., top Democrat on the House workforce panel, in a statement.

Without the specific programs, he said, “many workers will struggle to provide for their families.”

Walberg sees a need for big change.

“The workforce is evolving rapidly, and legislation designed over a decade ago is no longer meeting today’s demands,” 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.

Attorneys for Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson made the allegation in a brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument reflects a concern broadly held among Democratic state election officials that the Trump administration wants to compile voter data in an effort to influence the upcoming midterm elections. 

The Justice Department, under President Donald Trump, is suing 29 states for refusing to provide voter information. It says it needs the data to evaluate efforts to clean and maintain voter rolls, including whether noncitizens are registered to vote.

But Benson’s brief says that “appears to be a pretext for improper purposes.”

Michigan and other states argue the Trump administration is instead effectively building a nationwide voter registration list — a move not authorized under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, a federal law to combat voting discrimination that the Justice Department has cited in demanding states turn over voter data.

“Collecting Michigan’s voter data to conduct its own list maintenance and to use Michigan’s list as part of creating a national voter file is not encompassed within the purpose stated in DOJ’s demand, which is simply ‘to ascertain Michigan’s compliance with the list maintenance requirements’” of federal election laws, Benson’s brief says.

“Moreover, creating a national voter file of U.S. Citizens is beyond any purpose contemplated by the (Civil Rights Act).”

After U.S. District Court Judge Hala Jarbou ruled in February that the Justice Department isn’t entitled to Michigan’s unredacted voter list containing driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, the department appealed to the 6th Circuit.

Trump priority

Over the past year, Trump has attempted to exercise greater power over federal elections, which, under the U.S. Constitution, are run by the states.

“Trump does not have the authority to create a Trump voter list,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat whom the Justice Department is suing for not providing voter data, said in an interview earlier this month.

Studies have shown noncitizen voting is extremely rare, though Trump has long fixated on the prospect of noncitizen voting and other forms of election fraud. Last year, Trump signed an executive order that would have unilaterally required voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. The order was struck down in court, but Trump is pressuring the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which would implement similar proof of citizenship rules.

Michigan state officials and other critics of the Justice Department’s voter data effort point to actions by Trump and remarks by a DOJ attorney as evidence that the Trump administration is already compiling a national voter list.

Trump’s recent executive order to restrict mail-in ballots directs the Department of Homeland Security to build lists of voting-age citizens in each state and then share those lists with state officials. Homeland Security operates a powerful computer system, called SAVE, that can verify citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases.

And at a federal court hearing in Rhode Island in late March, Justice Department Voting Section Acting Chief Eric Neff said his department intends to share voter lists with Homeland Security, according to a transcript. He said DOJ and DHS have already entered into a use agreement to govern the sharing of data, though he didn’t detail its requirements.

Mail ballot order an ‘iceberg’ to DOJ case

A DOJ attorney, James Tucker, has denied any effort to create a national voter file. 

“There is not going to be a national voter registration database,” Tucker said at a hearing in Maine on March 26 — less than a week before Trump signed the executive order.

But David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, likened the Justice Department’s litigation strategy to a legal Titanic and the executive order to an iceberg: The order effectively creating a nationwide voter list could sink a strategy that denies such a goal exists.

“The DOJ … has been trying to assure the courts that this data is not going to be used to create a national voter list,” Becker said during a press briefing this month.

The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Civil Rights Act argued

The Justice Department has so far failed to persuade any federal judges that it’s entitled to state voter data. Judges have dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuits against California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon. 

At least a dozen states, all Republican led, have voluntarily provided their voter lists. The Justice Department has also reached a settlement agreement with one state, Oklahoma, to obtain its data. 

When Jarbou, a Trump appointee, dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit for Michigan’s voter roll, she ruled that the Civil Rights Act doesn’t require the disclosure of the information. The law, signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, empowered federal officials to investigate state and local discrimination against Black voters.

The law requires states to preserve election records for at least 22 months after a federal election, including any documents that come into the possession of an election official. Jarbou wrote in her decision that the state’s voter registration list is created by election officials but isn’t a document, such as a voter registration application, that comes into their possession.

When the Justice Department filed its brief in March, it argued that Jarbou misinterpreted the Civil Rights Act. “The CRA’s text … does not exclude self-generated documents,” the department’s brief says.

The Justice Department’s appeal of the Michigan loss has advanced the furthest, with state officials filing their brief on Monday. The DOJ has pushed for quick timelines in the appeals, arguing that court rulings are needed ahead of the midterms to ensure the fairness of elections.

Local officials back states

Regardless, 18 local election officials from across the country, including seven in Michigan, on Monday filed a brief in the case arguing that the Justice Department hasn’t provided a legitimate basis to obtain election records under the Civil Rights Act.

As election misinformation has proliferated in recent years, local election officials face increasing requests for information, the group wrote. They are accustomed to providing public voter registration information, with steps in place to exclude sensitive, nonpublic data.

Courts act as a “backstop” to enforce bans on disclosing sensitive information in response to records requests from the public, the local election officials argue.

“Courts should perform that same function for requests for records under the CRA,” the group said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Landsman’s No Harm Data Center Act would require data center operators cover the cost of new energy infrastructure, prohibit elected officials from signing nondisclosure agreements and require a study of the facilities’ environmental impacts.

Ohio lawmakers are pursuing nearly identical changes at the state level. But data centers aren’t just going up in Ohio, and Landsman believes Congress needs to act.

“I don’t think anyone has any real faith that there’s going to be movement on this in Ohio,” he said. “If there is, that’s great. Either way, you need a federal framework for managing these data centers and protecting communities.”

President Trump bragged during his state of the union address about securing a “ratepayer protection pledge” from tech companies.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs.” Trump said. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up.”

But Landsman contends a promise isn’t good enough.

“You’re either with Big Tech or with our towns,” he said in a release. “A handshake and a promise from these tech companies is not enough. That’s why we’re leading the data center effort to make sure they pay, and that they negotiate their deals in public – no more NDAs.”

Still, Landsman’s plan would mean a dramatic increase in the role federal regulators play in setting utility rates for data centers. Ohio’s consumer watchdog worries that might make it difficult for the average ratepayer to make their voice heard.

How the bill works

Landsman’s proposal applies to data centers pulling more than 50 megawatts of power at peak demand. For context, in 2022, the average U.S. home needed a little less than 1 megawatt to keep the lights on for an entire month.

Connecting such a power-hungry facility to the grid isn’t as simple as plugging in a new a toaster or lamp. Landsman tasks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with managing the process.

The measure directs the commission to charge the “full costs of constructing, upgrading, and expanding” the power grid to new data centers.

In a written statement, Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis praised the provision as a “core-consumer protection principle,” ensuring ordinary ratepayers aren’t forced to pay for the “extraordinary infrastructure costs associated with data centers.”

Data center owners would be on the hook for the poles and wires running to their own facilities, as well as the physical infrastructure necessary to make sure the broader power grid remains reliable for other customers.

Facility owners would also have to help shoulder the cost for new power generation to meet added demand.

All those costs would get applied to the rates they pay for power, and the measure prohibits utilities from shifting costs to other consumers.

“This is an essential safeguard,” Willis said, “at a time when rapid data center growth threatens to shift billions in system upgrade costs onto ordinary consumers.”

Landsman’s bill also invalidates nondisclosure agreements between public officials and data center operators.

He said they amount to an end-run around Ohio’s sunshine laws, by allowing investors to purchase land and negotiate tax breaks before community members have a chance to push back.

“These deals need to be entirely transparent,” Landsman said. “Not a little bit transparent, not kind of transparent, not mostly transparent, but entirely transparent. And that means no NDAs.”

Who sets rates?

The one bit in Landsman’s bill that gives Willis pause, however, is the expanded role for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Right now, FERC sets rates for high voltage electric transmission — think interstate highways — while state regulators handle rates for the lower voltage distribution network — think city streets.

Under Landsman’s proposal, FERC would assume all ratemaking authority, that is, transmission and distribution, when it comes data centers.

“We wanted to make sure that this was real change,” Landsman explained.

“I think people are getting a lot of lip service when it comes to these data centers in terms of protecting them from additional costs and the noise and the pollution in the soil and the water.”

“This would empower FERC to protect entire communities from the additional costs associated with the data centers,” he added.

Willis said that “while we strongly support the policy objective,” granting FERC exclusive authority over electric ratemaking “displaces” the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

And it’s not as though state regulators have done nothing. For instance, last year, the PUCO approved a data center specific tariff for AEP Ohio.

Since then a bipartisan pair of state lawmakers have filed legislation to extend its provisions to other utilities around the state.

“A stronger and more durable framework,” Willis continued, “would preserve the no-cost-shift mandate while allowing the state commissions, including the PUCO, to implement and enforce the federal requirements.”

Landsman acknowledged the change would mean a lot more work landing on FERC’s desk. But “in the absence of state and federal leadership, the communities are having to do this on their own.”

“Individuals who have lived their entire lives next to a field that is now going to be a data center, are having to do this on their own,” he said, “and that is unreasonable.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefountaine was listed in Public Citizen’s analysis of safety-net hospitals that are in danger of closing due to deep cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed last summer.

Hospitals made the list if 20% or more of their payer mix consisted of Medicaid and other low-income patients — and if they lost money between 2022 and 2024.

Mary Rutan lost $6.6 million in 2022, but it was profitable over the prior decade, and it had more than $1 million in net income in 2024.

“Like many hospitals across the country, Mary Rutan Health has experienced industry-wide pressures, including rising costs and reimbursement challenges following the COVID-19 pandemic,” the hospital said in a written statement.

“While these factors have impacted net operating margins, the organization continues to maintain positive earnings when accounting for non-cash expenses such as depreciation, along with a strong cash position and low debt levels.”

It said, however, further cuts to health programs could affect its ability to provide care.

“… potential changes to Medicaid reimbursement remain a concern for healthcare providers nationwide, particularly for rural and community-based systems,” it said. “Any future reductions could impact how certain services are delivered, both locally and across the country.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Last week, Vance tried to come through for his Silicon Valley sugar daddy.

In a stunning moment of betrayal of democracy, Vance traveled to Budapest to boost the flagging re-election campaign of a Hungarian despot over his pro-democracy opponent.

Hold that mind-blowing thought for a nanosecond; the sitting veep of the world’s oldest continuous democracy stood with the ruthless head of a tyrannical white Christian nationalist regime and suggested America’s “values” aligned with Viktor Orban.

To be clear, the wildly corrupt prime minister of Hungary (and Putin ally) has systemically dismantled democratic checks and balances in his country, taken control of almost all media and universities, weakened judicial independence, rigged election rules to favor his ruling party and undercut the opposition, suppressed dissent, rescinded civil rights, and oppressed state “enemies” which are typically people of color, immigrants, women, the disabled, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

This is the gem Vance praised and posed with in pictures five days before Hungarians were set to vote for an authoritarian, renowned for 16 years of corruption, or a center-right, socially conservative member of the European Parliament who offered change focused on domestic problems. (Peter Magyar, 45, who had been leading throughout the race, won overwhelmingly Sunday).

Vance backed the loser with the full weight of the Trump-Vance administration.

He gave a ringing endorsement of the Kremlin puppet and even parroted Russian propaganda about Ukraine “interfering” in Hungary’s election (while Russia wages unrelenting war against Ukraine) and also blasted the European Union for election meddling in the supreme irony noted by everyone but Vance.

“All that we’re saying is that Viktor Orban, he does a good job,” said the awkward 41-year-old who hailed the “moral cooperation” between Orban’s repressive reign and the United States.

In his final exhortation to a Budapest crowd, Vance lionized Orban as a champion of democracy, freedom, truth, and “the God of our fathers.”

He had to bring in religion to whitewash an ironfisted authoritarian who, in fact, destroyed democratic institutions, crushed individual rights, muzzled a free press, and used Christianity as a political tool to consolidate power, justify anti-LGBTQ+ laws and attract far-right, Christianity-as-culture allies globally.

Count among them true believers in the MAGA New Right movement, its architect Peter Thiel, and his ambitious acolyte from a suburb of Cincinnati plotting presidential glory.

The latest iteration of the New Right coalition in the U.S., inspired by Thiel — when he isn’t amassing personal information on all Americans with Palantir’s AI-powered super-database embedded in the federal government — made Orban its pseudo intellectual and spiritual godfather.

The Hungarian strongman had replaced a liberal democracy — a system of government that upholds the rule of law, protects equality and ensures that every individual has a voice — with an illiberal democracy that ignores constitutional limits on absolute power (sound familiar?) and deprives its citizens of basic rights and freedoms.

He did what Thiel’s New Right disciples only dream of doing.

Orban engineered a working model of patriarchal orthodoxy that merged Christian nationalist ideology with state governance.

He became a hero to MAGA’s white supremacy/neo-Nazi factions when he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed-race” society and received a rapturous welcome by American audiences at Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) when he portrayed western civilization as being under siege from godless progressives, illegal immigrants, same-sex marriage and, of course, Hungarian billionaire/philanthropist George Soros, the universal right-wing bogeyman. 

Orban was feted as a star by MAGA New Right zealots, including Vance, who envision a homogenous, ultra-nationalist, post-democratic rule in America that promotes Christian and ethno-nationalism and a nostalgia for old gender norms.

Orban’s Hungary was a laboratory for how to eradicate democracy without a messy coup.

His government steadily chipped away political rights and civil liberties through legalistic manipulation of institutions and “executive aggrandizement” to strengthen its grip on power.

Orban deployed stealth authoritarianism to erase multiculturalism and individual rights in favor of state power that could be used punitively to enforce a specific moral order and cripple resistance. 

This is the kind of dystopian society — untainted by large-scale migration of non-white people who could make the population with shared descent and ancestry a minority — that JD Vance endorsed with the fervor of a crusader for autocratic “domination and imposition.” 

The veep saw Orban’s transformation of Hungary from a secular, pluralistic society into an “anti-woke” nation centered on cultural homogeneity as the new European and American future.

He stood with the Putin-aligned prime minister — who degraded a once prosperous country into one of Europe’s poorest, a state stripped of personal and economic freedoms and corrupted by unrestrained executive power and crony capitalism — and urged its oppressed populace to vote for more abuse.

Hungarian voters ignored Vance’s laughable assertions that Orban had “kept your country strong and kept your country good and you don’t have problems with all of the problems that so many other countries have…because they let their countries be invaded.”

Tens of thousands of citizens poured into the streets of Budapest in a massive show of support following the opposition leader’s landslide victory over Orban.

Vance embraced a Russian-backed authoritarian in the name of America.

He betrayed our values.

The shame is all his. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

President Donald Trump’s priority elections bill has languished in the Senate for the past several weeks as some GOP politicians hesitate to upend precedent for voter registration in federal elections before the midterms.

That hasn’t stopped lawmakers in several red states from introducing similar changes for their elections. Certain provisions that mirror the SAVE America Act — particularly going through voter rolls to remove already registered citizens deemed non-eligible — could put up hurdles to voting for married women, trans people and others who have changed their names.

Republican governors in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and South Dakota recently signed bills that would require documentary proof of citizenship for people looking to register ahead of state and local elections. One is on its way to the desk of Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee. And several other state legislatures have moved toward tightening voter ID and registration laws over the past year.

Though a few states have already had similar bills on the books — including Arizona, whose 2004 proof-of-citizenship law has weathered several legal challenges, including a Supreme Court case — Trump’s talk of uprooting already rare election fraud led to more legislatures scrambling to implement new limitations over the last two years.

“Even though the efforts to enact these extreme citizenship policies at the federal level have run into roadblocks, whether that’s [Trump’s 2025] executive order being blocked or the Senate not taking up the SAVE America Act, there have been several state legislatures that have moved in this direction,” said Chris Diaz, director of legislative tracking at Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks election policy.

