Trump had not yet made a public announcement by late afternoon, but several media outlets reported the president planned to possibly drop the fund to clear the way for Senate Republicans to advance a $72 billion immigration enforcement funding package. Politico reported White House officials communicated the decision Monday to Republicans on Capitol Hill, according to two unnamed sources.

Trump’s fund has sparked resistance from both parties as concerns mounted that Jan. 6, 2021, riot defendants who assaulted police officers could conceivably get reparations by claiming the law was “weaponized” against them for political purposes. 

A slew of lawsuits challenging what opponents called a “slush fund” followed, including from police officers who defended the Capitol that day.

Shortly after the reports circulated that Trump might shelve the idea, the Department of Justice defended the fund on social media but said it would comply with a court order issued Friday temporarily barring the government from any further action on the fund. The order did not address the merits of a suit filed against the fund.

“The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling,” according to the department’s post on X.

The DOJ and the White House directed States Newsroom to the post when asked if the president would scrap the fund altogether.

Several Republicans vehemently opposed the fund, including retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who called the fund “stupid on stilts.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., abandoned plans for a floor vote on the immigration bill ahead of the Memorial Day recess as members threatened to defect unless the budget reconciliation package also included language to apply guardrails on the massive “anti-weaponization” pot of money.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that even if Trump says he will drop the fund, “a promise from Trump is worthless.”

“If Trump and Republicans are truly abandoning this corrupt scheme, they should have zero problem banning it in law,” Schumer said on the floor. “This week, Senate Democrats will push legislation to ban this slush fund and ensure no president can ever do this again. Trump’s word is nowhere near enough.”

The Department of Justice announced the $1.776 billion fund on May 18 as a condition for Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. A day later, the DOJ issued another order declaring Trump and his family would be forever immune from government inquiries, including tax audits, as part of Trump’s voluntary dismissal of the suit.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The reporting was published Wednesday by POGO Investigates – a newsroom within Project On Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that produces “evidence-based investigations into government waste, fraud, and abuse.”

According to the report, on July 15, 2025, GEO Group – the largest private prison company in the United States – made a $250,000 contribution to the American Liberty Foundation, a super PAC aligned with Jordan.

It was only through a fluke that the contribution came to light.

The contribution came 11 days after Jordan voted for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

The legislation cut taxes for the wealthy and slashed healthcare and food assistance for the poor.

The law also gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seven times its annual budget to fund Trump’s mass-deportation program.

That money doubled detention space for immigrant-detainees.

GEO Group, is a huge player in the private prison business, with 62,000 total beds at the 51 U.S. facilities it operates, according to its website. It was poised to get a huge windfall from the bill.

As chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Jordan is in a powerful position to be a friend or foe of any big government contractor — particularly one that contracts with ICE. His committee shares jurisdiction over ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and has great latitude to investigate or ignore activities that fall under its purview. 

Jordan was a big booster of the bill.

“It delivers Big, Beautiful Deportations,” he posted on X just prior to its passage. “The bill permanently secures our borders by making the largest border security investment in history, funding at least one million annual removals of illegal immigrants and ramping up mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history.”

Jordan’s office didn’t respond to multiple phone calls from the Capital Journal seeking comment. GEO Group also didn’t respond to emails.

‘Unprecedented growth opportunities’

As Jordan promised “at least one million annual removals of illegal immigrants,” GEO Group stood to get a boost to its bottom line.

In an August 2025 earnings call — about a month after passage of the Trump bill — GEO Founder and Board Chairman George Zoley touted his company’s prospects. 

“Given the intrinsic value of our assets and the unprecedented growth opportunities we anticipate will materialize over the balance of this year and next year, we believe that our current equity valuation offers an attractive opportunity for investors,” he said, according to a transcript.

Last year, NPR reported that nearly 90% of detainees were in facilities operated by private companies such as GEO.

In February, GEO Group reported to shareholders that it had increased its number of detainee beds by 6,000 in 2025. That brought the total number of ICE detainees the federal government can pay GEO to house to 26,000.

As of April this year, there were about 60,000 people being held in ICE custody, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.  

Critics — including the ACLU of Ohio — say profit motive gives private prisons an incentive to lock up more people and to cut funding for security, medical care, and other supports for the people they imprison.

Complaints of abuse

While expanding its capacity to hold ICE detainees, GEO Group has also faced accusations of mistreatment. 

This past month, hundreds of people being held at a GEO Group facility in Newark, N.J., went on a hunger strike complaining of deplorable conditions. Guards cut phone lines as detainees communicated their problems to people on the outside, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Complaints of injustice aren’t limited to the New Jersey facility or GEO Group.

During Trump’s second term, ICE has seen the highest number of detainee deaths in decades, detainees were denied due process in more than 10,000 instances, more than 170 detainees turned out to be U.S. citizens, and — despite Trump’s claims — the overwhelming majority of detainees have not been convicted of a violent crime. 

The private detention facilities have also been accused of blocking oversight. Despite having a legal right to enter them to investigate reports of mistreatment, members of Congress have repeatedly been denied access, they say.

News that at least one of those companies made a dark-money contribution demonstrates a lack of transparency that is both toxic and self-reinforcing, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of the good government watchdog group Common Cause Ohio.

“This circumstance of dark money is really painful because a private prison contributed dark money to the chair of a committee that makes decisions about ICE,” she said.

She added, “The policymaking is really direct. It’s ongoing. It’s the use of taxpayer money to go after undocumented people. There have been significant violations of due process. And we know that the lack of transparency when it comes to those prisons is mirrored by the lack of transparency in the dark money.”

Dark money

It was only through happenstance that Nick Schwellenbach, the journalist behind thePOGO Investigates report, found GEO Group’s $250,000 contribution to the Jordan-aligned political committee.

“It popped up in a really weird way,” he said in a phone interview. 

Schwellenbach received a somewhat mistaken tip that led him on a journey through the loophole-riddled world of campaign-finance law.

A summary:

Two committees with similar names and identical leadership are aligned with Jordan — the American Liberty Foundation and the American Liberty Action Fund. 

Each has the same president, secretary, and treasurer. The president, Ray Yonkura, served as Jordan’s chief of staff from 2012 to 2017, Schwellenbach reported. Yonkura didn’t respond to a request for comment from the Capital Journal.

The Federal Election Commission explicitly connects the American Liberty Foundation to Jordan. It lists the group as “current joint fundraising participants” with Jim Jordan for Congress and Team Jordan.

As a “super PAC,” the American Liberty Foundation is required to disclose its donors. As a 501(c)(4) “dark money” group, the American Liberty Action Fund isn’t.

The super PAC mistakenly disclosed the contribution as being made to it from GEO’s political action committee. GEO PAC never reported the contribution as it would have been required to do — had it made it, Schwellenbach said. 

“I suppose it put (GEO) in a little bit of a box,” he said. 

The company clarified that the contribution was made not by GEO’s political action committee, but from a legally distinct “political contribution account” that is subject to different rules, he said. GEO also clarified that the donation was made to the Jordan-aligned dark-money group — not his super PAC, Schwellenbach said.

Beyond that concession, the company has been uncommunicative.

“They basically explained what the facts are about this one contribution, but they wouldn’t tell me anything else,” Schwellenbach said. “I asked them, ‘Have you made any other dark-money contributions?’ ‘Are there other groups that received funds?’ … They just wouldn’t engage with any other questions.” 

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog founded by Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, says that GEO acted improperly in making the contribution.

The same day Schwellenbach published his investigation, Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC.

It alleges that the Jordan-aligned super PAC failed to properly report the contribution.

“Moreover, the complaint alleges that GEO Group, American Liberty Foundation, and an affiliated 501(c)(4) dark money group, American Liberty Action Fund, violated federal campaign finance laws that prohibit making or knowingly soliciting a federal contractor contribution,” the Campaign Legal Center said in a written statement.

A lot more important than a single $250,000 donation

Among watchdogs, the GEO Group’s contribution raises the question of how much corporate money may have gone to dark-money groups and from there into political coffers around the time lawmakers were voting on the massive One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

And how many other times have anonymous corporate dollars gushed just as government contracts worth billions were about to — or just had — become available? Is there a secret pay-to-play system that the press and almost everyone else is locked out of?

While nearly all dark money groups’ funding sources remain hidden, studies show that oceans of cash flow through them. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that a record $1.9 billion in dark money was spent in 2024, a presidential election year. 

The only way the public now knows about GEO’s $250,000 contribution to the Jordan-aligned dark-money group is that Schwellenbach stumbled across it.

Turcer of Common Cause Ohio said the and the private-prison dark money contribution show a dire need for more transparency.

“Dark money came into the light because (the Jordan-aligned super PAC) made a mistake and reported the information to the Federal Election Commission,” she said. “This mistake highlights how important it is to actually make this information public. There is no reason to hide this money unless (corporations) believe it is actually influencing (politicians’) decision-making.”

She explained that campaign-finance disclosure laws exist so the public can understand where elected officials are getting their money as they spend ours. Dark money stands that on its head, she said.

“The reason we care about transparency is so we can root out corruption; so that we can follow the money and make connections to policymaking,” she said. “There are real consequences when we can’t actually follow the money and connect the dots.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Christopher Riggs and Kenneth Holycross III were LifeWise teachers, and William VanSickle was a LifeWise volunteer. 

“LifeWise has received zero reports of misconduct involving LifeWise students in connection with these matters or during LifeWise activities more broadly,” LifeWise said in a statement. 

LifeWise confirmed each of the men was previously involved in local LifeWise chapters and all were recently charged with sex crimes involving minors.

“In each case, the individual completed and passed the required background screening process at the time they began serving, which revealed no disqualifying offenses or prior criminal history,” LifeWise said in a statement. 

LifeWise Academy is a controversial Hilliard-based religious instruction program for public school students on “religious release time,” that operates in 34 states and enrolls nearly 100,000 students, according to its website.

LifeWise is a non-denominational Christian program that teaches religion to public school students during the school day at a special release time. 

Religious release time instruction must meet three criteria: the courses must take place off school property, be privately funded, and students must have parental permission.

LifeWise is in 331 Ohio school districts — a little more than half of the state’s school districts, according to a LifeWise spokesperson. 

LifeWise has many critics and parents have said their students have been ostracized and bullied for not taking part in LifeWise.  

Holycross was charged with two counts of rape involving minors less than 13 years old earlier this month and is currently in custody at the Miami County Jail, according to the Miami County Sheriff’s Office. His arrest came after the county sheriff’s office received rape complaints against Holycross.   

Holycross was formerly a teacher at the LifeWise Academy Bethel Local program in Tipp City.

He pleaded not guilty to both counts of rape on May 20. 

Holycross is also listed as a part-time mental health technician at Dayton Children’s Hospital, according to his LinkedIn account. The hospital did not respond to inquiries about Holycross’ employment status.

Riggs pleaded guilty to voyeurism and gross sexual imposition involving a minor in the Muskingum County Court of Common Pleas on May 13 and he will register as a sex offender. He will be sentenced on July 1. 

The crimes reportedly took place between June 1, 2023 through Sept. 23, 2023 and Nov. 1, 2025 through Nov. 30, 2025, according to court documents. 

Riggs was formerly a teacher with the LifeWise Tri-Valley program in Muskingum County and was the pastor of Washington Township Baptist Church in Zanesville. 

William VanSickle pleaded guilty to one count of rape and two counts of sexual battery against a minor in the Perry County Common Pleas Court on April 23. The crimes took place between January 2017 through January 2022, according to court documents. 

He will be sentenced June 1. 

VanSickle was previously a volunteer “in a limited capacity” with the LifeWise Northern Local program in Perry County. 

“Any situation involving crimes against minors is deeply disturbing, and the safety and well-being of students is LifeWise’s highest priority.” 

All LifeWise staff and volunteers go through background screenings, and students are not left one-on-one with an adult during LifeWise programming, according to a statement from LifeWise. 

The Secular Education Association — the group that made the connections between the men and their previous involvement with LifeWise —  is “deeply concerned by the cases,” they said in a statement. 

In January 2025, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a law passed by Republican lawmakers that mandates public school districts create a policy allowing release time for religious instruction.

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 newly bespectacled students beaming with joy were recipients of the OhioSEE program which provides students in kindergarten through third grade comprehensive eye exams and glasses at schools for no cost. 

“This is a program that is very, very cost-effective,” DeWine said recently at a Dublin City Schools elementary school. “It’s a program that makes phenomenal differences in children’s lives. We have tens of thousands of kids out there who are needing an eye exam, who are not getting an eye exam.” 

