The July 27 letter from the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, an affiliated office of the Supreme Court of Ohio, is the first official account of the matter. It is also the first time a dollar figure has been attached to it publicly.

Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Karen H. Osmond wrote that the office had decided to exercise its prosecutorial discretion and not pursue further disciplinary action. She described what the office found: Smith’s campaign sent an email indicating that campaign contributions could be made to his personal Venmo account, and four of his friends contributed a combined $650 through it. Those contributions, the letter states, were not used and were ultimately returned — a step Smith took, in the office’s words, “once Judge Smith became aware of the article alleging improper conduct.”

TiffinOhio.net reported on May 1 that public transaction records showed a Venmo account under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith receiving payments explicitly labeled as campaign contributions, alongside personal transactions. Smith did not answer written questions submitted before that story published.

The disciplinary office was pointed about the conduct even as it declined to act on it. “We do not condone Judge Smith’s conduct,” Osmond wrote, adding that the office did not believe it warranted formal discipline. “Mistakes and misunderstandings occur.” The letter says the office wished Smith had been more vigilant and had ensured the email was never sent, and closed by expressing trust that his campaign will comply with the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct going forward.

Returning the money may not resolve the underlying question

The grievance that prompted the review was filed May 1 by Charles Tingler of Defiance, who also filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission the same day. Tingler filed the grievance with the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee, which he said informed him it had transferred the matter to the disciplinary counsel for administrative reasons. Both filings attached Ohio Elections Commission Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued in December 2021.

That opinion addresses this exact arrangement. It permits campaign committees to use peer-to-peer payment systems such as Venmo, but only through an account established specifically for the committee and kept separate from any personal account of anyone who benefits from campaign funds. Routing contributions through a candidate’s personal account before moving them to the campaign account is, the opinion states, “not acceptable under Ohio’s campaign finance laws.”

The opinion also anticipates the defense that the money did not stay put. Even where funds are transferred out in quick succession, it says, the initial deposit into a personal account cannot be permitted. State law requires campaign committees to deposit all monetary contributions into an account separate from a candidate’s personal or business account.

The disciplinary counsel’s letter treats the return of the $650 as corrective action. It does not address whether returning contributions resolves the deposit requirement, and the office does not enforce campaign finance law.

The letter is narrower than the grievance

Tingler’s grievance asked the reviewing body to determine twelve specific things: whether @BuckeyeBradSmith was a personal or committee account, whether campaign funds were commingled with personal funds, whether all Venmo contributions were deposited into a separate campaign account, whether the campaign treasurer kept strict accounts as state law requires, whether every contribution was timely and accurately reported, and whether any campaign finance report contained false or incomplete information.

The closing letter answers none of those questions. It describes the email, the $650, and the return, and closes the file.

The grievance itself did not mention any campaign email, and Tingler said no news article was among the materials he submitted with it. His filing was built entirely on the publicly visible Venmo transaction history — payments from Charles Yamarone and Adam Greenslade on April 8, 2026, one from Stacey Gibson on March 25, and unrelated personal transactions on the same account. The disciplinary office identified four contributors, one more than the grievance described. Venmo’s public feed displays payment descriptions but not amounts.

TiffinOhio.net reported the existence of the email on May 12, six weeks before the disciplinary office closed its file. Sent April 7 under the subject line “Asking for some quick help… Much Thanks!” it asked supporters for “$10 - $15 grand” to defend against a possible “Independent challenger” who never filed to run, used the official Sandusky County Juvenile and Probate Court logo as its first attachment, listed Smith’s government email address and the court’s direct office line in the signature block, and directed donors to the Venmo account. Smith was unopposed in the May 5 Republican primary.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel did not respond by deadline to questions about the disposition or the scope of its review.

A second complaint is still outstanding

The complaint Tingler filed with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which operates under the Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division, remains a separate matter. It sets out seven counts and asks the commission to order amended campaign finance reports, impose any fines authorized by law, and refer the matter for criminal investigation if evidence shows knowing concealment or misrepresentation. Its final count raises a possible violation of the state’s election falsification statute, a fifth-degree felony.

Nothing in the disciplinary counsel’s letter addresses that complaint. Tingler said he has heard nothing from the Secretary of State’s office since filing in May. That office did not respond by deadline to questions about the complaint’s status.

Smith has not addressed the Venmo matter publicly. He was represented before the disciplinary office by Lisa M. Zaring, a partner at Montgomery Jonson LLP in Cincinnati, who is copied on the closing letter. TiffinOhio.net submitted written questions to Smith through Zaring on July 27, asking whether he disputes any of the letter’s findings, on what date and by what method the $650 was returned, whether the contributions and the refunds appear on any campaign finance report filed with the Sandusky County Board of Elections, and whether his committee now maintains a separate campaign payment account. Neither responded by deadline.

Zaring’s firm biography says she devotes a significant portion of her practice to responding to disciplinary grievances received by attorneys and judges and regularly defends judges before the Supreme Court of Ohio’s Board of Professional Conduct. She chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s Ethics Committee from 2022 to 2024. Her firm maintains a practice area dedicated to representing Ohio judges.

The disciplinary track ends here

Tingler had 14 days from receipt of the letter to ask the director of the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct to review the decision. He said he will not seek review, which closes the disciplinary matter.

“The only reaction I have is that attorney disciplinary authorities are basically just self-regulating rubber stamps and there needs to be reform to allow non-attorneys to review grievances against the judicial branch,” Tingler said.

Smith has held the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division seat since 2009 and is serving his third six-year term. He is the subject of prior TiffinOhio.net reporting on a $33,300 state audit finding that Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler formally abated in 2023 with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

None of that cost him the nomination. Click, a three-term Republican from Vickery, finished with 6,859 votes to Eric Watson’s 6,260 — 52.28% to 47.72%, a margin of 599 out of 13,119 cast across Sandusky and Seneca counties. He is on the November 3 ballot. His opponent is Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin.

It also has not obviously cost him the seat. District 88 has not been close in a general election in more than a decade. Click carried it by 25.8 points in 2020, by 35.6 in 2022, and by 33.2 in 2024, when he beat Democrat Dianne Selvey 35,367 to 17,762. Republican primary turnout this May was more than twice the Democratic turnout — 13,119 ballots to 4,893 for Jones, who ran unopposed. On the district’s recent history alone, Click is the favorite.

What is different this year is the shape of the coalition underneath him.

A year of subtraction

The erosion started with the movement groups.

Ohio Gun Owners rated Click a C-minus in late March, citing his refusal to complete the organization’s candidate survey in 2024 and 2026 and his December 2024 vote against advancing the Second Amendment Preservation Act. Five days before the primary, the group cut him to an F, alleging he had accepted and refused to return campaign money from gun-control lobbyists. Ohio Gun Owners did not name the contributors it was describing. Click has rejected the group’s account and called its executive director, Chris Dorr, a “fraud.” The Buckeye Firearms Association, meanwhile, gave Click an A and endorsed him. Watson held Ohio Gun Owners’ “Aq” rating — its top grade for non-incumbents — and Buckeye’s survey-only “Aq.”

End Abortion Ohio endorsed Watson after he scored 100% on its survey. Click declined to take it, and called the group “clowns” in a Facebook post, saying he would refuse its endorsement “under any condition.” The comment thread that followed was filled with people who identified themselves as fellow conservatives and Christians telling Click he was wrong.

Watson also collected endorsements from former Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, the Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio, and secretary of state candidate Marcell Strbich — a coalition spanning guns, abortion and election administration, each of which used its announcement to criticize Click directly.

The subtraction was not only from the grassroots. Sen. Bernie Moreno was dropped from the promotion for Click’s March 28 campaign kickoff. Click’s name disappeared from Vivek Ramaswamy’s endorsements page in April, as Web Archive snapshots show, and was restored within hours of this outlet’s reporting. Click told followers reports of the removal were “greatly exaggerated.”

And his own political brand did not travel well. All three down-ticket candidates Click endorsed lost their primaries the same night he survived his: Andrew King for Ohio Supreme Court, Kristina Roegner for treasurer, and Josh Williams in the 9th Congressional District.

What the grassroots actually objects to

The complaints from Watson’s side of the party were specific, and they were mostly about direction rather than personality.

Watson attacked Click for co-authoring House Bill 646, which would create a 13-member data center study commission rather than impose the moratorium Watson wanted, saying Click had “gone completely establishment.” He campaigned on abolishing property taxes, opposing digital identification legislation, and on Click’s fundraising: a TiffinOhio.net review of Click’s contributions from 2020 through 2025 found less than 14% came from individual donors inside Sandusky and Seneca counties. Click ran on his legislative record, his chairmanship of the House Community Revitalization Committee, his sponsorship of House Bill 68, and his relationships with House Republican leadership — the same relationships Watson used against him.

Click’s answer to the challenge was largely to dismiss it. He told the Fremont News-Messenger that Watson’s campaign was “in the ditch” — “You move to the right of Gary Click and you’re in the ditch” — and closed the race branding Watson “the Arizona Kid.” Watson’s family has been in Seneca County for generations; Click moved to Ohio from Indiana in 2006.

The break has not healed

Two developments since the primary suggest the fracture is still open.

On July 23, Watson said he will not endorse Click and does not expect to, describing a private post-primary meeting that left him unpersuaded on data centers and digital ID. In the same statement, Watson said he and his wife are moving to Wayne County, outside the district.

Two days later, Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner said Click’s campaign had portrayed him as a supporter when he is not one. Roessner said he wore a campaign-supplied shirt at an America 250 event, that he keeps his voting choices private, and that he has not endorsed anyone. The campaign post remained online, unedited, three weeks later.

What the numbers do and do not say

The temptation is to read 6,260 Watson votes as 6,260 potential Jones votes. The arithmetic does not support that, and nothing in the record does either.

Watson ran to Click’s right. His platform — abolishing property taxes, opposing digital ID, expanding gun rights, ending abortion without exception — is not one Jones is running on. Watson has declined to endorse Click; he has not endorsed Jones, and there is no indication he intends to. Voters who reject an incumbent in a closed primary routinely come home in November, and there is no public polling in District 88 to suggest otherwise.

What the primary does establish is narrower, and still meaningful. It shows that roughly 6,000 District 88 Republicans were willing to fire a sitting member of their own party, that the organized conservative infrastructure in this district worked against him rather than for him, and that he lost Seneca County — where Jones lives, works and holds elected office — by about 8 points. It also shows that the general electorate here is roughly four times the size of the Republican primary electorate: 53,129 people voted in this district in 2024, against 13,119 Republicans in May.

That gap cuts both ways. It means Watson’s 6,260 is a small share of a November electorate. It also means Click’s November coalition has to include tens of thousands of voters who were not part of the primary at all, at a moment when the volunteers, group endorsements and door-knockers who normally supply a Republican incumbent’s ground game spent the spring working against him.

Jones has been building the other side of that equation. He has picked up endorsements from the UAW, the Ohio Federation of Teachers and VoteVets. He is a 1991 Clyde High School graduate, a four-year Army veteran who served with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, a production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die with more than 20 years at the plant, and a Tiffin City Council member representing the city’s 1st Ward. He is running on utility bills, property taxes and jobs.

The measurable test is not rhetorical. It is financial. Whether the Ohio Republican Party and leadership-aligned PACs put money into District 88 this fall, and whether Jones can raise enough to be competitive on a map this red, will say more about the state of Click’s support than any endorsement list. Those numbers arrive with the next round of campaign finance filings.

Click is seeking his fourth and final consecutive term; Ohio limits House members to eight consecutive years.

The general election is Tuesday, November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Fauci said during a brief opening statement he believed Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., was trying to get him to make statements under oath that would lead to criminal charges. 

“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” he said.  

Fauci added that “any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.” 

“Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, to refrain from answering your questions,” he said. 

Fauci was a member of the coronavirus task force during President Donald Trump’s first administration and a chief medical adviser on COVID-19 during President Joe Biden’s term. 

Repeated testimony

Fauci has testified publicly 13 times before Senate committees and 11 times before House committees since January 2020. This was the first time he declined to answer any questions from lawmakers.

Paul noted that former President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for any actions he might have taken from Jan. 1, 2014 through Jan. 20, 2025. But he said that doesn’t cover any actions since then, including any statements to Congress that may not have been entirely accurate.  

“A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution. It doesn’t rewrite history,” Paul said. “It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one.”

Paul said the committee will hold a vote next week to hold Fauci in contempt for declining to answer questions under a subpoena. 

“There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” he said. 

A member of Fauci’s legal team, seated beside him at the witness table, tried to speak several times but Paul refused to recognize him before having U.S. Capitol Police remove that lawyer from the room. 

Paul then said for the record that Fauci would “still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today.”

Origins of COVID-19

Paul alleged during his opening statement that Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases when the pandemic began, didn’t give enough credit to theories the COVID-19 virus may have been created in a laboratory in China. 

He asked Fauci a series of questions about the pandemic and the types of research the federal government funded leading up to the outbreak. Each time, Fauci responded, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., sought to remind his Republican colleagues that when he ran the panel, there was a bipartisan effort to look into the origins of the pandemic.  

“Rather than building on that work to strengthen our preparedness against future disasters, we are instead relitigating the past,” he said. 

Peters raised concerns that the country would likely face another pandemic at some point and that lawmakers should focus their efforts on the future, making sure public health agencies have the staff and funding they need. 

“COVID-19 exposed serious deficiencies in our nation’s public health infrastructure. We know that. More than one million Americans lost their lives and this committee should absolutely continue to examine how we can better prepare our nation against future biological threats,” he said. “Those are the kinds of forward-looking, life-saving questions that will help our nation be better prepared to protect the health and the safety of Americans when the next emergency occurs.”

Peters then sharply criticized the Trump administration, saying officials’ decisions on funding and staff have eroded the country’s safety net, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

“The administration has hollowed out the public health workforce,” he said. “They have fired, pushed out and cut funding for public health personnel, shrinking the CDC workforce by a quarter.” 

Fauci’s decision not to answer questions didn’t stop Republicans and Democrats on the committee from asking him questions and making lengthy statements throughout the three-hour hearing. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“When we look in the mirror, we are the problem,” Husted said in the shocking interview.

Asked about data centers, Husted said in full:

“But we just have to realize, you know, we’re in this world in which we-we’ve created the demand. We, the people, have created the demand for these data centers because we use all of these digital products that it processes, and if we don’t want them, then don’t use them. I mean, you can go back to the bunny ear antenna on your TV — you don’t need a data center. But if you’re connected to a wire, you’re using the data center. So, understand, like, when we look in the mirror, we are the problem.”

The remarks came in an interview Friday on Strictly Speaking with Bob Frantz.

Husted’s office and campaign have consistently claimed he is working to keep data center costs off household bills. On Thursday, July 16, he introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, S. 5028, which would push states to consider requiring large electricity users to cover the full cost of the generation and transmission built to serve them. Announcing the bill, Husted said the country must expand energy infrastructure “without passing the costs on to working families and small businesses.” The measure was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A House companion, H.R. 9340, cleared the Energy and Commerce Committee 52-0.

Husted has also said repeatedly that siting decisions belong to communities, telling the Washington Examiner this month that data centers “should remain a local decision.” He joined President Donald Trump at the White House in March for a roundtable on the administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which several technology companies committed to fund the power and infrastructure for new facilities.

The record behind the remark

Husted did not create Ohio’s data center incentive. The state’s sales tax exemption for data center equipment dates to the Kasich administration’s first budget in 2013, when Husted was secretary of state. But as lieutenant governor from January 2019 to January 2025, he became the state’s most visible salesman for the industry, and the incentive’s cost exploded on his watch.

TiffinOhio.net reported this week that Husted’s campaign has collected roughly $69,750 from political action committees and employees tied to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, American Electric Power, Duke Energy and Vistra, according to federal filings through June 30. Husted publicly defended a $43.5 million tax break for Google’s New Albany campus in 2019.

Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown has built a series of television ads around that history, labeling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio” — a phrase the campaign attributes to The Plain Dealer. Brown, who won the Democratic primary in May, has called for eliminating Ohio’s data center tax break outright, a position that puts him at odds with building trades unions that have backed Husted.

What the numbers show

Ohio now has more than 200 data centers, the fifth-highest total of any state, according to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. Companies plan to invest up to $40 billion more in Ohio facilities by 2030.

The state’s sales tax exemption for those facilities cost Ohio about $1.6 billion in 2025, roughly 11 times the Department of Taxation’s $136 million forecast, and about $555 million in 2024. The disclosure prompted Gov. Mike DeWine to pause new exemption requests while a legislative select committee reviews the industry. State Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, sits on that panel.

Household bills have climbed alongside the buildout. In testimony to the Ohio House Energy Committee, Policy Matters Ohio researcher Molly Bryden reported that the average Ohio residential electric bill in July 2025 was $214, a 25.7% increase over the prior year and the third-largest increase in the country, citing federal Energy Information Administration data. Average monthly residential electricity costs in Ohio have risen 34.9% over the past decade even as residential demand fell 9.3%. Bryden noted that data centers are not solely responsible for rising costs, but that the pace and scale of their growth carries serious consequences without stronger ratepayer protections.

What it means in Tiffin

Tiffin is served by AEP Ohio, the utility whose rates and data center policies have been reworked repeatedly by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio over the past year. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the typical Ohio household will spend about $745 on electricity from June through September, up 7.8% from $691 a year ago.

More households are falling behind. AEP Ohio’s disconnection rate reached 15%, roughly four times FirstEnergy’s, as bills climbed 53% since 2021. Ohio has no summer shut-off protections comparable to its winter disconnection safeguards. Households earning under $57,750 for a family of four may qualify for help through the state’s Summer Crisis Program, which runs through Sept. 30.

The political response

Ohio Democratic Party Senior Communications Advisor Tony Wen said in a statement:

“It’s absolutely disgraceful that Jon Husted is blaming hardworking Ohioans for their skyrocketing electricity bills caused by the record number of data centers that he helped bring to the state. Jon Husted could not be more out of touch with the people of Ohio, and they will hold him accountable in November.”

Husted, appointed by DeWine in January 2025 to fill the seat JD Vance vacated to become vice president, faces Brown in a Nov. 3 special election for the remainder of that term. The race is among the most closely watched in the country and could determine control of the Senate.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The conflict appeared to make it even more clear the issue will have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has been asked for its opinion on Trump’s sweeping order that would have a huge impact on states just a little more than three months before the midterm elections.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Tuesday the executive order, which directs the U.S. Postal Service to collect from states lists of eligible voters who intend to vote by mail at least two months before an election and the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state, can proceed because the agencies have not yet written rules implementing the order.

A D.C. trial judge in May denied several voting rights groups’ request to block the order, saying the groups had not yet been harmed.

Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, who were appointed by President Barack Obama, and Gregory Katsas, whom Trump appointed, affirmed the decision.

They wrote that the executive order, which Trump signed March 31, is not self-executing and specifically tells the USPS and DHS to write the prescribed rules in a way that is consistent with the federal laws the groups say the order violates.

“We affirm because, while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture,” they wrote.

Their order directly contradicts a ruling the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals published Saturday in a case brought by Democratic officials from 23 states and the District of Columbia. 

That opinion held that states would be harmed if the order was allowed to proceed because state elections officials would immediately have to shift significant resources to prepare to meet the order’s requirements, even without final rules from USPS or DHS.

The Trump administration appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice assigned to the 1st Circuit, requested briefs on whether the court should hear the case by Aug. 3. 

In a social media post, the voting rights legal group Democracy Docket, which is not affiliated with the case, called Tuesday’s ruling “a loss for voters” and said the administration under it could build a citizenship roster and withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not share citizenship data.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But look more closely. Congressional lawmakers and independent experts said this week none of those disclosures are enough to give a meaningful boost to the Trump administration’s relentless quest to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

New Jersey found 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2023 and 2024, with less than 400 actually voting. Alaska officials are raising questions about a few thousand voters, though it hasn’t proven they were not entitled to vote. President Donald Trump won Alaska in 2024 by 44,000 votes.

“The answer is no,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, when asked if the news would boost support for the SAVE America Act.

“They simply don’t have the votes in the Senate,” Becker said. “Even if it did pass,  we’re less than three months from the election.”

The House passed the SAVE America Act in April, and last week it approved legislation that would give states $10 billion to tighten election laws. 

But any effort to advance those measures is stuck in the Senate, where most measures will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate has 53 Republicans, but not all support the Trump plan.

Majority Leader John Thune saw a difficult path forward.

The South Dakota Republican said Monday it was up to Trump to persuade wavering senators to go along. “If he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators from nos to yeses, then we’ll have a different conversation. It’s just the reality,” Thune told reporters.

The SAVE America Act, arguably Trump’s top legislative priority this year, would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections.

New Jersey, Alaska problems

What triggered the latest Republican drive was New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote in the state because of a software problem with the state Motor Vehicle Commission automatic voter registration system.

About 400 actually voted. Sherrill said the mistake began in 2023 and took a year to fix. She said there was no evidence it affected election results. Sherrill took office in January 2026.

“It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one, in the previous administration, brought this to light, demanded accountability,” she said, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Alaska last week also reported problems with its Division of Motor Vehicles registration. Officials said the state has removed 3,048 people from its voter rolls, saying they may not be citizens.

Carol Beecher, Division of Elections director, told state lawmakers that someone identified as a noncitizen should contact her agency and say whether or not they are a citizen, the Alaska Beacon reported.

“It is not an onerous request from the division to simply contact us and confirm, and that is what we have asked them to do. We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she said.

Motor voter law

The federal motor voter law of 1993 had largely been regarded as a bipartisan success, a way of making it easier for people to register to vote. 

It requires that states offer registration at their motor vehicle agencies, including by mail. Applications for registration must be included in renewals and new applications for a drivers’ license.

The 1993 law applies to 44 states and Washington, D.C. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are exempt because when the law took effect, they had no registration requirements or had same-day election registration at polling places. 

A 2002 law requires voters to show identification, usually a driver’s’ license, before they can register. 

Noncitizens cannot vote in federal or state elections, but they can apply for driver’s licenses. 

It’s unclear exactly why noncitizens showed up on New Jersey and possibly Alaska vote lists. Was it a software glitch? Were officials lax? Is there a problem other states should be aware of?

“We don’t know a lot about this yet,” said Becker.

Proof of fraud?

The Trump administration claimed earlier this month that as many as 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said as many as 35,152 “potential noncitizens” may be registered to vote in New Jersey.

No concrete evidence supporting that number has surfaced, and voting rights analysts have raised questions about how that number was calculated.

To SAVE Act supporters, the New Jersey and Alaska disclosures last week were — finally — solid proof things were going wrong. Since the disclosures, there have been these developments:

• The Justice Department wants the names and other information for those improperly registered. Sherrill said she won’t release the data.

• U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who heads a House Judiciary subcommittee, and 18 other House Republicans sent a letter to Sherrill demanding details about what happened.  They want to know by Aug. 21 why the state failed to identify the error, and why it took so long. “New Jersey should end automatic voter registration at the Motor Vehicle Commission, clean up its voter rolls, and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. These are basic safeguards that should already be in place,” Van Drew said in a statement. 

• Trump and some Republicans called for the Senate to stay in session. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to keep senators in Washington past the start of their summer recess late next week so they can work on election reform. “The Senate doesn’t need a summer vacation as much as the country needs the SAVE America Act. Let’s cancel recess,” he tweeted Sunday. Joining him was Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind.

• Republicans blamed Democrats. On the Senate floor, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tied the mess to Democratic views on undocumented immigrants. “Democrats can’t throw open the borders, hand illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and then pretend to be shocked–shocked (as)  Democrats claim to be when these illegal immigrants end up voting.  Illegal immigrants must not be allowed to vote in American elections,” he said.

Democrats scoffed at such rhetoric.

“Give it up, Donald. The SAVE Act ain’t going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a floor speech this week aimed at Trump.

To Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior Senate Judiciary Committee member, the situation is tinged with sadness.

“It all creates more suspicion there are problems with the voting rolls. I’m sure there are on an anecdotal basis,” he said of the New Jersey news. “The more you cast the validity of the voting system in doubt it discourages more people from participating.”

Asked if the revelations changed any Senate votes on the SAVE America Act, he said flatly, “No.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The rule, which takes effect immediately, will allow USCIS, a Department of Homeland Security agency, to refer directly to immigration judges certain asylum cases — such as noncitizens who are not yet in deportation proceedings and are proactively seeking asylum — without first conducting an interview or including a referral letter to the judge regarding the applicant’s credibility.

The interim final rule will be in effect while the agency collects public comments and finalizes the rule’s language.

The move is a departure from how USCIS handles asylum cases. It could create weakened asylum claims before immigration judges, resulting in quick denials and orders of removal. 

In order to apply for asylum, a noncitizen has to detail to an asylum officer a fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 

Asylum officers can use the new rule when USCIS determines that an applicant is barred from applying for asylum, barred from receiving asylum, does not merit a grant of asylum and is not eligible for asylum based on merits of their claim. 