These laws usually require proof of citizenship in the form of a passport or birth certificate — documents that are difficult for many Americans to access or obtain. Half of U.S. citizens do not have a passport. Voting rights advocates say these state and local laws, like the proposed SAVE America Act, could more heavily impact married women and trans people who have changed their names — particularly in states where existing voters, not just new registrants, have to be re-checked against federal and local databases.

Of the 12 states that currently have proof-of-citizenship laws for local election registrants, 10 are Republican trifectas — meaning both legislative chambers and the governor’s office are held by the same party.

Beyond the burden the laws could place on people looking to register to vote, administrators say they need a longer runway to successfully stage elections and inform residents of policy changes. Critics of these voter registration overhauls also point to the additional administrative costs and lawsuit payouts, including the millions paid over time by Arizona and Kansas, which faced a legal challenge in 2018.

This spring, Utah and South Dakota enacted their bills requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections. Utah’s will take effect May 6, ahead of its June 23 primaries, while South Dakota’s will take effect immediately before its June 2 primaries.

Mississippi’s Safeguard Honesty Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act requires voter rolls to be verified through state and federal databases. If an individual can’t be confirmed, they must eventually provide proof of their citizenship to vote in later elections — proof that could include a valid passport, though Mississippi has the second-highest share of citizens without valid passports in the nation, according to data from the Voting Rights Lab. The state already held primaries in March, and the law goes into effect July 1.

Tennessee’s state legislature recently sent a bill authorizing county election administrators to verify voters’ citizenship status through a federal database to Lee, who is likely to sign it.

And Florida’s law, which won’t take effect until after the midterms, will also mandate existing voter roll verification, require proof of citizenship to register and impose stricter voter ID restrictions. Advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters of Florida and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit to block its implementation — naming elderly Black voters and Puerto Ricans whose birth certificates were issued before 2010 among the communities that would be affected.

“State voter registration systems aren’t set up to contain a record of what documentation has been presented. There’s a huge IT component to this,” Diaz said. “This is another example of a state trying to impose new requirements for elections without thinking through the timelines and costs.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database used to verify citizenship status — as mandated in the recent Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida laws, among others — usually sees a low error rate, but has mistakenly flagged eligible voters as noncitizens in the past in states like Texas. Naturalized citizens are at particular risk for being flagged, said Andrew Garber, a counsel for the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Even if a person is able to resolve their case and provide evidence, receiving an erroneous message in itself can be jarring for people, he added, and could potentially turn them off from correcting the record.

Several states will have ballot initiatives this November to decide whether to amend local constitutions or laws to clarify that only citizens can vote, including Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota and Alaska. In Michigan, a similar measure has not yet been placed on the ballot, as the state elections bureau has not verified the signatures required to advance.

Arizona has required proof of citizenship to vote in local elections since 2004, but a patchwork of laws, errors and court rulings created logistical hurdles for putting those requirements into practice. Because they run a bifurcated elections system that handles federal and state contests separately as mandated by the National Voter Registration Act, Arizona and a handful of other states have “federal-only voters,” tens of thousands of people who vote in only national elections because they have not presented accepted proof of citizenship to the state. Garber said that while those numbers don’t offer insight into how Arizona’s laws impact individual voter registration, they illustrate the hurdles such voters face in registering with the state — where elections have been won by the smallest of margins.

Experts worry that the new proof of citizenship laws and other state proposals will run into similar snafus, and further affect voters in hubs like college campuses, which tend to lean more liberal.

“These are really big administrative burdens. It might sound really simple, like you just have to check someone’s passport and they’re good to go,” Garber said. He also noted the new systems for training election officials and maintaining voter rolls will take more time to implement than is available — especially since local governments already struggle with election administration funding. “The idea that these systems can be up and running in the next few months before the midterms is a fanciful one.”

Some women in other states that already added proof-of-citizenship requirements say they have felt the burden of finding documentary evidence — including voters in Texas who worried about reconciling their varying names after the state advanced voter roll review legislation last year — though experts say the wider effect would still have to be studied as the laws settle. New Hampshire’s 2024 proof-of-citizenship law is also facing legal challenges for its disproportionate impact on women who have changed their surnames.

Federal lawmakers are set to return from recess this week and are set to take up the SAVE America Act again for debate alongside ongoing DHS funding negotiations, which has been shut down since February 14. Despite ramped up pressure from the White House and some GOP stalwarts, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has not indicated progress on elections negotiations within the upper chamber.

Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order on March 31 that would, among other conditions, require DHS and other agencies to create a list of confirmed American citizens, as well as direct agencies to withhold federal funds from non-compliant local governments — all stipulations that bypass parameters set up by the SAVE America Act. Democratic lawmakers and nearly two dozen states sued soon after over the order.

This story was originally produced by Michigan Advance, 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 problem: internet archive records prove it did happen.

A Web Archive snapshot from February 20 shows Click listed among the endorsers on vivekforohio.com/endorsements/. A second snapshot from April 11 — two days after TiffinOhio.net reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign was promoting endorsements from Click and state Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria), who was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor — shows both names gone.

Version of Ramaswamy’s website, dated April 11, 2026, showing Rep. Gary Click absent from the page.

On Monday, TiffinOhio.net published a report documenting the removals. Within approximately two hours, Click’s name reappeared on the live page.

Rather than explain what happened, Click took to Facebook.

The post

Shortly after his name was restored, Click posted a screenshot showing himself back on Ramaswamy’s endorsements page, accompanied by a grinning emoji.

“Rumors that I have been removed from a list of endorsements Vivek Ramaswamy are greatly exaggerated,” Click wrote, linking to the updated page — a paraphrase of a quote commonly attributed to Mark Twain.

Click’s name was added back to Ramaswamy’s endorsements list shortly after TiffinOhio.net’s report was published.

Click did not address why his name had been absent from the page for weeks. He did not explain who removed it. He did not say who restored it. He did not acknowledge the Web Archive snapshots confirming the removal. He did not dispute a single fact in TiffinOhio.net’s reporting.

Instead, he presented his restoration to the page as evidence the reporting was wrong — even though the reporting is what prompted the restoration.

The timeline

The documented sequence of events:

April 2-9: TiffinOhio.net publishes two articles — one reporting that Ramaswamy’s campaign was actively promoting the endorsement of Creech, who was accused of climbing into bed with a minor female relative while erect and wearing only his underwear according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents, and a companion piece examining resurfaced video of Click describing conversations with “young girls” about their sexual experiences during Ohio House testimony on his anti-trans legislation.

By April 11: Both Click and Creech are removed from vivekforohio.com/endorsements/. The Web Archive captures the change.

April 13, approximately 12:30 p.m.: TiffinOhio.net publishes a report documenting the removals, citing the Web Archive snapshots.

April 13, approximately 2:30 p.m.: Click’s name reappears on the endorsements page. Click posts to Facebook, framing the restoration as proof the reporting was inaccurate.

Creech’s name was not restored. As of publication, Creech does not appear anywhere on Ramaswamy’s endorsements page.

A familiar pattern

Click’s response follows a pattern of attacking the outlet rather than addressing the substance of reporting.

In late March, after TiffinOhio.net reported that Click cosponsored House Bill 649, which would give state officials live camera access to every child care center in Ohio, Click posted to his official state representative Facebook page, his campaign page, and his personal profile urging constituents not to believe reporting from TiffinOhio.net. His graphic cited Grok, the AI chatbot built by Elon Musk’s xAI, as its source material — literally labeled “Source: Grok by xAI” at the bottom of the image.

Click did not dispute any facts in that article either.

Earlier in March, after Click skipped a League of Women Voters candidates forum in Tiffin, he posted on Facebook calling TiffinOhio.net a “Democrat blog” that produces “Fake News with a dash of rumors and liberal, unverified Click bashing all day long.” He did not address the substance of the forum — including the fact that both his Republican primary challenger Eric Watson and Democrat Aaron Jones participated.

What the Web Archive shows

The Web Archive — also known as the Wayback Machine — is a nonprofit digital archive that automatically saves snapshots of web pages. These snapshots are timestamped and cannot be altered by the website’s owner. They are widely used by journalists, researchers, and courts to document changes to websites.

The February 20 snapshot of Ramaswamy’s endorsements page shows both Click and Creech listed among the campaign’s Ohio House endorsers. The April 11 snapshot shows both names absent. The Ramaswamy campaign made no public announcement about either removal.

Click was one of the most enthusiastic promoters of the Ramaswamy-McColley ticket. In January 2026, when Ramaswamy selected Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate, Click told The Daily Signal: “Out of a crowd of super qualified candidates, Vivek made a strong pick for L.G. Rob McColley makes a great ticket even greater.” Click added that “the future of Ohio grew just a little bit brighter tonight.”

Click faces Watson in the May 5 Republican primary for Ohio House District 88. He quietly stepped down as senior pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple in 2025, assuming the honorary title of pastor emeritus — a transition first reported by TiffinOhio.net.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Creech, who was accused by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents, no longer appears on Williams’ endorsements page at joshwilliamsforohio.com. Google’s cached index of the page still shows Creech listed among Williams’ Ohio House endorsers — confirming his name was there recently and has since been removed.

The old version of Josh Williams’ endorsements page, which listed Rep. Rodney Creech in the first column, fourth row.

Williams’ campaign made no public announcement about the change.

The removal follows a pattern. Last week, Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign removed both Creech and state Rep. Gary Click from vivekforohio.com/endorsements/ within two days of TiffinOhio.net publishing reports on Creech’s BCI investigation and resurfaced video of Click reminiscing about talking to “young girls” about their sexual experiences during Ohio House testimony. Web Archive snapshots confirmed that removal.

Williams’ campaign endorsements page as of 7:00PM April 14, 2026, with Creech absent.

Click stays

While Creech has been scrubbed from Williams’ endorsements page, Click remains listed — identified as “Rep. Gary Click, House District 88.”

Click formally endorsed Williams’ congressional campaign in August 2025, two years after Williams’ sexually explicit Facebook posts were first publicly reported by D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster, an independently owned Ohio political media outlet. The two have co-sponsored multiple pieces of legislation in the Ohio House, including HB 693, which would write the concept of “parental alienation” into state law — the same term Creech used to publicly dismiss his own daughter’s statements about the alleged misconduct.

Click told the Ohio House Public Health Policy Committee in 2023 that “young girls” had described to him how painful it was to have sex — testimony delivered while advocating for House Bill 68, which bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Click has never identified who these young girls were or in what capacity he — a former Baptist pastor — was discussing sex with minors.

Toxic endorsements

Three weeks before the May 5 primary, Creech and Click are rapidly becoming two of the most toxic endorsements in Ohio Republican politics.

Ramaswamy removed Creech. Williams has now removed Creech. On the Ramaswamy front, Click was also removed — then scrambled back onto the page within hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the change, posting on Facebook that “rumors that I have been removed from a list of endorsements Vivek Ramaswamy are greatly exaggerated.” Web Archive snapshots confirmed the removal had occurred.

Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign has also drawn scrutiny for promoting endorsements from both lawmakers on a March 19 endorsement graphic. Click serves as Husted’s Sandusky County campaign chair.

Creech was stripped of all four committee assignments and asked to resign by House Speaker Matt Huffman in May 2025 after the allegations became public. He refused. In February 2026, Huffman reversed course — reinstating Creech to his committees and signing a letter requesting the Ohio Republican Party endorse him for re-election. The party obliged. Creech is seeking re-election in House District 40, where he faces former state Rep. J. Todd Smith and Lew Lainhart in the Republican primary.

A special prosecutor who reviewed the BCI investigation into Creech declined to file charges but described Creech’s conduct as “concerning and suspicious.”

The OH-9 primary

Williams is competing in a crowded Republican primary for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District. The seat is held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, who narrowly defeated former state Rep. Derek Merrin by roughly 2,300 votes in 2024. Merrin is running again.

Williams has faced his own scrutiny during the campaign. TiffinOhio.net reported that Williams posted sexually explicit and degrading content about women on his public Facebook page before sponsoring bills he said would protect children from obscenity. When confronted about the posts in 2023, Williams refused to apologize: “What do I gotta apologize about? I made the post in 2018 being funny while I was in college burning time.” He was approximately 34 years old at the time.

The Republican primary is May 5.

TiffinOhio.net has reached out to the Williams campaign for comment on the removal of Creech’s endorsement. This article will be updated if a response is received.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a lengthy post, littered with falsehoods, on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump accused the first U.S.-born pope of being “WEAK on crime” and of supporting Iran having a nuclear weapon. The president also invoked the 70-year-old pontiff’s brother, Louis Prevost, “because Louis is all MAGA.”

Leo, born Robert Prevost, is from Chicago.

During a flight to Algeria on Monday, Leo told reporters, “I have no fear of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.”

“We are not politicians,” he said, as reported by Vatican media. “We don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”

List of complaints

Trump’s Sunday night post criticized Leo for not backing his foreign policy and aggressive immigration agenda, and generally for not being more supportive of his administration. 

The United States and Israel ordered military strikes on Iran in late February, despite not facing an imminent threat from the Islamic state. Trump did not give a clear rationale for the strikes until about a month after they launched, saying they were meant to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country,” Trump posted just after 9 p.m. Eastern.

“And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” the president continued in his 334-word message about the pontiff.

Further, Trump claimed Leo should be “thankful” because Trump is responsible for the Chicago native being installed as the leader of the Roman Catholic church.

“He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican,” he wrote.

A screenshot of Trump’s now-deleted post.

Less than an hour later, the president posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ blessing an ailing man as what appear to be angels in full military fatigues hover in the clouds above with fighter jets nearby. Trump deleted the post Monday morning.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

While speaking to reporters outside the Oval Office Monday afternoon, Trump said he posted the image but that he wasn’t depicted as Jesus. Rather, he said, he was supposed to represent a doctor associated with the Red Cross.

“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one,” he said in response to a question about the image.

“So I just heard about it, and I said, ‘how do they come up with that?’ It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better, I make people a lot better,” he continued.

One minute after the post depicting Jesus, the president posted an AI-generated image of a skyscraper bearing his name on the moon’s surface.

Iran talks crumble

In the hours prior to sounding off on the pope, Trump posted a video of himself shaking hands with mixed martial artist Paul Costa following an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended in Miami on Saturday night.

At the time of the fight, Vice President JD Vance was wrapping up failed peace talks with Iranian leaders in Pakistan. U.S. and Iranian leaders reached a two-week ceasefire deal last week. Trump described it at the time as a major step toward a permanent peace deal.

Trump threatened to establish a U.S. military blockade in the Strait of Hormuz Monday after talks collapsed. Not long after the war began, Iran effectively closed the narrow maritime passageway that moves one-fifth of the world’s oil.

Vance, whose forthcoming book focuses on his conversion to Catholicism, was one of the last guests to visit Pope Francis before his death nearly one year ago.

Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement Sunday night disapproving of Trump’s social media post about the pontiff.

“I am disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” said Coakley, the archbishop of Oklahoma City. “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s post “viciously attacked” Leo’s opposition to the Iran war. Trump’s comments that the pope is “weak on crime,” among other claims, reached “a new low,” the New York Democrat added.

Schumer also said the president’s AI-generated image of himself depicted as Christ “makes a mockery of millions of Christian Americans, many of whom voted for Trump and who fervently believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.”

“If King Herod had a Truth Social account in the first century, I think he’d probably describe Jesus Christ, who saved the penitent thief crucified alongside him, as weak on crime,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Swalwell’s announcement came just one day after he suspended his campaign for governor over allegations of sexual assault. 

“I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members,” he wrote in a statement on X. “Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress.”

Just over an hour later, Gonzales posted his plans to resign on social media.

“There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all,” he wrote. “When Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office. It has been my privilege to serve the great people of Texas.”