The OhioSEE program has administrated nearly 1,900 eye exams and nearly 1,200 students have received glasses, according to the Ohio Health Department.

Ohio law requires schools to do a school vision screening to students need an eye exam, but many students who fail a screening never receive follow-up care. Some of the barriers to receiving follow-up care include a lack of transportation, lack of providers in the area, or being underinsured.

At least 35,000 Ohio students who needed glasses did not receive them during the 2022-23 school year. 

The $10 million pilot program was enacted through last year’s state budget and it started in January. The Ohio Department of Health administers the program, which was born out of the Children’s Vision Strike Force that DeWine commissioned in 2024. 

About 230 school districts are enrolled in the OhioSEE pilot program in 15 counties —  Allen, Butler, Clark, Clermont, Cuyahoga, Erie, Franklin, Guernsey, Huron, Jackson, Lorain, Mahoning, Marion, Montgomery, and Ross.

Those counties were chosen by the state health department because 80% of children living there were identified as needing additional vision care after an initial screening, but never received it. 

“These kids have a difficult time,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, who joined DeWine at the central Ohio elementary school Tuesday. 

“They can’t see the chalkboard. They also get bored. They get disruptive. They get frustrated.” 

DeWine announced at the end of last that Ohio will receive more than $200 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Rural Health Transformation Program, and part of those funds will be used to expand OhioSEE into additional counties. 

“We believe with this money … OhioSEE is going to enable us to pretty much cover the whole state,” DeWine said. 

The state health department estimates the program will serve up to 14,000 students per year once OhioSEE is fully implemented.

An estimated 1 in 4 school-aged children have vision problems that could affect their ability to learn, according to the American Optometric Association. 

“Children with vision problems are at a higher risk for falling behind in the classroom, especially as they’re learning to read, write, and interact with classmates,” ODH Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said in a statement. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

That was the promise I heard throughout my childhood, a commitment by the Catholic schools I attended that no family would be turned away because they couldn’t afford tuition. It wasn’t a marketing slogan. It was a moral declaration: that access to a values-grounded education shouldn’t depend on a family’s bank account.

My parents believed that. They sacrificed for it. They paid tuition out of pocket while also paying the taxes that funded Ohio’s public schools. They never complained about that arrangement.

In fact, my parents and others like them who made the same choice acknowledged freely that a voucher program would have made their lives easier. Yet, they chose to carry that cost anyway, because they understood something that Ohio’s voucher advocates seem to have forgotten: a commitment to your own children’s education doesn’t require defunding someone else’s.

I’m an ordained minister and pastor now. I still carry the values those schools gave me. And I am firmly, unequivocally opposed to Ohio’s school voucher program.

Here’s the truth that voucher advocates don’t want examined too closely: this debate was never really about parents like mine. It was never about helping working families stretch toward a private education for their kids. The numbers make that plain.

Roughly 90% of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher scholarships are going to students who were already enrolled in private school, meaning this public money is simply reimbursing families for a choice they’ve already made. That’s not expanding access. That’s a subsidy.

And it comes directly at the expense of the 90% of Ohio students who attend public schools.

Every dollar redirected through a voucher is a dollar that doesn’t reach the speech therapist, the school counselor, the science lab, or the building in desperate need of renovation where most kids in a community still show up to every morning.

Ohio began a Fair School Funding Plan that legislators failed to fully implement. Vouchers don’t fill that gap, they widen it. Certain politicians are prioritizing private school students with more public dollars per pupil than the local public school receives. 

We need to call that what it is: theft from our children.

If you live outside Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincinnati, the voucher math becomes even more absurd.

Proponents love to talk about “school choice” as though choice is universally available. But choice requires options, and in rural Ohio, in the small towns and scattered townships that make up most of our state, there often aren’t any. Many rural counties have no private schools at all. When voucher money leaves those districts, it doesn’t help a child find a better option. It simply vanishes from a community that can’t afford to lose it.

We should also be honest about who is pushing this agenda and why. The loudest, most politically organized voucher advocates in Ohio aren’t struggling families looking for alternatives. They’re well-funded interests who benefit financially and politically from a system that keeps public schools underfunded and undefended.

“School choice,” in practice, often means the school’s choice: private institutions can select which students they accept, aren’t subject to the same curriculum standards or financial audits as public schools, and employ teachers held to lower certification requirements. The accountability flows one direction toward public schools while the money flows the other.

My Catholic education gave me something I treasure. It was made possible by a community that meant it when they said no child would be left out and by parents who were willing to sacrifice so I could be part of it. None of it required draining resources from a kid in Guernsey County or Champaign County whose only school is already doing more with less.

Ohio can do better. Fund our public schools as though every child in every county deserves a real education. Not a voucher. A school.

Rev. Dr. Ben Huelskamp is the Executive Director of LOVEboldly and the Pastor of Blue Ocean Faith Columbus.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Nationally there have been 1,983 measles cases this year, nearly the 2,288 total for all of 2025, which in itself was the worst year since 1991, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.  

Halfway through the year, 12 states and the District of Columbia already have more measles cases than they did for a full year in 2025. That’s true for South Carolina and Utah, where cases are already more than double last year, and also for states such as Florida, which has 139 cases so far compared with eight in 2025, and Virginia, which already has 63 compared with six in all of 2025.  

South Carolina, the state with the highest number of cases this year at 669, declared an end in April to an outbreak that was the nation’s largest in 35 years. The outbreak in the northwestern part of the state was centered in Spartanburg County, where religious exemptions to vaccination have spiked.  

The Utah outbreak, which began in the Short Creek area on the Utah/Arizona border, where vaccination rates are low, has generated 484 cases this year and is now slowing, said Dr. Andrew Pavia, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Utah, speaking at a May 26 briefing for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. 

Dozens of measles patients have been hospitalized with serious symptoms such as brain inflammation or pneumonia, he said, and one baby developed life-threatening congenital measles during pregnancy but survived, he said.

The national increases signal that the U.S. will certainly lose the measles elimination status it gained in 2000, Pavia said, in a determination due this fall. 

“Most state public health departments are stretched very, very thin, limiting their ability to contain measles. Anti-vaccine rhetoric has made this all the more difficult,” Pavia said. He referred to $11 billion in federal funding cuts to local public health last year that were delayed by a restraining order when states sued. The case is in settlement negotiations, according to court records. 

The Trump administration cited a “non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago” in the funding cuts, but COVID-19 is still causing more than 1,000 deaths a month and wastewater surveillance still shows hotspots in the Appalachian region and some other states, including Michigan.

Whooping cough is also on the rise with Ohio and Florida most affected. Deaths last year were at the highest level, 22, since 2010, according to the latest CDC WONDER provisional statistics.  

“The rising number of deaths from whooping cough, including among infants, is a reminder of the vital importance of vaccination,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a pediatrician and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore who follows whooping cough trends. 

“Families who follow public health guidance on vaccination and other precautions can avoid a needless tragedy,” Sharfstein said. 

Louisiana was accused of unusual delays in reporting a whooping cough outbreak last year that claimed at least two lives. Shortly after the deaths were reported, the state ended promotion of vaccines and vaccination events. At least three babies died in Kentucky last year along with at least one in Oregon. 

Unvaccinated people are like fuel for the wildfire of disease outbreaks, said Pavia, of the University of Utah, in his remarks. 

“Until we can restore faith in vaccines and restore funding for our public health agencies and increase measles vaccine coverage, we have to anticipate that there will be many more outbreaks, and some of these may blow up into very large conflagrations,” Pavia said.

Meanwhile the Trump administration announced a new quarantine center in Kenya opening Friday, May 29, for Americans exposed to the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The move was criticized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America in a statement, saying the decision to send exposed Americans to Kenya “raises serious questions about resources, timing and the level of care Americans sent there will receive.”

On Ebola, a May 22 CDC directive prohibited United States entry of non-citizens who had been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or nearby Uganda or South Sudan, in the previous 21 days. The disease has killed 224 people in that region, and there are more than 900 suspected cases. 

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.

An ongoing hunger and labor strike at the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey, reportedly involves roughly 300 people and has sparked daily protests outside the jail, which is owned and operated by the GEO Group, a private security company that provides security, maintenance, food and medical care under a 15-year contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Earlier this month, it was reported that at least 20 detainees at the 750-bed Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California, had launched a hunger strike to call attention to what they allege are substandard conditions at that facility, including a lack of medical care, unsafe drinking water, and mold.

And last month, hunger strikes reportedly erupted at the 1,800-bed North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, and at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which has a capacity of nearly 1,900. North Lake is the largest facility in the Midwest, and Moshannon Valley is the largest in the Northeast.

The GEO Group operates all of the facilities where the hunger strikes have taken place.

Families of migrants detained at Delaney Hall say their relatives  are being tear gassed and beaten by guards. Outside the facility, ICE agents have countered protesters with pepper spray, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

In a statement on Thursday, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherill said the New Jersey Department of Health tried to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but was denied access to all but a limited portion of the facility. Sherill said Delaney Hall should be shut down.

“Refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” she said in the statement. “I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”

ICE issued a statement dismissing the accusations of substandard conditions at the facilities as a “hoax.”

“All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries. Illegal aliens also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the statement says. “Certified dietitians evaluate meals. In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

In a statement, the GEO Group asserted that its support services “are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements regarding the treatment and services ICE detainees receive.”

For the last few days, Gabriela Fuentes, 35, has protested outside Delaney Hall.  She said her husband, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala on a work visa, told her recently that the guards had beaten and tear gassed him and other detainees.

“We’re all human, we’re all people, just because we’re Hispanic does not mean that we need to be treated like this,” Fuentes said.

Haddy Gassama, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, described the hunger strikes as “the natural consequence of a detention system that’s really falling apart at its seams.”

“Hunger strikes are a tool that people use when they are most desperate, where they feel that they have no other options,” Gassama said. “It’s really the natural consequence of what happens when you supersize a detention system that’s already rife with abuse so fast, with so much money, with so little accountability.”

Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the immigrant rights group Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said it’s hard to get a handle on the scope of the hunger strikes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

“Upon the hunger strike, the detention center stopped communication lines to that particular unit, so it’s hard for us and for family members to stay up-to-date on what was happening,” Rivera said.

In Michigan, Ruby Robinson, an attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, called for more state oversight of ICE detention facilities.

“It’s our understanding that they do not really have the means to adequately provide the oversight that’s needed, and outside of that, we don’t really see any other oversight, besides visits from members of Congress,” Robinson said.

“Because many immigrants are being detained in county jails, not just private detention facilities, there’s an opportunity to ensure that state law is followed. And if state law is insufficient, then it needs to be updated to basically reflect reality.”

This story was updated to include a statement from the GEO Group.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The remark came during a 2023 episode of Ramaswamy’s podcast, recorded while he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, in a conversation with Adam Coleman, author of “Black Victim to Black Victor.”

“One of the points that came out of my dialogue with her was that actually a Black baby is probably safer in the inner street of Chicago in the inner city of Chicago than in the womb of his own Black mother, and I think that that’s actually a problem, and it’s directly the product of what Margaret Sanger envisioned,” Ramaswamy said.

In the same conversation, Ramaswamy asserted that Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, launched the organization with the goal of reducing the Black population. Fact-checkers, including NPR, have found no basis for the claim that Planned Parenthood was created to suppress Black births. Sanger was a prominent birth-control advocate whose views aligned with the eugenics movement of her era, but her push to expand access to contraception also drew support from some Black leaders and organizations at the time.

The clip is not new. It resurfaced Monday after national Democratic organizations, including the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association, shared it, theGrio reported.

Ohio has among the worst infant mortality records in the country. In 2022, Black infants in the state died at a rate of 13.4 per 1,000 live births, compared with 5.7 for white infants — about 2.4 times the rate — according to a Groundwork Ohio report analyzing a decade of data. The report found Ohio ranked near the bottom nationally and that the racial gap had widened over the previous 10 years. Black women in Ohio are also more than twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, state health data show.

Reaction to the clip on TiffinOhio.net’s Facebook page was swift and largely critical. Many readers questioned what Chicago had to do with the Ohio governor’s race and pointed to the state’s own infant and maternal mortality rates. Several wrote that the remark would shape their vote in November. A number said they had fact-checked the clip themselves before accepting it was authentic. Some commenters defended the statement on anti-abortion grounds.