The rule also removes language that asylum seekers have the “right” to an interview. 

USCIS estimates more than 444,000 pending asylum applicants could be affected by the rule. The agency also estimates that about 132,000 future applications for asylum could be impacted. 

The rule could also affect hundreds of thousands of Haitians, who are set to lose their legal protections as the Trump administration plans to revoke Temporary Protected Status. When that status is gone, some could try to apply for asylum but not all would meet the specific standards for persecution laid out in asylum law.

Speeding hearings

Trump officials argued the rule will help backlogs in immigration court. 

“This rule will shorten the total time that it takes asylum officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate asylum applications,” a DHS press release said. 

USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a statement the rule would make sure asylum officers only consider “legitimate” applicants.

“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” he said. “America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole.”

Officers quicker than judges

But an immigration law expert said the policy may actually slow the asylum claim system.

The executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Ben Johnson, said in a statement that the rule will only worsen the 1.4-million-case backlog in immigration courts because judges can take longer to hear a case than an asylum officer.

“Not only will this rule throw sand into the gears of the immigration courts, it will stack the scales of justice against vulnerable people fleeing torture and persecution by putting them into adversarial court hearings and likely also into detention,” Johnson said. 

“Instead of wasting court resources and depriving asylum seekers of due process, more cases should be directed to asylum officers who can do a thorough review of their case far more quickly than judges,” he continued.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, introduced a bill last week that would create a cross-party body of experts to “advise Congress on the ethical and policy implications of emerging technologies” such as artificial intelligence. 

According to a summary of the bill, titled the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, the federal government lacks an institution dedicated to studying the deeper ethics of AI and the threats it poses to human dignity.

“Emerging technologies have the potential to improve everyday life and strengthen America’s position on the global stage,” Cruz said in a joint press release announcing the bill’s introduction. “But as these technologies continue to evolve, we should carefully consider the ethical questions they raise and ensure human dignity remains at the center of our policymaking.”

The commission would inform “both Congress and the American people on the best path forward,” Warnock added.

“As artificial intelligence continues to become a larger part of our society, we need to be clear eyed about addressing the potential problems and perils of this technology,” Warnock said.

The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which Cruz chairs.

The proposed commission would have a wide focus but a narrow function, largely serving as a researcher and advisor for lawmakers. The legislation would authorize $2 million per year to the commission for the next five fiscal years. The panel would sunset in 2032, according to the bill summary, allowing Congress to reconsider its function and effectiveness.

AI bioethics

The proposed commission would focus on examining AI advancement as it relates to bioethics, a decades-old area of research that considers the ethical questions raised by emerging technologies. 

Vardit Ravitsky, president and CEO of the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a nonpartisan think tank, said bioethics is an effective foundation for AI policy. It can help shape a regulatory structure from the outset of a developing technology, giving regulators and courts guiding principles.

“When we do the thinking ahead of time, and we have principles to guide the implementation, the rollout of the technology works better, more responsibly, more wisely, and then we can reap the benefits without running into so many problems,” she said in an interview.

Ravitsky said she is “fully in favor” of the commission outlined in the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, especially because such a body could help address high-stakes concerns related to AI use in the medical field. 

Ravitsky teaches bioethics at Harvard Medical School, where she specializes in emerging technologies including genomics, reproductive technologies and health AI. 

Ethical questions in medicine include the level of disclosure owed to patients when AI is involved with their care and what to do about people treating chatbots like their personal therapists. 

“You quickly understand why this has to do with humanity, because we need to ask ourselves: ‘Are we going to allow AI to take over any kind of role in the health context, or do we want to limit AI to roles that don’t involve care,’” she said. 

Developers needed

The Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act outlines four main features for its proposed ethics commission. 

First, according to the bill summary, the committee would be bipartisan, consisting of 17 experts in fields including philosophy, ethics, religion, civil rights, social sciences, medicine, technology and science. Members would be appointed by “the President, congressional leaders and relevant congressional committees.”

Ravitsky said she is in favor of having ethicists on the commission and believes maintaining bipartisanship is key. But she also recommends inviting AI developers and some representatives from the private sector to participate, given how quickly artificial intelligence is evolving. 

Without them, she said, “the conversation is very limited” because those involved “need some understanding of the technology.”

Julian Jonker, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has his own concerns about the way in which the proposed commission’s members would be chosen. 

Although the process laid out in the bill represents “an attempt for bipartisan nomination,” because one party currently controls all three branches of U.S. government, there is still a chance the commission could end up “fairly partisan,” Jonker said.

Opportunity to expand  

Along with detailing plans for composition, the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act directs its ethics commission to hold public hearings, issue reports and advise Congress and other relevant stakeholders on “AI, robotics, biotechnology, neurotechnology, emerging clinical technologies and other science or tech developments.” 

The commission would inform lawmakers about possible threats to human dignity posed by federal science and tech policy, and other congressional committees could call on the body to evaluate related programs. 

Jonker said it’s “really laudable” that the bill is “tuned into the intersection of several technologies,” but he also pointed out that it seems to exclude some important social concerns surrounding AI by focusing mainly on bioethics.

He identified issues such as labor displacement, deepfakes and the widespread use of online bots as among those the average American thinks about when considering AI’s impact on human dignity. 

The proposal also does not cover anything having to do with the environmental and economic consequences of AI buildup or data centers, he added. 

“I’m not saying that the commission has to cover everything,” he said. “But if this is the main way in which deliberation around the social impact of AI appears in Sen. Cruz’s framework, then we must note that it leaves out those things that I think are very prominent in most people’s minds right now.” 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Congressional candidates must file several financial disclosures throughout the year of their election. Reports for the second quarter of 2026 were due July 15.

Brown’s campaign announced $14.1 million in direct second-quarter donations, with an added $3 million coming from an affiliated PAC. Husted’s campaign reported $3.4 million in direct donations and $4.3 million from three affiliated PACs.

“Ohioans across the state are fed up with Jon Husted, who repeatedly puts corporations, billionaires, and special interests first at the expense of hard working families,” said Patrick Eisenhauer, Brown’s campaign manager.

In a press release, the Husted campaign touted its performance as the largest second-quarter fundraising total ever posted by an Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate.

This is the third straight U.S. Senate election in Ohio where the Democratic nominee’s early summer fundraising haul was significantly larger than his Republican opponent. Former Ohio U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan outraised now-Vice President J.D. Vance by $6.8 million from April to June 2022, and Brown outraised now-U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno by $6 million from April to June 2024.

Both elections ended in Democratic losses at the ballot box. The 2024 race became the most expensive non-presidential election in American history, and while Brown more than tripled Moreno’s campaign spending, Republican groups still outspent Democratic groups by over $75 million.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision will also strengthen the role of political parties to help campaigns this election cycle. Ruling on a case out of Ohio brought by Vance, in a 6-3 decision the court struck down limits on how much political parties could spend in coordination with specific candidates.

Spending

This time around, Brown spent over $11.5 million on advertising in the second quarter. Some in-house ads touted his positions on healthcare and Congressional stock trading, and three ads sought to tie Husted to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Brown also released a trio of ads on data centers in July.

While Brown raised about $4.3 million more than he did in the second quarter of 2024, he was also more frugal, spending over $2.5 million less on advertising. The former three-term senator reported $16.2 million cash on hand at the end of June.

Meanwhile, Husted’s campaign bought more than five times Moreno’s ad spending over the same period in 2024. His principal committee, Husted for Senate, paid for his first television ad of the cycle in late April. A pair of May ads attacking Brown’s Congressional record came from Husted Victory, a secondary committee.

His campaign reported over $11 million cash on hand, more than double Moreno’s cash balance in June 2024.

The two campaigns are far from the only groups with money in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race. Outside groups have already committed to spend over $174 million in the race, and AdImpact projects total spending to reach $749 million by Election Day.

The Republican-backed Senate Leadership Fund has already spent $700,000 in the race this year, and it plans to spend $79 million in total. Democratic-backed Senate Majority PAC has committed $64 million to the race.

Most of the outside spending in the second quarter came from two Republican super PACs. Americans for Prosperity Action, Inc., a super PAC bankrolled by Republican megadonor Charles Koch, spent over $3.1 million starting in April.

Ohio Flyer PAC paid over $445,000 for its April “Party’s Over” ad targeting Brown’s Congressional record, part of over $1.6 million in second-quarter ad spending. The super PAC is solely dedicated to supporting Husted’s election bid, and its name references Husted’s time on the University of Dayton’s football team.

Fundraising

Ohio Flyer PAC received its largest donation of the second quarter from A Public Voice, Inc., a Virginia-based dark money group that has given millions to Republican super PACs in past elections.

Nonprofits like A Public Voice, Inc., do not have to disclose their donors. A Public Voice, Inc. has history in Ohio U.S. Senate races: It gave $315,000 to a super PAC that opposed Brown in 2018, and it donated $850,000 to a super PAC backing Republican state Sen. Jane Timken’s primary run in 2022.

Brian Colleran, the CEO of an Ohio nursing home chain, and Chevron also gave Ohio Flyer PAC six-figure donations. A super PAC can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but it cannot directly coordinate with a candidate’s campaign committee.

Husted’s campaign received its largest donations of the second quarter, including a combined $637,200 from two Jane Street Capital executives, through Husted Victory. Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm, has made a recent push into artificial intelligence and data centers.

His campaign also accepted a total of $69,750 in smaller donations from the political action committees of utility companies like American Electric Power and Duke Energy, as well as tech companies like Oracle and Meta.

Other prominent Husted donors include Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who regularly donate to Republican campaigns. Cleveland Browns executives and members of the Haslam family gave Husted a combined $292,000 in the second quarter.

Only one person gave more than $50,000 to a committee affiliated with Brown’s campaign in the second quarter: Joe Kanfer, the former CEO of an Akron-based company that produces Purell hand sanitizer. Brown received most of his largest individual donations through Ohio Grassroots Victory Fund, an affiliated committee.

James McClave, another Jane Street trader who gave millions to a dark money group that supported former President Joe Biden in 2024, donated $7,000 to Brown’s campaign committee.

McClave was also an early investor in artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, which is spending millions in favor of AI regulation. Anthropic’s general legal counsel, Jeff Bleich, gave $20,500 to Brown’s campaign committees in the second quarter.

Brown reported over $5.1 million in donations through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, and Husted reported $500,000 from the Republican equivalent WinRed. The former senator had over 135,000 donors in Q2, including nearly 70,000 first-time donors, according to a press release.

The next campaign finance reporting deadline for Congressional candidates will be Oct. 15.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a recent decision, the state’s highest court upheld an appellate court decision related to Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment approved by Ohio voters that allows crime victims to appeal court rulings that denied them restitution.

The amendment was approved by 83% of voters in 2017, and implemented in Ohio House Bill 343 in 2023.

The amendment changed the Ohio Revised Code to do things such as redact victim names and identifying information from public records, allow victims to be heard and present in public proceedings, and authorize victims and victim’s advocates to argue for restitution based on the convictions.

Even more recently, the state supreme court ruled that police officers can be considered victims and be protected under Marsy’s Law privacy clauses.

The constitutional amendment notes that victim’s rights “shall be upheld in a manner no less vigorous than the rights of the accused.”

The supreme court case stems from an Eighth District Court of Appeals decision related to a Cuyahoga County woman identified as “M.S.” in the court records.

The woman asked to file a delayed appeal to seek restitution after a 2017 incident in which a man broke into her office, stealing a pistol and a nail gun.

A delayed appeal occurs as a second attempt after an initial appeal has already occurred.

Delayed appeals are allowed for those convicted of crimes, but not victims, according to the supreme court’s decision.

The man involved in the crime pleaded guilty to breaking and entering, as well as petty theft, but while the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office requested restitution for M.S. when the man was sentenced, his attorney argued the issue should be dealt with separately from his sentencing hearing. The trial judge didn’t include restitution in sentencing documents, according to court records.

Marsy’s Law went into effect in February 2018, and the woman appealed for restitution in December 2018, citing the constitutional amendment.

But, at the time of her appeal, “the legislature had not yet enacted legislation implementing the constitutional amendment and there was some uncertainty as to the proper manner for a victim to enforce the rights guaranteed under Marsy’s Law,” Justice Patrick DeWine wrote in the July 22 supreme court decision.

With confusion over what she could and couldn’t legally do, M.S. requested a voluntary dismissal of her appeal, instead asking the Eighth District Court of Appeals to order that the Cuyahoga County court decide whether she was owed restitution, and if so, how much.

As the case went on, the Ohio Supreme Court decided in a separate case that a direct appeal — an appeal made within 30 days of a conviction or case decision — “is the appropriate remedy for a victim to challenge a trial court’s failure to award restitution under Marsy’s Law.”

Because of that decision, the man convicted of stealing the woman’s pistol and nail gun argued she had “forfeited her right to challenge” when she voluntarily dismissed her first appeal. The appellate court agreed.

In appealing to the state supreme court, M.S. argued that victims should have the constitutional right to delayed appeals.

To enact a change in the way the law works, the legislature and the supreme court would have to look into changing the rules of procedure, the high court stated in its July decision.

“We have no authority to bypass this constitutional procedure and simply amend those rules by judicial decision in an individual case,” DeWine wrote in the majority opinion.

“While there may be good reasons to allow a victim to request leave to file a delayed appeal in at least some situations, that matter must be left to the rulemaking process.”

While the supreme court said it can “prescribe rules governing practice and procedure in all courts of the state,” the constitution requires the rules to be filed with the General Assembly, which has the ability to adopt a “resolution of disapproval” to stop them from going into effect.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But there are also plenty of examples of people who give enough of a damn to battle bureaucracy, to push back because they must.

They make calls, send letters, show up. They challenge “city hall” and rules too hard to change even if they cannot win. Because sometimes they do.

Thousands of Ohioans took on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency over a quality-of-life threat. They won. For now.

In December enraged citizens got wind of the Ohio EPA’s outrageous proposal to make it easier for massive data centers to pollute local waterways with impunity and they mobilized to table the blanket approach under consideration. 

The Ohio EPA confirmed that public comments against its proposed statewide data center wastewater permit exceeded 7,000.

Last Tuesday the agency announced it had scrapped the general permit drafted to help data centers release wastewater into Ohio’s lakes, rivers, and streams with heavily reduced review and analysis by the state.

“After carefully reviewing the significant volume of public comments received on the draft National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) general permit for data centers, Ohio EPA has decided not to move forward with finalizing the general permit.”

Would that have happened without 7,000 voices raised in opposition?

If not for the public outcry would the Ohio EPA have handed Big Tech everything it wanted — a quick, one-size-fits-all permitting process that cut meaningful agency review, on-site scrutiny of data center wastewater discharges, dropped notice and comment opportunities for local communities?

Ohio already provides massive sales tax exemptions for data centers (costing the state nearly $1.6 billion in 2025) and the state environmental agency was advancing an industry-friendly plan. 

In January, Ohio EPA director John Logue admitted the decision to propose a general permit (as opposed to individual, case-by-case authorization) was motivated in part by President Trump’s call to expedite the process for approving data centers.

Getting an environmental permit to satisfy clean water requirements took too long.

But as developers raced to build a wave of “hyperscale” data centers around Ohio — which hosts more than any other Great Lakes state at over 200-and-counting — controversy grew over wastewater generated by some of those facilities winding up in Lake Erie and its tributaries.

The expedited permit proposal could have wrapped up the process in a month compared to as many as six for an on-site specific permit.

Incredible as it sounds, the now defunct agency plan would have allowed all data centers, (regardless of size, location, or type) to discharge untreated waste and storm water directly into local waterways under certain conditions not subject to individual inspection. 

A single statewide blanket permit would cover an entire industry.

When the Ohio EPA informed Ohioans that such a deal was in the works at the end of 2025, one phrase from the proposed change ignited alarm.

“It has been determined that a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state associated with granting coverage under this permit is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.”

In other words, indulging the fast-track agenda of the artificial intelligence industry —  valued at hundreds of billions in direct market size with multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure spending and record-breaking personal wealth creation — is worth the price of polluting some Ohio lakes and streams??

The broadly ambiguous language in the agency’s drafted proposal underscored that tradeoff to Big Tech.

It acknowledged a “decline in water quality” as an acceptable business proposition as long as data center wastewater isn’t “discharged within 500 yards upstream from a public water supply intake” or dumped “in a lake other than Lake Erie, or groundwater supplies” or “exhibits the reasonable potential” to break Ohio’s minimum water quality standards.

All wording a major tech or AI company lawyer could drive a bus through without breaking a sweat.

One provision of the streamlined permit did exhort data centers to “evaluate potential prevention methods and install the latest pollution prevention technology if it is economically feasible.” Another revision to exploit.

The overwhelming takeaway from incensed Ohioans was that the state was giving AI data centers a pass on polluting surface water in Ohio with weakened safeguards for local communities.

The Ohio EPA appeared to sanction the necessary release of unknown contaminants from cooling-component water and other runoff from data centers into natural waterways to get operations up and running faster.

An accommodation to AI barons regardless of the cost to Ohioans stuck with polluted water.

Data centers consume massive amounts of water to cool servers and prevent overheating of equipment.

Discharge from those water-cooling methods can contain hazardous forever chemicals (PFAS) — toxic compounds that break down slowly in nature and in the human body and are linked to serious health risks.

While most data center wastewater in Ohio goes to municipal systems (treatment plants and sanitary sewers) instead of being dumped directly into lakes and streams, the Ohio EPA was prepared to approve that option for some data centers without requiring chemical measurements from the water prior to discharge and with limited public input. 

But the agency shelved the idea, thanks to more than 7,000 Ohioans who objected. Loudly. Who says you can’t fight city hall?

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

For months, Marie’s 11-year-old daughter wasn’t acting like herself. The fifth grader was often fatigued, sleeping more. She wasn’t eating enough, and spent more time alone.

“She wasn’t really motivated to do things with her friends,” Marie said.

The Chicago girl had been overwhelmed with worry for her father, who was recovering from diabetes complications after a serious infection. She also felt intense pressure at school, aiming for straight As.

“Ever since Dad went to the hospital, it just made it more intense,” she told her mom in a written note. “I don’t know how to feel. I’m having thoughts about hurting myself. I’m tired, and afraid of death.”

Earlier this year, she told her mom she’d tried to cut herself in the bathroom, and said she was hurting herself at school. Stateline is withholding Marie’s full name to protect her daughter’s privacy.

Marie took her to the emergency room. The ER staff tried to transfer the girl to a psychiatric facility, but several refused to take her. Most only served teenagers, while others didn’t accept her insurance plan. The emergency department team finally found a place for her at a child psychiatric facility nearly an hour away.

Marie’s daughter recently finished an intensive outpatient therapy program, and is seeing a therapist regularly. 

“We were able to get her the help that she needed,” Marie said. “But a lot of the times, there’s kids that struggle and unfortunately, do end up taking their life.” 

In the past several years, numerous studies have pointed to a mental health crisis among America’s youth. Much of the attention has focused on teenagers, who have higher suicide rates. 

But preteens are struggling, too.

The number of preteens — ages 8 to 12 — who die by suicide in the United States each year is relatively small. But the total in 2025 was 194 — the most since at least 2001, according to preliminary data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since 2008, the rate of preteen suicide has increased by an average of 8.2% annually, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Their analysis, published in 2024, found that Black preteens had the highest overall suicide rate, while girls and Hispanic preteens had the greatest percentage increase. Native American preteens also saw some of the most pronounced increases.

Suicide is complex and is often the result of a combination of factors. Talking with trusted adults and connecting kids with help can aid in prevention, and research shows most who have suicidal thoughts do not carry through with them. Mental health experts and advocates are calling for more mental health check-ins with preteens, earlier screenings and tailored interventions for Native, Black and LGBTQ+ preteens.

Jenny Britton, chief clinical officer at the Washburn Center for Children in Minneapolis, a nonprofit mental health practice, has noticed the long-term trend during her 25-year career.

“I’ve watched the age of kids who struggle with suicidal ideation and suicidality get younger and younger over that time,” she said. “Now, we’re seeing even as young as our 7- and 8-year-olds.”

Last year, the overall suicide rate in Minnesota increased by 4% compared with the year before, according to preliminary state data. But the suicide rate among children ages 10 to 14, the youngest age group included in the state’s report, more than doubled compared with the five years prior, from 2.2 per 100,000 people to 5.8.

Kids are feeling unsupported. They have more alone time. They’re more isolated. People aren’t really picking up on some of the clues of depression as early.

– Dr. Prachi “PJ” Striker, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, Children’s Minnesota

Four years ago, when the inpatient mental health unit opened at Children’s Minnesota, a Minneapolis-based health system, providers mostly saw teenagers, said Dr. Prachi “PJ” Striker, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. That’s still true, but over the past year-and-half, the unit has seen more 10- to 12-year-olds who have harmed themselves, attempted suicide or said they’ve considered it.

“(We’re) seeing more of the younger age group coming in,” Striker said. “Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed, suicidal thoughts.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that pediatricians start screening all patients starting at age 12 for suicidal thoughts. But for preteens ages 8 to 11, the academy only recommends a suicide screening if the child is coming to the doctor for behavioral health concerns or has a history of suicidal thoughts.

But Striker said screening as early as age 8 can prevent kids from slipping under the radar.

“How do we start identifying kids who are in trouble faster?” Striker said. “Kids are feeling unsupported. They have more alone time. They’re more isolated. People aren’t really picking up on some of the clues of depression as early.”

Stressors

Many mental health experts point to COVID-19 as a major factor that harmed the mental health of kids who are now preteens. 

“You have to remember these kids who are like 10 to 12, their early elementary years were COVID years, and so kindergarten, first grade, second grade were often at home. They didn’t have those normal experiences of going to school, starting to socialize,” Striker said. “They’re going into third, fourth, fifth grade, having been home and quarantined for the first few years of their school lives.”

Thousands of kids lost loved ones to COVID-19, including their parents. Children of color make up a disproportionate number of those whose caregivers were killed by the virus. 

“I was hopeful that as people were able to get back to their friends and school and normalize, that that would get better, but it really hasn’t,” said Dr. Maria Hughes Rahmandar, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Adolescents and Young Adults and an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Preteens and teens are really continuing to struggle with more and more mental health concerns.” 

Experts also point to other stressors for preteens, including social media use, lack of sleep, bullying both online and in person, and policies restricting gender-affirming care for trans kids that have created fear for some LGBTQ+ youth.

Jeremy Pettit, a professor of psychology at Florida International University who specializes in depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors in children and adolescents, is studying how sleep – and screen time right before bed – relates to kids’ mental health.

“When (sleep is) disrupted, it’s bad for everything – physical health and mental health. The data are pretty clear that our kids are not getting enough sleep at night,” said Pettit, who directs FIU’s Center for Children and Families. 

“We’ve got early school times in most of the country, even though the data, the research is pretty clear, it would be healthier for our kids not to have them go to school at 7 every morning,” he said.

Peter Gray, a researcher and emeritus professor of psychology at Boston College, contends that changes in schooling in recent decades, such as the standardization of curriculum, created “a new source of anxiety and depression on top of everything else.” He also pointed to a trend of less unstructured playtime outside.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has resources for parents or others who frequently interact with children, including a toolkit called “Talk Saves Lives” that offers guidelines and tips for steering conversations.

“That’s normal childhood,” Gray said of unstructured play. “This is how children learn to take charge of their own lives. It’s how children learn to negotiate differences with other people. It’s how children learn that they can solve their own problems. 

“We have been gradually, over time, taking that away from children,” he said.

Unlike many other child development experts, Gray argues that computers and smartphones have actually helped children by re-creating some of the social networking that used to happen outside. 

But a 2024 analysis by the CDC found that frequent social media use was associated with bullying at school, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and some suicide risk among students. More than 40 states have sued social media companies over mental health concerns among kids.

Other experts say too much exposure to media of all kinds may also be causing kids stress. 

“I think about my childhood in the ’70s and ’80s. I didn’t know all the details of shootings or a bomb going off, or you had to read about it in the newspaper or watch the news,” said Britton, of the Washburn Center for Children. 

“Kids are wrestling with things differently than I wrestled with things. They know more, so they’re thinking about more.”

Talking with kids

Experts say parents, teachers, coaches, clergy — anyone who interacts with kids — shouldn’t fear talking to them about suicide and mental health, especially if they notice withdrawal, sadness or stress.

Jamie Freeny, who was the director of the Center for School Behavioral Health at Mental Health America of Greater Houston until earlier this year, said that more elementary schools have started to ask for suicide prevention training.

“If the elementary schools are asking for it, that lets me know that there’s a reason,” said Freeny, who now works as a mental health consultant. “It’s very, very sad.”

There’s this myth that if you talk to kids about suicide, you’re going to put the idea in their head.

– Lisa Horowitz, visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has resources for parents or others who frequently interact with kids, including a toolkit called “Talk Saves Lives” that offers guidelines and tips for steering such conversations.