Debate about whether to expel four House members, which would require the support of two-thirds of the chamber, resurfaced this weekend when Swalwell dropped out of the gubernatorial election. 

New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, wrote in a statement that the reports regarding Swalwell were “horrific.”

“Rep. Swalwell’s actions would not be tolerated in any place of work, and the United States Congress should be no different,” she wrote. “We must believe and support survivors, and hold perpetrators accountable.”

Fernández called for an immediate investigation that ensures the “staffers and interns who courageously came forward must be listened to and kept safe.”

Fernández wrote in a separate statement that Swalwell and Gonzales, who is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations he engaged “in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office,” should immediately leave Congress. 

“Reps. Gonzales and Swalwell are not fit to serve. They must resign. If they do not, I will vote to expel them,” she wrote. 

Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wrote in a social media post that she “will be supporting this resolution!”

The House Ethics Committee announced Monday afternoon its members had opened an investigation into Swalwell “with respect to allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, including towards an employee working under his supervision.”

Florida lawmakers

There is also the possibility that an expulsion resolution would include Florida Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills.

The House Ethics Committee voted to find Cherfilus-McCormick guilty on more than two dozen ethics charges in late March after holding a public hearing. The panel plans to hold another hearing on April 21 to decide “what, if any, sanction would be appropriate for the Committee to recommend to the House of Representatives.”

Mills has been under investigation by the Ethics Committee for months over allegations he “engaged in misconduct with respect to allegations of sexual misconduct and/or dating violence,” among several other possible violations. 

Few expulsions in history

The House has rarely expelled its members, voting just six times to force lawmakers out. 

New York Republican Rep. George Santos was the most recent member removed from the House, following a 311-114 vote in December 2023 to approve an expulsion resolution sponsored by Mississippi Republican Rep. Michael Guest, chairman of the Ethics Committee. 

The resolution noted that in May 2023 “Santos was charged in Federal court in the Eastern District of New York with wire fraud in connection with a fraudulent political contribution scheme, unlawful monetary transactions in connection with the wire fraud allegations, theft of public money in connection with his alleged receipt of unemployment benefits, fraudulent application for and receipt of unemployment benefits, and false statements in connection with his 2020 and 2022 House of Representatives Financial Disclosure Statements.”

The next most recent expulsion came in 2002, when Ohio Democratic Rep. James A. Traficant was expelled for conspiracy, defrauding the government, illegal gratuity, obstruction of justice, racketeering and tax evasion violations, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. 

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Michael J. Myers was expelled in 1980 for bribery, conspiracy and Travel Act violations. In 1861, during the Civil War, Kentucky Rep. Henry C. Burnett along with Missouri Reps. John B. Clark and John W. Reid were expelled for “disloyalty to the Union.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But think tank Innovation Ohio contends the idea would be a disaster for local services like schools, public safety, libraries and public health. The group estimates Ramaswamy’s plan would mean $6.6 billion in cuts for those agencies.

“Rolling back the tax base would mean deep, immediate cuts to schools, fire stations, and services in every county,” the report states.

Right now, grassroots organizers around Ohio are working to eliminate property taxes outright. State lawmakers take that effort seriously enough that they’ve passed a raft of major property tax reforms, with even more proposals working through committee.

Last year, a working group made of former lawmakers, school officials, and auditors spent months wrestling over property tax reform. Although they endorsed several of the bills lawmakers later approved, the effort was a showcase for just how difficult it is to balance interests when it comes to cutting property taxes.

If it’s as simple as Ramaswamy portrays it to be, wouldn’t someone have stepped in to untangle the knot already?

Can he do that?

Ramaswamy’s plan is light on specifics, and no governor can wave a magic wand to bring property taxes down. Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Ramaswamy’s campaign for details about his proposal but they didn’t offer any.

Instead, in a written statement, campaign spokesperson Connie Luck said “our campaign doesn’t take policy advice from the Democrat staffers who ran up an $8 billion state budget shortfall and lost 300,000 jobs 15 years ago.”

Howard Fleeter, an economist and school funding expert, was left scratching his head. Property taxes had been climbing for years, even before the pandemic. Does Ramaswamy really want to go back to the middle of the pandemic or does he mean before it? Is he talking about tax rates or the amount homeowners actually pay? Does his plan apply to residential property only or does he include taxes on public utilities’ property?

“I think the burden is on Ramaswamy to show his work here,” he said.

Ramaswamy’s website does little to answer Fleeter’s questions. Instead, it vaguely promises a plan “designed to protect taxpayers while maintaining stability for local communities.” Ramaswamy insists new construction won’t be impacted, existing debts will be honored, and local governments will operate “with greater discipline.”

The website says his plan “builds on recent reforms that limit automatic tax increases.”

Lake County Auditor Chris Galloway said that measure, Ohio House Bill 186, might offer a way to achieve a kind of rollback. Galloway was part of last year’s property tax working group and advocated on behalf of H.B. 186. The measure limits future property tax increases to the rate of inflation. Originally the bill was forward looking, but an amendment pushed the baseline year back to 2023 — ratcheting taxes down further in many parts of the state.

“Can we roll back to pre-COVID levels? Yes,” Galloway said. “It would be an extension of what was accomplished under H.B. 186. Basically, instead of 2023 levels, it’s going back to 2019.”

But he warned there’s no way to cut that deep without making sacrifices.

“Costs for everyone have gone way up since 2019. That includes local governments,” he said. “So, slashing their revenue means slashing services. That can be done, but people are going to have to decide what they want to do without.”

When lawmakers passed H.B. 186, for instance, they decided they didn’t want to do without. Instead, they pulled $360 million from the sales tax holiday fund to keep school districts from losing money.

And as a practical matter, winding the clock back to 2019 doesn’t return tax bills to 2019 levels — it just changes the starting point for capped increases. Under the H.B. 186 model, property tax bills aren’t supposed to outpace inflation, but there has been a lot of inflation in the last six years.

If Ramaswamy is serious about lowering property taxes, Galloway said, he should take an even more radical approach.

“Want to lower taxes? Get school funding off our property tax bills,” Galloway said.

He made a similar pitch to the property tax working group but got no takers.

Galloway envisions the state completely taking over the education system. Instead of 600-plus local districts Galloway would have less than 100. That would mean dramatic reductions in administrative jobs and potential savings from consolidating transportation, collective bargaining units and school facilities.

“You could save billions of dollars,” Galloway said. “All of that takes political will and heavy lifting, but it is quite doable.”

Totaling the bill

Innovation Ohio’s report sets aside questions of means to focus on the potential consequences of Ramaswamy’s idea.

To get to its $6.6 billion estimate, Innovation Ohio started with recent Ohio Department of Taxation reports detailing millage rates and assessed property values. With that, the group calculated an initial estimate for 2025 and then used the same method for the two previous years — comparing their estimates to actual collections. The estimates came in about 2% high, so they lowered the 2025 calculation to match. Innovation Ohio included utility-owned property in its estimate as well, projecting the prior year’s total forward based on the most recent growth rate.

But that just gets to a figure for 2025. If Ramaswamy wins the election, and embarks on his plan to lower property taxes, it won’t happen until he takes office in 2027. To get to an estimate for 2027, Innovation Ohio took the 2025 figure and applied the three-year average growth rate of 5.1%.

With that math, the group estimates property taxes would amount to $27.2 billion in 2027. In 2021, Ohio collected $20.6 billion in property taxes. Innovation Ohio used that year as its baseline (Ramaswamy didn’t indicate one) because it’s “the last year before pandemic-era property value increases began working through Ohio’s tax system.”

What that would look like

About 60% of Ohio’s property tax dollars go to schools. The Innovation Ohio report notes dialing back to 2021 funding levels right now would mean cutting school funding by $2.4 billion. By the time Ramaswamy could put his plan into action, that figure would be $4 billion, based on Innovation Ohio’s projections.

“School districts would have no choice but to lay off teachers and staff, increase class sizes, and eliminate programs,” the report reads.

Because many districts use voted levies to service debt taken out for capital expenses like school construction, “a rollback would leave those obligations unfunded and could force school closures or indefinite deferral of building repairs.”

The report notes Ohio’s townships in particular would feel the pinch when it comes to public safety services. Unlike cities, townships can’t levy income or sales taxes. So if property taxes get cut, townships can’t turn to some alternative revenue source to replace the lost funding.

“Voters in townships across the state have approved 3,190 levies specifically for police, fire, and EMS services,” the report states.

Libraries get more than half their funding from property taxes. County health, developmental disabilities, and senior services agencies all rely on property taxes to fund basic operations.

And Innovation Ohio contends the harm doesn’t stop with direct cuts. Cutting off a reliable source of revenue source will make it harder for local governments to borrow money and potentially lead to a downgrade in credit ratings. The group warns if local governments are pinched, state bond ratings could suffer, too, “from the cascading instability at the local level.”

“That means higher borrowing costs for years to come,” the report states. “Communities would pay more for less as future infrastructure projects become costlier to finance.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

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Medicare and Medicaid provide health care to more than 144 million Americans, and paying interest on the $39 trillion national debt isn’t really optional. However, policymakers choose to spend nearly $900 billion a year on defense, and allow the Pentagon to ship 54% of that off to wealthy defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin — sometimes for weapons systems of questionable military value.

If you look at the federal tax bill of the average American, that person is giving those contractors more than he or she is paying for food and agriculture, school lunches, housing and urban development, disaster relief and national parks and the environment combined, according to the Institute for Policy Studies’ 2026 Tax Day report.

And that’s before you factor in the cost of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran or the portion of deep cuts to the social safety net that haven’t taken effect yet.

“More than half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities,” the report said. “But last year, instead of investing in programs that help people make ends meet, the president and his friends in Congress passed a Big Ugly Bill that cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, cut health insurance and food assistance for millions of Americans, and added billions in new spending for war and mass deportations.”

Politicians are quick to harp on fraud and error rates in programs they might not like, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But they continue to increase the amounts going through the Pentagon to politically connected defense contractors despite a long history of underperformance, profiteering and outright fraud that costs taxpayers billions.

Despite that, Trump is calling for the biggest increase in defense spending in decades while trying to pass off responsibility for Medicare, Medicaid and daycare to the states.

The average American taxpayer last year paid out $1,870 to defense contractors. That’s a third more than she or he paid to support veterans, nearly four times as much as on energy and the environment, and 19 times as much as on science.

Some observers have said that a lack of effective diplomacy is partly to blame for the Iran war and sustained diplomacy is needed if the ceasefire is to hold. Yet the average taxpayer last year gave defense contractors 37 times as much as he or she paid to support diplomatic relations with other countries.

The $1,870 the average taxpayer gave defense contractors is part of a $4,049 expenditure on weapons and the military. By contrast, that person paid $2,491 for Medicaid, $2,200 for Medicare and $4,330 to service the national debt.

All of those expenditures dwarf the $157 the average taxpayer spent to support scientific research — including $92 for NASA.

Olivia Alperstein, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Policy Studies, said cash-strapped Americans should know where their tax dollars are going.

“As the war in Iran drives gas prices sky-high while the cost of living crisis threatens Americans’ ability to afford basic necessities here at home, the majority of ordinary Americans across the political spectrum are deeply concerned about where our tax dollars actually go and how the government will prioritize our communities’ needs,” she said in an email.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The researchers conducted a review of studies on work requirements and concluded that “the best evidence shows they do not increase employment. Moreover, this research finds work requirements cause a large decrease in participation in SNAP.”

The research from The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, comes at a time of major upheaval for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Participation is already declining as states implement changes mandated by the president’s major tax and domestic policy law enacted last summer. 

Since the fall, states and counties that administer SNAP have been notifying residents who rely on food stamps that they must meet work requirements or lose their food assistance. Those changes affected exemptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, among others. 

Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law mandated cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

While SNAP enrollment is declining nationally, more people will likely lose food assistance as states continue to implement the work requirements and recertify participants, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution and the associate director of The Hamilton Project. 

“Everything that we know about work requirements is that they do not increase employment among the groups that are subject to them,” she told Stateline. “All they do is make it more likely that they are disenrolled from the program. And so, should these work requirements continue to be rolled out and implemented, we would expect to see declining enrollment and no changes in employment.”

Bauer said the growing body of research on SNAP has changed her mind about its ability to affect employment. While food stamps reach millions of people each year, the program’s work requirements have proven ineffective, confusing and burdensome, she said. 

“I am now of the mind that SNAP should be an anti-hunger program, and there are many, many ways to do workforce development, career ladders, career training, job search — all of those things. That’s not an anti hunger program and it shouldn’t be associated with it.”

What’s more concerning to her is how the stricter work requirements will affect people who lose jobs in an economic downturn. Traditionally, SNAP has been one of the most effective social supports for the unemployed, helping people who lose their jobs quickly gain food assistance. But laid-off workers will increasingly be told they cannot receive benefits without working. 

“It’s just this dissonant, unhelpful interaction that you have with the government,” Bauer said. “I lost my job, I need food benefits. Well, you can only get food benefits if you have a job.”

At least 2.5 million low-income people, or 6% of those enrolled, have lost SNAP benefits since the legislation was signed into law, according to a study by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published Wednesday.

Bauer said it’s unclear how much of that decline is directly related to the federal legislation. That’s because SNAP participation generally declines during times of economic prosperity and increases during downturns.

But the program is facing unprecedented changes: Under the new law, states have also lost funding for nutrition education programs, must end eligibility for noncitizens such as refugees and asylees, and will lose work requirement waivers for those living in areas with limited employment opportunities. States are also forced to cover more of the costs of the program. 

Earlier this week, a USDA spokesperson applauded the drop in SNAP participation, noting the program’s rolls had fallen below 40 million for the first time since the pandemic. The spokesperson told States Newsroom the program would continue “to serve those with the greatest need while also strengthening program integrity.”

Republicans, including U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have defended the legislative changes to SNAP, arguing they will help eliminate waste and fraud in the program.

In a June news release, he characterized SNAP as a “bloated, inefficient program,” but said Americans who needed food assistance would still receive it.

“Republicans are proud to defend commonsense welfare reform, fiscal sanity, and the dignity of work,” Johnson said in the release.

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.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The states that expanded Medicaid before that period also saw gains, but they were generally smaller. That’s because other changes, aside from Medicaid expansion, made buprenorphine easier to get after 2018.

The researchers found that among all patients — those covered by Medicaid, other insurers and the uninsured — the number of buprenorphine prescriptions increased in the eight most recent Medicaid expansion states (Idaho, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia) by more than 21% between 2019 and 2023. Maine, Oklahoma and Virginia saw the most dramatic increases.

Among the states that expanded Medicaid in 2018 or before, Kentucky, Vermont and West Virginia experienced the largest boosts. The study, published in February in JAMA Network Open, was conducted by researchers from Rutgers University and Indiana University, based on pharmacy claims data from retailers across the country.

Stephen Crystal, director of the Center for Health Services Research at Rutgers University and one of the authors, explained that buprenorphine became more accessible after 2018 as the federal government loosened various prescribing rules, including allowing prescribing via telehealth.

“Longer-term tracking shows that expansion, whether early or later, provides essential financial access and supports the growth of a provider network that improves population-level treatment rates,” Crystal told Stateline.

Experts warn that looming Medicaid cuts could cut off buprenorphine access to thousands of patients. The broad tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed last summer is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $886.8 billion over the next decade, largely because new work requirements will push people off the rolls, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. CBO estimates that it could increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.5 million in 2034.

Opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a high of 81,806 deaths in 2022. They’ve fallen sharply since then, to 79,358 in 2023 and 54,045 in 2024.

Medicaid is the largest payer of opioid use disorder treatment, and in 2023 it covered nearly half of all non-elderly adults in the U.S. with opioid use disorder in 2023, said Robin Rudowitz, a senior vice president at KFF, a health policy research group.