Ramaswamy won the Republican primary on May 5 and faces Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and former director of the Ohio Department of Health, in the Nov. 3 general election. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, is term-limited and cannot seek re-election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The founder of The Rooster, a prominent progressive newsletter that regularly criticizes Ohio’s political establishment, was arrested at the Statehouse on Monday.

Officials charged Donald “DJ” Byrnes with a misdemeanor charge of telecommunications harassment. Ohio State Highway Patrol Sgt. Tyler Ross, a patrol spokesperson, said Byrnes was arrested at the Statehouse on a warrant entered by the police department in Kirtland, a small city in Lake County, near Cleveland.

Records show Byrnes is being held in jail by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office as of 6 p.m. Monday on a misdemeanor offense. The records indicate he’s being held on behalf of officials in Lake County, near Cleveland. 

Specifics about the charges are not available on the Willoughby Municipal Court’s website as of Monday evening.

A photograph shared on social media by Max Littman, an occasional contributor to The Rooster, shows what appears to be a law enforcement officer standing behind Byrnes, his hands behind his back. The two are approaching a police car parked outside the Ohio Statehouse. 

The exact nature of the allegation against Byrnes is unclear, but his arrest could face scrutiny over whether it’s an example of the government punishing a citizen for political speech, violating basic First Amendment rights. 

In 21st century fashion, Byrnes operates as some combination of an online political commentator, newsgatherer, provocateur, prankster and gadfly. In recent days, he has feuded with Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy over whether the candidate was denied access to the New York Knicks’ locker room after the team eliminated the Cleveland Cavaliers from the NBA playoffs at a game in Cleveland. Ramaswamy denied Byrnes’ report as “100% fake” and called him a “leftist blogger with mental health issues.”

Telecommunications harassment is a first-degree misdemeanor, the most severe classification before felony level crimes. It’s punishable by up to 180 days in prison if the state can prove Byrnes knowingly made a telecommunication “with purpose to harass, intimidate, or abuse.”

Both Littman and Byrnes’ wife, Rachel Wenning, citing a line on apparent court paperwork identifying the victim as “JC,” claimed the arrest revolves around a text message sent to Sen. Jerry Cirino, a regular subject of Byrnes’ ridicule. (Rooster articles regularly refer to Cirino as “Little Mussolini.”) Cirino lives in Willoughby in Lake County.

Cirino largely declined comment Monday but said he “did not request any such thing” when asked about Byrnes’ arrest. 

The court records were published Monday afternoon by Jack Windsor, a conservative media personality in the Columbus area whom Byrnes also has criticized. The case number in the records though did not appear on the searchable case management system for the Willoughby Municipal Court, which handles misdemeanor charges filed in Kirtland, on Monday evening. The apparent warrant makes reference to an “explicit image and two harassing text messages.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But the Trump administration’s push to reward its supporters also harkens back to an earlier era of American cronyism, experts say, while expanding the frontiers of political favoritism.

From the early years of the United States until well into the 19th century, a spoils system dominated the federal government. Presidents handed out jobs to supporters, filling the bureaucracy with workers who had demonstrated loyalty to the administration in power. 

Trump’s political idol, President Andrew Jackson, replaced large numbers of federal officials after his 1829 inauguration, for instance. One appointee to a role at the Port of New York made out with more than $1 million, valued at tens of millions today.

The comparison isn’t exact. The spoils system was associated with the distribution of government jobs to political allies, a practice called patronage. Trump’s new fund would instead deliver taxpayer dollars directly to favored individuals.

Yet, academics who have studied the spoils system and the presidency see parallels between the past and present — with a desire to reward allies and build allegiance at the center of it all.

“It seems to me that may be the common element here,” said Sidney Shapiro, a professor of law at Wake Forest University who wrote before the 2024 election that Trump wanted to reinstate the spoils system. “It appears President Trump is thinking about using the fund to reward people unfairly punished, but I think in his mind it’s unfairly punished because they were trying to support him.”

Five-member board to be named by Trump

The Department of Justice announced the “anti-weaponization fund,” which critics call a “slush fund,” on May 18 as it moved to settle a lawsuit Trump had filed in his personal capacity against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns by a former agency contractor. 

The suit placed Trump in the extremely unusual position of effectively negotiating with himself because he has erased the DOJ’s post-Watergate tradition of independence from the White House.

Even before the settlement, the Justice Department under Trump had taken actions that would have been unheard of in other recent administrations. For instance, federal prosecutors have brought a case against former FBI Director James Comey and tried to pursue criminal charges against New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James. 

The DOJ has also obtained an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a frequent critic of GOP politicians.

Trump’s settlement agreement provides for the creation of the fund overseen by a board of five members chosen by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney. Trump can fire the members for any reason.

The fund’s board will have the power to make decisions about payments, as well as issue formal apologies. Claims submitted to the fund must be processed by Dec. 1, 2028, prior to the end of Trump’s term.

Jan. 6 rioters line up

A bevy of Trump supporters and hangers-on have said they plan to apply for compensation. They include individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Trump previously pardoned rioters when he took office in January 2025.

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison before Trump pardoned him, predicted on a recent podcast that a “lot of J6ers are going to spend their money on firearms.”

Trump has cast the fund as an act of magnanimity on his part because the settlement agreement doesn’t include a monetary payout to him. 

However, Blanche also signed a document barring any additional scrutiny of the president’s past tax history, a move that shields him from audits. The New York Times and ProPublica reported in 2024 that Trump could have owed $100 million if he lost an audit battle over improper tax breaks.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the FBI search of his Florida residence in 2022.

“Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”

Trump has adopted a “patrimonial” approach to governing, James Pfiffner, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who has studied the presidency, wrote in an email to States Newsroom. 

Benefits, like federal contracts, go to those who are loyal, Pfiffner wrote, and the government is treated as if it were a family business and the state’s resources were his personal property.

The “anti-weaponization fund” represents an extension of that approach, Pfiffner wrote, but also goes further than past presidents. He wrote that he could think of no past precedents in the modern presidency for such a blatant use of taxpayer money to potentially reward loyalists.

“At least in the spoils system, the people hired by the government were working and presumably doing their jobs,” Pfiffner wrote. “The beneficiaries of this fund have done nothing to earn their benefits, and presumably some will be rewarded for having committed crimes to overturn the 2020 election.”

Congress began curbing the spoils system after the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield by a spurned job seeker. 

Over the next two decades, many federal positions were moved into a civil service system. While the federal government still includes some 4,000 political appointees today, the vast majority of the bureaucracy is staffed by civil servants.

Critics and defenders in Congress

But it’s unclear whether Congress will block Trump’s fund, despite an intense backlash.

Anger among Republican senators has stalled action on budget legislation funding immigration enforcement, which Democrats would have used to force votes on amendments to block the fund. Democrats have introduced multiple bills aimed at halting it.

“Congress cannot stand by while Trump turns the federal government into a political operation for his friends and cronies,” Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, said in a statement.

Obstacles exist to congressional action. Even if Republicans who control both chambers voted with Democrats, Trump could veto bills passed placing restrictions on the fund, which would require two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate to override. 

And some GOP lawmakers have defended the fund.

On May 21, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, objected to a unanimous consent request by Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, to pass a bill that would prohibit payments to Jan. 6 rioters.

“Thankfully, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump Department of Justice established a standard and lawful process to hear from American citizens who suffered lawfare or weaponization under the Biden administration,” Tuberville said on the Senate floor.

Lawsuits have been filed challenging the fund and how it’s structured. Two police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 have sued, warning that rioters could use the money to organize. 

Fund blocked temporarily

On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered the Trump administration to halt work on the fund for at least two weeks while she considers ordering a lengthier pause.

The decision came in a lawsuit brought by a former federal prosecutor fired by the DOJ and a California professor who was charged but acquitted of assaulting a federal officer after protesting an immigration raid.

Legal advocacy groups also argue Congress didn’t intend for federal money to be used for these kinds of payoffs.

“Another commonality is we the taxpayers are funding both,” Shapiro, the Wake Forest professor, said of the spoils system and the Trump fund. “We certainly fund the jobs that people have and now we’re funding this fund.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But the proposed rule appears to smooth over some of the rougher edges of the executive order, which has been condemned by Democratic state officials as an intrusion on their constitutional authority to administer elections.

“The proposed rule would apply uniform standards for the mailing of absentee ballots to and from voters, which the Postal Service understands will facilitate the faithful execution of federal law,” the Postal Service said in a document posted on the Federal Register website.

The executive order faces at least five lawsuits. Experts on the Postal Service have also warned that Trump’s attempt to assert authority over the agency threatens its decades-long record of independence.

The order remains in effect for now ahead of the November midterm elections. A federal judge on Thursday declined to block it after finding the federal government had taken few steps to implement it. However, with Friday’s proposed rule, that’s beginning to change.

Some exemptions

Trump’s March 31 order directed the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. In effect, states would be blocked from allowing residents to vote by mail unless they provide their names to the federal government.

The proposed rule fulfills that directive, but it exempts overseas and military voters — a concession that wasn’t included in the executive order. Voting by citizens who are abroad and in the military is regulated by the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. The law sets strict deadlines for states to send ballots.

The rule also doesn’t require states to submit voter lists for primary elections.

“Primary elections largely involve political parties selecting nominees through their chosen procedures, rather than direct election of federal officials, and thus implicate different considerations that bear on the necessity for these provisions,” the Postal Service said in a document outlining the proposed rule.

The Postal Service document emphasizes that states retain full control of who gets to vote by mail or alter the information. 

The proposed rule creates data reporting standards that “can provide information regarding the sending of ballots through the mails that would be available for use by law enforcement,” the document says.

The Postal Service plans to formally publish the rule on June 2.

Noncitizen voting

Trump and administration officials have framed the executive order as a way to combat noncitizen voting, which occurs very rarely. Trump has long attacked mail voting, though he has voted by mail multiple times.

“I think this will help a lot with elections,” Trump said when he signed the order.

But opponents of the executive order say it violates the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the responsibility of running elections and allows Congress to pass regulations. The order represents an attempt by Trump to unilaterally control elections, they say.

After a federal judge in Washington, D.C., declined to block the order, another federal judge in Massachusetts will hold a hearing on June 2 in a separate lawsuit challenging the directive brought by Democratic attorneys general.

“Widespread chaos and confusion is the goal of this executive order,” Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said in a statement.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But Democrats speaking to reporters outside the session criticized Republicans for not conducting the interview under oath or on camera and said Bondi did not answer many questions and blamed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for the chaotic release of files related to Epstein. Bondi later denied on social media she evaded questions or tried to target Blanche.

Bondi sat for a transcribed hours-long interview before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as the panel continues its probe into the government’s handling of the Epstein case and sexual abuse survivors.

Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters before the early morning interview began that the panel is “continuing to move along, and hopefully today will be beneficial.” 

Epstein estate subpoena

The committee subpoenaed Epstein’s estate in August 2025 and made public all documents it received, Comer said. He said the committee has since conducted more than a dozen interviews and has six more scheduled throughout the summer, including with Epstein’s former assistant Lesley Groff, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and private equity investor Leon Black.

“The government has failed the survivors. There’s no question about that, and that dates back five presidential administrations,” Comer said. 

Comer credited Bondi for appearing a second time before the committee and criticized Democrats who he said “got up and walked out” of the first meeting in March while Republicans “asked questions for a couple of hours.”

Committee Democrats were highly critical.

The panel’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said the interview ground rules barring video and allowing Bondi to speak without taking an oath are a “disservice to the American people.”

House Oversight Democrats, and an Epstein abuse survivor, spoke to reporters outside the committee room for roughly 30 minutes following their portion of questioning.

The minority members said Bondi refused to answer any questions related to Trump’s knowledge of how the Department of Justice was handling the Epstein documents, and that a current DOJ lawyer was in the room with Bondi, choosing which questions she would answer. 

They also said Bondi sidestepped responsibility for the mishandled release of the files that initially unmasked victims’ names.

“She continues to push all of the investigation and the blame on acting AG Todd Blanche. She said, and I quote, ‘Acting AG Blanche was managing the entire investigation,’ end quote,” Garcia said.

Blanche, whom the president named as the acting attorney general after Bondi’s exit, was Trump’s personal lawyer prior to his second term. Committee Democrats said they plan to request Blanche come before the panel for questioning.

Bondi fires back

Bondi denied Garcia’s statement to reporters that she pushed blame on Blanche for the Epstein files release.