Lisa Horowitz, a visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine and who conducts research for the National Institutes of Health, said many parents tell her they’re afraid to bring the topic up with their kids.

“There’s this myth that if you talk to kids about suicide, you’re going to put the idea in their head,” Horowitz said, adding that research shows talking about it can actually help. 

“If you can detect suicide risk early, like in preteens or even even younger, then you can intervene early, and and then you can prevent a lot of psychiatric disorders that occur in adulthood.” 

Kids may tell their friends and may not necessarily come to their trusted adult first, making proactive conversations important, added Horowitz, who co-authored the study on the annual increase in preteen suicide and has developed screening tools.

“Most parents are surprised by a suicide attempt, and it’s not because they’re a bad parent, and it’s not because they’re not paying attention. It’s because kids keep these thoughts to themselves,” she said. 

“It’s an awkward but critical conversation to start. … So even if you say to a kid, ‘OK, this is really awkward, and I’m not even sure how to ask about this, but I care about your life. So, do you ever think about killing yourself?’”

Britton said even just asking about a change in a child’s mood can help.

“Work hard to figure out how to engage with your kids around really hard topics,” said Britton. “It does something so innate within the human experience if another person can say, ‘Today you looked really sad. Is there anything you want to share with me about that?’”

In Chicago, Marie and her husband have started fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As they’ve shared their story, other parents have opened up to them about the struggles of their own preteen kids.

“My husband and I want to be our daughter’s voice,” Marie said. “To help somebody else — even if it’s one person.”

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

More than a dozen states this year have passed laws creating new criminal offenses, increasing penalties and establishing specialized task forces and advisory boards designed to better investigate and prosecute organized theft rings.

While organized retail theft has been a growing focus for state lawmakers in recent years, this year’s legislation reflects how the crime has evolved beyond traditional shoplifting. Many of the new laws target fraud schemes that authorities say are increasingly tied to organized criminal groups, including cargo theft, gift card scams and identity theft used to steal freight or merchandise.

In April, the Los Angeles Police Department announced the seizure of about $1 million in stolen merchandise, including products from brands such as ALO, SKIMS, Edikted, Ariat, Milwaukee, Ninja, Dyson and Duracell. 

Investigators recovered 55 pallets of stolen commercial and train cargo from a Van Nuys warehouse, according to a news release. The stolen merchandise was tied to an e-commerce scheme involving the resale of stolen goods through the livestream shopping platform Whatnot.

Reported shoplifting increased 4% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, according to the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice’s latest crime trends report. Across the 18 cities included in the analysis, shoplifting rates were about 5% higher than in 2019 and reached their highest level in the nine-year period tracked by the group. 

Still, monthly rates were mostly similar to 2025, with the largest year-over-year increases occurring in February and April. This data only captures incidents reported to police and likely undercount the overall level of shoplifting.

“The number of shoplifting incidents has been declining in the last several years, but the amount stolen per incident has been increasing,” said Marc Levin, the council’s chief policy counsel. 

“Shoplifting rings have gotten more and more sophisticated,” he said, adding that some operations have reportedly hacked into the computer systems that dispatch trucks carrying merchandise to retailers, redirecting the shipments to steal the goods before they are delivered.

Harsher penalties

Several states expanded criminal penalties or gave prosecutors new tools to pursue organized retail theft cases this year.

In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee in May signed into law a measure creating a registry of people convicted of retail theft or organized retail crime, including attempted offenses and conspiracies. The registry is only available to law enforcement.

The new law, which took effect earlier this month, also increases penalties for offenders who commit retail theft while carrying a firearm, ammunition or a firearm accessory, possess anti-theft jamming devices or use disguises or fake license plates during a theft. Certain violations now carry mandatory minimum jail sentences.

A new Wisconsin law allows prosecutors to aggregate multiple retail theft offenses when determining criminal penalties and increasing sanctions for repeat offenders.

Two new laws in Wyoming, both of which went into effect this month, increased penalties for repeat theft offenders and created the new offense of absconding for criminal purposes, aimed at people who cross county or state lines to commit additional crimes or conceal stolen property. 

In Oklahoma, a new law broadens the state’s organized retail crime and identity theft statutes by expanding the types of fraud covered and closing loopholes involving elderly people and minors.

Cargo theft

Lawmakers also turned their attention to cargo theft as freight theft has become increasingly sophisticated and costly for retailers and supply chains.

In April, Lee, of Tennessee, signed another piece of legislation creating a legal definition for fraudulent freight theft. The law, which is already in effect, covers schemes involving fake identities used to obtain shipments, illegally rerouted freight and unauthorized transfers of cargo. It also requires local law enforcement agencies to investigate those reports as theft crimes, even if the offense originated elsewhere.

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation in March creating sentence enhancements of up to 10 years for organized cargo theft, with offenders ineligible for early release on the enhanced portion of their sentence.

Arizona created a cargo theft task force within the state attorney general’s office under legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in June.

California lawmakers are still considering legislation that would establish a statewide cargo theft task force within the state attorney general’s office. The bill is still under consideration in the Senate, but lawmakers have until November to act.

State officials last month announced that previous investments, including funding for local law enforcement agencies and legislation aimed at strengthening the state’s response to organized retail theft, have resulted in more than 32,000 arrests and nearly $260 million in recovered stolen goods since October 2023.

Michigan lawmakers also are still considering two pieces of legislation that would increase penalties for cargo theft. The bills cleared the House earlier this year. The legislature adjourns in December. 

Gift card fraud

Gift card fraud also emerged as a growing concern this year as lawmakers responded to scams involving tampered cards and stolen account information.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation in May creating new crimes for gift card theft, forgery and fraud. The law took effect this month. New laws in Virginia and West Virginia also established gift card fraud as a criminal offense.

Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation in June creating the Retail Theft Prevention Advisory Board within the Department of Public Safety. The board will oversee grant funding, collect statewide data on organized retail theft and gift card fraud, and develop policy recommendations in coordination with state and federal partners.

In Maryland, a new law going into effect in October will prohibit people from altering or tampering with gift cards or their packaging with intent to defraud. The law also establishes how gift cards are valued when determining theft charges.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed legislation in February that allows prosecutors to charge people under the state’s financial card crime laws for illegally obtaining or using gift cards to acquire money, goods or services.

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“Haiti is hell today. So you’d be sending people … back to hell,” the Republican governor said in an interview Monday in Columbus with CBS News. “Very few of these Haitians will voluntarily go back to Haiti. If they have to leave, they’ll go someplace else. They want to work. They want to support their family. They don’t want to go back to Haiti.”

DeWine called the planned operations “a mistake” and said they would be “a blow to Springfield” and “a blow to the state of Ohio.”

CBS News reported Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drawn up plans for a deportation push focused on Haitian immigrants that could begin as early as this week. The operations could focus in part on Ohio, where most of the state’s Haitian population lives in and around Springfield.

DeWine said he had “received no notification” from ICE about any such operation, The Hill reported, citing the same interview.

‘People who have helped Springfield really come back’

DeWine’s argument to CBS News was primarily an economic one.

“These are people who have helped Springfield really come back,” he said, pointing to Haitians who took jobs and opened businesses in a city whose economy had struggled for decades. “The Haitians who are living there and employed there, they came there to work, and they came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.”

The immigration advocacy group FWD.us estimated in a January fact sheet that about 14,000 Haitian TPS holders lived in Ohio, contributing roughly $160 million a year to the state economy and paying about $18 million in federal and payroll taxes and $21 million in state and local taxes. The group put the Springfield metro area’s share at $91 million a year and Columbus’ at $44 million. Those counts date to early 2025, before the administration began moving to end the designation.

DeWine has used similar numbers himself. In a statement the day the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the terminations in June, he said more than 10,000 Haitians living in Ohio legally through the program — most of them in the Springfield area — would lose work authorization and become subject to deportation, and that it would become illegal to employ them. TiffinOhio.net reported at the time that DeWine called the ruling a mistake.

‘Virtual chaos’ in Haiti

DeWine also pointed to conditions in Haiti, which he described to CBS News as “virtual chaos” with “no semblance of government.” Armed gangs control large areas of the country, and the U.S. State Department warns Americans not to travel there.

The Department of Homeland Security has taken the opposite position. In moving to end the designation last year, the department concluded that keeping it was not in the national interest and said conditions in Haiti had improved enough for Haitians to return home safely, according to CBS News. DHS told the network over the weekend that it was “closing time” for people losing status, and pointed them toward an offer of $2,600 and what the department called a “free flight home” for those who leave voluntarily.

How Ohio got here

Haiti was first designated for Temporary Protected Status in 2010, after an earthquake devastated the country, and the designation was renewed repeatedly in the years that followed. The Biden administration extended it in 2024, citing violence and instability.

After the Trump administration moved to end it, a federal judge blocked the termination in February, calling it arbitrary and capricious and partly rooted in racial animus. The administration took the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled 6–3 in late June that it could proceed with ending the program for Haiti and Syria. CBS News reported the termination was set to be formalized Monday.

TiffinOhio.net has covered each stage of that sequence, including how Ohio cities braced for the ruling, the rally hundreds of Ohioans held in Springfield hours after it came down, and the guidance advocates gave TPS holders on legal help and exit planning.

A stalled bill and a split Ohio delegation

Congress has one measure that would restore the protections. The U.S. House passed H.R. 1689 on April 16 by a vote of 224–204, directing DHS to designate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status into 2029. It reached the floor through a discharge petition that bypassed Republican leadership.

Ten Republicans voted for it, including two from Ohio: Rep. Mike Turner, whose 10th District takes in Springfield, and Rep. Mike Carey of the 15th District, according to the official House roll call. The Senate has not taken up the bill.

DeWine, who is term-limited and in his final months in office, has broken with President Donald Trump over Haitian immigrants before. In a 2024 interview with CBS News, he dismissed Trump’s claim that Haitians in Springfield were eating pets as something that surfaced online, noting that local officials found no evidence for it. He said then that the arrival of as many as 15,000 immigrants in a city of fewer than 60,000 had strained local systems, including health care, but that the newcomers had filled jobs and worked hard.

DeWine endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee to succeed him, who faces Democrat Amy Acton in the Nov. 3 general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Asked on Tuesday, July 21 why House Republicans have kept Rep. Max Miller in their conference while Democrats forced a Senate candidate out of a race over an assault allegation, House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a single line of defense.

“The key word there is allegation,” Johnson said, according to MS NOW. He added that the House Ethics Committee has a process, that he does not comment on investigations while they are underway, and that the standard applies to both parties.

Miller has not been charged with a crime. He denies every allegation against him, and he has said so on camera, in court filings and in a defamation lawsuit he filed against his ex-wife. Prosecutors brought no charges in connection with the injury that started the police investigation, and the county child-welfare inquiry that followed did not substantiate abuse or neglect.

Those facts are the strongest thing Miller has going for him. They are also the whole of the Republican response.

What the records say

The allegations surfaced through an ordinary paperwork trail: a custody fight, a police report, and public records requests filed by news organizations.

In February, detectives in Bay Village opened an investigation into how Miller and Emily Moreno’s 2-year-old daughter suffered a broken collarbone. Moreno sat for a recorded interview. CNN obtained that recording through a public records request and published it in June.

On the recording, Moreno describes an incident on New Year’s Eve. She had turned on a light to change the baby’s diaper, she said, and Miller became angry and started yelling. An officer asked when the gun came into it, and what Miller did with it.

“Holds it on me,” Moreno answered. A police incident report released to reporters stated the gun was allegedly held to her head. Moreno told the officer she had described the incident to her therapist but had not gone to police, because she did not think anyone would believe her. Asked in the interview whether she wanted to report it then, she declined.

She also described a February confrontation during a custody exchange, saying Miller became angry over the timing of a birthday party and threw her into a wall.

Miller told CNN the gun account is a complete fabrication and that every weapon he owns is locked in a safe. He disputed the wall allegation as well, pointing to text messages and home security video from that day. “I am fighting to clear my name,” he said.

Moreno declined CNN’s interview request. Her attorney noted that a judge has issued a restraining order covering both parties and said she intends to comply with it.

TiffinOhio.net has reported on the underlying case since spring, including the Bay Village investigation, the photographs and filings describing a hot-water incident, Moreno’s move to throw out Miller’s defamation suit under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP law, and the contempt motion filed after Miller gave a media interview hours after a judge issued the restraining order.

A 2,000-page record

This month, Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis published findings from roughly 2,000 pages of court filings and police records obtained through public records requests. The trove, according to that reporting, includes allegations of drug use, verbal abuse and violence toward multiple women across two decades.

It also includes a 2011 toxicology report from a crash in which Miller drove into a light pole while a student at Miami University. Miller has long maintained he was not impaired. The report shows MDMA and Klonopin in his system. Mother Jones reported that Miller’s spokesperson did not answer its questions about the toxicology findings.

The same reporting revisits an incident from Miller’s teens involving a young woman who says he pushed her down a flight of stairs. Miller previously denied it. The woman, now an adult, told Mother Jones the night remains among the most traumatic of her life.

None of that has been tested in a courtroom. All of it is now part of the public record in a congressional race.

Silence from Ohio’s senior senator

The most conspicuous quiet belongs to Sen. Bernie Moreno, who took office in January 2025 and represents every Ohio county, including Seneca and Sandusky.

In May, after Miller sued his daughter for defamation, Moreno told reporters his only comment was that he loves her and that her safety and his granddaughter’s are his priority. He has said little since. He has not asked Miller to resign, has not asked the House to act, and has not publicly weighed in on his daughter’s account.

Miller, for his part, has said the two men keep the dispute out of the office. In a June interview with Spectrum News, he said he and the senator continue to conduct themselves professionally and do not bring the matter into work. In the same conversation, he accused Moreno’s family of enabling a false narrative.

Rolling Stone described the broader Republican posture this week as a practiced silence.

The legal tangle keeps growing

Miller’s response to the allegations has been to sue. He filed a defamation case against Moreno in May. She has moved to dismiss it under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP statute, arguing that accusations against a sitting congressman on the ballot are protected speech.

That strategy has now produced a second lawsuit against him. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who dated Miller in 2019 and 2020 and later wrote that the relationship turned violent, sued him in Cuyahoga County in early July. Miller sued Grisham for defamation in 2021 and dropped the case in 2023 after both signed an agreement not to disparage each other. Grisham says his recent public comments broke it.

“The settlement included certain promises that Congressman Miller made to our client Stephanie Grisham, and those promises were broken,” her attorney, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, told the Ohio Capital Journal.

Each filing has generated another round of coverage, and each round has put more of the record in front of voters.

A safe seat that is no longer safe

The political effect is measurable.

The Cook Political Report has moved Ohio’s 7th District from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican,” Newsweek reported. A survey by GBAO, a Democratic polling firm, conducted June 18–20 among 500 likely voters, put Miller at 44 percent and Democrat Brian Poindexter at 43 — inside the margin of error — with Poindexter leading by 17 points among independents. The poll was commissioned by Democratic-aligned interests and should be read with that in mind.

Battleground Alliance, a PAC backed by the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America, is running about 100,000 robocalls in the district referencing the allegations from both Moreno and Grisham. The group is targeting 40 districts nationwide, two of them in Ohio.

Poindexter, a union ironworker and longtime Brook Park council member, is the Democrat on the ballot against Miller on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Miller has said the allegations will not cost him the seat and that constituents have not raised his personal life with him.

Why it matters here

Seneca and Sandusky county voters do not cast ballots in the 7th District. They do share a senator with it.

The standard Speaker Johnson articulated on July 21 — that an allegation is only an allegation, and that the appropriate venue is a committee process he will not discuss — is the standard now governing what Ohio voters are entitled to know about the people who represent them. Applied consistently, it means a member of Congress can face a documented record of accusations from multiple women, a police investigation, two active lawsuits and a court-ordered restraining order, and his party’s response is that the matter is under review.

Miller may well be telling the truth. No court has ruled on Moreno’s allegations, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence that every American gets.

What voters are entitled to is a party willing to say out loud what it thinks about the evidence. So far, on this one, Ohio Republicans have not.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Heads of state, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flew to Washington to attend the service. Graham was a steadfast Israel supporter, and advocated for U.S. support to Ukraine, which he visited in his last days before dying on July 11.

Vice President JD Vance, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and U.S. Rep. Sheri Biggs, R-S.C., remembered the South Carolina lawmaker as a staunch conservative with a sense of humor who never forgot his humble roots in a small town.

“Here in Washington, a town where many lose sight of who sent them here and why they are here at all, Lindsey never forgot where he came from or who he was here to serve,” said Biggs, who represents the same district Graham represented as a House member.

A visibly emotional Thune praised Graham as a “towering figure of the Senate and on the international stage.”

“He was a fierce defender of Ukraine, he was a fierce defender of the unborn. And on the surface these might seem like two completely separate issues, but it strikes me in another way they are both of a piece. In both cases, Lindsey Graham saw injustice, and he spoke up,” Thune said.

Vance, a former senator, recalled a heated argument with Graham last Congress at a Senate lunch about a funding bill for Ukraine and his surprise that Graham continued to build support for a railway safety bill championed by Vance following the 2023 toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

“And that was the kind of colleague he could be — a person you argued with and fought with in one minute but behind the scenes, without collecting an ounce of credit, was working for you and working for the things that you cared about,” Vance said.

Vance also credited Graham with the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of past sexual misconduct during his Senate confirmation hearings. 

“What he saw happening to Kavanaugh was not policy disagreement; it was character assassination,” Vance said. “And Lindsey got as fiery and as passionate as I have ever seen a human being get during a judicial confirmation, and I believe that he saved that nomination.”

A last trip to Kyiv

Graham’s last act as a senator was a trip to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy. 

In his final remarks to the press July 10 in Kyiv, Graham said he spoke to the White House to get the green light on a Russia sanctions bill.

“When I get back to Washington, I’m gonna go with Sen. (Richard) Blumenthal to the Republican and Democratic leader to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to help end this war,” Graham said.

Graham announced the agreement with the White House in one of his last posts on X the day before his death.

Zelenskyy is expected to meet Tuesday evening with senators following Graham’s funeral, and ahead of a Senate vote on Graham’s sanctions legislation, which now bears his name in the bill title.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 19, “Republicans should add Iran to the Russian Sanctions Bill. That’s what Lindsey wanted to do, and it was going to happen. IMPORTANT!!! President DJT”

Graham was an advocate and supporter for Trump’s war in Iran, which the president launched in conjunction with Israel in late February.

Brief and sudden illness

Graham, who two days prior turned 71, died in Washington, D.C., after a “brief and sudden illness,” according to an initial statement from his office. Preliminary findings shared the next day by Graham’s office from the District of Columbia’s medical examiner revealed the late senator died of an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. 

Graham was scheduled to make his 64th appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” on July 12. Welker instead hosted a special memorial episode recounting Graham’s life, and interviewed Trump by phone. 

Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, was sworn in to the U.S. Senate on July 14 to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term, which ends in January.

A special Republican primary election will be held in South Carolina on Aug. 11, with a tentative run-off election date set for Aug. 25, if needed.

Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform Sen. Darline Graham has his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for the quickly approaching special election.

“I hope Darline does this, in that there would be nobody better to honor the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey. Darline, who comes from an absolutely incredible family, has been a WINNER all of her life … SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN. RUN, DARLINE, RUN!,” Trump wrote. 

Graham, an Air Force veteran, served in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2003, and was appointed as a manager for impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton in 1998. Graham served as a U.S. senator from 2003 until his death in July.

He unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, during which Graham was an outspoken critic of Trump. 

Graham also vehemently denounced Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, after a mob of Trump supporters violently broke into the Capitol with the goal of stopping Congress from certifying the presidential election win for President Joe Biden.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

David Ziegler announced his candidacy Monday, casting himself as a practical local official rather than a party politician. He is the sole opponent to Republican Commissioner Bill Frankart in the Tuesday, Nov. 3 general election.

“I’ve never been interested in politics for politics’ sake,” Ziegler said. “Public office is about serving your neighbors. Every decision I make as Commissioner will begin with one question: Is this what’s best for the people of Seneca County? If the answer is no, then it’s the wrong decision.”

The matchup is unusual for a county where Republicans typically face no general election opposition at all. No Democrat filed for the commissioner seat, so the primary was effectively the only contested vote until Ziegler qualified as an independent. Frankart held the Republican nomination by 53 votes in the May 5 primary, finishing with 3,051 votes to Clinton Township trustee Jim Distel’s 2,998 — a margin of less than one percentage point.

That primary was itself part of an unusual season of Republican infighting in Seneca County, with contested races in 30 of the county’s 51 GOP central committee precincts.

Who Ziegler is

Ziegler is one of Eden Township’s three trustees, according to the county’s directory of elected officials, serving alongside Kenneth Bish and Vern Morter. His campaign says he has held the seat for three consecutive terms.

According to his campaign website, Ziegler was born to Paul and Dorothy (Beeler) Ziegler, was raised on a farm in Bloom Township and graduated from Mohawk High School in 1987. He works at Schilling Propane, an Upper Sandusky company that serves Seneca County, as a delivery driver, service technician and sales associate. He and his wife, Judy (Peer) Ziegler, live in Eden Township. Judy Ziegler is listed as the campaign’s treasurer.

Wind turbines and the SB 52 fight

Ziegler’s announcement leans heavily on his opposition to industrial wind development, an issue that dominated rural Seneca County politics for much of the last decade.

That record is documented at the Statehouse. In March 2021, Ziegler submitted written testimony to the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee supporting Senate Bill 52, identifying himself as an Eden Township trustee and writing that residents “must be allowed to have the opportunity for a vote” on local decisions affecting their property and safety. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill that July. Effective Oct. 11, 2021, it gave county commissioners the power to block or shrink large wind and solar projects before they reach the Ohio Power Siting Board.

Seneca County commissioners used that power quickly. At their meeting on Nov. 23, 2021, they voted to designate every unincorporated area of the county a restricted area, barring economically significant wind farms, large wind farms and large solar facilities countywide. That vote came more than a year before Frankart took office; he was elected in November 2022 and began his term Jan. 1, 2023.

Seneca is far from alone. Republican commissioners in 27 Ohio counties have used the law to bar wind and solar in their jurisdictions, and a study cited in earlier reporting found state and local restrictions have blocked billions of watts of generation that residents ultimately pay for in higher bills. Those bans are not always permanent: Richland County residents forced a countywide referendum on their commissioners’ ban this spring, and voters kept it in place by a margin of 52.9% to 47.1%.

Ziegler’s campaign says he stood with residents and initiated resolutions that helped keep turbine projects out of Eden Township and the county. Township records documenting those resolutions were not reviewed for this article.

What he says he would do

Ziegler’s campaign lists six priorities: giving every resident a voice in county decisions, improving roads, bridges and infrastructure, applying a business-minded approach to the county budget, increasing transparency and accountability, supporting first responders, and cutting what he calls wasteful spending while keeping taxes as low as possible.

His campaign also credits him with improving township roads and signage, replacing aging equipment, upgrading the township maintenance facility, securing grant funding for a community park and helping produce a township budget surplus. Those are campaign claims; township financial records were not reviewed for this article.

“When people elect you, they’re trusting you to stand up for them,” Ziegler said. “Whether it’s improving public safety, protecting our communities, or making smart financial decisions, I’ve always believed your job is to do what’s right for the people you represent.”

He framed his independent status as a rejection of party politics in county government.

“My goal is simple: make decisions that put Seneca County residents first,” Ziegler said. “Government doesn’t exist to serve itself—it exists to serve the people. I want every resident to know they’ll have a Commissioner who listens, works hard, spends their tax dollars wisely, and isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right.”

The incumbent

Frankart, a grain farmer who served 15 years as an Adams Township trustee, is the current president of the three-member board, which also includes Anthony Paradiso and Brent Busdeker. He operates Ridge View Farms and Sand Ridge Real Estate LLC and owns the Historic Octagon House near Green Springs, which he rents as an event venue, according to his campaign website.

His first term has drawn scrutiny. One day before the May primary, the Advertiser-Tribune reported that Frankart acknowledged under oath that some of his past public statements about a local landfill and oversight of the regional solid waste district were inaccurate and were not corrected. The deposition was taken as part of litigation involving the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District.

He has also faced questions over his handling of the Seneca Poultry operation in Seneca Township, just south of Tiffin. A county health district timeline obtained by TiffinOhio.net showed Frankart called the health commissioner in January to raise concerns about her inquiry into the facility. Months later he told voters in a candidate questionnaire that the operation was locally monitored by the Seneca County Soil and Water Conservation District — a claim the Seneca Conservation District publicly corrected, confirming that oversight rests exclusively with the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

Ziegler closed his announcement on the county’s prospects rather than his opponent’s record.

“I want people to feel proud of Seneca County,” he said. “We have hardworking people, strong communities, and tremendous potential. If we stay focused on serving the people instead of political agendas, I believe our best days are still ahead.”

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct that the Seneca Poultry operation is in Seneca Township, not Bloom Township as originally stated.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

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

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

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

In the latest motion, the three lawyers defending Hearn asked the judge to release the legal instructions given to the grand jury and a transcript or notes of all grand jury proceedings in the case. 