“Having health insurance is the main way for people to have consistent access to health care services, and also particularly for Medicaid, as most people are low income, and it provides protections against financial burdens,” Rudowitz said.

“And for (opioid use disorder) specifically, research shows that when people discontinue treatment, mortality risk increases. And for discontinuation of Medicaid, specifically, when coverage lapses, mortality rate increases.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@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.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion, stories continue to emerge of women with doomed pregnancies who developed life-threatening infections, had to travel to another state, or even died because doctors were afraid to provide what was once considered standard pregnancy-loss care.

Thirteen states have abortion bans, and all of them include a medical exception that allows abortions to protect the life of the pregnant woman. Some, but not all, of the bans also have exceptions to protect the health of the woman.

But patients and providers have argued in lawsuits challenging the bans that such exceptions are too ill defined to give doctors and hospitals the confidence to provide timely care. As a result, they say, providers end up denying care until the woman’s condition deteriorates to a point where the exceptions definitely apply, jeopardizing her health and future fertility.

Last year, states including Texas, Kentucky and Tennessee enacted laws designed to provide additional clarity. Confusion persists in those states and others, however, and research has linked abortion restrictions to higher rates of maternal death and injury.

The latest measures, crafted and promoted by national anti-abortion groups, would redefine “abortion” as the intentional ending of the life of the “unborn child.” Supporters say they would clear the way for doctors to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other pregnancy-related emergencies.

“No one wants a physician to hesitate or pause and further endanger the life of the mother,” said Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, which has advocated for all of the measures, in a written statement. “This is why providing clearer language in defining terms can be beneficial.”

But reproductive rights advocates and many OB-GYNs say the real purpose of the bills is to fortify abortion bans that are broadly unpopular, even in states with full bans, and under legal challenge in multiple states. They argue the new measures are still too vague because they hang on the intentions of individual physicians, and many of the same procedures and medicines used in abortions are used to treat miscarriages.

They also say the language in the bills could grant embryos legal rights, thereby making some fertility treatments illegal.

“If you’re trying to define what is and is not an abortion, and you’re creating really specific, narrow guidelines, it could really unintentionally classify some pregnancy-related procedures as abortion care, and therefore within the law not medically necessary,” said Elias Schmidt, state legislative counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group.

South Dakota is first

In March, South Dakota became the first state to enact such a law. Its measure states that the state’s abortion ban only applies to “the intentional termination of the life of a human being in the uterus,” and not to medical treatment that results in “the accidental or unintentional death of the unborn child,” treatment to resolve a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, “the removal from the uterus of a deceased unborn child,” or a medical procedure that aims to save the fetus.

To the concern of fertility-treatment advocates, the law also defines “human being” as “an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation.”

A similar bill introduced in Missouri defines abortion as “the act of using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or any other means or substance with the intent to destroy the life of an embryo or fetus in his or her mother’s womb.” It explicitly exempts miscarriage management and treatment for ectopic pregnancies from the definition.

And a bill in Utah, where abortion is still legal up to 18 weeks’ gestation, would regulate how an abortion procedure is recorded in a patient’s chart, distinguishing between an elective abortion and a medically indicated abortion. It defines the latter as an abortion “to remove a deceased fetus,” resolve an ectopic pregnancy, or to avert the death or “serious physical risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function of a woman.”

Wisconsin’s legislature recently voted not to advance a similar bill this past legislative session.

Blame for the confusion

Anti-abortion groups blame doctors and abortion-rights advocates for creating the confusion around the medical exceptions in abortion bans, insisting it is clear what is a medically indicated abortion and what is purely elective.

“The fact that we’re in a place now that states actually have to define (abortion) is a result of my field, particularly (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) not clarifying it,” said Dr. Susan Bane, vice chair of the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is made up of about 7,500 physicians and other medical professionals who oppose abortion.

The organization has launched a medical education and messaging campaign arguing that abortion bans do not prevent necessary health care.

According to Bane, the main difference between an induced abortion and medically indicated termination is that in the first case, “you want a dead baby at the end of whatever you do.”

The author of the South Dakota law, Republican state Rep. Leslie Heinemann, said he sponsored the measure to quell some of the criticism that the medical exceptions in his state’s ban were ill defined. He admitted he underestimated how difficult it would be to codify in law when care for a miscarriage is necessary.

“Even the medical community had trouble with helping define some of the issues,” he said.

The version of the bill that became law names only a few conditions and leaves the rest up to the discretion of physicians, who must exercise “appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female” to avoid felony charges.

Heinemann insisted his measure would not restrict fertility treatments or birth control. But reproductive health and legal experts say that by defining the beginning of human life as “the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation,” it could have that effect.

“Embedding personhood language into state laws does really bring up concern around contraceptive access and IVF access,” said Kimya Forouzan, principal state policy adviser for the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights.

“As personhood provisions grow in the state code, it brings up the question: At what point are we granting the legal rights of a person and placing those rights above the individual themselves?”

Dr. Amy Kelley, an OB-GYN in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who was the chair of the South Dakota chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists from 2023 to 2025, said lawmakers ignored her and other doctors’ concerns that the amended abortion ban is still too vague.

“The whole point of medicine is to prevent people from becoming on the brink of death, right? So are they expecting us to wait until that?” Kelley said. “It’s still not very clear, and the definition for miscarriage and ectopic is also not the one we wanted. It’s just not helpful.”

Kelley said that since her state enacted an abortion ban, she often waits longer to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons, and will sometimes send patients out of state for care. She noted that the new law doesn’t explain what level of risk to the pregnant woman justifies terminating a pregnancy.

“They want to say elective abortions are not allowed. But what do they consider elective?” she said. “Let’s say they have a heart condition and their risk of dying in pregnancy is 40%. Is that an elective abortion because their risk is not 100%?”

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org

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

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware County Common Pleas Court, names Storm D. Mills and his company, Mills Water Management, and alleges violations of both Ohio’s Consumer Sales Practices Act and the Home Solicitation Sales Act.

According to the Attorney General’s office, Mills operated the business from his Seneca County home before relocating to Florida, where he formed a new swimming pool business. Consumers who hired Mills for pool and pond work reported that projects were either started and never finished or never begun at all.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/ag-sues-seneca-county-pool-contractor-over-250k-in-losses/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click’s name disappeared from vivekforohio.com/endorsements/ on April 11, according to Web Archive snapshots reviewed by TiffinOhio.net. The removal came after TiffinOhio.net published two articles on April 9: one reporting that Ramaswamy’s campaign was actively promoting the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria), who was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor female relative, and a companion piece examining resurfaced video of Click describing conversations with young girls about their sexual experiences during Ohio House testimony.

Both Click and Creech were removed. A Web Archive snapshot from April 11 — two days after TiffinOhio.net’s articles — confirmed both names were gone.

Version of the page with both Click and Creech’s names removed, as of April 11, 2026. (via Web Archive)

On Monday, TiffinOhio.net published an article documenting the removals. Within approximately two hours, Click’s name reappeared on the page.

“Greatly exaggerated”

Click addressed the situation on Facebook shortly after his name was restored, posting a screenshot of himself back on the endorsements page with a grinning emoji.

“Rumors that I have been removed from a list of endorsements Vivek Ramaswamy are greatly exaggerated,” Click wrote, linking to the updated page.

Click’s name has since been readded to Ramaswamy’s campaign website, as of Monday, April 13, 2026, two hours after TiffinOhio.net’s original story on the removal.

The post did not address why his name had been absent from the page, who removed it, or who restored it. Click did not explain the Web Archive snapshots confirming the removal.

Creech’s name, meanwhile, remains absent from the endorsements page as of Monday afternoon. Neither the Ramaswamy campaign nor Creech has publicly addressed the removal.

An enthusiastic endorser

Click had been among the most vocal supporters of the Ramaswamy-McColley ticket. In January 2026, when Ramaswamy selected Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate, Click told The Daily Signal: “Out of a crowd of super qualified candidates, Vivek made a strong pick for L.G. Rob McColley makes a great ticket even greater.”

He added that “the future of Ohio grew just a little bit brighter tonight” and called McColley “a proven leader who we know will bring results because he already has a history of doing so.”

In April 2025, Click posted on X after Ramaswamy visited Sandusky County: “It was great to have @VivekGRamaswamy in Clyde last night and Fremont earlier in the day. Something transformational is happening in the heart of Ohio.”

What prompted the removal

TiffinOhio.net’s April 9 reporting raised questions about two endorsers on Ramaswamy’s page.

The primary article focused on Creech, who was accused in 2023 of climbing into bed with a minor female relative while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech admitted to investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. Clark County Special Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll declined to file charges but described Creech’s behavior as “concerning and suspicious.”

A companion article, based on video resurfaced by Ohio political journalist D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster, examined Click’s April 2023 sponsor testimony for House Bill 68. During the hearing, Click told the Ohio House Public Health Policy Committee that “young girls who’ve gone through this have told me it is very, very painful to have sex.” Click has never publicly identified who these young girls were, when the conversations took place, or in what capacity he was speaking with minors about their sexual experiences.

Click, who quietly stepped down as senior pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple in 2025 and assumed the honorary title of pastor emeritus — a transition first reported by TiffinOhio.net — is facing a contested Republican primary in Ohio House District 88, where he is challenged by Eric Watson. The May 5 primary is 22 days away.

Creech remains scrubbed

While Click moved quickly to get his name restored, Creech has not. As of Monday afternoon, Creech does not appear anywhere on vivekforohio.com/endorsements/, despite being among the original 38 Ohio House Republicans whose endorsements appeared on the site in April 2025.

Other names from that original list remain on the page — including Rep. Phil Plummer (R-Dayton), who told BCI investigators that Creech’s comments about the allegations were “disgusting and uncalled for.”

Creech is currently seeking re-election to Ohio House District 40, where he faces former state Rep. J. Todd Smith and Lew Lainhart in the May 5 Republican primary. The Ohio Republican Party has endorsed him for re-election.

Attempts to reach the Ramaswamy campaign and Click for comment were unsuccessful.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

David M. Clayton was riding a 2014 Harley Davidson Street Glide motorcycle southbound on State Route 100 near State Route 67 at approximately 7:21 p.m. on April 12 when he failed to negotiate a curve, the Patrol’s Norwalk Post said in a media release. Clayton’s motorcycle ran off the right side of the roadway, struck a ditch and overturned.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/bucyrus-man-43-killed-in-seneca-county-motorcycle-crash/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The scene was concerning enough to prompt the homeless shelter staff to call the fire department. 

A woman using a walker had shown up, incontinent and carrying “a large bag of medications.” She was diabetic, managing a tibia fracture and alcohol-related dementia, and she was “dumped” at the shelter, according to federal inspectors. 

“The staff member [said] Resident #83 was unclear of what was going on, scared, and not sure who dropped her off there,” inspectors for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which funds most nursing home care in the U.S., wrote after an Aug. 3, 2023 inspection. 

The incident was what industry experts described as a rare but increasingly common instance of a nursing home in Ohio transferring its patients – who are often older, poorer and medically fragile – to a homeless shelter.

CMS has faulted Eastland Rehabilitation and Nursing Center and six others in the past few years related to efforts to discharge patients to homeless shelters, most of which were ultimately carried out. 

The woman had been caught drinking beer at her residence at Eastland, in Columbus, prompting an involuntary discharge. Staff tried to get her into rehabilitation for substance use, but no beds were immediately available. 

Eastland staff never called the county’s psychiatric bed board to find a spot for the woman, according to the inspectors. Instead, they took her to the shelter. There, about 100 people sat ahead of her on the waiting list. 

The shelter at first declined to admit the woman, leaving her outside in the late-summer heat. Staff eventually relented, letting her sit in the lobby with a glass of cold water while they summoned a city rapid response team, including the fire department and a social worker. 

Neither Eastland nor the CMS inspectors could locate the woman by the time the report was published. 

“In addition, the events of what occurred at the addiction recovery center or how/why Resident #83 ended up at the homeless shelter … could not be determined as the facility was unable to provide any additional information regarding Resident #83,” the inspection report states. 

The administrator at Eastland declined to return phone calls about the inspection. Facility staff declined to provide contact information for Garden Healthcare, the corporate owner of the nursing home, which operates five other facilities, according to CMS data. It doesn’t publish any contact information online. 

An increasingly common occurrence

Most of the patients in these situations are older, homeless, unemployed and lack support networks of family or friends that might be checking in on them, according to Chip Wilkins, who leads the city of Dayton’s Long Term Care Ombudsman program, which acts as a legal advocate for long term care patients. 

“We are starting to deal with it more and more. The facilities are so closely monitored on discharges, but yet they still try and send them to hospitals and not take them back. Or drop them off at homeless shelters,” he said in an interview. 

“I would say certainly over the last six months there has been an uptick.”

Leilani Pelletier, the statewide ombudsman, said she didn’t have ready access to data that could confirm whether the discharges to homeless shelters have increased in frequency statewide.

But health care is as subject to macroeconomic forces like inflation as other sectors of the economy. And Medicaid, which pays for most nursing care, is under increasing cost pressure as federal lawmakers have reduced program funds. 

The challenges nursing facilities in Ohio are facing reflect a broader and concerning trend affecting facilities across the country, said Scott Wiley in a statement, CEO of the Ohio Health Care Association, an industry trade group. 

“This issue has been growing as more residents face unstable housing,” he said. “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.”

‘As cruel as it sounds’

The state ombudsman’s office gets copies of every involuntary discharge from a nursing home in Ohio. One of the first things they check, Wilkins said, is the proposed discharge location. 

Homeless shelter discharges are priority cases because they’re almost always unsafe, he said. They can’t manage the 10 to 20 medications they might need daily. Some rely on wheelchairs or walkers. 

“Invariably, that ends up being a horrible experience for the individual because they’ll go to the shelter, and typically, within two to three days, the shelter will send them to the hospital because they can’t meet their needs,” Wilkins said. 

Often, the issues trace back to insurers, including Medicaid and Medicare, that cut off residents’ benefits. Sometimes the facilities cite aggressive behavior or substance use. 

Homeless shelters aren’t built to handle medically fragile patients. They aren’t medical centers. Some may require residents to climb to a top bunk, a tall task for older patients. 

Marcus Roth, director of communications of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, said the practice puts the shelters in a tight spot. They’re tending to a population they’re not equipped to handle, but they’re also the de facto safety net. 

“The emergency shelter system, to the extent we have a system, is often the only thing available when other interventions don’t work,” he said. 

Pelletier emphasized in an interview that such involuntary discharges to shelters against residents’ wishes are rare. That said, she estimated about 13,000 Ohioans are discharged from a nursing home each month. 

Nursing homes, she said, have legal obligations to make sure that discharges are “safe and appropriate.” And it’s not up to the facilities, she said, to unilaterally decide where a person should go. 

Whether a shelter is “safe and appropriate” is a fact-specific question. Pelletier said there are instances where it could be, pending the care needs of the resident and abilities of the shelter. It’s the kind of thing that ombudsmen hone in on when reviewing discharges.

“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. 

Bounced after 22 years

It didn’t matter that its patient was diabetic and struggled to manage his blood sugar. Neither did his history of glaucoma, cataracts, or suspected autism, or his 22 years of residency at the nursing home. 

What mattered is that his insurance stopped paying, and the Laurels of Hillsboro wanted him out, according to a Dec. 29, 2025 CMS inspection of the facility. 

The man told CMS inspectors in an interview that nursing home staff never told him he was being taken to a homeless shelter. 

Federal law says nursing home residents must be given at least 30 days’ notice before a discharge, barring health and safety emergencies. But the patient at Laurels, who isn’t identified in the investigation, wasn’t given any. According to his former roommate, facility staff misrepresented the discharge, claiming he’d be going to an assisted living apartment as opposed to an emergency shelter that would only house him for up to 90 days. 