In two posts on X Friday afternoon, Bondi wrote, “I praised Acting AG Blanche’s management of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”

She also denied remarks to reporters by panel member Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., that she was not forthcoming about the president’s knowledge of Epstein’s actions.

“MISREPRESENTATION by Walkinshaw.  What the world knows to be true is President Trump banned Epstein from Mar a Lago decades ago bc Epstein was a despicable creep!!” Bondi wrote.

States Newsroom contacted the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Trump has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

A Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed in a written statement to States Newsroom that department personnel accompanied Bondi to the interview.

“Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and other Department of Justice personnel attended former Attorney General Bondi’s transcribed interview to assist the Committee in understanding the Department’s role in implementing and complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act during her tenure,” according to the statement.

The spokesperson continued: “Because former Attorney General Bondi oversaw the Department at the time the Act was enacted and carried out, DOJ’s presence was solely to ensure accurate representation of Department processes, facilitate any necessary clarifications, and support a complete factual record for the Committee.

“As with any congressional engagement involving past Department actions, DOJ routinely provides staff with relevant institutional knowledge to support transparency, accuracy, and cooperation with oversight responsibilities.”

Survivor speaks out

Epstein survivor Liz Stein, now a human trafficking specialist and advocate for the organization World Without Exploitation, said outside the committee room that the Trump administration needs to do more to deliver justice to victims.

“These files contain leads, names, connections, friendships, patterns, witnesses, travel records, financial relationships and institutional failures,” Stein said. “In any other sex trafficking case of this magnitude, those leads would be aggressively pursued, but in this case they have not been.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls is popular in opinion polls, and it’s been the law in Ohio since 2023. The new proposal would go before voters this November, and enshrine the requirement in the Ohio Constitution with a permanence well beyond the current statute.

That doesn’t appear to please many besides Ohio House Joint Resolution 9’s sponsors. Of the 80-plus witnesses who submitted testimony, just two support the idea. Neither of them showed up to testify in person last week.

Voting rights groups question the push for an amendment when the proposal makes no changes at all to current law and only makes future changes harder. Meanwhile, advocates who support increasingly more restrictive voting policies reject the idea because it doesn’t go far enough.

Voting rights opposition

Several speakers offered a version of the point made by Richard Topper, a retired lawyer and poll worker — the problem isn’t photo voter ID, it’s rushing to put it in the constitution.

ACLU of Ohio Legislative Director Gary Daniels explained the group’s opposition “is much less about the underlying policy issue of photo IDs for voters and much more about taking away valuable policy and legislative time to quickly place an unneeded constitutional amendment on the ballot for purely political reasons.”

State Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, pushed back. He pointed to the ACLU’s support for an Equal Rights Amendment despite similar protections showing up in several federal statutes. Why shouldn’t state lawmakers take steps to insulate Ohio’s current voting laws?

“I think the difference between those examples and this example,” Daniels said, “is that when we (support amendments), we are doing it, hoping to make things better. We don’t see H.J.R. 9 as making things better.”

Although the proposed amendment codifies photo voter ID, it isn’t a carbon copy of Ohio’s statutory language. Several voting rights advocates raised concerns about what the resolution leaves out and what it adds in.

When lawmakers approved photo voter ID in 2023, they included a provision allowing anyone to receive a free state-issued ID card. One reason for that is the prohibition on poll taxes in the U.S. Constitution’s 24th Amendment. But that free ID provision doesn’t appear in the proposed amendment.

“You can easily argue that it is unconstitutional at the federal level to not have free ID,” League of Women Voters Executive Director Jen Miller said, “that if you require something that costs money, that that is a poll tax.”

Miller opposes H.J.R. 9, but told lawmakers if they choose to go forward, they should at least include the free ID provision in the amendment’s text.

Opponents also worry about what lawmakers are adding through the resolution. The measure’s final section asserts that nothing in the resolution requires lawmakers to allow voting “in any location or manner other than in person at a polling place on the day of an election.”

To Steve David from All Voting is Local Action Ohio, that section hints at lawmakers’ long-term intent.

“Rather than installing protections for Ohio voters,” he said, “the General Assembly is telegraphing its intentions to restrict early in-person voting and eliminate the no-fault absentee system.”

‘Unequal treatment’

Advocates who typically welcome more stringent voting policies in the name of greater “integrity” batted down the proposal as well. Marcell Strbich, a retired Air Force officer who regularly testifies on electoral legislation and ran unsuccessfully for Ohio Secretary of State in last month’s Republican primary, said the amendment would lock in “unequal treatment.”

“The problem with the resolution,” he said, “is not the goal of requiring voter ID — as has been discussed today, that’s widely understood and unanimously agreed upon — but the unfair and incomplete way that it achieves it.”

Strbich sees a glaring hole in Ohio’s photo voter ID requirements: absentee voters. While a voter arriving in person at the polls has to present an unexpired government-issued ID, absentee voters simply write down their information on the ballot envelope.

“Most Ohioans support universal photo ID,” Strbich said, “yet many voters will not realize they’re being asked to enshrine this clause of unequal treatment, photo ID for in-person voters only, with no requirement for mail-in absentee ballots.”

To Strbich and others in his corner, that amounts to a “fatal flaw” or a “constitutional loophole.” They say lawmakers should require absentee voters include a photocopy of their license or ID card with their ballot. A measure to that effect, Ohio House Bill 577, is currently under consideration by the same committee working on H.J.R. 9. Strbich worries passage of the amendment might close the door on ID requirements for absentee voters.

Eric Watson, who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the 88th Ohio House district, described himself as a supporter of the resolution — so long as lawmakers “close these loopholes.”

“You need to show a government photo ID for many other things,” Watson said, “so it only makes sense that a government photo ID would also be required for mail-in ballots to help protect one of the greatest privileges we have as a citizen.”

Ohio state Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., expressed doubts about security.

“Before you leave today,” he told Watson, “Give me your driver’s license. I’ll keep it for a while and return it to you, maybe, and store all the data. Is that a good idea?”

Meanwhile, committee chair Ohio House Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, pressed him on the logic of requiring absentee voters to send a photocopied ID.

“What are you going to compare the copy to?” she asked. “Do you see how nonsensical that is?”

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Columbus-based Center for Christian Virtue sent a letter to Dominick Gerace II, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, and David M Toepfer, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, calling on the two to enforce the federal Comstock Act, “as it applies to the interstate mailing of mifepristone” and other drugs used in abortion procedures.

“For decades, federal prosecutors chose not to enforce these provisions,” the letter from Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, states. “That prosecutorial discretion was a policy choice; it was never a legal determination that the statute was unenforceable or unconstitutional.”

The Comstock Act is a federal law that was passed in 1873, originally to bar “obscene” and “immoral” materials from being circulated through the mail. It noted anything “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion” as examples of materials for which distribution was criminalized under the law. Provisions regarding contraception were removed in the early 1970s, and the passage of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, which legalized abortion nationwide through the Constitution, changed the way the law was seen and enforced.

Though Roe v. Wade was repealed by a separate U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022, Ohio voters approved an amendment to the state constitution legalizing abortion and other reproductive care in the state. The amendment was approved in 2023 by 57% of voters.

The Comstock Act has come up more recently with discussion of mifepristone, a drug typically used in tandem with misoprostol in a regimen used to perform an abortion without the need for surgery. Abortion rights advocates consider medication abortions to be a safe and more accessible option for low income individuals, and those who don’t live near a clinic that performs abortions, or don’t have reliable transportation to get to and from a clinic.

Medication abortion is now overtaking other methods of abortion in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s annual abortion report. The report also attributes a 15% increase in abortions from 2024 to 2025 to telehealth access.

Despite having been an FDA-approved drug since 2000 and with decades of peer-reviewed research finding complications to be statistically rare, mifepristone has been in the crosshairs of state and federal lawmakers, including Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, who participated in a congressional hearing on “dangerous abortion drugs” in January.

Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has held off on banning mail-order medication abortion distribution as it considers a Louisiana case that asks the court to do just that. In a dissent to a Supreme Court decision in May that continues to block a lower court ruling banning mail distribution of mifepristone, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up the Comstock Act. Thomas said the law still criminalizes mailing of drugs for abortions, and because of the law, he said drug companies should not be allowed to continue distributing mifepristone through the mail “based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.”

In its May letter to federal prosecutors, the Center for Christian Virtue argued that the Comstock Act “is not a dead letter.”

“The statute is unambiguous,” Baer writes. “It does not contain an exception for FDA-approved drugs, for physician supervision, or for states that have chosen to permit abortion. It says what it says.”

Baer points to Thomas’ dissent in the letter, along with a separate dissent by Justice Samuel Alito, and said he hopes concerns over the mail-order process ” will eventually prevail in the courts.”

But until a decision is made, Baer argues federal prosecutors have an oath to enforce the laws, including the Comstock Act.

“We recognize that prosecutorial discretion is a real and legitimate doctrine,” Baer wrote. “But discretion does not mean abdication.”

The letter asks that Gerace and Toepfer “open investigative inquiries into mail-order abortion providers knowingly shipping mifepristone,” coordinate with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to “document violations,” and also “pursue prosecution where the evidence supports charges, and make clear to providers that the era of consequence-free Comstock violations has ended.”

Ohio-based abortion rights advocacy group Abortion Forward said the push to enforce the Comstock Act goes against what Ohioans want.

“Ohioans do not find it obscene to access safe and effective medication from trusted healthcare providers via telemedicine,” Abortion Forward executive director Kellie Copeland said in a statement. “But what we do find obscene is lobbyists and lawyers shoving their nose into our doctor’s offices, medicine cabinets, and bedrooms because they think they are better than us.”

The offices of the U.S. attorneys mentioned by the Center for Christian Virtue did not respond to requests for comment from the Capital Journal.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Even if you think taxpayers should be forced to send money to religious institutions, despite the separation of church and state enshrined in the first clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights…

Even if you think state lawmakers should be funding this separate system of private education in Ohio propping up religious institutions and private business with taxpayer dollars, despite the Ohio Constitution‘s clear mandate for funding one public system of common schools and explicit prohibition against religious sects controlling any part of those school funds…

And even if you don’t mind that most of the new recipients of this taxpayer-funded public money never attended public school, and it’s OK with you for taxpayers to subsidize the private school tuition of well-to-do families while nearly 90% of Ohio K-12 students do attend public school…

At the very least, at the bare minimum, don’t Ohio taxpayers deserve a receipt?

An invoice? An accounting of the bill of goods and services rendered?

Some independently audited way to compare and contrast their local public schools that taxpayers are funding to the private ones that taxpayers are also funding?

Don’t Ohio taxpayers deserve transparency, accountability, and oversight of $2.5 billion in our money that is being handed over by our state government leaders to private schools and religious institutions?

A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers thinks so, and they’ve introduced a proposal that would dramatically increase transparency over Ohio’s private school voucher programs.

Among a dozen provisions offered by state Sens. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Township; Kent Smith, D-Euclid; and Rep. Justin Pizzulli, R-Scioto County, Ohio Senate Bill 443 would audit how state dollars are spent in two of the state’s private school voucher programs, create report cards for academic performance, and require students to take the same end-of-course exams that public schools mandate.

Private and religious schools accepting the vouchers would have to submit weekly attendance records, conduct criminal background checks of employees, report the tuition and fees charged by the school in a five-year cost trend, report how many of their students have an Individualized Education Program, and publish their dropout and graduation rates.

Ohio public schools face significant oversight from the state on their budgets, on their performance, and on their curriculum, as it should be. It makes sense: They’re funded by taxpayer money and taxpayers deserve oversight and accountability.

So why shouldn’t private and religious schools that are also taking taxpayer money also be subjected to oversight and accountability?

After all, taxpayers are taking a risk on investment. It hasn’t always worked out well. Ohio taxpayers were ripped off by hundreds of millions of dollars when the ECOT for-profit, private online charter school scheme crashed and burned in 2018.

As a concept, it seems like a no-brainer that $2.5 billion in Ohio taxpayer money deserves transparency and accountability.

Unfortunately that is not a no-brainer for Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima.

Nearly as soon as the bipartisan proposal was introduced, Huffman threw cold water on it.

But Huffman’s arguments against transparency and accountability are far too weak to carry the $2.5 billion Ohio taxpayer burden they labor under.

Huffman’s first claim is that the best argument that there already is enough accountability is the fact that parents already send their children to these schools.