Mary L. Dohrmann, principal attorney at Washington Litigation Group, Steve Levin, senior counsel at Steptoe LLP and Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, wrote in the brief the testimony from the one witness raised questions about whether the grand jury understood the legal standard to charge someone with a felony for destruction of property greater than $1,000. 

While grand jury deliberations are normally private, the lawyers wrote a rule “authorizes disclosure of the grand jury materials needed to determine whether a ground exists to dismiss the indictment.”

They argue in the motion the National Park Service official who testified in front of the grand jury didn’t say that Hearn caused that level of damage. 

“The witness’s testimony established that the pool had substantial preexisting damage requiring repair before any alleged conduct by Mr. Hearn,” the lawyers wrote. “According to the witness, the pool was leaking more than one million gallons of water per week; its expansion joints had exceeded their service life; and the liner already contained a rip.

“The government’s witness further confirmed that repairs were already necessary to address those conditions.”

That NPS official said repairs costing between $6,000 and $15,000 would have been needed regardless of whether Hearn “interacted with the pool,” according to the motion. 

The transcripts prosecutors shared with Hearn’s legal team so far “contain other irregularities that reflect a misleading presentation to the grand jury and a need for review of the entire grand jury record in this matter.”

“For one, the government failed to present the widely available photograph, discussed in Mr. Hearn’s Rule 41(g) Motion, that by the government’s own account was taken by Mr. Hearn before he ever touched the Reflecting Pool—and, accordingly, proves that he caused no damage to the pool,” the legal team wrote. “In addition, the government failed to present its central witness against Mr. Hearn to the grand jury, instead submitting that witness’s hearsay statements through an investigator, who emphasized that it ‘was not a sworn statement’ that he took from the witness.”

Hearn’s legal team added that the information they have so far about the grand jury process “raises the issue of whether the government should have known it was presenting false or misleading testimony to the grand jury.” 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The move came just two days after a federal appeals court denied the administration’s request to resume the controversial plan, which would force significant limits and voter information collection requirements on states in regard to vote-by-mail. 

It also sets up a high-stakes confrontation at the high court between the administration and the 23 states that sued over the Trump order, a little more than three months before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

“The district court has issued an extraordinary injunction barring federal agencies from implementing an Executive Order promoting election integrity in the upcoming federal elections in November,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in his petition to the high court.

Sauer argued the executive order should not be blocked because, among other things, the U.S. Postal Service has not yet come up with a final rule on how it would be implemented.

Appeals court ruling

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court ruling last month that blocked the order because the U.S. Constitution grants states — not the president — authority to administer elections.

The executive order “directs unprecedented levels of involvement by federal officials in how states administer elections,” two appeals judges, Gustavo A. Gelpí and Julie Rikelman, wrote in a Saturday order. Both were appointed by President Joe Biden.

Gelpí and Rikelman considered and rejected the administration’s argument that states could not challenge the order because the Postal Service rule was not finalized. 

The order directed the agency’s final rule to contain a requirement that states start submitting citizenship rosters 60 days from the general election, which is Sept. 4 this year. Allowing the order to go into effect would force states, which have been preparing for the election for months, to use considerable time and funding to create a new election system in mere weeks.

“The Government has failed to convince us that the impact of the (executive order) on the Plaintiff States is ‘hypothetical,’” Gelpí and Rikelman wrote.

The panel’s third judge, Joshua D. Dunlap, concurred in part and dissented in part, noting that the Postal Service rule mandated by the executive order had not been finalized. The timeline suggested by the order, though, would have required states to take immediate action related to mail ballots, he added.

Consequences for states

Time is running out for Trump’s administration to successfully place the restrictions on vote-by-mail before November’s midterm elections 99 days from Monday.

The 1st Circuit panel pointed to the approaching midterms as a reason to block the order for now. A full analysis of the executive order could be considered on a longer timeline, but state election officials faced imminent consequences if they did not begin preparing for the order’s requirements in time for the November general election and September primaries, the judges found.

The order directed the U.S. Postal Service to require states to notify the agency 90 days before an election if they plan to use mail-in ballots and, if so, to send the federal government a list of eligible voters at least two months before the election and before sending ballots to those voters.

Democratic officials in 23 states — California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and the District of Columbia brought the suit challenging the executive order. 

Twelve states with Republican attorneys general — Alabama, Missouri, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas — joined the appeal on the federal government’s side.

Citizenship lists

The executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile lists of voting-age citizens living in each state, and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. 

The list of citizens would be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It would also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The district court judge, Indira Talwani, said the executive order did not cite relevant constitutional or legal authority to support the creation of the lists.

Trump erodes faith in mail ballots

Trump has consistently raised unfounded concerns about mail-in voting, which nearly every state allows and some use exclusively. 

The practice, especially common in Western states, enjoyed strong bipartisan support until Trump sought to undermine its credibility during the 2020 election cycle.

In 2018, the Pew Research Center found 71% of voters, including 57% of Republicans, supported vote-by-mail. 

By the time of an April 2026 poll, Democrats’ favorable opinion of vote-by-mail remained high, but Republican support cratered to 34%.

In the executive order, Trump said restricting mail-in voting would limit voting by noncitizens, another voting issue Trump has often raised without offering evidence it has created a significant integrity problem in any election.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump wrote in a social media post that he wanted Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to keep the chamber open, preventing vulnerable Republicans facing reelection from the campaign trail, to pass a voter identification bill, among other measures. 

“John Thune should not allow the United States  Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” Trump wrote. “The Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership. Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”

Trump followed up with another post about 15 minutes later, writing that whichever political party eliminates the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate, known as the legislative filibuster, will hold an advantage in the Senate. 

“Whichever Party Terminates the Filibuster FIRST will be the Party that survives and thrives,” Trump wrote. “If the Dumocrats win this race, however, America will rapidly become nothing more than a Third World Nation!”

SAVE America Act

Thune has said repeatedly that there aren’t enough votes to remove the filibuster or to advance the SAVE America Act, which would require people provide proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and show a photo ID before casting a ballot, among other provisions. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a social media post that there was no path for Republicans’ voter ID bill to become law. 

“It’s a new week in Washington, but one thing remains the same: The SAVE Act is dead on arrival in the United States Senate,” Schumer wrote. “It will not pass—not now, not ever.”

The Senate is set to leave for its recess on Aug. 6 and return on Sept. 14. The House left on July 23 and will return on Aug. 31 for four days before taking a week-long break. Then both chambers will be in session for three weeks before breaking for five weeks in October and early November. 

Trump said aboard Air Force One later in the day that he hasn’t considered trying to have Senate Republicans oust Thune as their leader and replace him with someone else. 

“I haven’t even thought of it,” he said. 

GOP senators

Trump’s comments followed calls from a few Republican senators over the weekend to keep the chamber in session until certain bills make it to the president’s desk.

“.@LeaderJohnThune, I hereby object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August—at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act—and hereby request a roll call vote,” Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee wrote on Sunday. “Do not assume you have my consent. You do not.”

Lee’s post, however, isn’t actually an objection under Senate procedure. In order to do that, he’ll need to stand on the floor and object when Thune or another Republican asks for “unanimous consent” to break for the August recess. 

Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody wrote she believes “there are things we need to get done for the American People.” 

“The Senate needs to stay in session until we can get the SAVE America Act to the floor and passed,” she wrote. 

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott wrote he supports efforts to try to keep the Senate in session. 

“I will vote to stay in session unless we have passed the SAVE America Act,” Scott wrote. “The American people expect us to deliver. They deserve secure elections.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The cuts are also bringing about discussion when it comes to teens who are already parents.

Rosemary Oglesby-Henry was a teen mom herself three decades ago, and from what she’s seen, not a lot has changed in terms of the perception of teen pregnancy.

“I chose to parent, and when I chose to parent there were no resources to teach me how to be a mother,” she told the Capital Journal.

In 2016, Oglesby-Henry founded Rosemary’s Babies Company, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit aimed at helping teen parents learn not only parenting skills, but also how to reach educational goals, gain workforce skills, and delay having more children.

The founder and CEO hopes to be part of the supports that might not be as needed down the road.

“Basically saying okay, we understand you have a child, but … you can still go back to school, you can wait until you build your family to have another child, and in that way you’re getting back on target so that you’re not dependent on the government, and you don’t end up on that economic cliff, especially our young girls” she said.

Rosemary’s Babies is a donor-based nonprofit that also receives state funding, something that she said is hard to get in the area of teen pregnancy support, but means the most when it comes to bolstering a population that is often weighed down by trauma, abuse, and a lack of other supports, including sex education.

“It helps to reduce the stigma, so that organizations like my own can now seek out support in saying, ‘I don’t promote teen pregnancy, but once these young people have these children, we need to help them before they get caught up in the system,” Oglesby-Henry said.

The U.S. Health and Human Services agency recently announced a plan to cancel 53 of 67 grants meant for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, amounting to about $68 million in eliminated funding.

Stateline reported that President Donald Trump took a similar action in his first term, changing grant funding for more than 80 recipients, before a judge stopped the action, ruling in favor of legal advocacy group Democracy Forward in a lawsuit claiming agency regulations violations.

The most recent actions are also the subject of a lawsuit, with Democracy Forward again among the parties suing the Trump administration to stop the cuts.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s research institute was named as one of the federal grant recipients between 2020 to 2023, receiving more than $860,000 for a program called “Changing the Landscape for Adolescent Health Equity and Access in Central Ohio,” according to the HHS website.

Representatives for the hospital were unavailable for comment.

Nationwide Children’s still houses a Teen and Pregnant Program, which provides prenatal and postpartum care for pregnant women up to age 21.

According to the program’s website, the Teen Pregnancy Clinic allows pregnant individuals to meet with medical professionals, participate in group meetings, learn about infant care and sign up for public programs including federal food assistance, and receive education on birth control for the future.

According to the Health and Human Services agency’s own data in an objective it calls “Healthy People 2030,” babies born to teen mothers “are more likely to be premature, have a low birth weight, and even to die.”

“Having a baby can also negatively impact teen mothers’ health and their educational and job opportunities,” the HHS data states. “Although teen pregnancy and birth rates have gone down in recent years, disparities by race/ethnicity remain.”

The department also states “evidence shows that a variety of outreach and educational programs can help reduce teen pregnancies.”

State data from 2024 showed 69 babies born in Ohio to mothers who were younger than 15, more than 1,300 who were born to individuals aged 15 to 17, and nearly 4,000 who were born to mothers who were 18 to 19 years old.

The most recent state data is still considered preliminary, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s database, but 2025 numbers showed 52 children born to Ohioans younger than 15, and more than 1,000 born to children between the ages of 15 and 17. Those aged 18 to 19 represented more than 3,700 births in 2025.

The CDC’s most recent data on teen births is from 2024. Ohio’s teen birth rate in that year was 14 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, down slightly from the year before, when it was 14.6 per 1,000 female Ohioans.

Funding related to teen pregnancy is also part of state grant efforts, particularly through the program established by Gov. Mike DeWine, called the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The money historically comes from federal and state contributions to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF).

The Ohio General Assembly’s most recent operating budget allowed up to $26.8 million for the governor’s office initiatives over 2026 and 2027.

A spokesperson for DeWine did not specifically comment when asked about the cuts to federal teen pregnancy prevention programs, but said the governor’s office and the state Office of Budget and Management “continuously monitor federal funding decisions throughout the year.”

The most recent executive order from DeWine directing TANF dollars for 2026 and 2027 said one of the purposes of the TANF program was to “prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies.”

Following the most recent cuts, HHS put out new grant programs, called “Replicating Effective Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs,” and “Rigorous Impact Evaluation of Programs to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and Achieve Optimal Health,” according to the agency’s website.

The Trump administration also plans to put money toward abstinence education and an emphasis on marriage, with grant application language similar to concepts supported by conservative groups, which discourage contraception, among other ideas.

Sex education and the ‘success sequence’

The state has been criticized for lacking a standardized sex education program over the years, which advocates say contributes to the teen pregnancy rate.

The sex education advocacy group SIECUS gave Ohio a failing grade in a national ranking of state sex ed programs.

The group decried the newest development in the state’s sex education program, called the “success sequence,” which requires school to teach students that they should graduate high school, get a job, and get married, consecutively, before having a baby.

Under the new law, the “success sequence” would be a graduation requirement.

A 2021 study commissioned by the federal Health and Human Services agency found that though completing high school, getting a full-time job, and getting married did make people less likely to experience poverty, the order of events was not necessarily important.

“For the association between milestones and economic self-sufficiency at ages 35-40, our results suggest that the individual milestones, regardless of sequence, appear to be the main factors associated with economic outcomes in adulthood,” the study stated.

For Oglesby-Henry, the information provided through the “success sequence” and other measures can be helpful, even just as a conversation starter.

“It teaches about economics and the impact that happens when we make these decisions, and it teaches about consequences,” she said.

But there still needs to be lessons at higher levels about the consequences of promoting pregnancy without providing the support that’s needed.

“As this administration is pushing the need for families to have more babies and things such as that, we have to evaluate, okay, can people afford daycare if we’re cutting benefits, can people afford housing,” Oglesby-Henry said.

Having just opened Holloway House for housing support, workforce training, and other programs for teen parents, the founder of Rosemary’s Babies is attempting to strike at an increase in homelessness among young mothers as well, making funding even more important.

“We’re looking at how can we continue to assist these families, where, if we get them through our program, we get the training that this administration is (encouraging) … but when they complete all of that, they can’t afford housing, or they can’t still afford to live,” Oglesby-Henry said.

Support for teens who are pregnant and prevention for the future isn’t easily funded, she said, but education and the money to continue that education will bring about more results.

“Prevention always costs less than the actual epidemic or the actual problem,” according to Oglesby-Henry.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The JobsOhio Energy Opportunity Initiative was announced by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine last October. It is administered by the state economic development entity JobsOhio, a private organization that is exempt from Ohio’s public records law, even though it performs functions that were previously done by the state’s Department of Development and is funded by money that the state used to collect as taxes on the sales of alcoholic beverages. (Now JobsOhio gets that money instead.)

The Energy Opportunity Initiative, whose funding will come from a chunk of those liquor sales payments, offers grants and loans to companies to boost the state’s energy supply and access to it. But the initiative limits applications to projects for natural gas infrastructure and small modular nuclear reactors, even though solar and wind are the fastest and cheapest forms of energy to deploy — an example of how Ohio gives preferential treatment to fossil fuels and nuclear energy and snubs renewables.

To date, JobsOhio has released scant information about applicants. Companies have expressed ​“significant interest,” according to JobsOhio spokesperson Matt Englehart, who said the organization will not disclose additional details until it has executed agreements with companies.

The program’s critics have condemned both the decision to block renewables and the lack of transparency around the $100 million fund — and some are concerned about potential ethical issues, too.

Columbus attorney John Kulewicz, a candidate running for Ohio attorney general, filed an ethics complaint late last month noting that Josh Rubin, who chairs JobsOhio’s board of directors, is a founder and managing partner of The CJR Group, a firm that does lobbying work for American Electric Power’s regulated utility business in Ohio.

The utility stands to benefit from a bill introduced in May to let regulated utilities own advanced nuclear generation and include it in their rate base. If that passes, American Electric Power could become eligible for money from the JobsOhio initiative.

“JobsOhio has said in various interviews that no ethics violations have been committed, but it has otherwise been quiet on the issue,” Kulewicz told Canary Media. Public records laws don’t apply to JobsOhio, though, he noted: ​“JobsOhio has been exempted from most transparency regarding its activities. The inspector general will now investigate according to his own process.”

Tammy Ridout, a spokesperson for American Electric Power, noted that the company is currently prohibited from owning electricity generation in Ohio.

“Any suggestion that we would pursue actions contrary to the best interests of our customers is categorically false,” Ridout said via email after Canary Media asked for a comment on Kulewicz’s complaint and whether the company or its lobbyists had discussed the Energy Opportunity Initiative with DeWine, Rubin, or others at JobsOhio before the program was announced last fall. ​“Putting our customers first and operating with integrity are our top priorities, and we take issue with any implication to the contrary,” she added.

Ridout noted that two other lobbyists at Rubin’s firm work on behalf of the utility’s regulated business, but not Rubin himself. As a principal, however, he could still profit from the firm’s overall lobbying work.

Ohio State Auditor Keith Faber, who is Kulewicz’s opponent in the attorney general race, did not return Canary Media’s request for comment.

An opaque process

“In today’s market, it makes far more sense to prioritize natural gas and nuclear projects, which offer reliable baseload energy, frankly, rather than solar and wind, which are intermittent and not as reliable,” DeWine said when announcing the Energy Opportunity Initiative last October, despite claiming to embrace an ​“all-of-the-above strategy” for energy sourcing.

DeWine’s reliability criticisms echo arguments from champions of a bill that could make it more difficult to build any new utility-scale solar or wind farms in the state, even where they’re not otherwise banned under a law signed by DeWine five years ago. The Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 294 in June, and it’s now in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Of course, Ohio’s energy demands aren’t constant throughout the day, and advances in battery technology can store solar power for nighttime use. Even some data companies are now securing such ​“firm power” from solar-plus-storage arrangements, as Google announced last week for a project in Alabama.

However, it’s questionable for Ohio and any other state that is part of the PJM Interconnection region to constrain new energy supply. Last week, the grid operator held a capacity auction that hit price caps but fell short of its reliability target by roughly 6.8 gigawatts.

“We can use all the capacity we can get,” PJM spokesperson Jeff Shields said last month.

DeWine’s office has not answered Canary Media’s question about which lobbyists or other energy company representatives he spoke with before announcing the initiative.

An email from his spokesperson Jill Del Greco instead deferred all questions to JobsOhio’s Englehart, and noted that while the governor ​“did support the announcement of the Energy Opportunity Initiative, the state does not have any direct involvement or oversight of this program, because it is funded and operated by JobsOhio.”

Former Gov. John Kasich spearheaded JobsOhio’s founding in 2011 as a nonprofit corporation to replace many of the Ohio Department of Development’s functions for creating jobs and attracting businesses to the state. The enabling legislation specifically exempted it from the state’s public records law, and Englehart has relied on that to decline to provide specifics about the identities or even the number of companies that are seeking funding from the Energy Opportunity Initiative.

“JobsOhio has received and continues to vet project opportunities related to natural gas infrastructure and/​or nuclear supply chain or nuclear power generation,” Englehart said via email.

The lack of public information about whether lobbyists and energy company representatives might have pushed for the funding initiative is also notable because it shrouds any potential influence by particular companies or their lobbyists.

“If a company being considered has a conflict of interest, JobsOhio associates and Board members are recused from participation in the project discussions and any votes regarding the company,” Englehart said.

JobsOhio’s monthly metric reports and various press releases generally don’t show any recusals for conflicts of interests. And it’s unclear to what extent people with potential conflicts might have shaped the general funding parameters of the energy initiative.

Englehart has justified the focus on natural gas and nuclear power by stressing that approved projects will require commitments of job creation and investment.

As Englehart said of natural gas, for example, ​“There are often financial gaps that need to be closed to win competitive economic development projects, such as the extension or upgrade of a natural gas pipeline.” He noted that nuclear projects ​“come with significant commitments of jobs and investment,” but provided no specifics.

In contrast, Englehart said, ​“utility-scale renewable projects are extremely large, fully funded investments that are not tied to competitive end-use energy-consuming economic development projects, and typically do not create significant job growth.”

As with many renewable projects, however, pipeline-related jobs are mostly limited to the construction phase. Widespread development of utility-scale solar could generate tens of thousands of equivalent jobs statewide, prior research has shown.

Manufacturing enterprises for the renewable energy industry presumably could apply for some of the initiative’s funds, but only if they needed to extend a natural gas pipeline to their facility, Englehart said. He also noted there was an unrelated $1 million in grants announced in February 2026 for Stewart Glass to expand an Appalachian Ohio facility for supplying the solar panel industry.

Extending a natural gas pipeline can be done in roughly half a year, but that doesn’t solve the challenge DeWine voiced of adding more electricity generation to meet the state’s growing demand. Adding a natural gas power plant typically requires five years or more. Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are unlikely to be widely deployed before the 2030s at best.

With solar and batteries, ​“we would be able to get energy on the grid faster and at a lower cost than the SMRs or natural gas,” said Michael Benson, president of the board of directors for Green Energy Ohio, which advocates for renewable power and distributed energy. Put simply, he said, ​“solar and batteries are cheaper.”

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

One success story is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Since 2010, it has provided over US$5 billion to improve the quality of the region’s environment, with an overarching goal of cleaning up the water in the Great Lakes watershed. And it has survived multiple attempts to reduce its funding or eliminate it altogether.

As a water policy and politics expert and a former leader in the Great Lakes advocacy community who has worked on and analyzed the initiative, I worked with environmental historian and Great Lakes expert Marc Gaden along with a team of graduate students to comprehensively assess the initiative and determine useful lessons learned for other projects in conservation and beyond.

A bit of background

The Great Lakes contain approximately 20% of the world’s available surface freshwater, providing drinking water to over 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada and billions of dollars annually in economic activity and ecological productivity.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the ecosystem in and around the lakes was degraded and contaminated due to raw sewage, industrial waste, invasive species, loss of natural habitats and runoff pollution from development, among other issues.

Many problems remained even after the major environmental and Great Lakes laws of the late 20th century took effect. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has funded more than 8,000 specific projects, focusing on cleaning up especially toxic locations, controlling invasive species, restoring natural habitat and educating the next generation of leaders.

Government reports, public opinion polls, economic analysis and many other accounts suggest that the initiative has not only been successfully implemented and popular but has led to positive results for water quality, habitat restoration and wildlife while boosting the local and regional economy.

Deep connection

But these results didn’t happen by accident, and they weren’t inevitable. Our research team identified converging forces, some unique to the Great Lakes but many broadly applicable, that led to this success.

Underlying each force is the iconic status of the waters themselves. People in the region feel a deep attachment to the lakes and the quality of life they enable, with more than 50% of residents engaging in walking/hiking, swimming, boating or simply being with family and friends along the lakes. As U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, Republican co-chair of the Great Lakes Congressonal Task Force, said in mid-July 2026: “The Great Lakes aren’t a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. They’re an economic engine, a source of drinking water for millions of people, and part of our way of life here in Michigan. Protecting them is something we can all rally around.”

A 2024 poll of a random sample of more than 2,500 Americans and Canadians found 96% of the region’s residents think it’s important for governments to invest in protecting the Great Lakes – a level of near-unanimity unheard of for other issues.

A prominent launch

Shared identity and popular support are not enough to launch a major government effort without a spark and a plan.

In 2004, President George W. Bush – in part driven by the swing state electoral power of the Great Lakes region – signed an executive order declaring the Great Lakes to have “national significance” and launching the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy. Developed over the course of a year through work groups involving more than 1,500 people combined with public input sessions, the strategy laid out common goals for restoration and prioritized a list of needs, such as funding to clean up toxic hot spots and sewage overflows, which was critical to securing congressional support for funding.

Diverse allies

A plan for restoration – even for an iconic resource – will not garner billions of dollars in federal funding without significant bipartisan support from all levels of government and strong community support.

Those speaking up for the new program were “not simply one group or one voice. It was governors, mayors, the NGO community and tribes,” David Naftzger, executive director of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors & Premiers, which works with all the chief state and provincial executives across the region, told our research team.

Business leaders have been particularly crucial backers. They relay to lawmakers the economic value of restoration projects, providing political cover for a program that increases government spending.

The broad range of support continues today and has helped the initiative weather various efforts to reduce or eliminate its funding.

Most famously, in 2019, President Donald Trump proposed cutting the initiative’s funding by 90%. Three weeks later, while traveling with Trump to a political rally in Michigan, three Michigan congressional Republicans explained how critical the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is to the region’s identity and economy, and how popular it is. At the rally, Trump reversed course and announced he would support keeping funding levels at US$300 million per year, promising to “make the Great Lakes great again.”

At a Washington, D.C., event celebrating the Great Lakes in 2023, I saw JD Vance, then a Republican U.S. senator from Ohio, and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, proclaim that while they may not agree on much, they are united in their support for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Clear communication

Our analysis found that initiative supporters have been organized and disciplined about how they talk about the program and the overall goals. State officials, local leaders, tribal nations, nonprofit groups and businesses all deliver a “coordinated, consistent kind of beating of the drum,” Erika Jensen, executive director of the Great Lakes Commission, told our research team.

This includes not only the many positive stories of success but also the economic benefits. A University of Michigan study that showed the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative boosts the region’s economic output by more than $3 for every dollar of federal spending is used often to make this case.

These coordinated messages allow political leaders to tie the initiative into their priorities and build support across diverse audiences. One key reason for this kind of powerful communication is that the initiative funds work in every congressional district in the Great Lakes watershed, so every member of Congress in the region can say they brought home federal money to make significant improvements in their own districts.