The man wasn’t taught to manage his medications and showed up at the shelter without any needles to use. He struggled to see with his cataracts. He had no driver’s license, birth certificate or other documents he would need to get a job, income or housing. 

“I can’t believe they would do someone dirty like that,” the patient’s roommate said to CMS inspectors. 

Laurels of Hillsboro, via a receptionist who declined to provide her name over the phone, declined to comment but said the facility is now in “substantial compliance” with the state. 

Rules broken

In some of the facilities cited by CMS, the providers allegedly failed to ensure patients got their medications as they were discharged to homeless shelters. And some failed to provide patients their 30 days of notice before an involuntary discharge. 

Meadowbrook Manor, in Trumbull County, sought to discharge a patient with an array of long-term illnesses and a history of substance use and homelessness, according to a July 8 inspection. He was given a 30-day discharge notice, but was sent to a shelter 20 days later regardless. 

He was given two weeks’ worth of medications, but no prescriptions, medical appointments or care plan. The shelter staff identified a “mismatch” given the man had trouble walking and couldn’t climb a ladder to reach a top bunk, as the facility requires. 

Meadowbrook staff refused to take him back. 

At New Lebanon Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, a woman’s insurer sent her a termination letter for her treatment for a series of neural and spinal disorders, plus depression and arthritis. 

While she was entitled to 30 days’ notice, the facility gave her roughly 24 hours before discharging her to a homeless shelter. The facility’s social services director said he didn’t know where the woman actually went, only that a friend picked her up.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor has quietly removed two state lawmakers from its official endorsements page — including one who was investigated for alleged sexual misconduct with a minor — days after TiffinOhio.net reported that the campaign was actively promoting their support.

State Reps. Gary Click (R-Vickery) and Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria) no longer appear on the endorsements page at vivekforohio.com. As of April 13, neither name is listed among the dozens of Ohio legislators featured on the page.

A Web Archive snapshot from February 20 shows both Click and Creech listed on the page. A second snapshot from April 11 shows them removed.

The April 11 snapshot was captured two days after TiffinOhio.net published a report detailing how the Ramaswamy campaign was promoting the endorsement of Creech, who was accused in 2023 of climbing into bed with a minor female relative while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Ramaswamy also promoted the endorsement of Click, who made headlines earlier this month after resurfaced video showed Click reminiscing about talking to “young girls” about “how painful” it is for them to engage in sex, during testimony for his anti-trans legislation, House Bill 68.

The Ramaswamy campaign made no public announcement about removing either name. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication of the April 9 article and has not publicly addressed the endorsement removals.

Click had praised the Ramaswamy ticket

Click’s removal is notable in part because of how enthusiastically he promoted the Ramaswamy-McColley ticket. In January 2026, when Ramaswamy selected Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate, Click told The Daily Signal: “Out of a crowd of super qualified candidates, Vivek made a strong pick for L.G. Rob McColley makes a great ticket even greater.”

Click added that “the future of Ohio grew just a little bit brighter tonight” and said McColley was “a proven leader who we know will bring results because he already has a history of doing so.”

Click also endorsed Ramaswamy on social media when the candidate visited Fremont and Clyde in April 2025, posting on X: “It was great to have @VivekGRamaswamy in Clyde last night and Fremont earlier in the day. Something transformational is happening in the heart of Ohio.”

Click is now facing a contested Republican primary in Ohio House District 88, where he is being challenged by Eric Watson. He has drawn scrutiny in recent months over his legislative record, campaign finance transfers to Speaker Matt Huffman’s PAC, and a quiet departure from his role as senior pastor at Fremont Baptist Temple — a transition first reported by TiffinOhio.net.

Creech remains party-endorsed despite allegations

Creech was the primary subject of TiffinOhio.net’s April 9 report. In 2023, a minor female relative accused Creech of climbing into bed and under the covers with her while erect, wearing only his underwear, according to BCI documents. Creech admitted to investigators that he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. Clark County Special Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll declined to file charges but described Creech’s behavior as “concerning and suspicious.”

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of his committee assignments in May 2025 and asked him to resign. Creech refused. In February 2026, Huffman reinstated him, then signed a letter requesting the Ohio Republican Party endorse him for re-election. The party obliged.

Creech is seeking re-election to Ohio House District 40 in the May 5 Republican primary, where he faces former state Rep. J. Todd Smith and Lew Lainhart.

Both Click and Creech were among the original 38 Ohio House Republicans whose endorsements were featured in an April 2025 press release on vivekforohio.com. As of April 13, neither appears anywhere on the campaign’s endorsements page. Other endorsers from the original list — including Rep. Phil Plummer (R-Dayton), who told BCI investigators that Creech’s comments about the allegations were “disgusting and uncalled for” — remain listed.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ramaswamy’s disclosure, filed on April 6, shows that the billionaire entrepreneur personally holds Bitcoin and Ethereum and retains a roughly 10% ownership stake in Strive, Inc. — a company he co-founded that has committed nearly all of its corporate treasury to Bitcoin.

As of April 2, Strive held 13,741 Bitcoin purchased at an average cost of roughly $105,850 per coin, according to SEC filings and an investigation by The American Prospect and the Center for Media and Democracy. With Bitcoin trading at approximately $71,000 on Monday — a decline of roughly 33% from Strive’s average purchase price — the company’s cryptocurrency holdings have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

Every dollar Bitcoin’s price rises is a dollar closer to recovering those losses — for both Strive and its co-founder.

The policy connection

Ramaswamy has made cryptocurrency a centerpiece of his economic pitch to Ohio voters. In January 2025 — while still serving as co-lead of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency — he publicly praised Ohio House Bill 18, the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act, calling it “a thoughtful & powerful bill” in a post on X.

HB 18, introduced by Rep. Steve Demetriou (R-Chagrin Falls), would authorize the State Treasurer to invest up to 10% of state interim funds — including the general revenue fund and budget stabilization fund — in digital assets. It would also permit Ohio’s five public pension systems, which cover hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, firefighters, and public employees, to invest in crypto-linked exchange-traded products.

Those five pension systems hold a combined $257 billion in assets, according to the Ohio Retirement Study Council. Under HB 18’s 10% cap, tens of billions of dollars in Ohio public money could flow into Bitcoin and similar digital assets — institutional buying pressure that could drive up the price of the cryptocurrency Ramaswamy and Strive already hold.

The bill has received five hearings in the House Technology and Innovation Committee but has not advanced to a floor vote.

Governor’s power over pensions

As governor, Ramaswamy would have the authority to appoint trustees to Ohio’s state pension boards — the same boards that would make decisions about whether to invest in cryptocurrency under HB 18.

Chris Tobe, a financial analyst and former pension trustee in Kentucky, told the Center for Media and Democracy that the governor has “great influence” over state funds in Ohio. Tobe warned that Ramaswamy’s connections to crypto through Strive could create conflicts at the intersection of public pension oversight and personal financial interest.

Not all Ohio Republicans share Ramaswamy’s enthusiasm. House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) told reporters last fall that he thinks the legislature needs “a long, hard look” at crypto investments, adding that he is “still scratching my head over cryptocurrency.”

Strive’s Bitcoin losses

Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) began as an anti-ESG asset management firm Ramaswamy co-founded in 2022. After Trump signaled support for making the U.S. a global crypto leader, the company pivoted to Bitcoin, raising $750 million and merging with Asset Entities in September 2025 to become what it called “the first publicly traded asset management Bitcoin Treasury Corporation.”

That bet has not paid off. Strive’s stock price has fallen approximately 96% since its initial public offering, and the company reported a $393 million net loss in its first six months as a public Bitcoin treasury company, driven largely by unrealized losses on its cryptocurrency holdings.

Michael McGovern, CEO of Innovation Ohio, a progressive policy organization, said the financial disclosure makes the conflict clear.

“Why else would he be pushing for risky public investment in crypto?” McGovern said. “That’s not a policy agenda for working Ohioans. It’s a bailout for Vivek.”

Campaign donors with crypto ties

Ramaswamy’s largest campaign donors also have significant stakes in the cryptocurrency industry. The top donor to his gubernatorial super PAC in 2025 was Ross Stevens, who gave $14 million and is actively involved in Bitcoin and crypto. The second-largest donor was Jeff Yass, who gave $10 million. Yass’s firm, Susquehanna International Group, holds more than $2 billion in Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), a company that exclusively invests in Bitcoin, and over $2 billion in Coinbase, a crypto exchange, according to the American Prospect investigation.

Those two donors alone account for $24 million in super PAC contributions from individuals with direct financial interests in the expansion of cryptocurrency markets and infrastructure — the same policies Ramaswamy has pledged to advance as governor.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has not publicly addressed the overlap between his personal financial holdings, his donors’ interests, and the crypto-friendly policies he has endorsed.

The financial disclosures filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission are available for download through Signal Ohio’s coverage.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Costs jumped 0.9% in March compared to the previous month — that’s up from the 0.3% increase in February. 

Prices for all items together, including food, energy, shelter and other commodities like vehicles, rose by 3.3% from a year ago. That’s the highest annual jump since May 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics historical data. 

Fuel costs drove the spike, with gasoline and fuel oil together rising 10.9% in March compared to the previous month. Singled out, gas prices jumped 21.2% in March. The cost for airfare, largely driven by jet fuel prices, rose 2.7% in March, up from the 1.4% jump in February.

President Donald Trump launched the joint war in Iran with Israel on Feb. 28. In response to the intense bombing campaign that killed the country’s supreme leader and numerous senior officials, the Iranian regime effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage in and out of the Persian Gulf vital to the transport of one-fifth of the world’s petroleum.

As of Friday, Americans were paying $4.15 on average nationwide for a gallon of regular gas, according to AAA. The average for diesel across the U.S. is $5.68 per gallon.

Prior to the war, a gallon of regular hadn’t topped $3 all year.

Iran’s de facto takeover of the Strait of Hormuz by threatening to strike any tankers, other than a handful from friendly countries, has caused the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, according to the International Energy Agency.

Despite a tenuous ceasefire agreed to Tuesday evening Eastern time, Iran is still controlling the strait. Ten oil tankers transited the waterway Tuesday, and only one on Wednesday, according to the latest figures available from the Joint Maritime Information Center, which tracks tankers and cargo ships worldwide that are transmitting location data.

Prior to the war, roughly 140 vessels daily flowed freely through the Strait of Hormuz.

Dems pounce on affordability issue

Democrats blamed Trump Friday for higher inflation, as affordability is emerging as perhaps the single-most important issue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said the president is “pushing working families to the brink.” 

Unleaded gas is $3.99 per gallon at the Exxon at 129 Lee St. W in Charleston, West Virginia on April 8, 2026. (Photo by Leann Ray/West Virginia Watch)

“Trump promised to ‘lower prices on Day One,’ and instead he waged an unhinged trade war and started an unpopular war with Iran — and what have Americans gotten in return? Nothing except even higher prices. Americans are sick and tired of this president putting his own interests first and using their hard-earned dollars to fund his war instead of making health care more affordable or expanding access to child care,” Martin said in a statement Friday morning.

White House senior deputy press secretary Kush Desai responded to the inflation figures, saying the president “has always been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, disruptions that the Administration has been diligently working to mitigate.”

“Although gas and energy prices are seeing volatility, prices of eggs, beef, prescription drugs, dairy, and other household essentials are falling or remain stable thanks to President Trump’s policies. As the Administration ensures the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, the American economy remains on a solid trajectory thanks to the Administration’s robust supply-side agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy abundance,” Desai wrote in a statement Friday morning posted on social media. 

Other costs

The price index for food consumed at home decreased 0.2% compared to the previous month, but increased 1.9% from a year ago. 

The costs of fruits and vegetables rose 1% in March compared to the previous month, but prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs declined 0.6%, according to the latest BLS figures.

The price index for items minus food and energy rose 0.2% in March, matching the increase in February. The cost of all items, less food and energy, rose 2.6% over the past 12 months.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A single adult in Scioto County working full-time in a minimum wage job would need to be making $18.66 an hour to cover costs, according to a new minimum wage report by Policy Matters Ohio. Ohio’s minimum wage is $11 an hour. 

“We’re already looking at minimum wage workers not being able to make ends meet on the current wage, and wages really need to be raised in order for us to make sure that all Ohioans have the same or improved standard of living,” said Heather Smith, one of the report’s authors.  

On the flip side, Delaware County has the highest cost of living for a single adult and a minimum wage worker there would have to work nearly two and a half years to cover a year’s worth of expenses, according to the report. 

An Ohioan working full-time and earning minimum wage makes $22,880 a year, according to the new report. 

A single person in Ohio could pay for the costs of everyday living as determined by the Economic Policy Institute with a full-time, year-round job that pays between $18.66 and $26.82 an hour, depending on the county, according to the report. 

The Economic Policy Institute’s cost of living represents a modest standard of living including housing, food, transportation, child care, health care, and taxes.

Ohioans passed a constitutional amendment in 2006 that increases the state minimum wage every year based on the consumer price index.  

“Ohio’s minimum wage increases with inflation,” Smith said. “The minimum wage hasn’t lost value over the last 20 years, but it hasn’t gained value either.”

The state’s minimum wage next year will likely be $11.20 an hour, she said. 

“It’s not much,” Smith said.  

Under Ohio’s current policy, workers will likely not see a $15 minimum wage until 2034, according to the report. 

Policy Matters Ohio recommends the state increase the minimum wage one dollar each year until reaching $15 per hour in 2030. More than a dozen states and Washington, D.C. have minimum wages of $15.

Economic Policy Institute modeling shows 616,700 Ohio workers would get a raise due to a state minimum wage increase of $15 an hour by 2030, according to the report.  

“This is really just a common sense thing for Ohio legislators to consider, or Ohioans to consider for a ballot (initiative) that would raise the quality of life for folks without having a negative impact across the economy,” Smith said.

A couple of Democratic bills would raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, but neither of those bills have had any hearings. 

Ohio House Bill 34 would do what Policy Matters Ohio is suggesting — increase the state’s minimum wage to $11 per hour in 2026, $12 per hour in 2027, $13 per hour in 2028, $14 per hour in 2029, and $15 per hour in 2030. 

State Reps. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced the bill. 

Ohio Senate Bill 234 would raise the minimum wage by a dollar per hour each year until reaching $15 per hour in 2029. Ohio State Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, and Ohio Sen. Hearcel Craig, D-Columbus, introduced the bill. 

The bill would also eliminate the tipped employee minimum wage and require all employees to be paid the state’s minimum wage. 

Ohioans need to be making at least $22.51 an hour working a full-time job to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment, according to a report last year by Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not gone up since 2009. 

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 Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 33 of his colleagues in other states are fighting on. The case was expected to go to the jury in federal court in New York late last week.

In 2024, while Joe Biden was still president, the Justice Department sued the entertainment middleman under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

It accused Live Nation Entertainment of using its dominance of several parts of the entertainment business to set itself up as a huge middleman, jacking up prices while starving the artists patrons are paying to see. It accused the company of using its dominant ownership of the most desirable concert venues, its ticket-selling platform, and its concert-promotion business to lock artists and patrons into its services and to lock competitors out.

The settlement caps the company’s fees at venues, opens its platform to third-party ticket sellers, forces it to sell off about 12 of its 400 entertainment venues, and pay $280 million to the states that sued. 

Critics were not impressed. 

It came “after years of evidence that Live Nation, the largest artist manager and concert promoter in America, in coordination with its in-house event-ticketing monopoly Ticketmaster, consistently ripped off fans and bullied venues and artists.” antitrust activist Ron Knox wrote in The Sling. “The government’s case had finally made it to trial — only to end a week after it began. How could a company that has so blatantly abused its outright power in the live music industry for so many years, earning scorn from artists, independent venues owners, and consumer advocates, get off with the most cursory slap on the wrist?”