I’m not sure why that means that those parents don’t still deserve independently audited information on academic performance, graduation rates, attendance records, and accountability testing on par with public schools.

Comparison shopping would be far easier with independent apples-to-apples comparisons. Why don’t those parents deserve that? Huffman doesn’t say. We’re left to wonder.

Huffman’s second claim is that he has concerns about infringing on a private business. He neglects to mention that this is a private business taking public money.

You see, Huffman’s justifications would only make sense if a private family was using their own private money to pay a private business. That’s not the case.

These are private families using public Ohio taxpayer dollars to pay a private business or religious institution.

The use of public money demands public accountability far beyond the personal views of the parent using the public’s money at the public’s expense.

And privacy against public oversight for the business or religious institution stops when they dip their hands in the public honey jar.

If the issue was the contracting of home health services with Medicaid money, would Huffman make the same argument? The services have all the accountability they need because families are using them? The service agencies are private businesses and we don’t want to infringe on the privacy of a private business, even though they’re accepting huge amounts of public money?

‘Seems like pretty weak sauce.

‘Seems like pretty poor reasoning for the state government of Ohio to abdicate responsibility and oversight over billions of dollars in taxpayer money being handed out to private institutions.

If you are going to open up the public coffers for private business, Ohio taxpayers deserve transparency and accountability at the very least. This is as simple and basic as it gets.

If state leaders are going to continue to deny Ohio taxpayers that basic transparency and accountability over our own money, then taxpayers deserve a far more intelligible argument than Huffman has been able to offer.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The local actions come as state lawmakers also are looking to limit or repeal the incentives for the centers, which are sprawling campuses of computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites.

Supporters of the pauses say cities need rules before projects arrive, especially to answer residential concerns about electricity use, energy costs and nuisance issues. Industry supporters argue data centers bring jobs and tax revenue and are an essential part of the nation’s digital infrastructure. They warn that communities that block data centers are sacrificing those benefits.

The Denver City Council this month unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on data centers, halting new zoning permits and site development plans while the city drafts rules for future projects. In April, Oklahoma City approved a similar moratorium that will be in effect until the end of this year, or until the city updates its zoning code. Tulsa, Oklahoma, also approved a temporary stop on new data center construction, though major projects already in the pipeline will be allowed to proceed.

Smaller communities are taking similar steps.

In Illinois, both Bloomington and Normal earlier this month approved six-month moratoriums, and Morgan County took the same action in April. In Michigan, Huron County this week approved a three-year moratorium, joining roughly 20 other Michigan communities that have paused data center construction.

In Georgia, Camden County enacted a six-month moratorium earlier this month, becoming the first community on the state’s coast to do so. And a cluster of counties in North Carolina have hit pause, including Chatham County in February and Orange County (which includes Chapel Hill) in April.

But not all cities are souring on data centers: Cheyenne, Wyoming, this week opted not to proceed with a one-year moratorium after a lengthy public hearing.

A study released at the end of 2024 by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with projected use rising to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028.

A March Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans would oppose the nearby construction of data centers for artificial intelligence (AI), higher than the 53% of respondents who said they would oppose living near a nuclear power plant.

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.

All seven critical violations were noted as corrected during the inspection. State food code defines a critical violation as one with a direct connection to foodborne illness risk.

Inspected Monday, May 18, 2026, the Tiffin ice cream shop received one critical and two non-critical violations. Health district inspectors cited the facility under Ohio code 3717-1-03.4(G) for refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature controlled for safety (TCS) foods not properly date marked, with unlabeled food observed in the cooler. The violation was corrected during the inspection.

Non-critical violations included working food containers not properly labeled—a repeat violation—and a mop observed in the warewashing sink, which was also corrected on-site. An inspector note indicated the soft serve machine had been recently refilled before the visit and temperatures were moving toward compliance.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/7-seneca-county-restaurants-cited-for-critical-health-violations-in-may/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The answers are not flattering.

The Alzheimer’s drug that made him rich — and wiped out everyone else

In December 2014, a company under Ramaswamy’s Roivant Sciences umbrella bought an experimental Alzheimer’s drug, intepirdine, from GlaxoSmithKline for just $5 million. GSK was done with it; the drug had already failed in earlier trials. Ramaswamy saw an opportunity that had nothing to do with curing anyone.

Six months later, before running a single new late-stage trial to completion, he took the drug’s parent company, Axovant, public. The 2015 IPO valued the company in the billions — a record for a biotech debut at the time — even though Axovant reported having only a handful of employees, two of them Ramaswamy’s own mother and brother. That year, Ramaswamy reported roughly $38 million in income, most of it capital gains.

Then reality arrived. In September 2017, intepirdine failed its late-stage trial, and Axovant’s stock dropped more than 70% in a single day. It never recovered. The company was eventually wound down. Ordinary investors who had bought the hype were left holding next to nothing.

Ramaswamy was not among them. He had structured his personal stake through the parent firm, Roivant, insulating himself from the wreckage at the subsidiary. Heads, he wins; tails, the retail investors lose.

A pattern, by his critics’ account

This is where I will be careful, because the harshest words here belong to other people, not to me. Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, reviewing Ramaswamy’s biotech career, told Fortune the fortune was built by “basically a version of pump and dump.” A 2023 Newsweek opinion column went further, calling him a fraud outright. No regulator ever charged Ramaswamy with a crime, and he has never been convicted of one. Those characterizations are opinion and accusation, not court findings, and readers deserve to know the difference.

What is not in dispute is how Ramaswamy himself frames it. He has called Axovant his “single greatest failure” and said he has no regrets about how it was run. When pressed on whether he profited from a venture that cost others their savings, his campaign at first denied he made money on the failure, then acknowledged he had sold shares — saying he was “forced to sell a tiny portion” in 2015 to bring in an outside investor.

So here is the argued judgment, and I will own it as mine: a business model that reliably enriches the founder whether or not the product works, while leaving small investors to absorb the downside, is a scam in every sense that matters to the people on the losing end — even when it is perfectly legal. Legality is the floor, not the standard Ohio should accept from its next governor.

He already told Ohio what he thinks of it

Ramaswamy is running on a promise to make Ohio more competitive and more prosperous. Ohioans should weigh that pitch against what he did with his own company.

Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management in Columbus in 2022, marketing it as an “anti-woke,” anti-ESG investment firm. It grew fast. Then, in late 2024 — months before he announced his run for governor — Strive moved its headquarters from Columbus to Dallas, taking roughly $1.7 billion in assets under management and most of its Columbus staff to Texas.

When a candidate’s own firm votes with its feet and leaves the state he now wants to lead, that is not a detail. That is a tell.

Amy Acton served a Republican governor — and he says so himself

Now to the attack at the center of Ramaswamy’s campaign. He and the Ohio Republican Party have spent months branding Amy Acton “Dr. Lockdown” and accusing her of spreading dangerous “COVID ideology.” Here is the fact that branding is built to make you forget: Acton ran the Ohio Department of Health under a Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and signed the orders DeWine asked her to sign.

DeWine has endorsed Ramaswamy. He has also defended Acton’s work — and he personally knocked down the campaign’s central attack on her. One Ramaswamy ad blamed Acton for suspending Ohio’s in-person primary voting in March 2020. DeWine told the Associated Press that was his own call, not Acton’s, after a judge declined to delay the election. PolitiFact rated the ad “Mostly False.” When the Republican who appointed your opponent and endorsed you says your headline attack is wrong, that is not a close call.

Ramaswamy helped run the response he now calls disqualifying

The deeper problem is that Ramaswamy was not a bystander to Ohio’s pandemic response. He was inside it.

In a 2021 op-ed, Ramaswamy wrote that, as CEO of Roivant, he “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19” during 2020. The lieutenant governor then was Republican Jon Husted — now a U.S. senator — who stood alongside DeWine and Acton at Ohio’s daily pandemic briefings.

His positions at the time were not the civil-libertarian stance he sells today. Ramaswamy supported vaccines and mask-wearing and was vaccinated himself. According to a 2020 recording and Associated Press reporting, he also backed mandatory testing and a national COVID-19 registry that would have sorted Americans by immunity status to decide who could return to normal life. Ramaswamy says he never supported government mandates and that his proposals were about restarting the economy. Fine — but that is an argument about which restrictions to impose, not whether to act at all. It is the same debate Acton was in, and he was in it with her.

It was also lucrative. A Roivant subsidiary, Genevant Sciences, announced a $2.25 billion settlement with Moderna over patents used in COVID-19 vaccines. The pandemic Ramaswamy now invokes to disqualify Acton was, for his own companies, extraordinarily profitable. TiffinOhio.net detailed that record in earlier reporting.

Then he tried to erase his part in it. Before his 2024 presidential run, Ramaswamy paid a Wikipedia editor to remove a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team,” along with a mention of his Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship. He called it a correction and said the panel never met. The instinct is consistent across his whole career: take the upside, then scrub the receipt.

Ohio doesn’t have to be the next mark

Ramaswamy won the May 5 Republican primary and will face Acton, a physician and former state health director, on November 3. Acton spent the worst months of the pandemic at a podium next to a Republican governor, asking Ohioans to look out for one another — “don the mask, don your cape.” Ramaswamy spent that era, and the years around it, advising the same response and turning the pandemic into a payday, and now asks voters to believe he was on the other side of it the whole time.

None of this is hidden. It is in the SEC filings, the tax-record reporting, the relocation announcements, his own op-ed, and the governor’s own words. The record is the argument. Ohio can read it for itself — and it cannot afford to be sold one more time.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a brief order halting the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department and other high-ranking administration officials from taking any additional actions to create the fund or make payments from it.

The order came in a lawsuit filed by a former federal prosecutor and a California professor. The plaintiffs are represented by the legal advocacy groups Democracy Forward and Common Cause. The lawsuit is part of a flurry of legal challenges against the fund.

The Justice Department on May 18 announced a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that will make payments to individuals who believe they have been wronged by past administrations. The fund came as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over the leaking of his tax return information by a former IRS contractor.

Trump’s settlement agreement provides for the creation of the fund overseen by a board of five members chosen by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney. Trump can fire the members for any reason.

Brinkema, a President Bill Clinton appointee, took no position on the legality of the fund in her order. She wrote that her order is to ensure no money is “irreversibly disbursed” while the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order is pending.

She also set a hearing for June 12 — likely ensuring the fund will remain blocked for at least the next two weeks.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Andrew Floyd, a former federal Jan. 6 case prosecutor who was fired by the DOJ in June 2025, and Joseph Caravello, a California university professor who was charged with felony assault on a federal officer after protesting an immigration raid last summer. A jury acquitted Caravello in April.

The nine-count lawsuit alleges in part the fund violates the plaintiffs’ First and Fifth Amendment rights, and violates the authority of Congress.

“Since its inception, this fund has been on a collision course with the United States Constitution,” their complaint says.

Trump has written on social media that the fund will help those “who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration” receive justice.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Among the top concerns: Could pardoned Jan. 6, 2021, riot defendants who assaulted police officers claim a slice of the pie and essentially be rewarded for committing political violence? 

Advocates are also legally challenging the fund’s structure that will conceal details from the public, including claimants’ names and amounts paid out.

Nikhel Sus, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, otherwise known as CREW, which has filed suit against the fund, told States Newsroom the administration’s order is a “flagrant power grab of congressional authority.”

The fund, established by the Department of Justice to settle Trump’s multibillion dollar lawsuit against the IRS, has also complicated Senate Republicans’ plans to pass a simple majority immigration enforcement funding package. Some GOP senators are withholding votes unless guardrails for the fund are included in the legislation.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Republican senators on Capitol Hill on May 21 to defend the fund, but many GOP lawmakers left unconvinced and with multiple questions remaining.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters the fund is “stupid on stilts” and resembles “tyranny.”

Others were sweating out questions at town halls during the congressional recess. 

“I do not think one penny of any fund should ever go to any January 6 insurrectionist that was in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 … I want to be very clear … I clearly think Congress needs to have an oversight role in this before I can sign off or support this,” U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., said at a town hall in Norfolk, Nebraska, on May 26.

The fund hit a road bump on May 29 when it was temporarily blocked in the courts. Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia, in a suit in which plaintiffs are represented by the advocacy groups Democracy Forward and Common Cause, issued a brief order halting the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department and other high-ranking administration officials from taking any additional actions to create the fund or make payments from it.

Brinkema, who made no decisions on the merits of the case, set a June 12 hearing.