‘Secret sauce’

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative pays for community-based work on local lands and waterways – it does not regulate industries or tread into particularly controversial territory.

Everywhere has places that need help, cleanup and care. These ecosystems are relatively easy to build support for, and when connected with other projects across a wide region, these smaller efforts can make a significant difference in environmental quality and quality of life while building political and community support for even bigger undertakings.

I believe that many of the core lessons and converging forces that make up the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative’s “secret sauce” can be applied not only to the future of the Great Lakes but to conservation initiatives across the U.S. and the world. And they may even be able to help restore bipartisanship to at least some parts of U.S. politics.

Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability; Director of the University of Michigan Water Center, University of Michigan

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

There were 2,318 confirmed cases as of July 23, compared with 2,289 in all of 2025, with 93% of cases for both years being among unvaccinated people, mostly younger than 20. 

There have been fewer hospitalizations this year, 151 compared with 243 last year, and no deaths yet, compared with three in 2025. The highest number of new cases was in mid-January 2026, when there were almost 300 new cases. 

The largest number of current cases are in South Carolina (670), Utah (522), Texas (188), Virginia (176), Florida (141) and Pennsylvania (134). Except for Virginia, all those states have childhood vaccination rates below the 95% level considered necessary to prevent outbreaks among unvaccinated people as of the 2024-25 school year. 

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

The last time national cases were higher than 2025 and 2026 was in the 1990s as national vaccinations were still ramping up, with 9,643 cases in 1991 and almost 28,000 in 1990. 

Most states now have childhood vaccination rates below the 95% level considered necessary to prevent outbreaks among unvaccinated people, including people who choose not to be vaccinated and small children too young for the shots. 

Oklahoma has a low childhood vaccination rate of 88.7% and saw 20 cases last year, but only one so far this year. A foundation has sent a mobile health van around the state to vaccinate thousands of children. 

Delaware declared a new outbreak this week. The state’s first measles cases in a decade climbed to five cases in a few days. The state’s child vaccination rate is 94.1%. 

“High vaccination coverage has protected even the unvaccinated and undervaccinated because of herd protection, keeping measles at bay for the past few decades,”  said Dr. William Moss, director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University, in a published statement. 

“But in communities with pockets of susceptible individuals across a broad age range, measles has been able to take hold, infecting those who are susceptible and spreading rapidly,” he said.

The center used its own measles tracker to declare more cases in 2026 than last year as of July 21. 

The Pan American Health Organization is scheduled to review the U.S. measles status in November and consider revoking “elimination” status as it did for Canada last year.  

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by abortion providers in Kansas, Montana and Virginia to challenge the restrictions as excessive, unwarranted and inconsistent with other legal requirements. A similar case in Hawaii was already decided in October, with a federal judge also finding that the restrictions were arbitrary.

In Virginia, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Ballou, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said the FDA failed to conduct an appropriate review of the 2023 restrictions on mifepristone, which include rules that prescribing pharmacies and clinicians must be specially certified and prescribers and patients must sign a form acknowledging the medication’s risks.

“The 2023 REMS modification is unlawful and must be remanded to the FDA for review,” Ballou wrote, using the acronym for the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies protocols.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of lead plaintiff Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, based in Virginia, said in a statement Friday that eliminating those three restrictions would help clinic staff focus on patient needs instead of “excessive paperwork.”

“I have worked in abortion care for over 30 years, and I can attest that these regulations serve no medical purpose, nor do they add value to our patients’ experience of abortion,” Hagstrom Miller said in the statement.

The FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Stateline on Friday.

Ballou did not give a timeline for a review of the restrictions, but the FDA has said it is conducting a broader safety review and has sought to dismiss cases related to mifepristone regulation until it completes that review. Trump administration officials told the Wall Street Journal in June that the review was expected to take about six months, meaning it would conclude after the national midterm elections.

Katie Keith, founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, said the Virginia and Hawaii decisions mean the FDA has been ordered by two courts to reconsider its restrictions and more thoroughly explain why they are necessary.

“They’re going to have to look at everything these various courts are telling them to look at,” Keith said.

But the two rulings come at the same time the administration is receiving pressure from anti-abortion groups to further restrict access to mifepristone, even in states where abortion is legal.

The 2023 rules, which were decided under the Biden administration, also eased restrictions to allow mifepristone to be dispensed without an in-person provider for the first time. That helped expand national access to the medication, which is one of two drugs typically used to end a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, and allowed people who live in one of the 13 states with near-total abortion bans to continue to receive it by mail.

That expanded access prompted three other lawsuits from attorneys general in states with abortion bans that are still pending in federal courts. In Louisiana, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether to strike down the provision allowing telehealth prescriptions, and will hear oral arguments in the case in September.

The 5th Circuit initially granted an emergency request from Louisiana to block telehealth access to the medication, but after drug manufacturers appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices reversed the circuit court ruling. That stay from the high court will remain in place as the case continues.

Two other cases with different implications for the future of mifepristone are ongoing. One is in Missouri, joined by attorneys general from Idaho and Kansas, where they have asked the court to return all of the restrictions to what they were in 2016. The other is in Texas, joined by Florida’s attorney general, asking the federal court to revoke the drug’s approval entirely.

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.

Consumer protection work, long a growing focus of state AGs from both parties, has ramped up considerably more in the past two years, legal experts say. The change follows Trump’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created by Congress in the wake of the Great Recession. And persisting concerns about the high prices of housing, groceries and fuel has made affordability a top political concern for many AGs.

After Trump took office last year, the bureau became an early target of billionaire Elon Musk’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. Since then, it has dropped dozens of investigations and enforcement cases, moved to slash the agency workforce and made it harder for consumers to submit complaints.

The Trump administration also has sought to limit the authority granted to states to enforce financial services protections under the federal legislation that launched the CFPB. 

Now, Republican and Democratic attorneys general are increasingly teaming up to use state laws and enforce federal laws to go after alleged antitrust violations, deceptive marketing practices and price gouging, as many Americans grow weary of high prices.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, president of the bipartisan National Association of Attorneys General, said states are increasingly working to fill the void left by the federal government.

“We do a ton of work in trying to pick up the pieces,” said Tong, a Democrat.

Last year, Tong launched a national affordability campaign aimed at using state laws to drive down consumer costs. While sometimes prices go up simply because of general inflation, he said, states have the power to tackle affordability by targeting unfair and deceptive business practices.

“It’s probably less complicated than people think,” he said. “If it looks unfair, if it seems unfair, it probably is unfair.”

Experts note that state AGs cannot fully replace the breadth of work once undertaken by the federal government. And the growing interest in large, multistate cases can divert attorneys general office resources from other pressing local consumer matters, they add. 

Still, big businesses have taken note of the changing landscape: Once considered secondary enforcers of consumer protections, states are increasingly defining the rules around pricing transparency, subscription service fees and algorithmic pricing. That decentralization means businesses can face quickly evolving, different or even contradictory rules in different states.

“It means enforcement is moving closer to home,” said Ashley Taylor, a partner at law firm Troutman Pepper Locke. His work includes helping clients with compliance issues, government investigations and enforcement efforts brought by state AGs. Though states are working less with the federal government, he said, companies haven’t seen a drop in regulation — instead, they face the prospect of highly coordinated state investigations and lawsuits. 

Democratic and Republican attorneys general have hired former CFPB employees, expanded their consumer protection staff and budgets for outside counsel,and increasingly specialize in different areas of business law. Indiana and Illinois, for example, have built a reputation for investigating data breaches and privacy issues, Taylor said. 

The consumer work of AGs stands in stark contrast to their splashy partisan work that often garners headlines. Republicans, for example, often sued Democratic President Joe Biden over environmental, labor and gun policies. And Democratic AGs have filed over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, challenging federal funding cuts, immigration enforcement efforts and tariffs on foreign goods.  

“That’s a whole different world,” Taylor said. “If you’re in business, if you have a consumer protection concern, an antitrust concern, or privacy concern, it’s nonpartisan, completely nonpartisan.”

Bipartisan state enforcement

Tong said not having a federal partner makes it harder for his office to do all the work it wants, but he said he’s not ignoring any consumer complaints. “You probably don’t get to it as fast as you want or as completely as you want.”

As one example, he pointed to an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, which owns hundreds of concert venues, a promotion business and Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket-selling platform. The Biden administration started that investigation, but the Trump administration and six Republican-led states dropped the effort, with a surprise $280 million settlement reached in the first days of the trial. 

Still, 33 states and Washington, D.C., continued with the trial, ultimately convincing a federal jury that Ticketmaster operated as a monopoly and harmed consumers. In the second phase of the trial, the court will now weigh financial penalties and potentially force the company to break apart.

“After the federal government abandoned us, Democrats and Republicans hung in there and we got a guilty verdict against Live Nation/Ticketmaster for illegally using their monopoly to rip us all off,” Tong said. 

Following the April verdict, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach was among the Republicans celebrating the decision. A staunch Trump supporter, Kobach said he refused to accept the federal government’s “weak settlement.”

In a similar bipartisan effort, 46 states recently won a $45 million with Block Inc., the owner of peer-to-peer payment service CashApp. States alleged that the company illegally misled consumers about the safety of its app and failed to protect users from fraud, though the firm did not admit to wrongdoing in the settlement.

Tong said states pursued the case because of lax oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which under the Biden administration ordered the firm to pay $175 million for failing to protect users.

“States have a lot of authority. They’re doing what they can to fill the gaps, but the hole left by the gutting of the CFPB is impossible to entirely fill,” said Amanda Fischer, policy director and chief operating officer at Better Markets, a nonprofit consumer and investor watchdog group. 

Since its inception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helped more than 200 million Americans recoup over $21 billion from financial services companies. That included restitution for improper junk fees, deceptive lending and the highly publicized banking scandal at Wells Fargo revolving around mortgages, auto loans and checking accounts.

Fischer said the agency has now undertaken a “reverse-Robin Hood campaign,” using its might to enrich financial and tech firms instead of consumers. 

State AGs can’t fully focus on replacing CFPB’s actions, since they must also devote resources to criminal and civil state court cases and local business complaints. And Democratic AGs are devoting time and money to ongoing legal battles to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau funded. 

“So they have to spend resources to even have an operational bureau, let alone pick up the work that they’re not doing.”

The CFPB did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.  

Earlier this month, acting CFPB Director Russell Vought told a U.S. Senate committee that the agency had been “weaponized” under the past administration. He said overregulation had stifled innovation, reduced consumer choice and increased prices. 

Focus on affordability 

While states have worked on consumer issues for years, legal experts have noticed a heightened focus on affordability efforts from state AGs of both parties.

Republican attorneys general in Indiana and Georgia recently warned retailers against pocketing the savings from temporary suspensions of their state gas taxes. 

Neither office responded to requests for comment. In May, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said complaints to his office resulted in 30 formal price gouging investigations as well as informal inquiries into price fluctuations at another 100 gas stations.

His office created an online dashboard tracking live gas prices across more than 4,600 Indiana gas stations. 

“We know every penny matters right now and are committed to making sure you are treated fairly at the pump during this time,” Rokita said in an April news release. 

In Texas, the Republican AG is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether meatpackers are driving up beef prices. And Washington state’s Democratic AG is suing a grocery chain over allegedly overcharging customers through deceptive Buy One Get One Free promotions.

Darwin Roberts, a lawyer at the Morgan Lewis firm and a previous deputy attorney general in Washington state, said many of those issues have long been in the wheelhouse of AG offices. They’re just being framed differently in the era of inflation. 

“They’d be doing this work,” he said. “But the fact that it dovetails so closely with this issue that’s becoming really politically important causes them to emphasize it.”

Roberts said state laws banning deceptive or unfair trade practices are purposefully broad, allowing attorneys general to challenge evolving business practices or emerging markets. 

For businesses, the changing regulatory landscape presents new challenges. Companies must navigate a landscape of varying individual state regulations or investigations, the possibility of lawsuits from coalitions of multiple states and potential federal enforcement.

“It can be a difficult environment for businesses,” Roberts said, “because they’re facing a range of regulators looking at them.”

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“As governor, I will take immediate action and support a conditional moratorium on data centers to ensure they cover one hundred percent of their utility costs, exclusively build with union labor, operate with full transparency, adhere to Ohio’s environmental standards, support the needs of local communities, and bring jobs to former industrial areas that have been left behind,” Acton said in a statement released by her campaign. “Costs are too high, and Ohio families and businesses need protection from data centers driving up costs. Ohio is open for business, but we are not up for sale. If you do not meet these conditions, we do not want you in Ohio.”

The announcement puts the Democratic nominee closer to the position taken by a string of Ohio communities — Tiffin among them — that have paused data center development while the state works out who pays for the electricity, water and infrastructure the facilities consume.

What the conditions would require

According to the campaign, Acton would require data centers and their investors to cover the full cost of the gas, water and electricity they use rather than shifting it to taxpayers or ratepayers, to invest in their own generation, and to demonstrate that a project would not raise electricity prices or degrade regional reliability. The campaign said low-cost, carbon-free and net-zero energy paired with storage would get priority.

The remaining conditions, as described by the campaign, would require that construction, maintenance, operation and upgrades be performed by union workers trained in Ohio; that Ohio’s long-term tax incentives be reined in and paired with clawback provisions; that nondisclosure agreements and the secrecy surrounding site negotiations end; that new facilities be built on brownfields and previously developed industrial sites rather than farmland or the centers of communities; and that air quality and groundwater standards not be loosened for the industry.

The release did not say how Acton would put a moratorium in place — through legislation, executive action, or the state boards a governor appoints. Ohio’s governor names the members of the Ohio Power Siting Board, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and the Ohio Tax Credit Authority, the panels that site, regulate and subsidize these projects.

The announcement is an escalation of a position Acton has held since spring. Her ActOn Costs Agenda, released April 6, called for guardrails rather than a bar to entry: data centers paying their own energy costs, union labor on the job, and restoration of the energy efficiency and renewable standards gutted by House Bill 6. Monday’s statement keeps those demands and attaches a consequence for companies that will not meet them.

Ramaswamy’s position

Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy has made data center growth central to his campaign and has rejected the idea of a ban. At a town hall in Strongsville this month, he framed the choice as one between two failures of leadership.

“I think we need a leader who just doesn’t say, ‘Hey, open it up, and it’s a free-for-all,’ or a leader who says that they ban it because ‘I don’t understand it,’” Ramaswamy said, according to News 5 Cleveland’s July 23 report on where the candidates stand.

Ramaswamy has said the industry should shoulder its own energy demand. “If you’re going to use a whole bunch of energy as a demand user, a hyperscaler, you should bring at least the energy that you’re using,” he said. On incentives, he told the station’s reporter that the state should stop subsidizing older, more resource-intensive facilities: “We should not be given state incentives to bring something here that guzzles water and drives up electric bills.”

The distance between the two is less about whether data centers should pay their own way — both say they should — than about what happens if they will not. Acton would hold projects out of the state until conditions are met. Ramaswamy would sort good projects from bad ones and keep building.

The local stakes

Seneca County has already been through this argument at the council table. Tiffin City Council voted 6-0 on Monday, April 20, to freeze data center development inside city limits for up to a year under Resolution 2026-42, giving officials time to write zoning rules or decide against the facilities entirely. No data center had been proposed in Tiffin. Findlay’s council approved its own 12-month pause the next day, following earlier moratoriums in Maumee and Waterville.

The state’s stalled attempt at data center rules also runs through this corner of Ohio. House Bill 646 was introduced by Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, and Rep. Kellie Deeter, R-Norwalk, and passed the House unanimously in March as a bill creating a study commission. “This legislation originated in the heart of the 88th district, in response to my constituents,” Click said at the time. His district covers all of Sandusky and Seneca counties, Tiffin included.

The version that cleared the House also directed the commission to study “reports of foreign propaganda intended to create opposition to data centers,” a clause listed alongside water use and farmland impacts. The libertarian Reason Foundation submitted testimony urging senators to delete it.

Republican leaders then routed the issue to a new joint committee led by other chairs, reducing Click to an invited participant on his own bill, and senators rewrote it into a regulatory package — a separate electric rate class for data centers, water monitoring and reporting requirements, a provision making nondisclosure agreements subject to Ohio public records law, and a cut in the sales tax break for future projects. The rewrite made it out of Senate committee, then ran out of votes in both chambers before the June recess amid a fight over the tax exemption. It has since been sent back to committee — the version posted on the legislature’s website is labeled as re-referred to Senate committee — and it has never come to a floor vote in the Senate. Lawmakers are not due back in Columbus until November. Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, the Senate president pro tempore, sits on the joint legislative committee studying the industry.

Several of Acton’s conditions track provisions already negotiated in that bill. Two do not: no version of H.B. 646 has required union labor, and the Senate rewrite treated brownfield siting as grounds for a larger tax break rather than a requirement.

The money behind the fight

Ohio Department of Taxation figures show the state granted almost $1.57 billion in sales tax exemptions on data center equipment and construction materials last year — nearly 12 times what officials had projected. Gov. Mike DeWine directed the Ohio Tax Credit Authority on May 27 to stop accepting new exemption applications while lawmakers study the industry. The bills landing in mailboxes have moved the other direction, with summer electric costs climbing across the region.

The sitting governor has drawn a different conclusion from the same numbers. In June, DeWine told local officials wary of data centers to negotiate harder rather than refuse, saying communities should “be aggressive” in seeking a deal and “don’t just take what they give you” — while rejecting the idea of shutting the industry out of Ohio altogether. That is the position Acton is now running against from the left, and the one Ramaswamy is running on from the right.

Washington is pushing a voluntary version of the same idea. On July 23, the Trump administration rolled out a Ratepayer Protection Pledge asking hyperscalers, utilities and developers to build, bring or buy the power their facilities need and to cover the delivery infrastructure. More than 200 organizations have signed, including AEP Ohio. The pledge carries no penalty for companies that do not sign. Acton’s conditions would be requirements.

Ohio’s general election is Nov. 3. The winner will appoint the boards that decide where these facilities go, what they pay and who covers the difference.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The money is a small fraction of what the Republican has raised. Husted’s campaign reported $14.35 million in total receipts and $9.42 million in cash on hand at the end of June. The contributions traced to data center and utility interests amount to less than half of one percent of that.

But the donations arrive as data centers have become one of the defining issues of Husted’s race against Democrat Sherrod Brown — and as Husted’s own record of recruiting those facilities to Ohio has become the subject of television advertising.

Federal filings show corporate political action committees affiliated with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle gave the campaign $16,000 combined. Employees and executives of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle contributed another $28,750, including two Oracle contributors who each gave $7,000, the maximum allowed for the primary and general elections combined. The filings list their occupations as the company’s chief technology officer and founder, and its president and chief executive.

Corporate PACs are funded by voluntary employee contributions rather than company treasuries.

A further $25,000 came from the PACs of three electricity companies with direct exposure to data center growth: American Electric Power, Duke Energy and Vistra. AEP’s Ohio utility serves the central Ohio corridor where much of the state’s data center construction has concentrated.

Husted introduced a ratepayer bill this month. It has no cosponsors.

On Thursday, July 16, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would push states to make large electricity users — data centers among them — cover the cost of the power generation and transmission upgrades built to serve them, rather than letting utilities spread those costs across household bills.

“If America wants to lead the world in AI and strengthen our national security, we have to build the energy infrastructure to support it,” Husted said in announcing the measure, adding that the country must do so “without passing the costs on to working families and small businesses.”

The bill’s reach is narrower than its title suggests. It works through the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, a 1978 law whose federal standards require state regulators only to consider adopting them. Nothing in the measure compels a state to act.

The bill has attracted no cosponsors and was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, said last month that he did not have data center legislation identified as a priority. Husted’s office has said he is encouraged by bipartisan support for a companion measure in the House and intends to keep working with the committee. That House version, sponsored by Reps. Gabe Evans, a Colorado Republican, and Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, is the vehicle that has actually advanced.

Husted has also worked the issue outside Congress. On Wednesday, March 4, he joined President Donald Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and technology executives at a White House roundtable promoting the administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary commitment under which companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI and xAI would build, buy or bring their own power supply for new artificial intelligence data centers.

“Requiring companies to fund their own power protects working people from higher bills,” Husted said in a statement released by his office that day.

Husted told the Washington Examiner this month that siting decisions should stay local. “Data centers are, and should remain, a local decision. Every community has different priorities, and local leaders are best equipped to decide what’s right for their residents,” he said in a comment to the publication. He said many communities welcome the facilities for tax revenue and construction jobs, while others have “legitimate questions and concerns, and those local decisions should be respected.”

A record that goes back to 2019

The advertising against Husted reaches back to his tenure as lieutenant governor.

In November 2019, Google secured two separate incentives for a central Ohio data center: a 15-year abatement on New Albany property taxes, and a 15-year state sales tax exemption estimated at $43.5 million and approved by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority.

The local abatement was granted under Ohio’s Community Reinvestment Area law, which exempts the value of newly constructed buildings but, as New Albany notes, does not abate the increased value assessed on the land itself. The city argues that describing such agreements as “tax breaks” wrongly implies a company owes nothing at all, and says its abatements never permanently excuse a corporation from paying taxes.

Husted defended the incentives at the time and said the economic return would outweigh the cost. He said the investment would fuel the state’s economy for years and give Ohio a case to make globally, adding that when the question is where the tech hub of the Midwest is, he believed the answer would be Columbus. He also said charging sales tax would have driven Google out of Ohio.

Brown’s campaign has built an advertisement around that history. The ad calls Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio” — a characterization the ad attributes to The Plain Dealer, not to Brown himself — and says Husted cut tax deals and sped approvals while residents absorbed rising electricity costs. “Jon Husted: Who’s he really working for?” the narrator asks.

Brown has separately called for Ohio to end its data center tax break altogether.

The race

Husted and Brown meet on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in a special election for the Senate seat previously held by Vice President JD Vance. Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted to the seat in early 2025. The Cook Political Report rates the contest a toss-up.

Brown, who represented Ohio in the Senate for three terms, lost to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ticket booths opened at 8 a.m., the same hour Junior and Senior Fair exhibitors were required to have all entries in place. The fair runs through Sunday, Aug. 2.

The grounds actually came to life a day earlier, on Sunday evening, when Senior Fair harness racing with pari-mutuel wagering ran at the grandstand. Racing returns Monday at 6 p.m.

The scale of the youth side of the fair is substantial. The market livestock exhibitor list posted by the fair, generated Sunday, lists 750 market animal entries from 455 individual young exhibitors — led by meat goats, market hogs, broiler meat pens, dairy feeders and market lambs. Those animals go through the Junior Fair Livestock Sale beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, with champions of each species selling first.

Monday: Farm Bureau Day, veterans free

Monday is Seneca County Farm Bureau Day, and veterans are admitted free all day. A Senior Fair dinner for veterans and their families is set for 5:30 p.m. in the Entertainment Building.

The night belongs to the Junior Fair. The 6:30 p.m. program in the Education Building includes the crowning of the fair king and queen, 4-H awards, and induction into the county Agricultural Hall of Fame. Adam Sendelbach performs in the Entertainment Building from 7 to 9 p.m.

Daytime judging Monday covers poultry, general livestock, floral, crafts and collections, with the dairy show at 1 p.m. and the Senior Fair swine judging at 6 p.m. Kids activities run in the Booth Building from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of the fair, and a fishing pond outside the Youth Center is open from 2 to 4 p.m. daily.

The rest of the week

Tuesday is North Central Electric Cooperative Day, with free admission for anyone 60 and older. Goat shows start at 8 a.m., and the evening brings the 4-H style revue at 6:30 p.m., the antique machinery parade at 6:30 p.m. and the pig scramble at 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday is Ag Credit Day. Baked goods entries are accepted from 9 a.m. to noon, judged at noon and auctioned at 5:30 p.m. Presley Eastlick plays the Farm Stage from 5 to 7 p.m. The grandstand headliner is Anne Wilson, the Grammy-nominated Christian country singer from Lexington, Kentucky, best known for the platinum single “My Jesus,” with special guest Band Reeves. The fair’s schedule lists the show at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday is Your Legacy Federal Credit Union Day. The draft horse and pony hitch show runs at 9:30 a.m. at the grandstand, the Junior Fair swine show at 5 p.m., the Kyle Garrison Memorial Livestock Scramble at 6 p.m. and Nick Foos on the Farm Stage from 7 to 9 p.m.

Friday is Mercy Health Tiffin Hospital Day, with PeeWee showmanship in all arenas from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and a kiddie tractor pull from 4 to 6 p.m. Bulls and Barrels takes the grandstand at 7 p.m.; admission is $10. Seventy80 plays the Entertainment Building.

Saturday is Clouse Electric Day and the busiest day on the schedule: the livestock sale at 9 a.m., a classic tractor and truck pull at 9 a.m., a cheerleading contest at 10 a.m., horseshoe pitching at 10 a.m., a garden tractor pull at noon, and the best dressed animal contest at 5 p.m. The demolition derby closes the night at 7 p.m., at $10 for grandstand seats and $15 for the infield.