President Donald Trump ran on claims that he would lower prices for consumers. But the Live Nation settlement is one of several maneuvers to gut antitrust enforcement that had been reinvigorated by the Biden administration.

In a move of questionable legality, Trump removed two Democratic appointees to the Federal Trade Commission and he forced out the head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. 

Among other actions, the newly Republican FTC last year dropped a lawsuit that accused the country’s largest grocer and food supplier of colluding to drive out competition while driving up prices.

The sudden settlement of the Live Nation suit enraged interested parties — and the federal judge who was presiding over the trial.

“It shows absolute disrespect for the court, the jury and this entire process,” U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian said, according to the New York Times. “It is absolutely unacceptable.”

Critics pointed out that the $280 million settlement amounted to just four days’ worth of Live Nation’s 2025 revenue. And they said that requiring Ticketmaster to host other vendors could make scalping even worse and drive ticket prices ever higher.

“Live Nation has long been the poster child for monopoly power in the live entertainment industry,” John Breyault of the National Consumers League said in a written statement. “Through its ownership of Ticketmaster and its dominance in concert promotion and venue management, the company has amassed extraordinary control over the live music ecosystem. This has left fans, artists, and independent venues with nowhere else to turn.”

Disappointment over the settlement was shared by 34 state attorneys general, including Ohio’s Yost, Politico reported.

The Ohio attorney general’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did Yost appear to issue any public statement about it. But others did.

“For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a written statement. “My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable.”

She added, “The settlement recently announced with the U.S. Department of Justice fails to address the monopoly at the center of this case, and would benefit Live Nation at the expense of consumers. We cannot agree to it.”

In a related matter, Ohio lawmakers have introduced a bill aimed at curbing the conduct of Ticketmaster and other sellers who are accused of acting as middlemen artificially inflating prices.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The State Library of Ohio is a state agency that houses and preserves state founding documents and historical artifacts, and also distributes federal funding for things like statewide digital materials and other resources.

“When our children fall in love with a great book, federal funds helped a library do that; when historians explain our shared state history, a federally-funded library project helped with that, too,” State Librarian Mandy Knapp told the Capital Journal.

The funding the library receives comes through the Library Services and Technology Act, distributed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. According to institute statistics released this week by data analysis organization USA Facts, Ohio had the highest library circulation per person in both physical and electronic materials in 2023. It was also the third highest state in library visits per person, and most library cards per person, according to the data.

The institute is a federal entity that was up for elimination since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, as part of an early effort by the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal spending. According to the Office of Budget and Management and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the institute spent $280 million in fiscal year 2024.

The institute’s funding falls under the umbrella of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, and the overall foundation spending amounted to 0.01% of all federal spending, USA Facts found.

Attorneys general in 21 states filed a lawsuit in 2025 to stop the dismantling of the institute, and in November, a federal court sided with those attorneys general, saying the Trump administration could not go forward with plans to eliminate the agency, its funding, and its staff of less than 100.

The Trump administration appealed the decision, but then requested that the appeal be withdrawn, which a federal judge granted on April 6.

“Libraries can move forward with confidence that IMLS funding will be available to sustain the vital services communities rely on,” said Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, in a statement.

A separate lawsuit was filed by the association, in which a May 2025 order temporarily barred mass layoffs of institute employees. This week, a settlement was reached in that case “that protects the Institute of Museum and Library Services and ensures the agency will continue carrying out its work,” according to a statement by the library association.

The settlement would allow the institute to continue funding grants, conducting research, and operating programs to assist libraries and museums in the U.S., the association stated.

The battle continues, however, as the budget process at the federal level begins again, and national library advocates continue to worry that funding cuts could be on the horizon.

Trump’s proposed budget takes the nearly $300 million in the previous budget for the institute, and chops it to $6 million, “for necessary expenses to carry out the closure of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.”

“The budget proposes to eliminate funding for several independent agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, as part of the administration’s plan to move the nation towards fiscal responsibility and to redefine the proper role of the federal government,” the budget proposal states.

Along with the proposed elimination of the institute, the budget request from the Trump administration would take the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program, which received $25.5 million in 2025, down to zero. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the program awards grants to promote literacy through “enhanced school library programs; early literacy services, including outreach to parents of young children … and the distribution of high quality books.”

The department said the program would be consolidated under a newly proposed “Make Education Great Again” program.

“Consistent with the administration’s efforts to return education to the states, the request would empower states to use federal funds flexibly to meet their needs without the administrative burden and programmatic silos of current law,” the department said in a summary of the proposed budget.

Even with the dramatic cuts showing up in the new proposal, the American Library Association isn’t panicking yet, with a pattern of congressional support behind them.

“The president has repeatedly underestimated congressional support for libraries and the lengths to which advocates will go to protect library services,” Helmick said in a statement. “Thanks to library advocacy, Congress increased library funding, just as they did all four years of the president’s first term.”

But the State Library of Ohio is moving forward both physically and financially, setting up shop in two new facilities, and out of a location that Knapp told state legislators was aging to the point of putting preservation efforts in danger.

The funding the agency received from the institute has been used for things like a peer-to-peer reading program at Southview High School in Sylvania, and the purchase of book repair machines by the Northern Buckeye Education Council in Archbold, machines that have been used by 11 school libraries and one public library as of September 2025, according to the State Library of Ohio.

“At a time when many districts face limited or nonexistent book replacement budgets, this simple yet powerful solution is keeping books in students’ hands,” the agency stated.

The state library’s current location will close on April 14, but access to digital collections through the Ohio Digital Library will continue as the agency moves to its new locations. Administrative offices will be staying in downtown Columbus, while collections will be moved to a “specialized archival facility” in Gahanna, according to the library.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court held on March 31 that a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from performing “conversion therapy” on minors was likely unconstitutional as applied to talk therapy. Justice Elena Kagan filed a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

I am a law professor and political scientist who teaches and writes on free expression and discrimination. I see this holding as a potentially important decision at the intersection of free speech and health care.

Colorado’s law defines conversion therapy broadly. It bans practices that attempt not only to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but also to reduce same-sex attraction. The law allows therapists to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” of gay or transgender identity. However, they may not help a client suppress those identities. Penalties include fines, probation and loss of license.

Kaley Chiles challenged the law as a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights. As a therapist who only offers talk therapy, Chiles’ objection was limited to her talk therapy. She didn’t contest the ban on what she called “long-abandoned, aversive” conversion practices. And – notably, considering she is an evangelical Christian – Chiles said she never set out to convert her clients. She says she respects her clients’ “fundamental right of self-determination” and determines her therapy approach only after a client identifies his or her own objectives. But she argued that some of her clients wish to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions (or) change sexual behaviors,” and the law prevents her from expressing support for any of those goals.

Colorado’s failed ‘professional speech’ argument

Colorado faced a major obstacle in defending the Colorado conversion therapy law. The law was transparently driven by the government’s views about the well-documented inefficacy and harmful effects of conversion therapy. And outside of certain contexts, such as government grants, public employees, advertising and threats, courts have treated such viewpoint-based laws as constitutionally dead on arrival.

Colorado’s best hope in defending the law, then, was to argue that it wasn’t principally a restriction on speech at all. Rather, the state framed the law as a restriction on professional conduct — an area where states have broad regulatory latitude. That framing would mean the law burdened Chiles’ speech only incidentally.

In NIFLA v. Becerra, decided in 2018, the court rejected the argument that professional speech was a less-protected category. But it acknowledged that laws “regulating conduct in ways that incidentally sweep in speech” – particularly where they “fall within the traditional purview of state regulation of professional conduct” – might survive under a lower standard of scrutiny.

Colorado attempted to demonstrate such a tradition here, citing medical licensing laws, informed-consent requirements and malpractice liability.

A divided 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed with Colorado’s argument, as did Jackson in her dissent. But the Supreme Court majority rejected it. Gorsuch wrote that a government cannot evade First Amendment scrutiny by relabeling restricted speech as “conduct,” “treatment” or a “therapeutic modality.” Quoting the dissent of U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, he called Colorado’s argument a “labeling game.”

For Gorsuch, the key question is whether the law restricts speech in practice. And in Chiles’ case the answer was yes. Colorado was plainly restricting what she wished to tell her clients about their sex and gender issues.

Not just content but viewpoint discrimination

More than that, the majority noted, Colorado’s law doesn’t regulate therapists’ speech based on its content. The law discriminates based on viewpoint, permitting expressions of acceptance and support for a client’s self-identity while forbidding expressions that attempt to change it.

Under 1995’s Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, viewpoint discrimination is an “egregious form” of content regulation. Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. The court remanded the Colorado case back to the 10th Circuit to resolve the case under this standard.

Jackson’s dissent: Medical treatment, not speech

Jackson’s solo dissent emphasizes that states have long enjoyed broad power to regulate how licensed medical professionals treat patients. To Jackson, the First Amendment should not interfere simply because a treatment is applied through words rather than instruments.

The court’s 2018 NIFLA decision, she argues, distinguished between speech restricted “as speech” and speech restricted “incidentally” as part of a medical treatment the state is otherwise entitled to regulate. According to Jackson, the majority arbitrarily collapses that distinction simply because the treatment is delivered orally. A talk therapy session and a drug infusion are both medical treatments, she argues, and the analysis should not turn on whether the provider uses a syringe or a sentence.

Jackson’s dissent also raises difficult line-drawing problems, such as the validity of less controversial potential prohibitions, such as those on encouraging a patient to smoke or to take their own life.

Implications are broader, narrower than most believe

First, only talk therapy is implicated.

The holding is narrow in this sense. It leaves room for policymakers still hoping to limit the practice of conversion therapy. Because Chiles challenged the statute only as applied to her, the majority’s analysis does not invalidate conversion therapy bans wholesale – neither Colorado’s nor those of more than 20 other states – but applies only to the extent they ban conversion talk therapy.

State legislatures can define conversion therapy a bit more narrowly, for example, by prohibiting the physical and more coercive techniques that initially gave rise to these bans. States can then leave the regulation of talk therapy to other legal and professional mechanisms, such as malpractice or enforcement of professional ethics.

Second, the standard of scrutiny that the lower court must now apply is not strict scrutiny; it is more demanding. Strict scrutiny is a legal test that validates a law if it is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.” Contrary to what some legal commentators have implied, Gorsuch never directs the lower court to use strict scrutiny.

The opinion emphasizes that the law doesn’t just discriminate against certain types of content – a trigger for strict scrutiny; it discriminates based on viewpoint. The strict scrutiny standard is demanding, but laws sometimes survive it. Viewpoint discrimination, on the other hand, is subject to a near-absolute prohibition: Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. This language is stronger and more categorical than that for strict scrutiny. The implication is that the law should certainly be invalidated as applied to talk therapy.

Not a clear win for conservatives

Finally, the holding is a double-edged sword for conservatives with traditional views of gender identity. And for those discouraged by the outcome, seeing it only as a victory for religious conservatives, the holding’s logic offers a silver lining.

Kagan’s concurrence makes explicit that a “mirror image” law – one barring talk therapy that affirms gender identity – would raise the same constitutional problems.

The majority makes a similar point. As late as the 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Under Colorado’s position, a law from that era prohibiting counselors from affirming gay clients’ identities would have been constitutionally sound.

Today, more than 20 states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care, and the federal government is pressuring state medical boards to adopt skeptical positions on gender transition. It’s not implausible that a legislature would attempt to ban gender-affirming, talk-based therapies. If and when conservative policymakers attempt that move, Chiles will be a formidable obstacle.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally produced by Colorado Newsline, 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 2025 provisional number of births fell 1% from the previous year to about 3.6 million births, and the general fertility rate also dropped 1% for women between the ages of 15 and 44. The decrease was a difference of 22,534 births. The national fertility rate is calculated as the total number of live births per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

The number of births has continued to slowly decline or remain flat since 2015, according to the CDC, and the fertility and birth rates among teenagers continues to fall by much larger margins. The teenage fertility rate has decreased by 72% since 2007, down another 7% last year for teens aged 15 to 19.

Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, have focused on the declining birth rate as a problem that should be addressed by national and state policies. Vance campaigned on increasing taxes on people without children and expanding the child tax credit to increase birth rates.

But many sociologists have said low birth rates are a sign of an advanced culture that provides more opportunities for people to pursue career and life goals, and some of the negative factors that drive down rates are related to affordability and uncertainty. Women interviewed by States Newsroom in 2025 said the cost of daycare, state policies around abortion and in vitro fertilization and general political instability were leading them to decide not to have more kids or not to have kids at all.

The CDC also tracks maternal and infant health characteristics, and found that the rate of C-section deliveries is the highest it’s been since 2013, continuing to increase as it has nearly every year since 2020. Among those having their first child, the rate increased from 26.6% in 2024 to 26.9% in 2025, making it the highest rate since 2012.

Preterm birth rates were largely unchanged or slightly lower, the data showed, as it has been since 2021.  

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.

There’s just one problem: Donald Trump already told voters Riedel is none of those things.

And the record behind that assessment is not a matter of interpretation. It’s a matter of audio recordings, Truth Social posts, rescinded endorsements, and 2 consecutive primary defeats — a trail of political wreckage that Riedel is now hoping Northwest Ohio voters will simply forget as he seeks the open Ohio Senate District 1 seat in the May 5 Republican primary.

The tape

In December 2023, while Riedel was running for the Republican nomination in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk released audio of Riedel in conversation with a potential donor. On the recording, Riedel was asked directly whether he wanted Trump’s endorsement.

“I’m not. We are not. Nope,” Riedel said on the tape, according to reporting by Politico.

When pressed on what he would tell voters about supporting Trump, Riedel went further: “Donald Trump, he’s a different person than me. I don’t like the way he communicates. I think he is arrogant. I don’t like the way he calls people names. I just don’t think that’s very becoming of a president.”

Asked whether it was safe to say he wouldn’t support Trump’s primary run, Riedel replied: “I’m with you.”

The fallout was swift. Rep. Matt Gaetz called Riedel a “RINO Never-Trumper.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, then chair of the House Republican Conference, withdrew her endorsement, saying she was “very disappointed in his inappropriate comments regarding President Trump.” Rep. Max Miller followed suit.

Riedel scrambled. He issued a hasty Trump endorsement and called the leaked audio a “setup” orchestrated by “Matt Gaetz and a social media trickster.” But the damage was done. National Republicans held high-level discussions about recruiting a replacement candidate before the filing deadline, according to Politico’s reporting at the time.

Trump’s verdict

On March 18, 2024 — the day before Ohio’s primary — Trump posted on Truth Social to deliver his own assessment of Riedel.

“Derek Merrin is an incredible America First Patriot who is running for Congress in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District against a RINO, Craig Riedel, who is no friend of MAGA,” Trump wrote, according to PBS NewsHour reporting. Trump gave Merrin his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

Merrin won the primary the following day with 52% of the vote. Riedel finished with roughly 35%, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.

It was Riedel’s second consecutive defeat in the same district. In 2022, he lost the 9th District Republican primary to J.R. Majewski, who took 36% to Riedel’s 31%.

The rebrand

Rather than accept that Republican voters have now rejected him twice, Riedel has pivoted — not to a new message, but to a new audience. He is running for the Ohio Senate District 1 seat being vacated by term-limited Senate President Rob McColley, and he is doing so with an entirely new political persona built on the very identity Trump told voters he doesn’t have.

His campaign announcement called him an “America First champion.” He pledged to create a state-level “Department of Government Efficiency” — a reference to the Elon Musk-led federal initiative. He promised to “eradicate DEI” from Ohio’s public institutions. His ad declares Northwest Ohio “MAGA country” and pledges that he will “drain the swamp in Columbus, like President Trump is draining the swamp in D.C.”