What is the “anti-weaponization” fund?

In exchange for Trump and his family dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for the 2019 leak of tax returns, the DOJ ordered the establishment of a settlement fund in the amount of $1.776 billion — a nod to the country’s founding. 

As part of the arrangement, Trump also agreed to drop an administrative claim for damages related to what Blanche described as an “unlawful” FBI raid of the president’s Mar-a-Lago residence, part of the Biden administration’s case against Trump for allegedly hoarding classified documents after leaving office. 

Trump also agreed to drop a claim for damages related to the DOJ’s 2019 inquiry into Russian meddling in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

Blanche introduced the fund on May 18 as a path to restitution for “victims of lawfare.”

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said in a press release. 

The fund will be led by five commissioners chosen by the attorney general, one of them in consultation with Congress. The president has the power to remove any member, according to the DOJ.

The department maintains the fund is nonpartisan. In addition to money, the DOJ will also issue formal apologies to eligible claimants, according to officials. 

Who is trying to limit or shut down the fund?

House Democrats tried to intervene in the president’s IRS case settlement, but U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams dismissed the case on Trump’s terms. Williams was appointed to the bench in the Southern District of Florida in 2010 by President Barack Obama.

On May 27, nearly three dozen former federal judges urged Williams to reopen the case, arguing the Trump administration “deceived” the court by not sharing with the judge details of the “anti-weaponization” fund. 

Further, the judges argued, the DOJ also claims the settlement forever absolves Trump and his family from tax audits and any other claims by a federal agency.  

“The parties to this case are using this lawsuit as the legal justification for these actions,” the judges argued.

Legislative proposals have also popped up in the House and Senate.

A bipartisan bill from Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., both up for re-election in swing districts, proposes to ban the use of federal money to pay claims submitted to the “anti-weaponization” fund.

“The Bipartisan Transparency for American Taxpayers Act ensures federal funds cannot be used for this fund without the transparency, oversight, and legal safeguards the American people deserve. Taxpayer dollars will not become a discretionary payout fund. Transparency is not optional. Accountability is not negotiable,” Fitzpatrick said in a press release.

Suozzi characterized the arrangement as a “slush fund to pay off January 6th criminals and other maladjusted minions!”

When pressed during a May 19 Senate hearing on whether Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of assaulting police officers would be eligible for the fund, Blanche said “anybody in this country can apply” and final decisions will be made by the fund’s commissioners.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., announced plans to introduce painful amendments when and if the Senate GOP brings its immigration enforcement funding bill to the floor.

Van Hollen said he will call for votes on an amendment to block payment to Jan. 6 defendants who have been convicted of violent crimes and sexual abuse of children.

The Maryland senator also said he will introduce an amendment that would prohibit members of Congress from receiving payouts.

“And as it currently stands, Members of Congress have the chance to benefit from this corrupt scheme. If Republicans won’t put an end to this fund entirely, they should at least join with us to bar Members of Congress from cashing in on it,” Van Hollen said May 21 in a written statement.

Who is suing?

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the fund.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Washington Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, argued in federal court that the pardoned rioters could use payout money to organize.

“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name,” they argued in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Legal advocacy groups, including CREW, Democracy Forward and Common Cause have also challenged the fund in court.

Through the order, the administration has granted itself “final unreviewable authority to disperse nearly $1.8 billion in money that Congress did not appropriate for that purpose to people that they subjectively determine are victims of so-called lawfare or weaponization,” Sus, of CREW, said in an interview.

The fund’s structure also flouts transparency laws, Sus said, not least of which includes moving $1.776 billion from the government’s legal judgment fund in a single transaction to a separate, unaccountable pot of money.

As the law stands now, the Department of Treasury publicly updates a website at least once per month with judgment award amounts paid to claimants by the U.S. government.

By withdrawing one lump sum, “they are wholly circumventing disclosure law that Congress passed specifically for that purpose to require disclosure for each settlement,” said Sus, whose organization filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

CREW also argues DOJ’s order is arbitrary and capricious.

“I think arbitrarily picking 1776 as the number for their (fund) valuation is the definition of an arbitrary precious action — like they just did it because they thought it was cool,” he said.

“And that’s not how the government’s supposed to operate. They’re supposed to actually consider the facts, they’re supposed to have a reasoned explanation for why they’re doing things.”

In the Virginia case, another group of plaintiffs is represented by Democracy Forward and Common Cause.

Among the plaintiffs are Andrew Floyd, a former federal Jan. 6 case prosecutor who was fired by the DOJ in June 2025, and Joseph Caravello, a California university professor who was charged with felony assault on a federal officer after protesting an immigration raid last summer. A jury acquitted Caravello in April.

The nine-count lawsuit alleges in part the fund violates the plaintiffs’ First and Fifth Amendment rights, and violates the authority of Congress.

The fund “does not offer benefits to victims of ideological targeting by Democrats and Republicans alike; instead, it offers benefits to those who have espoused views that were, or were perceived to be, oppositional to Democratic administrations, but not to those who have espoused views that were, or were perceived to be, oppositional to Republican administrations,” according to the complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Juan Salinas II of the Nebraska Examiner contributed to this report.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Taken together, the speakers sought to downplay and displace concerns about the expansion of data centers around Ohio.

Ohio is now home to more than 200 data centers, with another 77 planned by the year 2030.

“We are all driving data center demand,” Dan Diorio from the Data Center Coalition told lawmakers.

Sure, artificial intelligence is a significant and growing driver, he said, but basic cloud computing infrastructure makes up the biggest share of data center computation. The number of people who are online now has almost doubled since 2018.

“The average household has 21 connected devices,” he said, between phones, laptops, watches, TVs, and thermostats. “My oven is connected to Wi-Fi. I can preheat it from here.”

And anyway, Diorio added, data centers are good for local economies, creating jobs in construction and upkeep, while placing limited demands on local services like schools.

Polling from Gallup shows 7 in 10 Americans oppose data center construction in their neighborhood.

Lawmakers expressed more concern with how to move forward than how to divvy up blame.

“What I also heard him say,” Ohio state Sen. Brian Chavez, R-Marrietta said after the hearing, “is they’re absolutely willing to pay for everything that they use.”

“They said it’s up to us to figure out how we allocate that, and it’s a very difficult calculus,” the committee’s Senate co-chair went on, “but I heard them say they are going to pay for it,”

The committee’s Ohio House co-chair, state Rep. Adam Holmes, R-Nashport, chimed in that it’s a question of determining “cost causation.”

“We just want to be fair,” Holmes said. “But it’s a demand of society as we grow, so just being fair on who pays for it.”

None of the speakers who addressed lawmakers Wednesday took a particularly oppositional stance to data centers. Instead, they said Ohio should welcome the industry, even if lawmakers should create guardrails to protect consumers.

Power impacts

Data centers place massive demands on the power grid and that demand will only grow over the next several years. The data center industry insists that it is ready and willing to pay for the new infrastructure necessary for its roll out.

Ohio state Sen. Shane Wilkin, R-Hillsboro, pressed Diorio on that point.

“So, does that mean data centers are going to cover that cost of the increase in the need for utilities for them specifically?” he asked.

“Yes, data centers are fully committed to paying our whole cost,” Diorio replied. “So, all the costs attributed to us, data centers are committed to paying.”

Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis said the central question facing lawmakers is how to encourage data center growth while protecting ratepayers from subsidizing that expansion.

“Ohio can and should do both,” she said. “We can welcome investment, we can support innovation, we can compete for economic growth, but we must also protect Ohio families that are already struggling with rising utility bills, and that balance matters.”

The problem, however, is that assigning costs to a specific customer class can be difficult. The cost of a new transmission line is relatively straightforward, but incremental increases in cost of power? That’s harder to parse.

Asim Haque from the regional grid operator PJM explained that in some states, utility regulators have begun to develop separate customer classes for data centers.

Public Utility Commission of Ohio Chair Jenifer French explained that’s exactly what Ohio regulators are weighing right now.

“They are not currently in their own class,” French said. “So we have communicated to the Ohio utilities and stakeholders that we will be evaluating how costs are allocated across the different customer classes, with the main goal again of ensuring that existing and future data centers are being properly allocated their share of FERC-approved transmission costs.”

But this also comes with a challenge, Haque told lawmakers.

“The challenge is, is that it takes a year or two to construct a data center, and it takes to be generous four to seven years to construct the corresponding supply.”

That means even with data center operators committing to cover their costs, there’s still a potential mismatch in supply and demand. Haque explained that, in the short term, PJM’s reserve margin of power will get “chewed up” by data centers and other power users, and that consumption might outpace the grid’s ability to replace it.

“There may be periods of strain on the grid,” he said, “where we are going to have to ask the data centers to effectively get off the grid and move to their backups, so as to not have to shed likely residential consumers.”

The environment

One of the biggest environmental concerns about data centers is their demand for water to cool their servers. But Diorio said data centers aren’t actually using that much water.

“Data centers are amongst the most efficient water users within the economy,” he claimed.

The 39 billion gallons the industry used in 2025 is less than the 59 billion gallons used by the semiconductor industry, and it pales in comparison to the 533 billion gallons used by the food and beverage industry, he said. Not to mention, he added, “the 2,500 billion gallons of water per year that were lost to water leaks in municipal water systems on an annual basis.”

But the scope of data center water usage in Ohio is at best murky.

Mary Mertz, who heads up the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, explained that her agency regulates the quantity of water in the state. The agency requires registration and licensing from high-capacity water users, but has no real ability to identify data center specific use.

“If you tie into a public water system, you do not register separately,” she said, “and all of Ohio’s data centers currently tie into a public water system, so there are no separate registrations for data centers. So, that is just something we do not have visibility into their actual water use.”

She explained the agency has seen rising demand from public systems with nearby data centers, but they’re unable to quantify how much of that increase is tied to the data centers themselves.

John Logue from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency explained that most data centers don’t have to get a wastewater permit because they’re connected to a municipal water treatment system. If they discharge to a river or stream, however, the data center would need a permit for limiting and monitoring pollutants.

“Ohio EPA has only issued one such (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit for a data center at this time,” Logue said.

What’s next?

Committee co-chair Chavez laid out four further committee hearings in the coming weeks.

He warned the schedule could change, but lawmakers plan to take public comment June 1.

Following that, the committee plans to hold hearings for testimony from data center operators on June 4, local government officials on June 8, and companies associated with the data center industry on June 11.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In November, Ohioans will vote for a new governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, and treasurer, as well as one U.S. Senate race, and two Ohio Supreme Court races.

The Gongwer/Werth Legislative Survey is a recurring survey put out to members of the Ohio General Legislative Assembly to gather lawmakers’ views on current policy and legislative issues, according to the survey’s website.

For its most recent addition, the survey collected responses from 35% of Ohio legislators on the potential outcomes of six critical midterm elections.

Key Ohio U.S. Senate race

As former Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown tries to regain his congressional seat following a 2024 loss to Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, the odds are split on if Ohioans will ride the blue wave this November.

Legislative respondents said there was a 35% chance Brown wins the race, with 8% being undecided and 56% choosing Republican candidate U.S. Sen. Jon Husted.

Husted, former lieutenant governor of Ohio, was appointed to his Senate seat following Vice President JD Vance’s election in 2024.

Brown has reentered the campaign trail running on a platform of affordable healthcare and worker protections.

Ohio governor race

Ohio’s race for the top desk has already been singled out as one to watch as November draws closer.

With Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton winning her primary uncontested and Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy running away with his own, both candidates move towards Election day with no prior experience as elected officials.

Legislative respondents said Ramaswamy has a 64% chance of winning, giving Acton 29% with 7% of respondents being undecided.

Notably, no Democratic respondents chose Ramaswamy, while 6% of Republican candidates said Acton would win.

Acton and Ramaswamy are already curating a record-breaking expensive election.

Ramaswamy is running primarily on a platform of cutting taxes, reducing government waste, and advocating for more energy independence, according to his website.

Acton’s platform includes creating more affordability in housing and healthcare, improving public education, and supporting small businesses, according to her website.

Ohio congressional races

The U.S. Congressional race in Ohio’s 9th district has also been highly watched, with current Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur facing off against former Ohio state Rep. Derek Merrin in a rematch, this time with the district’s lines drawn more to favor Republicans after Merrin lost by just a little over 1% in 2024.

Kaptur has represented the district since 1983, making her the longest-serving woman in congressional history.