Sunday is Clouse Construction Day and the final day. A church service opens the morning at 9 a.m. in the Education Building, Senior Fair members elect directors between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the feeder calf sale runs at 1 p.m., and the sub eating contest is at 2 p.m. The Ohio State Tractor Pullers Association closes the fair with a pull at 5 p.m.; grandstand and infield tickets are $20.

If you go

The fairgrounds are at 100 Hopewell Ave. in Tiffin. Admission and season passes are sold at the gates and through the fair’s online ticket portal; current rates are posted on the fair’s website. The Senior Fair office can be reached at 419-447-7888.

A full day-by-day breakdown is available on the fair’s schedule page, and the grandstand and Farm Stage lineup is listed on its entertainment page.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, says the administration violated a federal privacy law, administrative law and the First Amendment by targeting people who observed and protested aggressive immigration enforcement, including during the deadly operation in Minneapolis in January. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a legal group that advocates for privacy issues related to technology, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Amid a nationwide surge of immigration enforcement that has included federal agents shooting and killing protesters, observers and immigrants, opponents “did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights” by assembling, protesting and recording DHS agents’ activity in public, the suit says.

“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents,” the suit says.

Officers with the DHS agencies Immigration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol killed two observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in incidents 17 days apart in January. 

‘Driven home by ICE’

ICE and Border Patrol agents used facial recognition technology, license plate readers and other technology to identify protesters and observers. The agents would then use that information in efforts to intimidate and retaliate against protesters, the suit says. 

Federal immigration officers addressed many legal observers by name, despite having never spoken to them. In Minnesota, legal observers tailing DHS agents in a car would commonly be led back to their own home addresses, according to the suit.

“The experience … is so widespread that Minnesota residents have coined a term for it: being ‘driven home by ICE,’” the suit said.

The practice shows that DHS is no longer following its own 2023 policy on facial recognition, the suit says. The department quietly removed the policy from its website — omitting it even from a set of archived pages — during President Donald Trump’s first month back in office, the suit says.

The complaint argues that amounted to a policy change, which DHS did not conduct through the process agencies must follow under the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The department also retaliated against protesters and observers by revoking their status in DHS trusted traveler programs TSA Precheck and Global Entry, the suit says.

Nicole Cleland, a Minnesota woman who is one of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, said Global Entry status was revoked three days after an encounter with a Border Patrol agent whom she was following at a safe distance, according to the suit.

Chilling rights

The suit alleges DHS’ actions have had a chilling effect on First Amendment-protected activity. 

Cleland has stopped observing DHS operations for fear of further retaliation, according to the suit.

The two other individuals who brought the suit, Jacquelyn Ivey of South Carolina and Anna Walker of California, said they experienced “fear, anxiety and emotional distress” following their interactions with DHS officers.

The suit also mentions activity in Maine, North Carolina and Chicago.

DHS response

In response to a request to DHS for comment, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said trusted traveler status can be denied for “inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

“Global Entry or other CBP Trusted Traveler Program memberships are not revoked because someone exercises their First Amendment rights,” the spokesperson wrote. “Membership may be denied or revoked for reasons such as criminal activity (including pending charges or warrants), violations of customs or immigration laws, or inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

The spokesperson added that travelers whose Global Entry is denied or revoked can ask for additional review. A Global Entry ombudsman provides “additional oversight” of some cases, the spokesperson said. 

A denial of Global Entry is not an impediment to travel, they wrote.

DHS did not respond to questions about its policies for recording or using facial recognition on observers.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

They have a different mission than the nonpartisan election observers long regarded as bulwarks of credibility, and there’s concern that voters will be confused who’s there to influence them and who’s there to protect them.

The growing presence of partisans creates the possibility of even more conflict in the November midterm elections, voting rights advocates worry. They fear confusion between the two groups will contribute to an ongoing breakdown of voter trust in the process.

“This is a polarized country. There is the risk that people will see other poll monitor programs designed for intimidation and lump us all together,” said Dan Vicuna, senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause. 

His organization is part of a coalition of voting rights advocates that trains and sends nonpartisan workers to the polls. They ensure voters won’t be intimidated and that counting and recounting will proceed properly.

The political parties, which have their own poll watching programs, each maintain the other side is to blame for any confusion.

“The Trump administration has sought to break longstanding norms surrounding observers and monitors,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., the House elections subcommittee’s top Democrat.

Republicans argue that election integrity has been under assault for years and despite virtually no evidence, they maintain results in key state and presidential races were subject to fraud.

President Donald Trump in his address to the nation on July 16 claimed “evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.”

The result so far is a Trump-inspired redrawing of congressional lines in some states to favor Republicans, a so-far unsuccessful push to have Congress pass a law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship and show ID at the polls, and the Supreme Court’s weakening of Voting Rights Act protections against poll intimidation.

Many eyes on the process

Poll watching takes many forms, depending on state laws and policies. Poll watchers and workers are often outside the polls, promoting their interests. 

Monitors, on the other hand, are trained observers.

Common Cause explains that poll monitors are “people who are assigned to observe the polls on behalf of a campaign or political party and certified by the election officials – often inside the polling place.” In certain states they can challenge voter eligibility

Some poll watchers are stationed outside polling places. “They may be explicitly partisan and for a particular candidate or party. These individuals do not have the right to enter the polling place,” Common Cause explains.

Common Cause is part of an Election Protection program that concentrates on helping voters and election officials in areas where turnout could be low or there’s concern about voter intimidation.

“The focus of our program is to be nonpartisan problem solvers,” said Vicuna. Depending on a state’s laws, it can redirect people to the correct polling place. 

Monitors, who go through a training program, can make sure a partisan poll worker does not try to overstep their authority or that a voter is not showing up because they fear immigration officials could be present.

Another highly regarded system is the “observer” program Congress approved two years ago by a 413-1 vote in the House and by voice vote in the Senate.

“The purpose of the program is to have House of Representatives staffers, designated and credentialed by the (House Administration) Committee, on-site at the election office or facility in close or difficult elections to observe the election procedures to ensure the certified winner was chosen in a free and fair election,” says a House Administration Committee fact sheet.

It stresses “election observers are not campaign staff and may not advocate or represent any candidate or position.”  

The program has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and won plaudits recently from Rep.Laurel Lee, R-Florida, chair of the House elections subcommittee. 

“It promotes transparency, gives election officials another set of eyes on the process, and helps candidates and voters better understand how elections are conducted,” she said of the program. “Together, these benefits strengthen public confidence in our elections.”

A system that works?

The subcommittee held a hearing on July 15 on poll activities. Despite the fierce battles over voting rights, the hearing was a calm, policy-driven session.

It featured two local election officials, Wesley Wilcox of Marion County, Florida, and Lance Reed of Summit County, Ohio, describing how they strive to avoid any show of partisanship or efforts to influence voters.

Summit County, which includes Akron, is heavily Democratic. Marion County is heavily Republican.

“We have a perfect opportunity to counter many of the false narratives that circulate online. We can educate people about how elections actually work,” Wilcox said.

Reed described how officials in his county had a “positive experience” with the congressional program and were unaware of the observers’ political opinions.

Sewell expressed a broader concern, that the combination of Republican efforts to dispatch poll watchers, combined with court decisions that have arguably weakened the Voting Rights Act, could lead to more intimidation of minority voters by the GOP.

She asked Reed where he saw the line “between a legitimate election observation and conduct that risks intimidating voters and interfering with or disrupting the work of election officials?” And, she asked, what safeguards could be most effective in preventing observers from promoting partisan views?

“Luckily, we haven’t run into any issues along those lines,” he said, adding many of the local observers are people election officials know well who have done the job for years.

Suspicious political parties 

Beyond the calm congressional talk and nonpartisan Election Protection efforts, the two parties are increasingly suspicious of one another’s activity at the polls.

Republicans in 2024 sent poll watchers to many states, part of a massive effort that officials said would assure election integrity.

“Every ballot. Every precinct. Every processing center. Every county. Every battleground state. We will be there,” said Lara Trump, who at the time was a Republican National Committee co-chair. The party sent thousands of volunteers to keep an eye on polls in 18 potential swing states.

Republicans sent congressional observers to Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Madison, Wisconsin, that year, said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York, the House Committee on Administration’s top Democrat. He said no congressional Democratic observers were sent. 

“Their departure from the long-established norms suggested an unprecedented attempt to use the program for partisan gain,” Morelle said. The Republican National Committee has not responded to a request for comment.

Trump praised the GOP’s election watch effort and vowed to keep it going this year.

He recalled in a May Truth Social post how “the Republicans had an Election Integrity Army in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote.”

He said, “We will be doing the same again in 2026, but it will be much bigger and stronger. All Americans should have their voices be heard by casting a vote. Be assured this Election will be fair!”

So far, “The RNC‘s already on the ground, deploying staff in 17 states, registering voters, and aggressively fighting to win in November – and we will not stop until we do,” said Chairman Joe Gruters in a May post on X. The states have not been identified.

Democrats are fighting back with their own poll watching programs.

The Democratic National Committee says it is working to “develop comprehensive counter-programming to potential GOP voter intimidation and election subversion.”

It plans to do this using “poll observer deployment, constitutional observers, escalation protocols, and coordinated legal and operational support.”

The DNC would not provide details.  

In addition, Senate Democratic leaders last month announced a new program they said would “train Senate staff to serve as official election observers and protect against any meddling in the 2026 midterm elections.”

They said in a statement “Their role will be to observe, document, and report objective information to assist the Senate in addressing any potentially contested Senate elections and to inform future legislation and oversight work related to federal election administration.”

Voters seem to agree on one thing. “I guess at the end of the day, public trust is paramount, and public trust right now is on the edge,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, an election subcommittee member. “It’s the most fragile it has been in our electoral system in quite some time.” 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

As of Friday morning, American importers will now pay an extra 10% to 12.5% of a product’s value on most goods from nearly 60 countries, including Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among dozens more. The tariffs could affect 99.4% of imports, according to U.S. trade authorities.

The fresh round of import taxes, first announced late Thursday afternoon, replace a blanket 10% tariff on global goods under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which expired at midnight Friday. Those tariffs invited new legal challenges, including from Democratic-led states.

The latest tariffs were imposed after the Office of the United States Trade Representative allegedly found forced labor conditions in all of the economies investigated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement Thursday that Trump “recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains.  The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.”

Supreme Court ruling

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced two broad investigations in March, less than one month after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s unprecedented global tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, commonly called IEEPA. 

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s blow to his IEEPA tariffs, which he announced in early April 2025 on what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” the government was on the hook for roughly $166 billion in refunds to American importers who already paid the duties.

The latest batch of duties, in effect as of Friday, is the second round of import taxes the Trump administration announced this week. The White House introduced 50% tariffs on most Canadian imports Monday, triggering the duties under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

The Depression-era provision, which has never before been enforced, authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce.

States Newsroom has spoken with numerous small business owners since 2025 about the effects tariffs have on their capacity to keep prices steady, hire employees, invest in new equipment and inventory, and just generally remain in operation.

‘Ridiculously blunt’

Critics slammed the administration’s new series of sweeping duties on a large swath of the country’s imports.

Scott Lincicome, vice president for general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote Thursday the outcome of the Section 301 investigations were “clearly predetermined” and “both ridiculously blunt and wildly out of proportion to any measurable economic distortion.”

“And the whole thing establishes precedent for an ‘automatic tariff generator’ that Trump or a future president can deploy at will. It makes a mockery of a real issue and might poison legitimate reform. And Congress probably won’t do anything about it,” Lincicome wrote.

Some Republicans in the U.S. House rebuffed Trump’s tariff agenda in February, but legislative change has not emerged. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Thursday the president has “has bled the inflation-battered American people dry with his tariffs.”

“Now he’s coming back for more. Trump’s chaotic tariff taxes have made life harder and more expensive for the American people. Families are paying more for everyday necessities. Small business owners are struggling to keep the lights on. Manufacturers are shedding jobs and farmers are getting squeezed. Meanwhile, Trump and his billionaire family and friends get richer on the backs of working families,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates consumer prices could rise up to 1% under the new tariffs, increasing household costs by roughly $1,100.

If the duties remained in place, the U.S. would gain about $2 trillion in revenue over the next decade, though the number would likely be lower after accounting for negative impacts on the economy, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

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 online briefing hosted by federal union leaders Thursday, speakers said the reorganization process USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has led will amount to widespread layoffs, as many workers will choose not to relocate across the country. 

Rollins’ effort, launched one year ago Friday, would move department staff away from the nation’s capital. The department should have no more than 2,000 employees in the region, according to a July 2025 memo Rollins signed. 

Kevin Shea, former acting secretary of the USDA under President Joe Biden, said the relocation could impact the department’s ability to carry out its core services such as fighting pests and diseases, protecting forest land and ensuring food safety. 

“All of this requires an adequate and qualified workforce,” he said. “These new proposed actions, added to the damage already done, all but ensures that we’ll not have one.”

Department layoffs

Since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, the USDA has lost more than 20,000 employees,  according to Office of Personnel Management data. Most left through early retirement or buyouts offered by the U.S. Doge Service, union officials said. 

But speakers Thursday warned that thousands more will choose to leave instead of relocating across the country to a regional USDA office. Those offices, as outlined in Rollins’ July 2025 memo, include Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. 

In that memo, she wrote that the relocation will ensure that the USDA is “closer to the people it serves while achieving savings to the American taxpayer.” 

But most USDA staff already work outside the nation’s capital. The department had about 4,600 employees in Washington when Rollins announced the reorganization efforts last year. A majority of the staff reductions have come from across the country. 

‘A forced choice’

Genny Kotyk, a Forest Service employee and president of the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council, said the impacts of federal cuts are already being felt. 

She said that the employee reductions and reorganizations of the Forest Service, which is the largest U.S. firefighting agency, are affecting the response to the damaging wildfire season currently impacting Canada and some Midwestern and northern states. 

In 2025, the Forest Service saw more than 6,500 employees leave through a combination of layoffs, buyouts and early retirements, according to OPM. 

“We’re looking to lose, potentially, another 6,500 employees that are going to be forced to either change their job duties, have a longer commute, or move completely across the country, or resign, or retire,” she said. “Forty percent of those employees have some kind of fire qualification, and because they’re higher level staff, they typically also have a more seasoned career and have higher level fire qualifications.”

Kotyk said that her union polled nearly 3,000 of its bargaining unit employees about the reorganization, and only 7% said they’d be willing to relocate. 

Chearice Vaughn, who works for a USDA office that oversees grants and loans for rural development projects, said she and 45 members of her team received a notice to relocate from Washington to Dallas, Texas. She said of those who received relocation notices, 86% were people of color. 

“It’s a forced choice: uproot your entire life, or leave federal service,” Vaughn, also president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3870, said. 

Still, she said, it’s not about “45 names on a spreadsheet in Washington.”

“It’s about whether the next little town waiting on clean water gets it in time,” she said. “It’s about whether the next small business owner in a town with no other lender gets a chance at all. We built these things once. We’re asking to be allowed to keep building them.”

Legal challenge

Although USDA is continuing with its relocations and department-wide reorganization, some employees are seeking to block the change. 

Several national labor unions, as part of their efforts over the past year to block the Trump administration’s reshaping of the federal government, filed a request for an injunction in federal court in San Francisco seeking to block USDA from ordering the relocations. 

The case is ongoing. 

USDA spokespeople did not return a message seeking comment Friday.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The recommendation came after a competitive 26-19-4 vote in South Carolina’s favor over Nevada and New Hampshire. The decision is now pending final confirmation from a full vote of the DNC next month. 

If finalized, it will mark the second straight presidential primary cycle led by South Carolina, after the Palmetto State served as the first contest in 2024.

The committee also voted to expand the maximum number of early primaries to six, up from the base of four — with one state representing each region of the DNC. 

The committee voted in favor of New Hampshire, Michigan and Nevada to make up the other three early primaries that represent regions. New Mexico, whose Feb. 15 primary is ahead of Michigan’s, and Virginia were selected as the additional two states to hold an early primary. 

Notably, Iowa, which for years was home to first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses for Democrats, will likely not be part of the early group in 2028, if the committee’s recommendations are upheld. 

That decision came despite a pitch from Iowans to Democratic leaders that the party cannot afford to lose Iowa voters or the input of rural Midwesterners.

Iowa prevailed as first in the nation in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, but many Democrats sought a shift away from the state after significant controversies with how the caucuses were run in 2020. There were long delays in reporting the results, and no winner was declared on the night of the caucus. 

In addition, former President Joe Biden backed South Carolina as the new leader in the nominating process after his victory there in 2020 propelled him to the front of the presidential field ahead of Super Tuesday.

Voting rights ruling cited

During the meeting Friday, many committee members championed South Carolina as a choice from the party to better reach its Southern constituents and base of Black voters. 

Committee member Donna Brazile, a national Democratic consultant and two-time DNC chair, was the first to recommend South Carolina. Citing the recent Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, she said Democrats must break down the barriers many Americans face to have their voices heard. 

“We must start our process where democracy must still be fought for in the full view of the nation, where our coalitions can be tested, strengthened, and made real,” she said in emotional remarks, her voice occasionally wavering. “ We’re the party that will give every American citizen, every eligible voter a seat at our table, and again, that starts in the South, (with) Black voters.” 

The committee’s co-chairs, Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt, Jr., said in a statement that the calendar is “rigorous, fair, and efficient” and the “most diverse calendar Democrats have ever had for an open nominating contest.”

After committee members voted for their recommendations, DNC Chair Ken Martin in a public statement praised “their diligent work and commitment to a fair and transparent selection process.”

“As a result of their hard work, today, Democrats took a critical step toward retaking the White House in 2028 by ensuring we have the strongest possible nominee,” he said. 

The early group

The committee’s recommended dates for the six primary contests are as follows: 

• South Carolina on Jan. 22, 2028

• Nevada on Feb. 1, 2028

• New Hampshire on Feb. 8, 2028

• New Mexico on Feb. 15, 2028

• Michigan on Feb. 22, 2028

• Virginia on Feb. 29, 2028

The full DNC will vote on the proposal during its next meeting, which will span from Aug. 13-15. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Trump administration announced in June it will move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office for Civil Rights to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

The special education office is responsible for making sure states follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal law that ensures students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education. 

The civil rights office investigates complaints from students and families.

Dee Marks sits on the Member Organization Council, an arm under the governing board of the Ohio Coalition for the Education of Children with Disabilities.

“For special education in Ohio, it means the process of children with disabilities getting their needs met just got significantly more complicated,” Marks said.

“There’s significant fear that it’s going to degrade the programs and services that have historically been provided under IDEA to the point where students with disabilities will no longer be educated to the level that the law dictates that they should be educated to.” 

About 14% of Ohio students receive special education services, said Jennifer Webb, past president for the Council for Exceptional Children’s Ohio chapter. 

“It puts special education back 50 years to when we were diagnosing and trying to fix kids versus identifying them to give them the services they need to help them learn the best,” said Webb, chair of the teacher education programs at Malone University, a private university in Canton. 

This move also creates a stigma that students with disabilities are viewed as having a medical need first, instead of being viewed as a student first, Marks said. 

For example, she talked about students with disabilities who are blind. 

“You have specialized needs, but all of those needs are focused on education … that student navigating the education building, accessing the curriculum, making sure that it’s in braille or audio so that that student has access,” Marks said. 

She wonders if the focus would now be a medical first model under HHS. 

“It becomes less about them getting access to the education and more focus on that student who’s blind, which then becomes a big concern that that student might be segregated because they’re different,” Marks said. 

Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc of the United States, agrees. 

“Moving IDEA oversight into HHS pushes students with disabilities toward a medical model, where disability is treated as a diagnosis to manage instead of a natural part of human life,” she said in a statement. 

“When that mindset drives education decisions, students are more likely to be segregated, underestimated, or treated as separate from the school community.”

The U.S. Department of Education will continue to be in charge of the statutory responsibilities over special education as required by federal law, but this shifts the day-to-day operations to HHS. 

“It adds another layer of complexity because two departments are involved, and one is still going to have the ultimate responsibility for this other department underneath it, but then how does a parent of a child with a disability who has an issue navigate that?” Marks asked.  

She also wonders how HHS will be able to support students’ educational needs. 

“The Department of Education has, for decades, been in charge of special education, and all of a sudden they just carve special education out, send it to Health and Human Services, and they’re not qualified to handle that programming,” she said. 

This move further shrinks the U.S. Department of Education as President Donald Trump works to fulfill his campaign promise to dismantle the department. 

The Education Department had announced 10 earlier interagency agreements, or IAAs, with HHS, Labor, Interior, State and Treasury, which transfer several of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The strong consensus of economists surveyed on the topic this month said such a move would reduce the number of graduates in Ohio and reduce economic output. They split on whether it would even save any money.

Amid a backlash, Ramaswamy is now backing away from his call. 

“I think that we have too many duplicative programs in our universities,” Ramaswamy told a Strongsville audience earlier this month, according to Cleveland’s WEWS. 

He later added, “I want every region to have the best higher education institutions available for people in (every) region. But not every university needs to offer every program.”

Ramaswamy said something quite different  in a March 27 column in The Columbus Dispatch. He cited Ohio’s aging population and declining enrollment, and referred approvingly to the fact that Georgia eliminated nine public universities between 2011 and 2018.

He wrote that as governor, he would “identify where missions overlap, where enrollment collapse has made independence untenable, and where administrative functions can be unified without harming students.”

The result, he said, would “create a more competitive, increasingly affordable and rightsized higher education system for taxpayers and students.”

A panel of Ohio economists surveyed by Scioto Analysis wasn’t sold on the argument. None believed it would help the Ohio economy in the long run.

Asked whether they agreed that, “Reducing the number of universities in Ohio would reduce long-term economic output in the state of Ohio,” 11 agreed and four were uncertain.

None said they thought cutting the number of public universities would increase economic output.

Most of them work for public universities, so a little bias in their favor might be inherent. But Kevin Egan of the University of Toledo made a straightforward argument for why cutting public universities cuts economic output.

“On average college graduates earn more reflecting their extra value to the economy,” he wrote in the comment section of the survey. “Closing any local public university will reduce some local commuters from attending college and thus will reduce valuable workers to the economy in the long-term.”

On the other hand, Curtis Reynolds of Kent State University said the economic benefit of public colleges in Ohio might be blunted because Ohio’s leadership doesn’t do a better job of making the state attractive to young professionals.

“I am less confident about this for one simple reason: Ohio struggles to keep the college graduates that we create,” he wrote. “If the state cannot keep college graduates, then producing college graduates may matter less (from the perspective of the state).”

Reynolds didn’t mention the issue, but when CNBC earlier this month ranked Ohio its Top State for Business, it ranked it 18th for quality of life. And one thing it could have dinged Ohio on is an abortion ban passed by Republicans in the state’s gerrymandered legislature. It was later overturned by voters, but legislative Republicans continue to try to restrict abortion rights.

“And with surveys showing a sizable percentage of younger workers would not live in a state that bans abortion, we factor reproductive rights in this category as well,” CNBC said of its quality-of-life scoring.

The Ohio economists overwhelmingly agreed that getting rid of public universities would cut the portion of Ohioans who get college degrees. Twelve said it would and two were uncertain.

“It will reduce the number of bachelor’s degrees and eventually reduce the number of graduate degrees as well,” said Charles Kroncke of Mount St. Joseph University.

Ramaswamy was famously part of incoming President Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” before making an early departure.

Run by Elon Musk, another billionaire with no government experience, DOGE promised to cut waste and save taxpayers $2 trillion. 

The ramshackle effort caused widespread chaos and fired people who often had to be rehired. It saved vastly less than promised — and by some estimates, it even ended up costing taxpayers billions.

While Ramaswamy said his college-consolidation plan would save Ohioans money, the economists didn’t seem to believe the matter was so clear-cut.

Six said it would save money, six said it wouldn’t and two were uncertain.

Even some of the economists who said consolidation would save money questioned the wisdom of doing so.

“It would save money for the state in the short run but would be penny wise and pound foolish in the long run,” said Bob Gitter of Ohio Wesleyan University. “Education is one of the primary functions of government.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

More and more Ohioans are struggling to pay their utility bills. That’s one clear takeaway from the latest utility reports showing how many customers had their power shut off because of unpaid bills.

Across the state’s regulated electric utilities, an average of 7.7% of customers had their power turned off because of past-due bills for the latest reporting year, ending May 31 — a higher rate than in any of the three preceding periods, which ran between 6% and 7%.

Each customer is one household or business, so the total number of people affected would be more than the total of nearly 345,000 disconnections. The average amount customers owed when their power was cut was more than $60 greater than it was for the year before.

The company reports filed at the end of June with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission are yet one more sign of the energy affordability crisis affecting households nationwide.

“Families are put in an extremely vulnerable position when electric utilities shut off their electricity for a debt,” said Shelby Green, a research and communications manager with the Energy and Policy Institute, a national watchdog group that promotes clean energy. Among other things, no electricity typically means no ability to cool or heat homes, refrigerate food, and turn lights on at night.