The transformation would be remarkable if it weren’t so transparent. Less than 3 years ago, Riedel was privately telling donors he didn’t want Trump’s endorsement and considered the president arrogant and unpresidential. Now he has built an entire campaign around the premise that he is Trump’s ideological heir in Columbus.

No endorsement from Trump has materialized for Riedel’s Senate bid. His campaign has not addressed the contradiction.

The contrast

Riedel’s opponent in the May 5 primary is state Rep. Jim Hoops of Napoleon, who has represented the 81st House District since 2018 and previously served in the Ohio House from 1999 to 2006.

Whatever voters think of either candidate’s policy positions, the organizational gap between them is significant. Hoops entered the race with more than 50 endorsements from local elected officials across all 9 counties in the district and $300,000 cash on hand, according to his campaign. In a recent Q&A published by The Crescent-News, Hoops said he passed 4 times as many bills as Riedel during their overlapping time in the legislature and secured more than 60% more in capital funding for the region.

Riedel has secured endorsements from Americans for Prosperity-Ohio and Ohio Value Voters — national and statewide organizations — but has not demonstrated comparable local support.

In that same Crescent-News Q&A, Riedel took a swipe at Hoops, saying “Ohio doesn’t need more career politicians who have betrayed conservatives time and again.” It is a curious line of attack from a candidate who was caught on tape privately trashing the leader of the conservative movement he now claims to represent — and who was then publicly repudiated by that same leader.

A pattern, not a pivot

What Riedel is doing in the District 1 race is not a genuine ideological evolution. It is a calculated rebranding effort by a candidate who has now lost 2 straight Republican primaries and is hoping that a different electorate in a different race won’t bother checking the receipts.

The facts are straightforward: Riedel privately refused to endorse Trump. He called Trump arrogant. He lost the endorsements of prominent Republican allies over those comments. Trump himself labeled him a RINO and told voters he was “no friend of MAGA.” And then Riedel lost — twice.

Now he’s back, draped in MAGA branding, asking a new set of voters to buy what 2 previous sets of Republican primary voters already rejected. Whether that sales pitch works is up to the voters of Northwest Ohio’s 1st Senate District on May 5. But they should at least be making their decision with the full picture in front of them.

The District 1 seat covers 10 counties in Northwest Ohio: Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Paulding, Putnam, Van Wert, Williams, and a portion of Logan County. No Democratic or independent candidates have filed as of this writing.

TiffinOhio.net reached out to the Riedel campaign for comment. No response was received prior to publication.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Because it has not been representing the people of Seneca and Sandusky counties.

Over the course of his tenure in the Ohio House, Click has billed his campaign donors more than $19,000 in conference travel — to ALEC gatherings, to a WallBuilders conference in Texas run by Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, to the Family Research Council in Washington. He stayed at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, a AAA Five Diamond luxury resort, on his donors’ dime. He spent more than $12,000 on golf outings at a private country club — complete with professional signage, catered dinners, and bakery runs — all charged to his campaign account, every single year.

He billed four Columbus hotel stays to his campaign that his own filings labeled “Non legislative.” He never reimbursed them.

And while all of this was happening, Click was quietly building something for himself.

He told the Advertiser-Tribune he has been traveling to California, Colorado, Alabama, and cities across Ohio preaching about what he called “the justice and biblical role of Christians in civil government.” He filed paperwork for a nonprofit called “We the Church.” He attached his name to HB 486, the so-called “Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act” — a piece of legislation designed not to solve a problem in Ohio but to connect its sponsor to a national conservative media brand.

And then, quietly, he stepped down as pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple.

Not publicly. Not with an announcement. The church website still listed him as active pastor for 11 months after the transition allegedly occurred — until TiffinOhio.net started asking questions. Then, suddenly, Click went to the Advertiser-Tribune to get his version of events on the record, blaming Democrats for “trying to make something of it.” When confronted on social media, he responded: “Actually, that is inaccurate. I’m still pastor emeritus.” A response that confirmed exactly what was reported while appearing to misunderstand what the word “emeritus” means.

This is the pattern. Not transparency — damage control. Not accountability — deflection.

When the League of Women Voters of the Tiffin Area held a District 88 candidates night in March, Click did not attend. Both of his opponents showed up. Click blamed the scheduling — a Wednesday evening during session — and called the event something that “resembled what it would look like if the Democrat blog Tiffin dot net had a podcast. Fake News with a dash of rumors and liberal, unverified Click bashing all day long.”

The LWV board responded with a statement that dismantled Click’s claims point by point. The event had been scheduled the previous summer. Click was invited by email. A board member personally re-invited him at a public event. He was notified that both opponents had confirmed. He did not respond until the morning of the event. And the next evening — Thursday — Click showed up at a Sandusky County Republican forum with no apparent scheduling conflict.

He did not skip the LWV event because the House was in session. He skipped it because he did not want to answer questions he could not control.

At the Sandusky County forum, when a moderator asked Click how he would fight sexual predators in District 88, he ignored the question entirely and pivoted to transgender children — legislation he has made a centerpiece of his identity. That is not a serious answer. That is a candidate who has confused a culture war applause line with constituent service.

Then came the gun photo.

With weeks left before the primary, Click swapped out his professional headshot for a photo of himself shouldering a scoped rifle. This from a legislator who earned a C-minus from Ohio Gun Owners, refused their candidate survey two cycles running, and voted to table the Second Amendment Preservation Act in December 2024. When Ohio Gun Owners called him out, Click responded by calling their executive director a “fraud” and a “stalker” on his official Facebook page — the same page where he calls himself a servant-leader.

The profile photo is not about the Second Amendment. It is about a man who looked at a primary calendar, saw the walls closing in, and grabbed the nearest prop.

A former Click donor — someone who gave $3,000 to his campaign before becoming disillusioned — has said publicly on Facebook what many in the district have begun to suspect: that Click is using his seat in the Ohio House as a stepping stone to something bigger. The national travel, the nonprofit, the Charlie Kirk bill, the pastoral exit, the ALEC conferences, the WallBuilders pilgrimage — none of it has anything to do with Sandusky and Seneca counties. All of it has everything to do with Gary Click’s next act.

Consider what Click’s campaign money has actually gone toward. Only 13.9% of his total fundraising has come from individual donors inside the 88th District. More than 65% has come from corporate PACs and industry groups. In 2025 alone, he transferred $39,000 to OHROC — the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee, the caucus PAC controlled by Speaker Matt Huffman. That is not a war chest built to serve local constituents. That is a loyalty payment to the party apparatus that keeps an incumbent insulated from primary challengers.

And yet the challenger came anyway.

Republican Eric Watson of Tiffin and Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin — a U.S. Army veteran, factory supervisor, and Tiffin City Council member — are both running because they see what the record shows: a representative who has spent six years building a personal brand on his constituents’ time and money.

Click’s official Ohio House page still features the quote: “Leaders must first be servants. Without the ability to serve, one forfeits the ability to lead.”

Read that again. Then look at the campaign finance reports, the luxury hotel receipts, the golf tournament invoices, the “non-legislative” hotel stays, the WallBuilders conference fee, the national nonprofit paperwork, and the gun-toting profile photo of a man who earned a C-minus from the very organization whose voters he is now trying to court.

Gary Click is not serving District 88. He is serving himself. And he has the receipts to prove it — because he filed them.

Early voting is underway. The Republican and Democratic primaries are May 5, 2026.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Together, the two measures represent a pattern: weakening the tools communities use to fight unwanted development while casting the people who use them as potentially illegitimate.

The zoning change was embedded in House Bill 96, the state’s $200 billion biennial operating budget, which Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on June 30, 2025. Among the bill’s hundreds of provisions was a measure raising the petition threshold for township zoning referendums from 15% to 35% of the number of electors who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election. For municipalities and limited home rule townships, the threshold jumped from 10% to 35%.

In practical terms, the change means Ohio residents now need more than twice as many signatures to force a public vote on zoning decisions made by local officials — decisions that can open the door to data centers, landfills, high-density housing developments, and industrial projects.

The Ohio Township Association opposed the provision and asked DeWine to veto it. He did not. The OTA, which represents more than 5,200 elected officials from Ohio’s 1,308 townships, had previously negotiated the 15% threshold down from a proposed 25% during the 2023 budget cycle. The 2025 budget blew past that compromise entirely.

The groups that supported the higher threshold were developer-aligned organizations. The Ohio Realtors called the change a way to “remove a barrier to new housing construction projects.” NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association, praised it for improving “predictability for developers in their planning process.” The Building Industry Association described it as reducing “the chances of unexpected project delays.”

Click served on the conference committee that finalized the budget. The zoning threshold increase was not a standalone bill he introduced — it was one of many provisions in a massive spending package. But Click voted for the final product, and neither he nor his office has publicly objected to the provision.

HB 96 also exempted zoning amendments related to megaprojects — defined as developments creating at least 700 jobs and $700 million in investment — from the referendum process entirely. For projects of that scale, Ohio residents now have no petition mechanism at all.

The data center bill

The zoning threshold change took effect in September 2025. Four months later, in January 2026, Click co-sponsored House Bill 646 with Rep. Kellie Deeter (R-Norwalk), a bill creating the Data Center Study Commission within the Ohio Department of Development.

The bill directs the commission to study a range of legitimate concerns about data center development: environmental impact, effects on the electrical grid, water usage, noise and light pollution, impacts on farmland, and effects on the local economy. But tucked into the list of required study topics is a provision with no equivalent in the bill’s other sections: the commission must also examine “reports of foreign propaganda intended to create opposition to data centers.”

The provision places community opposition to data centers on the same footing as environmental or infrastructure concerns — but frames it as a potential national security threat rather than a legitimate exercise of democratic participation.

The Reason Foundation, a libertarian policy organization, submitted testimony to the Ohio Senate recommending the “foreign propaganda” provision be deleted from the bill. The group noted that the commission’s report “must studiously avoid the appearance of bias” and that the provision could undermine public trust in the commission’s findings.

HB 646 passed the Ohio House unanimously on March 19, 2026, with 97 votes and no opposition. It is now pending in the Ohio Senate.

Local relevance

The data center issue is not abstract in Click’s district. In October 2025, residents of Woodville Township in Sandusky County packed a township meeting to discuss a potential data center project on approximately 450 acres of industrial land. No formal zoning requests had been filed at that time, but neighbors had already been approached about selling property.

Aligned Data Centers broke ground on a 129-acre campus in neighboring Perkins Township (Erie County) in early 2026, with plans for four buildings totaling 96 megawatts of capacity. The $200 million-plus project is the first hyperscale data center in northwest Ohio.

Click himself acknowledged the local stakes when HB 646 passed the House. “This legislation originated in the heart of the 88th district, in response to my constituents,” he said in a statement released by the Ohio House Republican caucus.

But critics see a contradiction: Click says he is responding to constituent concerns about data centers, while his legislative record includes voting for a budget that made it harder for those same constituents to challenge zoning decisions — and co-sponsoring a bill that could label their opposition as foreign-influenced.

The pattern

The timeline tells a straightforward story. In June 2025, Click voted for a budget that raised the bar for zoning referendums from 15% to 35%, over the objections of the Ohio Township Association. In January 2026, he co-sponsored a bill that would investigate whether opposition to data centers is foreign propaganda. In March 2026, he voted to pass that bill out of the House.

At no point in that sequence did Click introduce, co-sponsor, or publicly support legislation that would strengthen residents’ ability to challenge unwanted development in their communities.

Attempts to reach Click’s office for comment were unsuccessful.

The 2026 primary election for the 88th Ohio House District is scheduled for May 5. Early in-person voting begins April 7. Click faces challenger Eric Watson in the Republican primary, with Democrat Aaron Jones running in the November general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

GOP treasurer candidate Jay Edwards received more than 42 gifts worth at least $75 a piece last year as he prepared his campaign, financial disclosures show. 

The list of gift-givers spans a mix of industrial titans and personal friends of Edwards from Southeast Ohio. That includes health care entrepreneurs, construction executives, campaign fundraisers, and a lobbyist for the vendor that’s regularly in the hunt for state lottery contracts.

The list also includes a gift of undisclosed size from Robert “Bobby” George, a restauranteur and son of a prominent Cleveland businessman. Robert George in November 2025 pleaded guilty to a charge of strangulation after he was originally charged with rape, kidnapping, attempted murder, and felonious assault. 

Candidates and public officeholders must disclose all gifts they receive worth more than $75, according to the Ohio Ethics Commission. It’s a rule designed to guard against conflicts of interest and provide transparency into relationships of those who run the government.

So did Edwards really receive more than $3,100 worth (at minimum) of gifts, as he disclosed in his financial statement? Probably not, he said in an interview. 

Edwards, who served in the Ohio House between 2017 and 2024 where he was also required to disclose certain gifts, said in an interview he was blindsided by the requirement to file as a statewide candidate. 

So against a legal deadline, he said he went through his contacts and simply listed his friends, and went through his calendar and included anyone who he met with. 

“You don’t get in trouble by overreporting,” Edwards said. “I know for a fact I didn’t receive gifts from some of them.”

But stuffing the financial statement with what amounts to false positives, as Edwards said he did, makes it functionally impossible to know who’s buying him gifts. That’s not Edwards’ problem, he said. 

“I fill out these forms for the OEC [Ohio Ethics Commission], I don’t fill them out for news reporters,” he said. 

Such a move presents a glaring contradiction. In his financial statement to ethics officials, Edwards said he received each gift he disclosed. But in his interview, he said he didn’t. 

Who bought the gifts?

Take Bobby George, for instance. Edwards said he doesn’t think he has seen George in a year, but added him anyway. (Bobby George’s father, Tony George, has hosted fundraisers for Edwards.)

There’s also Jett Facemyer, a lobbyist for Intralot who’s registered to lobby on matters related to Ohio Lottery’s central gaming and VLT (video lottery terminal) programs, both of which are farmed out to private companies. Facemyer, a former legislative aide to Edwards, took Edwards to see a Tim Dillon comedy show. Facemyer “might have” paid,” Edwards said. 

Edwards said he golfs with Scott Weisman, owner of a jewelry store, and disclosed a gift on his statements because he can’t remember who paid for the rounds.

Or Steve Boymel, head of a chain of nursing homes in Ohio. Edwards said Boymel has hosted an event for him as a candidate. And, per the financial statement at least, also gave him a gift. 

“I don’t think he bought me a gift but I can’t remember,” he said. 

Edwards’ gift receipts stand out for their volume. Signal Ohio reviewed financial disclosures of all statewide candidates on the ballot this year. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump-backed Republican with a national profile, received 24 as he runs for governor. His likely Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, disclosed none. Most candidates disclosed none or a small handful, although Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican running for state auditor, disclosed 23.

Other prominent names that Edwards said gave him $75 or more gifts include:

• Republican fundraisers Brooke Bodney and Paige Simms
• GOP megadonor Virginia ‘Gini’ Ragan
• Jeff Woda, of housing developer Woda Cooper
• Health care entrepreneurs Miro Kesic and Neall French
• Mark Porter, of his eponymous auto group
• Zach Schiff, a prominent Columbus lawyer 
• Jacob Block, CEO of American Nitrile (a state tax break grantee)

Troubled history with ethics laws

Edwards is an Athens County Republican known as a powerful political fundraiser and former chairman of the House Finance Committee. As Ohio treasurer, he would be responsible for overseeing the state’s hundreds of billions in assets, including getting checks out the door and managing a sprawling investment portfolio. He is running in next month’s Republican primary election against state Sen. Kristina Roegner, of Hudson.

He has brushed against ethical lines and transparency requirements in the past. 

In September of 2019, as Edwards operated as a top political lieutenant of then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, Edwards joined him for what turned out to be a $2,400 dinner at a private dining club in Columbus. 

At the table were, among others, three undercover FBI agents building a case against Householder that would lead to Householder’s 20-year prison sentence. 

Edwards was not accused of wrongdoing. But the lavish dinner became an important piece of trial evidence. And it indirectly revealed that Edwards failed to disclose the fact that three people he believed were lobbyists bought him a very expensive dinner. 

“Notwithstanding my good faith due diligence, I subsequently became aware that the total value of the dinner, inclusive for all attendees, had been described in media reports as costing more than twenty-four hundred dollars,” Edwards wrote to ethics officials in 2023. 

”As soon as I became aware of this information, I contacted caucus legal counsel to ask if I had a duty to amend my [financial disclosure statement).”

When reporters filed records requests in connection with news of Householder’s arrest, many of Edwards were missing, despite a legal duty to preserve public records. He later explained his regular practice of deleting text messages. 

“You’re going down the rabbit hole saying Jay Edwards deletes texts with Larry Householder. No, that’s not true,” Edwards said at the time, referring to himself in the third person. “Jay Edwards deletes all texts. To members, to other people; I go through at night and erase text messages I don’t find useful.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Mariah Corona scaled the fence at the southeast corner of the Crosswaeh female facility at 3091 S. State Route 100 at approximately 5:10 p.m., according to the report. A grey, mid-sized sedan pulled into the facility’s parking lot, drove to the northeast corner of the building, picked Corona up and exited the lot, traveling northbound on State Route 100 toward Tiffin.

The escape was captured on the facility’s surveillance cameras. Staff were unable to identify a license plate number on the vehicle.

Sgt. Richard Best of the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office responded to the facility and reviewed the surveillance footage, confirming that the individual on camera matched Corona’s description. Deputies searched the surrounding area but did not locate Corona or the vehicle.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/woman-climbs-fence-escapes-crosswaeh-facility-in-tiffin/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The project, called The Ashford of Tiffin, is being developed by Wallick Communities, a regional developer that specializes in affordable and income-based housing and senior living communities across multiple states. The proposed three-story building would span approximately 80,000 square feet and operate as a licensed Residential Care Facility. All units would be Medicaid eligible.

“We are excited about the opportunity to serve the Tiffin community,” said Michael DiCarlantonio, Vice President of Development for Wallick Communities. “This project allows us to deliver high-quality, affordable housing for seniors while becoming part of a community that values long-term growth and care for its residents.”

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/122-unit-senior-housing-development-proposed-for-former-tiffin-golf-course/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The event coincides with Downtown Tiffin’s “Arts, Beats, and Eats” Third Thursday, the first of the 2026 season, which runs from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. throughout the downtown district with live music, local artists, food specials, and DORA drink options.

Jones — a U.S. Army veteran, production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die, and Tiffin City Councilman — is the only candidate running in the Democratic primary for the seat representing Seneca and Sandusky counties.

“I’ve spent over 20 years on the factory floor, I’ve served my country, and I serve my neighbors on City Council,” Jones said. “I’m running because the people of District 88 deserve a representative who understands what it takes to make ends meet — not someone beholden to out-of-state special interests.”

Jones served four years as an Airborne Infantryman with the U.S. Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as The Old Guard — the official ceremonial unit and escort to the President of the United States. After his honorable discharge in 1995, he returned to Seneca County, where he and his wife Tracy raised their blended family. They have four grandchildren.

Since joining Tiffin City Council in 2024, Jones has focused on supporting local jobs, public safety, and constituent access to government. In March, national veterans organization VoteVets endorsed his campaign.

A different kind of kickoff

Jones’s decision to hold his kickoff during a public downtown event — and to make the event open to all with a suggested donation — draws a notable contrast with the campaign launch held by incumbent State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) in late March.

Click’s March 28 kickoff at the Octagon House in Clyde required a minimum $50 payment for entry, with host committee tiers reaching $1,000. There was no free admission option. The event featured Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, Majority Whip Nick Santucci, and State Treasurer Robert Sprague — all Columbus power brokers.

Jones’s kickoff carries a $50 suggested donation, but attendance is not contingent on payment. The event is open to the public.

What’s ahead in District 88

Jones is running unopposed in the May 5 Democratic primary. On the Republican side, Click faces a primary challenge from Eric Watson of Tiffin, who has collected endorsements from Ohio Gun Owners, End Abortion Ohio, and national conservative figures.

The winner of the Republican primary will face Jones in the November 3 general election.

More information about the Jones campaign and the April 16 event is available at jonesforohio.com.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The issue originally surged to the forefront last year when the Trump administration repeatedly struck boats in the Caribbean officials alleged were carrying illegal drugs. Democratic lawmakers with backgrounds in the military and intelligence community then published a video reminding troops they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

The issue of legal versus illegal military orders surfaced again this week when Trump escalated his threats against Iran, leading to bipartisan condemnation from members of Congress before he gave that country’s leaders two more weeks to negotiate.

But what exactly violates international law or rises to the level of a war crime is often murky, as is who would be willing to prosecute U.S. troops, according to experts interviewed by States Newsroom. 

Rachel E. VanLandingham, professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force, said that “at the end of the day, the law of war does allow for a great deal of violence and a great deal of civilian suffering.” 

But several of the threats Trump has made, including to destroy power plants and bridges in Iran, would likely violate the law if the military were to carry them out, she said. 

“Under no stretch of interpretation would that be lawful, right? Because that just fails to distinguish whatsoever the civilian objects versus lawful military objectives, even if we stretch the definition of what’s a lawful military objective,” VanLandingham said. 

The boat strikes in the Caribbean, including the decision to order a second strike on two survivors, could also have been illegal, she said. 

VanLandingham doesn’t expect the Trump administration will hold anyone accountable for actions the military has already taken or may take. But she noted there is no statute of limitations on the charges that would likely apply under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military members or the War Crimes Act for anyone not subject to the military justice system.

“The next administration could come in and investigate our service members for alleged war crimes. And they should, to demonstrate renewed fidelity to U.S. law, to the law of war,” she said. 

Congress doesn’t have the authority to prosecute anyone for violating the law, but could hold oversight hearings with Defense Department officials, a scenario that would become more likely if one or both chambers return to Democratic control following the November midterm elections. 

“They can have public, open hearings and drag in every single military member that was involved in the chain of command of orders for striking Iran, if they wanted to,” VanLandingham. “That’s not a criminal prosecution, but it’s transparency.”

Lawmakers could also provide more funding and require the Pentagon to reinstitute the Civilian Harm Mitigation Program, which she said “the Trump administration has gutted.”

Geneva Conventions

Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at WashU Law School in St. Louis, Missouri, said that in a situation where the president directs the military to violate the laws of war, it’s highly unlikely military commanders or the Department of Justice would then turn around and prosecute those actions. 

Even if a prosecutor were to try, Trump would likely be insulated from any domestic prosecution for “official acts.” And as president he could issue preemptive pardons for any military members he believes could face future prosecution, either in the military or civilian justice system.

Trump has a history of absolving military members accused of violating military law, including in 2019, when he pardoned two officers in the Army for actions in Afghanistan and restored the rank of a Navy SEAL who had been demoted for his conduct in Iraq. Trump later pardoned four contractors for killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in 2007.

But those protections only apply within the United States. 

The Geneva Conventions’ provision on universal jurisdiction would apply internationally and any country could choose to prosecute. 

“Now you still have to catch them, you have to get the evidence, but every state in the world is a party to the Geneva Conventions,” Sadat said. “So committing violations of the Geneva Conventions by attacking civilian objects, by attacking marketplaces, or hospitals, or schools, or electrical infrastructure, those kind of crimes can be prosecuted by every country in the world. So people should think about it before they do it.”

France, Germany and Sweden have all used the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute Syrians for crimes they committed during the war in their home country, she said. 

“The one debate is, do you have to have the person on your territory before you can go forward? Or can you do an investigation even if the person is not on your territory?” Sadat said. “And many have argued that you can do the investigation even if the individual is not on your territory. Different countries have different rules on whether they accept trials in absentia.”

Sadat said that gets a bit more complicated when the Status of Forces Agreements that give the U.S. jurisdiction over alleged wrongdoing by U.S. troops in dozens of countries come into play. 

Sadat, who was a special adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor from 2012 through 2021, said if the U.S. military were to carry out some or all of the threats Trump posted to social media, that could have led countries to reconsider those agreements. 

“It could create a huge security problem for the United States eventually. And that’s why I hope calmer heads are prevailing. Saying, ‘You know, there’s an entire complex web of treaties and agreements,’” she said. 

Trump would also likely pressure countries not to try U.S. military members for violating international law, but he may not always be successful, she said.  

“Eventually there’s going to be a country in which that’s not going to work,” Sadat said. “And so that’s why you really do have to think of this a little bit differently, because there are external forces and external actors that could decide we’re going to enforce the law, even if the United States is not going to enforce the law.”

Investigating US forces

Susana Sacouto, director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law, said the Geneva Conventions require the U.S. to “investigate and … deal with alleged violations of the law of war by its own forces.”

How well that works in practice has “varied over time,” she said. 

“The problem is, we have an architecture, but those cases, particularly the criminal cases, are really exceptional, and they’re really exceptional, especially regarding senior officials,” Sacouto said. “So there’s been a lot of criticism about whether that architecture that exists is actually functioning to routinely investigate our own military actions for potential war crimes or (international humanitarian law) violations.” 

There is the possibility a future presidential administration may have defense officials or the Department of Justice look into allegations that emerge during the Trump administration. But Sacouto said, “past history with respect to accountability for U.S. officials, especially senior officials, is not very encouraging.”

Congressional investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is one example Sacouto pointed to of a long-term investigation that did not lead to any high-level prosecutions. 

“Even then, no senior officials were really ultimately held accountable for their role in that program,” she said. “There were lower-level Abu Ghraib prosecutions, but no senior-level folks were found accountable.”

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 rare solo statement livestreamed on the White House website, Melania Trump also called for a congressional hearing featuring the women who have shared stories of abuse by Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

“I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors, to give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress,” the first lady said in her nearly six-minute remarks. 

“With the power of sworn testimony, each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the Congressional Record,” she added. “Then and only then, we will have the truth.”

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the government’s files related to Epstein as a “hoax.” However, throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to make the investigatory materials public.

The scandal has followed the president through most of his first term. While Trump shared a well-documented friendship with Epstein, who pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor in Florida in 2008, he denies any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.

The first lady also reproached individuals who she said are “devoid of ethical standards” for spreading “completely false” stories that she shared relationships with Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Ghislane Maxwell. 

“I was not a participant, was never on Epstein’s plane, and never visited his private island,” she said. “I have never been legally accused or (convicted) of a crime in connection with Epstein sex trafficking, abuse of minors and other repulsive behavior. The false smears about me from meanspirited and politically motivated individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name to gain financially and climb politically must stop.”

Free speech suit

It was unclear what spurred the first lady’s statement. 

She specifically mentioned the Daily Beast, James Carville and HarperCollins UK. The three are mentioned in exhibits attached to a lawsuit in New York against Melania Trump by journalist Michael Wolff, accusing her of seeking to intimidate him into retracting statements he’d made alleging a connection between her and Epstein. 

She also mentioned a 2002 email exchange between her and Maxwell that was revealed among the hundreds of thousands of records from the federal Epstein investigation that the Justice Department released beginning in December, as required by law. The first lady defended the email exchange as “casual correspondence.”

All but one member of Congress supported legislation compelling the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. 

The effort gained steam after the department, then under Attorney General Pam Bondi, said in July it would not release anything further related to the case. Bondi had previously claimed she had Epstein’s client list sitting on her desk.

Trump removed Bondi this month.

Dem endorses call for hearing

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, lauded the first lady’s call for a hearing.

“We agree with First Lady Melania Trump’s call for a public hearing with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. We encourage Chairman Comer to respond to the First Lady’s request and schedule a public hearing immediately,” Garcia wrote on X.

The Oversight Committee, led by Kentucky Republican James Comer, is conducting its own investigation into the files and has subpoenaed high-profile figures to testify, including former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as Bondi.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Researchers at the national Food Research & Action Center said participation in federal Summer Meals Programs is up nationwide based on 2024 data, and Ohio saw its own boosts.

The group called the numbers “a promising sign after three years of steadily dropping participation,” but also said gaps still remain to help feed hungry children.

Summer meals are provided through a federal program called the National School Lunch Program Seamless Summer Option, and the Summer Food Service Program, through which children can go to designated sites to pick up food.

Some sites provide up to 10 days of meals per child every two weeks, and bulk items like bread and milk are available at some sites as well. Home delivery is also an option.

“While summer 2024 introduced new opportunities to expand access to nutritious meals when school is out and progress was made, there are still millions of children missing out, and more must be done to connect them to these critical nutrition supports,” the researchers stated in the center’s newest report.

In 2024, a separate federal program was also introduced, called the Summer EBT program.

A program approved by Congress in 2022, the Summer EBT program was made available to children who are also eligible for free and reduced-price lunches during the school year.

In 2024, that program served 21 million children, with Ohio participating in it.

In Ohio, children in households with incomes at or below 185% of the federal poverty level are eligible for Summer EBT.

According to the Children’s Hunger Alliance, the $120 loaded onto EBT cards “works with other nutrition assistance programs to provide kids consistent access to critical nutrition when school’s out.”

A family of four is eligible if they make $4,810 or less per month.

If a household already receives federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds, Ohio Works First funds, or is Medicaid-eligible for free and reduced price meals, children are automatically enrolled in the Summer EBT, according to the state’s website on the program.

The EBT program and the Summer Meals Programs work in tandem, as the Summer EBT is considered by the Food Research & Action Center to be “an important nutrition support,” but only amounting to about $1.33 per child per day.

“Summer EBT is an important complement to the Summer Meals Programs, which provide a maximum of two meals each day at most sites, less than the breakfast, lunch, supper, and snack that children can receive on school days during the school year,” according to the center.

Ohio’s average daily participation in summer lunch between 2023 and 2024 was up 16.6% in Ohio to more than 76,000 children, ranking the state 36th in participation rates.

Summer breakfast programs in the state also saw increases, with average daily participation up nearly 26% between 2023 and 2024.

Ohio served more than 2.6 million summer lunches over June, July, and August of 2024 through the Summer Meals Program, numbers that were up from 2023 numbers for the same time period. July 2024, in particular, saw a 31.6% increase in the number of lunches served from July 2023.

Nationally, almost 3.2 million children received a lunch through the Summer Meals Program in July 2024, an increase of more than 350,000 kids, or 12.6%.

According to the report, 43 states and the District of Columbia had increases in their average summer lunch daily participation.

Like Ohio’s numbers, the national participation rate for breakfast assistance was higher in July 2024 than in July the year before, seeing more than 380,000 more children in the program.

Reductions coming from the federal budget bill, also called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, could create more need for child hunger programs, while also reducing the ability for children to get that help.

Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the bill mean millions of Americans are expected to lose some or all of the funding from that program, including children in low-income households.

“Already 14.1 million children lived in food insecure households in 2024, and that number will likely increase as fewer families qualify for SNAP or receive reduced benefits, underscoring the importance of the Summer Nutrition Programs when school meals are unavailable,” researchers stated in the summer meals report.

Kids across the country who lose benefits through SNAP will also lose their automatic eligibility for free school meals, and that may “artificially lower an area’s poverty rate, resulting in some sites no longer being eligible to operate the Summer Meals programs,” according to the report.

“With the attacks on SNAP through (the federal budget bill) set to impact millions of families now and in the coming years, it is vital that all states work to expand access to summer meals and implement Summer EBT, so that they take full advantage of all the options available through the Summer Nutrition Programs,” the center stated.

Administrative SNAP costs being deferred to states in the budget bill have already caused the Ohio House to pass a bill to cover a shortfall of about $38 million in administrative funds, meaning a much smaller pot for certain Ohio counties to divvy up.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.