The bump in disconnection rates could be driven by numerous factors — such as that families have less money left over after higher expenses for healthcare, food, and other needs. Yet the skyrocketing cost of energy certainly plays a role.

The average Ohio electricity bill grew by more than 53% from June 2021 to June 2026, according to the Electricity Price Hub from Heatmap and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That’s significantly higher than the national average growth of 32% over that time period.

Energy bills have been on the uptick for multiple reasons: among them, ballooning electricity demand, much of it from data center developers; the impacts of extreme weather; and costs linked to aging transmission and distribution equipment.

In any case, experts agree that the U.S. needs more electrons flowing onto the grid. But that’s become increasingly difficult to accomplish as President Donald Trump throws sand in the gears of companies developing wind and solar — energy sources that are often relatively quicker and cheaper to build than fossil-fueled plants. His administration has not only killed renewable energy tax incentives but also snarled permitting and — in some cases — tried to halt projects, either through stop-work orders or payoffs.

“Instead of trying to suppress all these forms of energy that we need, we need to be doing everything we can to get all that energy online,” said Jesse Lee, a senior adviser for Climate Power, which advocates for progress on climate action and clean energy. ​“Then maybe you could start to catch up with the exponential increase in demand.”

While Trump’s actions affect projects nationwide, renewables developers face a particularly steep uphill battle in Ohio. The state’s permitting rules and local restrictions for wind and solar are notoriously challenging. Pending legislation could hamstring clean energy even more.

And House Bill 6, the 2019 law at the heart of Ohio’s ongoing corruption scandal, eliminated widely available utility-run energy-efficiency programs. Those initiatives can help households use less electricity, thus lowering their costs and potentially reducing the risk of overdue bills. The Trump administration has also moved to slash support for energy-efficiency upgrades.

While many people struggle to pay their power bills, utility executives are raking in the big bucks. An April analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute shows utility profits and executive compensation surging in recent years. Bill Fehrman, head of American Electric Power, which owns an Ohio utility, made a whopping $36 million in 2025.

Unless top utility executives and shareholders pass some of their take back to customers, Green says, ​“we’ll continue to see the trend of disconnections grow.”

A closer look at Ohio’s disconnection data

The topline figures about power shutoffs hide some dramatic differences between Ohio utilities.

Overall, the companies cut electricity to households about 345,000 times from June 2025 through May 2026. The average arrears — the amount owed at the time of the shutoff — was $558, up from $495 the year before.

FirstEnergy had the lowest disconnection rate for that latest reporting year, at 3.6%, as well as the least variability in average arrears in recent years. Since 2020, the company has beefed up efforts to help customers avoid shutoffs, including ​“more flexible payment plans, increased outreach to connect people with assistance, coordination with state and local programs, and expanded protections for vulnerable customers,” spokesperson Brooke Conlan said.

AEP’s Ohio Power utility had the highest rate of disconnections, at 15% — at least double that reported by FirstEnergy, AES Ohio, or Duke Energy. That continues a trend from the three preceding years.

“Turning off someone’s power is always a last resort, and we do not disconnect customers during extreme weather,” like heat waves, said an AEP spokesperson via email. The person did not provide their name or answer Canary Media’s question about why the company’s disconnection rate was so high compared with those of Ohio’s other regulated electric utilities.

More detailed information may help the state bring utility disconnection rates down.

For years, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio resisted requiring companies to provide disconnection data based on zip code. Such data could show whether utility shutoffs disproportionately impact communities of color or other vulnerable groups.

However, a 2024 settlement obligates AEP Ohio to provide that zip code data to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, which is the official state advocate for utility consumers. The office has finished reviewing that company’s data for 2023–2024 and plans to look for trends in information for subsequent reporting periods.

“Our analysis has shown that areas with high poverty rates do not always align with areas experiencing the highest number of disconnections, making local data important,” explained Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis. ​“This information helps OCC identify trends, target concerns, and advocate for solutions that reduce disconnections and keep consumers connected to essential electric service.”

The information can also help the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel target its own outreach efforts, Willis said. That work can help people understand payment options, bill-assistance programs, and other consumer protections.

One point Willis noted that is not obvious from the lump-sum data: ​“Neighborhoods with the highest overdue utility balances were not always the same communities experiencing the most shutoffs.”

The 10 zip codes with the highest disconnection rates were primarily high-poverty areas in the cities of Columbus and Canton, where customers had their power shut off for lower average arrears than customers in rural and Appalachian areas did, Willis noted. However, it took longer for ratepayers in those less densely populated areas to get their power back. Higher accumulated debt — sometimes exceeding $4,000 — may make it more difficult for households to restore service quickly, Willis said.

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel now also receives zip code-level disconnection data from AES Ohio, as well as Northeast Ohio Natural Gas and Duke Energy Ohio’s natural gas utility, Willis noted.

Meanwhile, some Ohio advocates expect keeping up with power bills to get even more challenging as climate change drives hotter summers, requiring people to run their cooling units longer and harder.

“Now, with the summer and needing AC to even stay healthy, it seems like it’s only going to grow the problem,” said Morgan Harper, co-founder and executive director for Columbus Stand Up!, a grassroots organizing group that advocates for working people.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Tims’s bill comes in a time of increasing concern about affordability. According to the Energy Information Administration, the residential price of electricity per kilowatt hour in Ohio grew 29% from 2019 to 2024.

Utility prices are an element of family budgets where the state has a clear lever for controlling costs.

Since electricity companies are regulated entities, they negotiate with the state public utilities commission to set prices for their ratepayers. The state has the ability to freeze these prices for a year if it wishes to do so.

In a lot of ways, this sort of policy change is like a sales tax holiday, which the state of Ohio has embraced in the past, or a gas tax holiday, which legislators have bandied about recently to offset gas price increases endured by Ohio in the wake of the U.S. war with Iran.

It represents a temporary suspension of a cost for ratepayers to provide relief in the short-term.

In the short term, a utility freeze would help low-income households.

According to the United States Department of Energy, the average low-income household in Ohio spends about 11% of their income on utilities compared to 3% for a median-income household and 1% for a high-income household.

While a utility freeze would be less targeted than an earned income tax credit, it would likely disproportionately benefit low-income households.

Energy insecurity can lead to unsafe health outcomes for households.

As many as 1 in 10 U.S. households report keeping their household temperature at an “unsafe” level due to energy prices.

A utility freeze could help households stabilize their finances without forcing them to cut back on heating or cooling their homes.

Stability in energy prices could even lead to stabilization in home environments that could have spillovers into educational outcomes, like what we’ve seen with federal energy assistance programs.

While low-income households spend a larger percentage of their income on energy, evidence from the Energy Information Administration suggests the highest-income households consume energy at nearly twice the rate of the lowest-income households.

This means upper-income households could be saving twice as many dollars from a utility rate freeze as low-income households, reducing the inequality impact.

The biggest problem with a rate freeze is that it could lead utilities to defer maintenance of existing infrastructure, which could impact reliability of electricity service and grid modernization efforts.

This could lead to more blackouts, especially as growth in energy demand is leading to more users taxing the power system.

Ultimately, this policy represents a bet that utility increases over the next year will not be used for essential maintenance, efficient grid modernization, or reliability upgrades that outweigh the short-term benefit the freeze would have for household incomes, especially for low-income households.

If Rep. Tims is right, this could mean better outcomes for households at little cost to the public.

If she is wrong, the short-term benefits would come at the cost of a quicker degradation of the grid, which means more blackouts and could lead to higher costs in the long run. 

While there is part of me that wants to see if her bet is correct, there is another part of me that thinks a more targeted policy, like an earned income tax credit expansion, would achieve the same boost to household income without the potential costs to the grid.

We’ll see if the General Assembly has an appetite for either.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Included in the 139-page law are a host of provisions that will restrict some institutional investors from buying homes, ease rules for manufactured housing and expand assistance for veterans. But some of its most notable provisions give local governments greater flexibility in using federal grants while introducing new financial rewards and penalties tied to housing production. 

This is especially important because states and cities — not the federal government — control most housing choices through zoning and land use regulations. So the law tries a new approach to nudge cities toward more housing.

The law allows certain federal block-grant funding to pay for new affordable housing construction, which previously had been forbidden. And for the first time, it provides incentives and penalties for cities to build faster.

“The federal government is going to give you a whole lot of carrots, a whole lot of support, and just a couple sticks, in order to encourage these communities to start building more housing,” said Ben Harrold, senior manager of public policy at the National Apartment Association.

The measure made it through a divided Congress in part because it “doesn’t actually come with a ton of new money for these programs,” said Andy Winkler, the managing director of housing and infrastructure policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.  

“There’s not one huge idea that’s going to change the dynamics of the housing market, but there are tons of small bills and provisions and programs that collectively really could have an impact.” 

The most immediate impact of the law could be making existing federal housing dollars easier to use for municipalities. 

Mark Kudlowitz, senior policy director for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation — a national nonprofit that finances affordable housing and other projects in urban and rural communities — said localities can now make decisions on where to spend existing federal dollars to increase supply. They also can start readying their local policies for potential funds from new incentive-laden programs.

“When we make it easier for the jurisdictions to deploy the funding, it’s doing everyone a favor, from the jurisdictions that have to manage these dollars to the federal government and then the developers that are ultimately receiving it,” said Kudlowitz. “It’s just decreasing costs and creating more efficiencies within the process.” 

Although Hartford, Connecticut, Democratic Mayor Arunan Arulampalam wishes the law contained more new funding for programs, he praises a $200 million annual competitive grant program for municipalities that increase housing supply. He also welcomes a pilot grant project to help more municipalities convert vacant and abandoned buildings into housing. 

“The thing that this bill actually does is make existing federal dollars more efficient and maybe more useful,” Arulampalam said. 

The new Innovation Fund will reward communities that demonstrate increases in housing supply with $200 million in annual competitive grants from fiscal 2027 through 2031. The housing increases can come from local governments and tribes reducing parking requirements, revising minimum lot sizes and building height, creating incentives for dense development, changing zoning laws, streamlining regulatory and environmental requirements, or eliminating restrictions on accessory dwelling units. 

“The Innovation Fund for flexible spending, which I think is the core of what the federal government should be doing for communities like Hartford that are actually building housing, it’s an exciting program,” Arulampalam said.

Block grant changes

The new law also makes significant changes to the Community Development Block Grant program that could make it easier to use the money to build affordable housing. The CDBG program helps states, cities and counties finance improvements to housing, but funds also can be used for infrastructure, economic development and other projects that are geared toward low and moderate-income residents. 

The new law now allows some grants to be used for construction. And it will reduce the money given to cities that don’t meet certain construction thresholds.

Under the CDBG State Program, states receive federal money and distribute grants to eligible smaller communities. Jenna Pomponi, director of advocacy and federal programs at the Council of State Community Development Agencies, said cities under 50,000 residents and counties with fewer than 200,000 residents, known as non-entitlement communities, especially rely on state agencies to conduct environmental reviews and administer complicated federal requirements.

“In a lot of small communities, they don’t have the capacity to do all the compliance work that’s required for a government to review, so the state agencies do that for them,” Pomponi said. 

The new law now allows the construction of affordable housing to be eligible for CDBG grants, capped at 20% of the amount allocated to a recipient. Before the law, CDBG funds were used for public facilities and infrastructure, rehabilitation of existing housing, public services and economic development.  Congress provided $3.3 billion for the CDBG program in fiscal year 2026. 

“It streamlines some really outdated requirements that were adding administrative burdens onto administering these grants, so I think essentially it’ll just make the money that we have go further in communities,” Pomponi said. “In the past, folks mostly used CDBG just to repair older homes, but now they can construct new affordable housing.”

Under the law’s Build Now provision, which applies to cities and urban counties receiving CDBG entitlement funding, funding will be based on the rate at which housing has grown. Recipients at or above the median growth rate will receive bonuses, while recipients below the median generally will face a 10% reduction. 

Exemptions apply to municipalities that meet its thresholds for both lower rents and home values, places where rental vacancy rates are above the national average, areas recently impacted by a major disaster or emergency declaration within the previous three years, and those that lack legal authority to update zoning or permitting ordinances. 

“This is the first time to my knowledge that the federal government will condition resources on the actual construction of new homes,” said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “So this goes even a step further from other programs, which provide money to cities and states to just do reforms. This is actually tying money to outcomes.” 

Garcia said that the Build Now provision and changes to CDBG funding will make cities, notably bigger and high-cost cities, motivated to do what’s necessary to get housing production moving and avoid any loss of funding.

Ultimately, zoning can only go so far, as Garcia noted that economic conditions and the price of building could still make construction very costly.

“Cities don’t control interest rates, they don’t control tariffs, they don’t control the labor pool … so there may be instances where you actually have cities working in really good faith to try and get more homes out of the ground, but the broader economic conditions are just not in their favor.” 

Before the law passed, six organizations representing states, counties and local development agencies urged Congress to remove the Build Now provision, warning that tying CDBG dollars to short-term housing growth could make funding less predictable and that the metrics used to gauge growth could be slow and misleading. 

“The idea was to put the squeeze on local governments to play ball, so to speak, as far as, looking at some of their zoning reform or their local housing strategies,” said Jared Grigas, associate legislative director for community, economic and workforce development at the National Association of Counties, which signed the letter.

These funding conditions don’t factor in until fiscal year 2029 and remain in effect through fiscal year 2043.

Grigas said the final version of the law, with the three-year implementation window and exemptions, made the provision more agreeable.

“That gives us three years to get the word out to our folks that, ‘Hey, you might find yourself in this new universe where this might impact your CDBG allocations,’” Grigas said. “And here’s how you can plan ahead.” 

‘Next battle’

Federal funding for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staffing was reduced by 24% in fiscal year 2026. And the guidance and implementation of at least 35 new or updated programs and regulations from the new law will be assigned to HUD — including the Innovation Fund and the Build Now provisions, according to the Urban Institute. 

Winkler, from the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the “next battle” in the realization of the ROAD Act is swift implementation of the new law from HUD to the local agencies.

Some are skeptical that HUD — without new funding for staffing — can manage the workload that comes with such an expansive to-do list.

“A lot of this will hinge on HUD’s ability to implement this law,” Pomponi said. “Some of us are concerned because HUD cut back so much of their staff last year when the administration changed over, and now they’re being handed this huge law to implement.”

Arulampalam, the Connecticut mayor, said Hartford will continue pursuing options such as  office conversions and vacant lot development while waiting to see whether Congress funds the law’s new programs.

“We are coming up with as many creative solutions as we can to solving the housing crisis,” he said. “The thing that limits us the most is the dollars we can put into it.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

On Friday, July 3, at 4:04 p.m., Click’s campaign Facebook page posted a photo of two men in matching white T-shirts reading “America 250” and “Gary Click / State Rep.” The caption read: “I am honored to have the support of Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner.”

Roessner, who represents Tiffin’s 3rd Ward and chairs City Council’s Finance Committee, said he has not endorsed Click in the November race for Ohio House District 88 — and that the shirt in the photo came from the campaign itself.

“My goal was simply to participate in the historic 250th celebration alongside fellow community leaders, not to campaign—the shirt was offered solely for the event from a patriotic perspective,” Roessner told TiffinOhio.net. He said he has no plans to make endorsements and will “continue to keep my voting choices personal.”

Roessner is listed among Tiffin’s elected officials on the Seneca County Republican Party’s website, alongside five council colleagues. Tiffin City Council elections use a nonpartisan open-primary system, although candidates may choose to have a political-party affiliation listed beside their names on the ballot.

“For a well-rounded view, I attend lots of events to get exposure and learn about elected officials and candidates,” Roessner said, pointing to his recent attendance at a campaign event with Democratic congressional candidate Brian Shaver of Fostoria. “My goal is to learn what they can do for Tiffin and not so much their ideology.”

Click’s post is still up

Roessner said he moved to head off confusion once he saw the post. “I saw that post and reshared it with context on my Facebook page to help avoid confusion,” he wrote.

Click’s original post remained online, unchanged, as of Friday, July 24 — three weeks after it was published.

Attempts to reach Click for comment were unsuccessful.

A cycle of Republicans stepping back

Click has spent the election year bleeding Republican support in public.

In April, Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign removed Click from its official endorsements page, a change confirmed by Web Archive snapshots, before restoring his name within about two hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting it.

Ohio Gun Owners cut his rating from a C-minus to an F five days before the May primary.

When End Abortion Ohio endorsed his primary challenger, Click called the group “clowns” on Facebook and drew pushback from his own supporters in the comments.

Multiple candidates endorsed by Click lost their primaries.

The councilman and the candidate’s opponent

Click, a Vickery Republican, is seeking a fourth term representing House District 88, which covers all of Seneca and Sandusky counties. He faces Democrat Aaron Jones in the Nov. 3 general election. Click won a contested Republican primary in May over challenger Eric Watson by roughly 4 percentage points while losing Seneca County.

Jones is Roessner’s colleague on Tiffin City Council. Jones represents the 1st Ward and sits on the Finance Committee that Roessner chairs; Roessner in turn sits on the Materials & Equipment Committee that Jones chairs, according to the city’s council roster. The two also serve together on the Streets, Sidewalks & Sewers Committee.

Roessner did not address the race or either candidate’s campaign in his statement beyond a closing note.

“I wish all candidates and their campaigns the very best,” he wrote, “and urge the public to research all candidates and issues prior to the election.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Jill Simpson announced her candidacy in a post on her campaign’s social media page. “Today, I am honored and humbled to officially announce my candidacy for Sandusky County Commissioner!” she wrote.

The Sandusky County Board of Elections listed Simpson, a Democrat, and Republican Justin C. Smith as the two candidates for the unexpired commissioner term ending Jan. 2, 2029, in a notice the board posted July 24 listing every candidate certified for the Nov. 3 general election.

The seat is on the ballot this fall because it was filled by appointment rather than by election. Former commissioner Charlie Schwochow left office March 31. The Sandusky County Republican Party Central Committee — the party organization Smith chairs — appointed him to the vacancy on April 18 after three rounds of voting, and he was sworn in two days later. Under Ohio law, an appointee to a county office holds it only until a successor is chosen by voters at the next qualifying general election.

Stepping down to campaign

Simpson is not staying in her post while she runs. United Way of Sandusky County said her last day is Aug. 31, roughly two months before the election, and the organization has already posted the opening for her replacement.

“We are excited to celebrate an exciting new chapter for our CEO, Jill Simpson, as she begins her campaign for Sandusky County Commissioner,” the organization said in a statement. It credited her with “strengthening partnerships, expanding our impact, and improving lives throughout our community” over nearly four years.

“Jill’s last day will be August 31 and while we will certainly miss her, we wish her well on her new journey,” the statement said. United Way said it is seeking a “mission-driven, collaborative, and innovative leader” to succeed her.

Three decades in county nonprofits and workforce programs

Simpson has led United Way of Sandusky County as president and chief executive since 2022, when the organization’s board selected her to run it. She had worked for the agency earlier in her career as a program specialist before leaving in 2016 to become president and chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce of Sandusky County.

Her earlier work includes a business relations post with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, the state’s vocational rehabilitation agency; a management role with the Sandusky County Board of Developmental Disabilities; directing Leadership Sandusky County; and teaching marketing courses as adjunct faculty at Terra State Community College.

The campaign says Simpson holds a master of business administration from Tiffin University and a bachelor of science in psychology from Heidelberg University, and describes her as a lifelong resident of Sandusky County. She is the widow of Brian Simpson and has two adult sons.

In her announcement, Simpson framed the race around governing competence. “Our county needs experienced, accountable leadership that makes thoughtful decisions, respects taxpayers, and focuses on building relationships and a stronger future for everyone who calls Sandusky County home,” she wrote.

What she says she would do

Simpson’s campaign platform lists three priorities: fiscal responsibility and transparent government, economic growth and workforce development, and quality of life.

On the first, she pledges to maintain responsible budgeting, promote transparency and accountability in county government, and base decisions on facts, data and long-term planning. “Good government starts with trust, and trust begins with transparency,” the platform states.

On economic development, she points to work with employers, educators and community organizations, and says she would support local businesses, strengthen workforce training and work to attract and retain jobs. The third plank emphasizes public services, infrastructure and collaboration among local governments.

How her opponent got the seat

Smith’s path to the commissioner’s office ran through the party he leads rather than through an election. Because his own candidacy created a conflict, Vice Chairman Ben Decker presided over the April meeting in Smith’s place. Smith advanced past two other finalists on the third ballot.

As TiffinOhio.net reported in April, the appointment came seven years after Smith resigned from a deputy clerk position at Sandusky County Court District No. 1 in Clyde following a verbal reprimand, according to personnel records reviewed by this publication. Then-Clerk of Courts Tracy Overmyer had reviewed two months of his outgoing calls and concluded he was repeatedly contacting the county board of elections from work. Smith said at the time that he was forced out, called it a negative work environment and denied any wrongdoing.

Schwochow’s reasons for stepping down have not been publicly disclosed.

The rest of the November ballot

Sandusky County voters will decide a second commissioner race the same day. Republican Richard J. Farmer II and Democrat Kurtis A. Kuhl are competing for the term commencing Jan. 1, 2027 — the seat held by Russ Zimmerman, who is leaving at the end of his second term. That race went through the May primary; the Simpson–Smith contest did not, because the vacancy opened after the February filing deadline had passed.

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“So he approached the city to see if it was possible to annex that property so that he could get the zoning change to something that would allow him to develop,” Wilkinson said, describing the sequence as he understood it from the developer, Leonard “Lenny” Clouse, whom the mayor identified as the owner of the ground.

The account is the city’s fullest public explanation of an annexation that three residents challenged at Monday’s City Council meeting. It places a township zoning decision at the origin of a process that leaves the township’s residents no way to object.

Anna Flechtner lives with her husband, Tom, and their two young children at the intersection of West State Route 18 and U.S. Route 224. The home has been in her family more than 40 years, she told council, and her children are the third generation to live there. They attend Hopewell-Loudon Schools.

“We have never sought to become residents of the city of Tiffin,” she said.

The family became part of the annexation because of a sewer service agreement its parents signed roughly two decades ago. Wilkinson said that agreement obligates a new owner to annex if asked once the property transfers, and that the city needed at least one owner at that corner to sign so the territory would connect to the city.

Flechtner told council the family was warned they could lose sewer service if they did not sign. The family signed, she said, believing they had no choice.

Asked whether losing service was ever a real possibility, the mayor said he did not know.

“I’m not really sure what those consequences are,” Wilkinson said, adding that he would have to review the legalities and take advice from the law director. He said he knew only that the agreement had been signed and that the property had transferred.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-annexation-hopewell-township-rezoning-denial/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Chappell said the Tiffin Fire/Rescue Division responded to 3,085 emergency incidents in 2018 and 3,872 in 2025, growth of roughly 25.5% over seven years that he said is a sustained trend rather than one unusual year. The city’s population has not grown at anything close to that rate.

He pointed to an aging population, patients living longer with more complex conditions, growth in assisted living and health care facilities, two universities and significant daytime employment. A planned assisted living development on the city’s north end expected to house more than 200 residents could add more than 100 emergency responses a year in that part of the city, he said.

Nearly 80 times in 2025, Chappell said, the division called personnel back in to supplement daily staffing because of overlapping or large incidents.

Schedule change draws recruits, trims daily staffing

The division’s most visible change over the past year was a move to a 24-hour-on, 72-hour-off schedule, which required reorganizing from three crews of 12 into four crews of 10 and promoting additional officers.

Chappell said the previous schedule had firefighters working 2,704 hours a year against a starting salary of less than $56,500 — the equivalent of under $21 an hour. The division’s most recent hiring campaign drew 41 applicants, which he said is the most in more than 15 years, including seven lateral hires with full-time experience elsewhere. The budgeted roster of 40 firefighters is now filled, with 15 of those 40 hired since January 2025.

Asked by a councilmember what the schedule’s downsides have been, Chappell said the crew restructuring temporarily reduced minimum on-duty staffing from nine to eight.

“It really is kind of an integral part of our operations to have nine people as a minimum on duty,” he said, adding that he is confident the division will return to nine in the near future. He also flagged the challenge of bringing on that many new firefighters at once in a service that depends on knowing every corner of its response district.

Council has approved legislation that would eventually allow the division to build back to crews of 11.

Two stations, neither adequate

Chappell said facilities remain the division’s largest long-term problem, and that discussion of a west-end station has been going on since shortly after Station 2 was rebuilt in the 1960s.

“We need to develop a plan before the plan is made for us,” he said.

Apparatus have grown larger and heavier and required equipment has multiplied, he said, while modern stations need space for contamination control, turnout gear, secure medication storage, fitness and training areas and separate sleeping accommodations for a diverse workforce. Neither Tiffin station was designed for any of that.

At Station 2, built in 1965 and now 60 years old, apparatus are parked tight against the bay doors front and back. Personnel crossing the station must squeeze between the front bumper of an ambulance and a bay door, or between the rear bumpers of the ambulance and an engine.

“Football may be a game of inches, but it has nothing on us,” Chappell said.

The tight fit has knock-on costs. Chappell said Engine 1, now 10 years old, would normally rotate to Station 2 as a reserve, but its wheelbase is too large for the space Engine 2 occupies. Engine 2, which he described as 21 years old and due to be sold, instead took $55,000 in repairs last year.

Chappell said he has been working with a local architectural firm on a 16-foot addition to the rear of Station 2, estimated at roughly $250,000, which would relieve the immediate crowding without solving the long-term problem. A new station, he said, would cost approximately $12 million based on current construction costs.

EMS revenue tops $1 million

Emergency medical service remains the bulk of the division’s work, accounting for nearly 90% of activity, Chappell said. Over the past 12 months the division transported 2,293 patients, 1,096 of whom required advanced life support. Thirty-two of the 40 firefighters are certified paramedics.

EMS revenue passed $1 million in 2025 for the first time in the division’s history, a figure that includes contracted service to Clinton Township and northern Eden Township along with medical coverage for university sports and community events. Chappell said participation in the Ohio ambulance provider assessment program is projected to bring in more than $173,000 in additional annual revenue by recovering federal Medicaid dollars.

On the fire side, the division has responded to 47 fires since May 2025, including 21 building fires, along with 155 motor vehicle crashes and 387 false alarms. Average response time to fire incidents was 4 minutes, 42 seconds. Chappell said a majority of false alarms occur on the college campuses and that the division worked with Tiffin University over the past year on materials aimed at reducing preventable activations.

Deputy Chief Mike Homan told council the division used a Tiffin Community Foundation grant of a little over $1,600, accepted by council in March, to buy 30 LifeVac airway clearance devices. The devices were distributed across fire apparatus, roughly 10 to the police department and about half a dozen to city parks, with training provided to police and parks staff.

Residents challenge annexation

Three residents used the public comment period to press council over a private developer’s bid to annex roughly 149 acres of Hopewell Township into the city. Anna Flechtner told council her family was warned it could lose sewer service if it did not sign the annexation petition, and was later given one day to sign a replacement petition or face legal action.

Mayor Lee Wilkinson said the developer approached the city, that Tiffin is nearly out of developable industrial land and that no particular industry is driving the request. Council President Bridget Boyle said no annexation measure is pending before the body.

TiffinOhio.net has reviewed City of Tiffin Engineering Department maps that divide the same acreage into an 11-lot industrial park and propose light and heavy industrial zoning across it.

Sewer transfer and stormwater easements pass 6-0

Council suspended its three-reading rule and passed two ordinances unanimously. Councilmember Kyle Daugherty was absent.

Ordinance 2026-50, introduced by Kevin Roessner, transfers and appropriates $138,000 from the Sewer Revenue Fund into the Combined Sewer Separation Fund for additional flow monitoring and data analysis in the Schonhardt and Main Street areas. It was passed as an emergency and took effect immediately.

Ordinance 2026-49, introduced by John Hays, authorizes the mayor to negotiate and accept permanent stormwater easements from TH Plastics, Inc. at 680 Tyber Road and from the Diocese of Toledo Properties Trust for a new parking lot on Jefferson Street. City code requires property owners who operate a stormwater facility to grant the city a permanent easement to inspect, maintain and repair it.

“It just passes the maintenance responsibility onto the property owner,” Hays said of the post-construction maintenance agreements.

Council also tabled Ordinance 2026-43, a tax increment financing measure that had reached its third reading. Hays, who moved to table, said a required notice went out the previous Thursday and that 14 days must pass before the ordinance can be adopted. Council is expected to take it up at its next meeting.

Ordinance 2026-46, which would repeal the Fire/Rescue Division residency requirement, received its second reading. Resolution 2026-47, adopting federal funds policies for the city, received its first reading.

Also before council

Three new requests for legislation were referred to committee: authorization to acquire and accept sewer easements, to the Streets, Sidewalks and Sewers Committee; establishment of an All Patriots Memorial Committee and an option agreement with AFLP, LLC for the purchase of Lot 4 in the Eagle Rock North Subdivision, both to the Recreation and Public Property Committee.

Both committees will meet Monday, July 27, in council chambers — Recreation and Public Property at 5:15 p.m., with Streets, Sidewalks and Sewers immediately following.

Finance Director Jill Lindhorst reported total receipts of $4,810,545.57 and total expenses of $6,231,450.01 for the month ending June 30, with a general fund unencumbered balance of $5,556,232.08. June income tax receipts were $1,389,795.74, up $60,810.68 from June 2025, though year-to-date income tax receipts are down 1.74%. The unexpended balance across all funds was $44,401,384.34. Council accepted the report and bank reconciliation on a voice vote.

Wilkinson said 2026 street paving is nearly complete, with East Market Street, Circular Street and final striping remaining, and said the work should take place in August if the contractor’s schedule holds. Construction on North Sandusky Street has moved to rebuilding the stretch from Sixes Corners to Tome Street one lane at a time, with the northbound lane currently open. Wilkinson pointed residents to the street closures and delays page on the city’s website rather than its Facebook page.

The mayor also said three qualifying applications for the CDBG downtown revitalization grant have been forwarded for initial screening ahead of a second round, and noted the Seneca County Fair’s opening ceremony at 8 a.m. Monday, July 27. The fair runs through Aug. 2.

The city administrator reported that Rumpke collected 2,981.51 tons of municipal solid waste and 428 tons of recyclables in Tiffin from January through June, compared with 2,809.04 tons of trash and 462.5 tons of recyclables over the same period last year — more garbage and less recycling year over year. June’s bulk cleanup week brought in 137.13 tons, down from 162.64 tons in 2025. For all of 2025, Rumpke collected 5,770.24 tons of trash and 878.29 tons of recyclables.

Councilmember John Hays also reported that the Streets, Sidewalks and Sewers Committee, meeting July 13, discussed properties within the city that are in disarray, resident complaints about them and how the city is addressing the problem. Administration is exploring its legal options and will bring findings and recommendations back to council at a later date.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Stopped in a Capitol hallway and asked about backing new funding for the war and about blowback from voters in November, the Ohio Republican told CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju: “We have to protect America, we have to protect American troops. I want the war to end, I want the war to be over, I want gas prices to come down but I also don’t want to weaken our military.”

The next day the Senate rejected a resolution directing the removal of U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran that Congress never authorized. The vote was 47–49, with the result recorded at 12:31 p.m., according to the official roll call. Husted voted no. So did Ohio’s other Republican senator, Bernie Moreno.

What the vote was

The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., was a joint resolution — binding, had it cleared both chambers and survived a veto. It had been sitting in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which never acted on it. What failed Thursday was Van Hollen’s motion to pull it out of that committee and onto the floor.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican who voted to advance it. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat who voted against. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who supported a similar measure in June, voted no this time. Four Republicans did not vote: Katie Britt of Alabama, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Murkowski and Paul have both backed earlier attempts to limit the president’s war powers in Iran.

An Ohio Republican in the House voted the other way

Roughly two hours before the Senate vote, the House passed its own war powers resolution 214–208. Four Republicans joined every Democrat in supporting it, among them Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio. The others were Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

That measure, sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., is a concurrent resolution. Even if the Senate adopted an identical version, it would not reach the president’s desk and would not carry the force of law. It was the House’s fifth vote on reining in the administration’s military actions in Iran and the second one it has passed.

The chambers have split before. In June the Senate approved a House-passed War Powers Resolution 50–48, the first time both chambers rebuked the president over the war, then reversed course on a separate resolution the following day. The administration maintains the underlying law is unconstitutional.

145 days, 18 dead, $37.5 billion

Thursday marked the 145th day of a war that began Feb. 28. It was the first congressional vote since the president told lawmakers he had restarted hostilities after peace negotiations collapsed.

Eighteen U.S. service members have died since the fighting began, according to the Pentagon, four of them since July 17. Nearly 500 have been injured, about 100 in the past two weeks. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators this week the war has cost $37.5 billion so far.

The funding Husted was asked about moved the same day he was asked about it. The House passed a $1.15 trillion defense authorization bill Wednesday on a 216–212 vote and separately advanced a $95 billion budget blueprint setting aside more than $70 billion for the Iran war. Senate Democrats have blocked the defense bill in protest over the conflict.

At home, the war shows up at the pump. With the Strait of Hormuz still closed, oil topped $100 a barrel this week. GasBuddy’s Monday survey put the national average at $3.95 a gallon, up 13 cents in a week and roughly 86 cents higher than a year ago. Ohio’s average was $3.87. In Columbus it was $3.90 — 93.8 cents higher than the same week last year. Cincinnati was at $3.80. Diesel, which farmers and freight haulers buy by the hundreds of gallons, is back above $5 nationally. AAA figures published July 18 put the national average just under $4 and about 34% above where it stood before the war.

What Husted has said since March

Husted has wanted the war finished for nearly as long as it has been running, and has voted against every mechanism to finish it.

On March 6, eight days into the fighting, he told reporters in Dayton the operation was going “much better than anyone thought it would,” even after six U.S. soldiers had died. “My goal for the operation, as I’ve articulated to the president and his team, is that it should be brief and successful,” he said. “We don’t want to have hostilities linger on any longer than they need to, but if we’re going to undertake this, let’s finish it.”

In April he called the war “good news for the global economy” in remarks reported as inflation hit a three-year high of 4.2%.

On May 19, asked on the Northeast Ohio podcast “Strictly Speaking Unfiltered” what he was doing about gas prices that had climbed as high as $4.78 in Ohio, Husted replied: “What do you want me to do?” Hours later he voted against a war powers resolution, which advanced anyway 50–47 — the first time such an effort cleared a procedural hurdle after seven failed attempts.

In a May interview with CNN, Husted said he did not want his constituents paying higher prices for anything, and that there was no doubt gas prices were too high and action was needed to make life more affordable.

The Senate race

Husted was appointed to the seat in January 2025 by Gov. Mike DeWine after JD Vance resigned to become vice president. He faces former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, in the Nov. 3 special election for the final two years of the term.

Brown has built his campaign around the war and its cost at the pump, the same approach that carried him to the Senate against the Iraq war in 2006. At a spring campaign stop in Austintown, Brown said Husted had never called the war a bad idea and had offered no plan for ending it.

Public opinion has hardened. A Washington Post-Ipsos survey released last week found 68% of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, against 28% who said it was — a wider negative margin than either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars recorded in comparable polling.

The Senate adjourned Thursday until Monday afternoon.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

While members of the U.S. House approved a War Powers Resolution 214-208, with four Republicans joining all Democrats, lawmakers in the U.S. Senate rejected the measure by a slim margin of 47-49, though two senators who previously supported the measure did not vote.

Trump reignited the conflict earlier this month, rupturing a ceasefire during 60-day negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end the war. The countries have since been trading rocket fire on a near-daily basis.

The most recent deaths of U.S. soldiers in the conflict bring the total killed to 18. Three service members were killed July 17 and July 18 in an Iranian strike at a U.S. airbase in Jordan, and a fourth was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone July 19 at a U.S. base in Iraq. 

The dignified transfer, in which the remains of soldiers are transferred from an aircraft arriving from the theater of operations back to the United States, occurred at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The soldiers were identified by the Pentagon as:

• Army 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii

• Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas

• Army Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York

• Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina

Gas prices shoot back up

Economic fallout is also center stage again as Iran has choked off nearly all traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s petroleum traveled prior to the war. 

Oil reached over $100 a barrel Thursday, and AAA clocked gas prices at $4.09 a gallon across the U.S.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who prefers the title secretary of War, told Senate appropriators Tuesday the war has so far cost $37.5 billion. The administration has requested an additional $67 billion.

Dissident Republicans

House Republicans who sided with Democrats to stop Trump’s military action in Iran included Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Tom Barrett of Michigan. 

In the Senate, Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who both voted “yes” for some or all of the dozen Iran War Powers Resolutions considered so far during the conflict, did not vote.

A spokesperson for Murkowski said the senator returned to Alaska Wednesday for a family emergency. Paul’s office did not immediately respond regarding the reason for his absence.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican locked in a tough reelection race, supported the measure Thursday.

As he has on all previous votes to curb the president’s war powers in Iran, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the resolution, which some argue is not legal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in early May that the 1973 War Powers Resolution is “unconstitutional.” 

Congress overruled President Richard Nixon’s veto of the measure meant to rein in his actions during the Vietnam War.

According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on Monday, 100 troops have been injured since July 7, and 96% have returned to work. 

The department’s Defense Casualty Analysis System only identifies five injuries during Operation Epic Fury in July, and 420 total since the conflict began Feb. 28.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s delayed vote to send the controversial nominee to the full Senate is “per standard committee practice,” according to a spokesperson for Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The Iowa Republican and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., used the time that had been allocated for the vote to comment at length on Blanche’s nomination. Grassley then recessed the session because too many Republicans were absent, which he described as “kind of rude.”

Grassley praised the selection of Blanche and said the Justice Department under his leadership as deputy and acting attorney general “has protected Americans at every turn,” but that committee Democrats “like clockwork, sought to defame him.”

Democratic committee member Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey led a forum Wednesday featuring former Department of Justice officials and a survivor of abuse by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The witnesses questioned Blanche’s fitness to lead the Justice Department following his handling of the Epstein files release, during which several victims’ identities were unmasked, and his role is establishing a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund as part of President Donald Trump’s settlement with his own administration’s IRS.

Durbin said Thursday he and fellow Democrats oppose Blanche, who worked as Trump’s personal defense lawyer prior to his appointment to the DOJ, because he “will continue to serve the interests of Donald Trump, not the American people.”

Sen. Darline Graham joins

Committee members were scheduled to address other business, including voting on federal judicial nominees in Ohio and Oklahoma, and approving subcommittee roles for Republican Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. She was sworn in as a senator July 14 following the sudden death of her brother.

The committee meeting marked the first for Graham, who was not yet part of the panel when members questioned Blanche for nearly five hours during a confirmation hearing July 15. Her arrival on the GOP-led committee brings the split among members back to 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats and is likely a positive development for Blanche.

Nominations require a majority vote to advance to the Senate floor. All eyes are on whether committee Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced his retirement last year, and John Cornyn of Texas will support Blanche after Trump effectively ended both of their Senate careers.

Trump subjected Tillis to intense criticism for opposing the Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 and said he would find candidates to oppose Tillis in his primary. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent earlier this year.

Both Tillis and Cornyn pressed Blanche during his confirmation hearing about formally ending the “anti-weaponization” fund. 

While Cornyn was present at Thursday morning’s Judiciary Committee meeting, Tillis was one of several members missing. Grassley’s spokesperson attributed Tillis’ absence to a Senate Banking Committee meeting that convened just a half hour before the scheduled Judiciary Committee meeting. Tillis’ office did not immediately respond to a question about his absence.

Blanche was a prosecutor in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2006 to 2014. 

He eventually left the Justice Department to work in private law and represented Trump as his personal defense attorney in three criminal cases in 2023 and 2024. 

Trump, with the approval of Senate Republicans, installed Blanche as deputy attorney general in March 2025. 

Trump announced Blanche as his pick for attorney general in early June, just over two months after former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s departure. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

This is slightly more than a 5% increase from last year — which was $22.51, according to National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio’s annual Out of Reach report. 

The Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must make to afford a rental home at HUD’s Fair Market Rent without spending more than 30% of their income. 

Ohio’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,238, meaning a household must earn $49,537 annually to cover rent and utilities, according to the report. 

The state’s Fair Market Rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $996, according to the report. Ohio has nearly 1.6 million renter households. 

The report showed the average Ohio renter earns $19.59 an hour, $4.23 less than what they need to be making to afford a two-bedroom apartment. 

The Housing Wage gap was $1.57 an hour in 2020, meaning the Housing Wage has increased by 169% in the past six years, the report said. 

“Renters’ incomes shot up in the early 2020s, but then rent increases eventually swamped the wage gains,” COHHIO Executive Director Amy Riegel said in a statement. 

“And it’s not just housing. The cost of food, transportation, healthcare, childcare, and education is continuing to rise while people working in low wage jobs are getting squeezed.” 

Of the 10 most common jobs in Ohio, only general operations managers and registered nurses pay more than $23.82 an hour, according to the report. 

Fast food workers, retail salespeople, stockers, laborers, home health aides, and cashiers earn a median hourly wage less than $20 an hour, according to the report. 

Ohio’s minimum wage is $11 an hour for non-tipped workers — meaning a minimum wage worker would have to work 87 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom rental and 70 hours to afford a one-bedroom rental. 

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 a report by Policy Matters Ohio published earlier this year. 

Union County had the highest Housing Wage, where full-time workers need to make at least $27.56 an hour, the report showed. 

Urban areas in the state were not far behind. The Housing Wage is $27.50 an hour in Columbus, $26.02 in Cincinnati, $24.60 in Cleveland, and $24.48 in Dayton. 

Ohio has a shortage of 266,000 affordable and available rental units, according to the 2026 Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO. 

“While we’re helping many families get stably housed, even more are falling into homelessness every day,” Fred Berry, president and CEO of Humility of Mary Housing in Akron, said in a statement. 

“The lack of affordable housing is increasing the risk of homelessness and making it harder to get out of homelessness.” 

There were 12,196 people experiencing homelessness in Ohio last year, according to HUD’s annual Homelessness Assessment Report. 

Only one in four eligible households receives federal housing assistance, NLIHC President and CEO Renee M. Willis said. 

“To meaningfully address the affordable housing crisis, the federal government must adequately fund housing programs in a way that would expand rental assistance and both preserve and increase the supply of deeply affordable homes for those with the lowest incomes,” she said in a statement. 

“We have the resources to invest in expanding housing solutions that provide stable homes for the lowest-income people in our country. We just need the political will to do so.” 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In addition, the poll indicated that when it comes to defrauding the government, Medicaid wasn’t respondent’s top concern — it was taxes.

The poll, by the nonpartisan health-research organization KFF, was published July 16. The combination online/phone poll was conducted between June 25 and 30 among a nationally representative sample of 1,321 U.S. adults.

It comes after President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” last year cut almost$1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years while giving massive tax cuts to the richest Americans. Congressional Republicans also allowed subsidies to buy health coverage on Affordable Care Act exchanges to expire. 

Since then, Ohio has seen the steepest drop in coverage purchased on the exchanges. Almost a third, or 161,000, have dropped coverage as their premiums doubled.

Amid an overall affordability crisis, Americans’ are still most worried about healthcare, the KFF poll found. Sixty-two percent said they were very or somewhat worried about affording healthcare, while 38% were not too worried or not worried at all.

Healthcare was followed by gas prices, then housing costs, then food expenses and then utilities in respondents’ affordability concerns.

As the public and Medicaid administrators brace for the brunt of Medicaid cuts to take effect Jan. 1, the Trump administration and Ohio officials have been highlighting what they say is rampant fraud in the system. 

In early June, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials gathered on a stage in Whitehall with Ohio Republicans to decry alleged Medicaid fraud — particularly home health programs it funds. But the dollar figures they threw out also included allegations of undelivered behavioral-health services and alleged fraud in federal programs unrelated to Medicaid.

The KFF poll said the administration has also been playing up Medicaid fraud in other states. It said a big majority of respondents think it’s not a genuine anti-fraud effort, merely election-year politics.

“The Trump administration has recently deferred federal Medicaid payments in a few states with claims that these actions will save money and root out fraud,” it said. “But voters are skeptical: fewer than half say these deferrals are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat likely’ to save taxpayers money (43%) or that it is likely to lower health care costs for people like them (31%). However, most voters — including majorities across partisans — say the deferrals are likely to cause eligible low-income people to lose access to care they rely on. About two-thirds of voters (65%) believe this approach is mostly motivated by politics, though most Republican voters say it is mostly motivated by a genuine effort to reduce fraud and protect Medicaid (69%).”

When it comes to fraud, respondents placed other suspects higher on their list.

A whopping 92% said the federal tax system was subject to a lot or some fraud. That was followed by defense contracting (87%), foreign aid (79%), Medicaid (78%), Medicare (75%), Social Security (72%) and ACA marketplaces (70%).

Respondents also don’t appear to be buying what some Republican officials are selling in terms of Medicaid fraud — that recipients and their families are bilking the system.

Keith Faber is Ohio auditor and the Republican nominee for state attorney general. On a May 5 appearance on Cincinnati’s WLW radio, Faber said that family members paid by Ohio Medicaid are bilking a program to provide home care. 

“The problem is that it’s very difficult to catch the abuse because grandma’s never going to rat out granddaughter or daughter who’s supposed to be taking care of her, but she’s sitting there playing on her cell phone all day,” Faber said at the 1:16:18 mark of the “Sunday Nights With Bill Cunningham” show. “So that’s the problem you get into and, candidly, why the legislature probably needs to get out of that waiver and get back to the… eliminate these programs.”

In other words, Faber was accusing an elderly Ohioan of being complicit as family members denied her care that taxpayers were financing. When Faber’s campaign was asked for a documented example of that happening, it didn’t provide one.

Respondents to the KFF poll didn’t think such alleged scams were much of a problem.

Just 13% thought that Medicaid or Medicare fraud was carried out by individual patients. Another 53% said it was carried out by providers, including doctors’ offices and hospital systems. The remainder were unsure.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

This week, the United States Conference of Mayors asked the U.S. Senate’s agriculture committee to reconsider the deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,  enacted in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In addition to imposing new eligibility and work requirements for recipients, the law will require states for the first time to fund some SNAP benefits themselves beginning in fall 2027.

The 210 mayors who signed a letter to Senate leaders said they are on the “front lines of a deepening food security crisis” and said the federal government should be expanding access to food, not creating new obstacles.

That letter was signed by Democratic and Republican mayors leading major cities such as Baltimore, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City and St. Louis, as well as smaller communities including Lima, Ohio; Manhattan, Kansas; and Muskegon, Michigan. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 leaders of cities with populations of 30,000 or more.

“When we’re talking about how to make sure that our residents are fed, that is something that worries Republican mayors, it worries Democratic mayors, it worries independent mayors. It worries everybody,” Matt Tuerk, the Democratic mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, said in an interview with Stateline.

Tuerk, who leads the national organization’s Children, Health, and Human Services Standing Committee, said his constituents are already struggling with the high costs of housing, utilities and groceries. 

“Now they’re worrying about their ability to even pay for those needed groceries without those SNAP benefits,” he said. 

Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.

Federal officials have argued that changes were necessary to root out fraud and waste from the food stamp program. 

Tuerk said philanthropic groups don’t have the resources to serve as the national safety net, and city and states are already facing tight budgets that cannot fill the void left from federal cuts. 

“And there’s no adequate replacement for food,” he said. “And I can say that as a kid who had a free lunch card … Without food stamps, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

The mayors are also asking Congress to delay implementation of new requirements that some experts expect could cost states more than $9 billion.

The new law will penalize states depending on their payment error rates — a technical calculation by the feds of SNAP overpayments and underpayments, not fraud. States with a payment error rate above 6% will have to fund 5% to 15% of their benefit payments. Previously, the feds provided the aid.

Last month, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement new error rate data was “further proof that state accountability is severely lacking” in the SNAP program.

But the mayors group said states need more time to improve their error rates and budget for additional costs.

“Rising costs of living, stagnant wages, and reduced federal support are converging to create conditions that municipal governments are increasingly challenged to address on their own,” the mayors’ letter said.

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Last week, 18 states and the District of Columbia moved to intervene in a lawsuit filed by wind industry companies against the Department of Defense. 

The companies and state leaders say that the feds have frozen all new wind projects by refusing to conduct routine national security reviews. The bottleneck has halted more than 155 onshore wind projects, according to the American Clean Power Association. 

The attorneys general argued in a court filing that proposed projects with wind turbines over 200 feet tall must be reviewed by the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense for potential national security concerns. Prior to President Donald Trump’s second term, they claim, those reviews were predictable and collaborative. 

But in August 2025, the Department of Defense stopped signing agreements or communicating with developers, the states allege, freezing pending projects at varying stages of review. 

The attorneys general pointed to specific projects in their states that have been unable to move forward. In Washington state, Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said five projects totaling more than 1,600 megawatts are stuck in limbo. 

“The federal government claims we’re in an energy emergency and yet unlawfully stands in the way of projects seeking to harness an excellent renewable source of energy—wind,” Brown said in a news release. 

“(The Department of Defense) has not provided a reasonable explanation for its sudden change in policy, accounted for the harm to states, developers, workers, and ratepayers, or considered the major investments made in reliance on its longstanding review process,” the news release said.

Joining the lawsuit were Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

In a statement, the Defense Department said it was “actively evaluating” projects in a complex process “to balance renewable energy development with the protection and preservation of testing, training, and operational readiness.”

Trump has long been an opponent of wind power and has gone to great lengths to block the development of both offshore and onshore wind.

“I’m proudly telling you that we’re going to try and have no windmills built in the United States,” he said in March.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@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.