Polled legislators have predicted another tight race for the pair. The survey said 52% of legislators chose Kaptur to retain her position, with 43% choosing Merrin to win, and 5% being undecided.

Kaptur’s platform emphasizes her priority to strengthen the economy and expand border security, according to her website.

Merrin’s platform includes lowering income and property taxes, reducing health regulations for patients, and promoting price transparency, according to his website.

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 truly audacious (or desperate) publicity stunt, Candidate Ramaswamy called on the legislature to speed a proposed constitutional amendment (that duplicates the state’s voter ID law) onto the November ballot.

The next day, both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate introduced identical resolutions to do just that — and fast-tracked the measures for passage by mid-June.

Why the mad rush to amend the Ohio Constitution with a voter ID provision — only three years after the GOP-controlled legislature passed the nation’s strictest photo identification requirements at the polls?

Good question.

The Ramaswamy-Statehouse narrative for suddenly putting the same mandates in the state constitution via a slapped together legislative amendment boils down to partisan insurance. 

The toughest voter ID law in the country needs to be constitutionally protected from “the whims of state lawmakers, judges and the political winds that blow them in,” wrote Ramaswamy in a recent op/ed.

A mere statute in the Ohio Revised Code enacted by Republican supermajorities, signed by a Republican governor, and enforced by a Republican secretary of state is “fragile” said the former hedge fund/bio tech executive, so the voter ID statute must be enshrined in the state constitution for added protection.

If that’s not a convincing case to make for a ballot amendment to replicate established law — and it’s not even in the ballpark of persuasion — Ramaswamy recycled assertions that “public faith in elections is at an all-time low” and “restoring public trust in elections” is important, yada, yada, yada.

In a telling sign, the Republican running for governor suggested his voter ID amendment should be easy to achieve because polls show voter ID proposals are widely popular — which, ironically, is also how Ohio Republicans sold their extreme voter ID law in 2023.

In 2026, Ramaswamy — and obliging Republican lawmakers expediting makeshift legislation for their de facto leader — intend to exploit that voter ID popularity to goose turnout in a toss-up election.

How else to explain a major constitutional change that makes no sense?

Stumping for a superfluous constitutional version of established voter ID requirements in Ohio will require fancy footwork on the campaign trail to market redundancy as a necessary amendment, but Ramaswamy, who tap danced his way to a fortune as a shrewd marketer, will spin away. He is already acting as if he’s governor with a compliant legislature in tow.

Ramaswamy’s running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, kicked off the impromptu legislative mission to enshrine settled voter ID law into the state constitution “to secure the fundamental right of voting and maintain that confidence in our election system.”

Pay no attention to the glaring cognitive dissonance of Ohio Republicans who boast of the state’s secure, “gold standard” elections while manufacturing gratuitous restrictions to “safeguard” voting and restore confidence in a system they acknowledge is above reproach.

“Voter integrity” is the tired mantra they repeat every time they move to restrict voting access.

They never address the lie that fuels legislative remedies for non-existent problems or reverse deliberately seeded distrust. Donald Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election he lost with an aggressive propaganda campaign built on deceit about rampant voter fraud and rigged elections.

He and his lackeys cultivated baseless doubt about the 2020 election even after it had been reviewed, recounted, audited, adjudicated and verified ad nauseam.

Trump is still lying about the election his own cybersecurity chief called the most secure in U.S. history. Those lies undermine the legitimacy of elections at the core of our democracy. 

Republicans perpetuate those lies with ongoing legislation that reinforces the perception Trump cemented about fraudulent elections that are, in fact, run by the book.

Ramaswamy credited the twice-impeached felon who tried to seize unearned power for recognizing the problem of depleted trust in elections and the solutions to “strengthen faith” in voting.

Pretty rich considering it was Trump who conspired to trample that trust and weaken that faith.

But it is the legislative maneuver in the Ohio General Assembly, synced to Ramaswamy’s ambitions, that most deserves voters’ scorn and rejection if the dual resolutions to amend the constitution (on a campaign whim) make it to the ballot this fall.

We’ve seen this movie before. Republican lawmakers tried to affect the outcome of another election with a last-minute legislative amendment thrown on a special election ballot in August 2023. It attempted to raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments in the state from a simple majority to 60%.

The same legislative leaders — who just proposed a legislative amendment on a whim — claimed the constitution was revised too frequently and should be harder to amend.

It was a ruse to defeat a citizens’ initiative on the ballot three months later to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution — which passed overwhelmingly.

But Ohio voters saw through the Republican scheme to cancel their century-old majority voting rights to keep a majority of Ohioans from weighing in on constitutionally protected reproductive freedom.

Even in a sleepy summertime election, furious voters showed up to overwhelmingly reject the underhandedness of GOP leadership in the state.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Marquez D. Williams was charged May 27 in Sandusky Municipal Court with public indecency, persistent disorderly conduct, obstructing official business and resisting arrest, court records show.

Officers from the Sandusky Police Department were sent to Cedar Point shortly after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday on an assault report and were told the suspect had fled on foot into the parking lot, the report states.

The man approached a transgender woman from behind, grabbed her skirt and underwear and pulled them down, the report states. Several people in the area, including children, saw the woman exposed.

The woman’s friend chased the man toward the front gate, according to the report. The woman told a security officer what had happened as the man left the park and ran into the parking lot.

When the man ignored repeated commands to stop, an officer warned him and then deployed a stun gun, dropping him to the ground, according to the report. The man then became aggressive with officers, and additional units were called to the scene. Officers called for an ambulance afterward.

The woman told officers she believes the man targeted her because she is transgender, according to the report.

Ohio’s hate-crime statute, known as ethnic intimidation, applies only to certain offenses committed because of a victim’s race, color, religion or national origin. It does not cover gender identity or sexual orientation, so it was not available as an additional charge in this case.

Williams was taken to the Erie County Jail and has since been released. Court records list bonds of $250, $250 and $300 across the cases. He has not entered a plea, and his arraignment is set for June 3 at 9 a.m. in Sandusky Municipal Court.

The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court. The case was first reported by the Sandusky Register.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a statement posted to Facebook, Kakarala wrote:

I would like to convey my deepest thanks and gratitude from the very bottom of my heart to all the area parents for trusting me with the health and well being of their children all these years.

Coming to Tiffin has proven to be one of the very best decisions of my entire life. I had an extremely satisfying and tremendously successful professional career doing what I love most—taking care of thousands and thousands of children these past nearly 50 years and seeing them grow up over the years with many eventually returning with children of their own.

I wish everyone health, happiness, and peace.

Thank you all,

Prasad C. Kakarala, MD

Kakarala’s retirement was announced in April, when the practice confirmed his final day in the office would be May 28. Board-certified and holding the designations MD, DCH, and FAAP, he served Tiffin families for more than 45 years and spent roughly three decades as a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Toledo College of Medicine.

The practice remains open

Tiffin Pediatrics continues to operate under new ownership at 455 W. Market St., Suite A. Dr. Amna Hilal has been named medical director, and nurse practitioners Samantha Dotson, APRN, and Whitney Stine, APRN, are continuing to see patients and serve as clinical leaders. The practice has said it is accepting new patients.

Kakarala has said he will remain available in the coming months to help with the transition of care.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Travis D. Martin, 25, of 505 N. Union Street, Fostoria, was charged Tuesday, May 26, with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and 2 counts of child endangerment, a first-degree misdemeanor under Ohio law. The charges were filed by Sgt. Brandon Bell of the Fostoria Police Department.

Martin appeared by video for arraignment on May 27 and entered a not guilty plea. He was released on a personal recognizance bond and a waiver of extradition. Court-appointed attorney Joshua Sherman has been assigned to represent him.

A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, at 11 a.m.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The company is currently hiring for multiple positions across all shifts, including operators, maintenance technicians, and process technicians. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with company representatives, learn about JVIS operations, and explore available career opportunities at the facility.

JVIS, a Michigan-based automotive supplier, manufactures interior and exterior automotive components for major automotive manufacturers and suppliers throughout North America.

The Tiffin acquisition, completed earlier this month, preserved hundreds of manufacturing jobs that had been at risk following First Brands’ planned closure of the Toledo Molding & Die operations.

“We’re excited to continue growing our team here in Tiffin,” said Jonathan Crum, Plant Manager for JVIS Tiffin. “This facility has a strong manufacturing history, and we’re proud to build on that foundation while creating new opportunities for workers in our community.”

Tiffin Mayor Lee Wilkinson welcomed the company’s continued investment in the local workforce.

“JVIS investing in this facility is great news for Tiffin and our local workforce,” Wilkinson said. “We’re excited about this demonstrated commitment by JVIS and look forward to seeing continued growth and opportunity at this location.”

Individuals interested in attending the June 3 hiring event or applying for open positions can visit jvis.us/careers for additional information.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The New York Knicks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 130-93 on Monday, May 25, completing a four-game sweep of the Eastern Conference finals and clinching the franchise’s first NBA Finals trip since 1999. Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, was in the building, having posted a photo with his wife on X earlier that evening captioned, “Date night in Cleveland. Let’s go Cavs…all the way back!”

The Cavs did not come all the way back. And according to the Ohio political newsletter The Rooster, which broke the account, Ramaswamy’s night got worse from there.

Citing a private security source it said had direct knowledge, the outlet reported that Ramaswamy tried to walk into the Knicks’ restricted area after the final buzzer, announcing that he was “running for governor of Ohio and wanted to welcome everyone to Ohio.” A Knicks security officer reportedly told him he “didn’t have access to the area” and turned him away. The newsletter also reported that arena security had stopped Ramaswamy before the game, when he tried to park near the Cavaliers’ players and ownership.

Ramaswamy’s campaign denied the account. Campaign manager Jonathan Ewing told The Independent the report was “100% fake, from a mentally unstable and unhinged left-wing blogger who may suffer from delusions.”

Mamdani gets the last word

What isn’t in dispute is how the night ended online. After the sweep, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reposted Ramaswamy’s courtside “date night” photo to his personal and official accounts. The next day, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked him directly whether he had been trolling his Ohio counterpart.

“You know, I just hope you had a nice night, and we had a great one in New York,” Mamdani said on “The Source”. When Collins replied that it sounded like a yes, Mamdani answered, “I’ll leave that to you.”

A feud Ramaswamy helped start

The exchange extended a rivalry Ramaswamy has courted himself. Last summer, as the Columbus Dispatch reported, a super PAC backing his campaign ran a Times Square billboard urging New Yorkers unhappy with Mamdani’s rise to leave the city and move to Ohio — a stunt Ramaswamy promoted on X.

Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati native and Upper Arlington resident who built a fortune in biotech, ran briefly for president in 2024 before dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. He was tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk, then left the day Trump was inaugurated. He is now the GOP nominee for governor, running to succeed term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine. His Democratic opponent, former state health director Amy Acton, has led him in spring polling.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The filing in the federal District Court for the District of Maryland comes after a federal judge in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 22 dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s criminal indictment charges of human smuggling that stemmed from a 2022 traffic stop. The judge called the prosecution “vindictive and selective.”

Abrego Garcia’s habeas petition before Maryland federal Judge Paula Xinis argues that the Trump administration did not make a genuine effort to remove him to a country where he would not be harmed, persecuted, or potentially sent back to his home country of El Salvador. He has had protections against deportation to El Salvador since 2019. 

The Trump administration is trying to again deport Abrego Garcia to the west African country of Liberia. 

Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation to a brutal Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT cast a national spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica because the Central American country will grant him protections and refugee status. 

But the Trump administration would only allow for his removal if he pleaded guilty to the Tennessee criminal indictment, which was dismissed last week. Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty and since then, the Trump administration has tried to remove him to the African nations of Eswatini and Uganda.

“Considered cumulatively, the Government’s message is clear: because Abrego Garcia successfully challenged his unlawful removal to CECOT, declined the Government’s plea offer, and has continued to prevail in courts, the Government would rather seek to unlawfully remove him to a distant third country than lawfully remove him to the country he has designated,” according to the filing. “That is not a removal policy. It is punishment.”

The new filing asks Xinis to make a final order to resolve Abrego Garcia’s habeas petition by barring the Trump administration from deporting him to Liberia, or any country that is not Costa Rica. The filing also asks for the Trump administration to be prevented from redetaining Abrego Garcia, unless he will be removed to Costa Rica. 

Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. from El Salvador to face the criminal indictment. Several courts, including the Supreme Court, found his removal to that country illegal, but the high court stopped short of requiring the Trump administration to return him to the United States.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“The American people deserve to know the true costs of this conflict, and they deserve transparency and honesty when their government commits the nation to war,” the senators wrote in the May 27 letter to the nonpartisan agency. “Your timely and comprehensive estimate of the immediate and long-term budgetary consequences will help ensure that the Iran war remains subject to rigorous and appropriate legislative oversight.”

House Budget Committee ranking member Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., sent a letter to the CBO in early March, asking the agency to estimate what the conflict would cost “under several scenarios, including scenarios of the war lasting longer than 4 to 5 weeks and deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.” 

The senators’ letter asks CBO Director Phillip Swagel to “take into consideration the significant divergence between the administration’s public estimates and those produced by independent analysts and investigative journalists.”

The senators wrote that while Pentagon officials said in mid-May they believed the war had cost about $29 billion, other estimates placed its total costs much higher. 

“It is essential that Congress and the American public receive accurate, comprehensive estimates of the costs of the war in Iran,” they wrote. 

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, California Sen. Alex Padilla, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, Maryland Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen, Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine all signed the letter. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The decision by D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, represents a setback for Democratic groups, lawmakers and other groups including the NAACP that have sued to stop the order ahead of the midterm elections in November. The March 31 order faces at least five lawsuits. 

The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. Under the order, the proposed rule is due this week.

The order also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, with the help of the Social Security Administration. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

The Department of Justice had told the judge that the federal government hadn’t yet implemented the directive. The judge’s opinion, released just after midnight in Washington, D.C., makes clear that he could arrive at a different decision if the Trump administration moves forward with enforcing the order. 

“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote in a 26-page opinion. 

“Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur,” he wrote. “Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”

Implications for midterms

Nichols’ decision is the first ruling in what is likely to be a protracted legal battle that could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Thursday’s opinion dealt only with whether the executive order should be blocked immediately — the underlying lawsuit to decide if the directive is unconstitutional and illegal will continue.

Whether Trump can successfully implement the order holds major consequences for the midterm elections. If the White House is able to block the Postal Service from sending or receiving mail ballots from voters not on state-provided lists, it could upend elections in states where voting by mail is the norm and disrupt procedures in others. 

About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Trump has framed the order as a needed measure to combat noncitizen voting, though it’s exceedingly rare. The directive marks the White House’s latest effort to assert authority over elections as the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, stalls in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats and voting rights advocates argue the executive order is unconstitutional. Under the U.S. Constitution, states administer elections and Congress has the power to pass regulations on them, but the president has no power to act unilaterally.  

Postal Service targeted

The battle over the executive order also carries ramifications for the future of the Postal Service. While the president used to appoint the postmaster general, since 1970 the Postal Service has operated as an independent corporation — a change intended to shield mail delivery from politics.

Postal law experts say that if Trump is able to enforce an order against the postmaster general, who now is appointed by a Postal Service Board of Governors, it will shatter the agency’s independence. 

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Democratic groups suing over the order, including the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement expressed confidence they would eventually prevail. They said the decision doesn’t change the principle that the executive branch cannot infringe on Americans’ voting rights.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and one of the plaintiffs, in a statement called mail voting safe and secure. He emphasized that presidents don’t get to rewrite election law “by decree.”

“Trump’s strategy is simple: if he can’t win voters, he’ll silence them — and now a MAGA judge is enabling him,” Schumer said.

A group of Republican state attorneys general has also intervened in the case to defend the order. They argue that Trump has authority to gather and organize information within the executive branch. They say Trump can direct the Postal Service to propose rules.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who is leading the Republican legal effort, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Nichols’ decision.

Opponents look to Massachusetts

With Nichols’ decision, a federal judge in Massachusetts offers opponents their next opportunity to quickly halt the directive. 

Massachusetts District Court Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by President Barack Obama, will hold a hearing on Tuesday in a legal challenge brought by Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, along with the League of Women Voters and other civic groups.

Some legal analysts anticipate states may have an easier time challenging the order because its requirements, such as requiring states to submit lists of voters to send ballots through the mail, directly affect them. David Becker, director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, wrote on social media that the states have “much stronger standing claims” heading into the hearing.

After federal agencies begin acting on the order, the challenge in Massachusetts “will be the case to watch,” he wrote.

‘Maximum amount of confusion’

At a mid-May hearing before Nichols, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic leaders Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and other interest groups had argued that, with the midterm elections less than six months away, there was no time to see how the Trump administration executes the order.

The proposal would result in a “maximum amount of confusion” and be a “nightmare for election officials,” Danielle Lang, who argued on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Nichols. “Waiting will only erode public confidence in elections.”

At the time, Nichols warned Justice Department lawyers to notify him of “anything even approaching a material change” on implementing the order.

Justice Department senior trial counsel Stephen Pezzi told Nichols the plaintiffs have a right to “prepare for the darkest fears,” but, he argued, they can’t win a preliminary injunction based on speculation about error-prone citizenship lists and a postal rule not yet created.

Ultimately, Nichols agreed.

“In any event, given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs,” Nichols wrote, “they have not suffered any harm at present, much less harm that is ‘certain,’ ‘great,’ and imminent.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio Sens. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, and Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Township, recently introduced Ohio Senate Bill 443, also known as the Take the Dough, We Gotta Know Act. 

“The key point with this piece of legislation is that if you are going to take state dollars, there has to be a degree of transparency and oversight,” Blessing said. 

“This is a cornerstone of conservative philosophy in this state, where we have a program … and we have oversight over something like that. This is no different.”

The bill would require Ohio’s auditor to audit the funds of each school that is using EdChoice and EdChoice expansion vouchers each fiscal year. 

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce would be required to create a report card for chartered non-public schools in order to “hopefully get an apples-to-apples comparison,” Blessing said. 

Schools accepting EdChoice vouchers would have to submit weekly attendance records, conduct criminal background checks of its employees, report the tuition and fees charged by the school in a five-year cost trend, report how many of their students have an Individualized Education Program, and publish their dropout and graduation rates. 

“The current voucher system is doing two things — providing tuition coupons for wealthy Ohio families to be able to send their children to private schools, and it’s underfunding Ohio’s public school districts with drastic ramifications for Ohio students,” Smith said. 

Lawmakers increased the EdChoice expansion eligibility to 450% of the poverty line in 2023 through the state budget — creating near-universal school vouchers.

This means K-8 students can receive a $6,166 scholarship and high schoolers can receive a $8,408 scholarship in state funding under the expansion. 

Ohio spent more than a billion dollars on private school vouchers for the 2025 fiscal year, the second full year with near-universal eligibility. Nearly half of the money — $492.8 million — was from the EdChoice expansion. 

“Why on earth would we spend billions of Ohioans’ hard-earned money on schools that don’t have to provide that level of transparency and accountability — it doesn’t make any sense,” said Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati. “It’s what taxpayers deserve, that there would be accountability and transparency into all schools that receive public dollars.” 

Students in some counties don’t have the option to attend a private school. 

“Many of us barely know what vouchers are because we simply don’t have private schools,” said Ohio Rep. Justin Pizzulli, R-Scioto County. “Our best schools are our only schools, and those schools are public schools.”

Carroll, Champaign, Hardin, Harrison, Holmes, Meigs, Morgan, Noble, Preble and Vinton counties had zero private schools during the 2025 fiscal year.

Pizzulli said rural Ohio is frustrated with how schools are funded.

“We see our tax dollars supporting a voucher system that largely benefits areas with access to private schools, while communities like mine receive no or little practical benefit at all because those options don’t exist,” he said. “When vouchers were expanded, many of us were told, well, private schools would begin magically appearing and popping up all over the state, that simply has not happened.”

Nonpublic Ohio schools had 181,244 students enrolled in fiscal year 2025 — a 4.6% increase compared to fiscal year 2024. 

“What frustrates us is seeing our taxpayer dollars increasingly flow towards families who already had the means to afford private tuition, and so we’re just asking for fairness,” Pizzulli said.  

The lawmakers stressed Ohioans deserve to know how their tax dollars are being used. 

“The taxpayers deserve to know where the money is going, who is benefiting, and whether the investment is producing results,” Pizzulli said.  

Cleveland Heights Teachers Union President Karen Rego said her district is expected to lose $7 million over the next two years in layoffs and other cutbacks. 

“I don’t know where that’s going to happen, we feel very stretched thin already, and to lose staff members that we’ve lost this year, and the possibility of losing more next year is a really tough pill to swallow,” she said. 

Rego is not against people choosing what school they go to, but wants to see more accountability as far as how the taxpayer money is being spent. 

This bill is being introduced late in the General Assembly — any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered.

“If it goes nowhere in this General Assembly, or even next, that isn’t the point,” Blessing said. “We have identified a major problem here. We also have a solution.” 

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, questioned how serious the senators are about this bill since they waited until now to introduce it. 

“Once that money goes to those private organizations, we don’t audit that, and I think if we’re going to come up with a scheme where something like that would happen, we need to make sure that the privacy part of it for people — kids and families going to school, and the people running the school — all of those things are intact,” he said. 

More than 300 public school districts are suing over EdChoice. A trial judge ruled last summer that the program was unconstitutional, but a hearing was held earlier this month before the 10th District Court of Appeals.

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.

Less well-known is another necessity — long-term care for seniors — that is also costly and getting costlier. And, because of the way it’s financed, it’s sucking vast amounts of wealth out of the upper middle class on down, a study published in April by the Roosevelt Institute says. 

“The result is a system that drains the resources of low-income and middle-class families, eroding their ability to build or transfer wealth across generations,” the report said. “In this way, long-term care is both a symptom and a cause of the nation’s deepening wealth divide. It is a force shaping who gets to grow old with security and who bears the financial cost of care.”

The report said that 62% of those surveyed think Medicare, the health program for people over 65, pays for long-term care. It doesn’t.

It’s financed by Medicaid, the state/federal health program for low-income Americans.

To qualify, you have to meet income and asset guidelines. In Ohio, individual assets have to be less than $2,000 and you can have a maximum monthly income of $2,982, according to the American Council on Aging.

No matter how frugal you were during your working years, no matter how much you saved, you have to pay out of your own pocket until you get down to $2,000. 

That means less money to invest in your heirs; to do things like paying the wildly inflating cost of a college education. Instead, the heirs take on that burden, often in the form of student debt.

The Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, said that feeds inequality and makes it hard even for better-off Americans to get ahead.

“Even among upper-middle-class couples with lifetime earnings over $4.75 million, nearly half will spend down their assets paying for long-term care and eventually enroll in Medicaid if they require long-term care for five years or more,” the report said.

The vast majority of Americans — more than 80% — have to spend down and depend on Medicaid if they require long-term care for five or more years, the Roosevelt Institute report said.

If you slice the wealth distribution into fifths, even a majority of the top slice — 53% — have to go on Medicaid after five years, it said. That jumps to 75% of the second-richest tranche, 87% of the third-richest, 91% for the second-poorest and 95% for the group at the bottom, the report said.

The Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University reports that with 2 million residents over 65, Ohio has the sixth-largest elderly population in the United States. So as those people age and require long-term care, Ohio families are losing a huge chunk of the wealth their elders spent a lifetime accumulating.

And, even as it wipes out intergenerational wealth, the way we finance long-term care is likely to get even harder on American families. That’s because of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

It gave $1 trillion in tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans, while it cut a similar amount from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program. 

Many of the Medicaid savings are expected through less enrollment due to new work requirements. But the GOP law also seeks to save $150 billion over 10 years by capping certain state payments to providers such as nursing homes.

The Roosevelt Institute report said that long-term care imposes huge costs even on families who are able to personally provide long-term care to their elders. 

“Unpaid family care is not without its own intergenerational costs,” it said. “Unpaid caregivers provided an estimated $600 billion in economic value in 2021, often at the expense of their own career growth and retirement savings.” 

The Roosevelt Institute report said the way care for older Americans is financed affects everyone.

“Long-term care is not just an individual health issue, but a structural driver of wealth inequality,” it said. “By maintaining a system that depends on unpaid family caregiving, provides public support only after families have nearly exhausted their savings, and allows private, profit-driven companies to capture rising care costs, the US effectively penalizes aging.” 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, was a Christian private liberal arts school that counted among its graduates members of Congress, famous musicians, Pulitzer Prize winners and the former executive editor of The New York Times. Yet it had been unable to endure years of financial losses.

About 15 minutes southeast, toward the Birmingham suburbs, the inaugural freshman class at Highlands College was finishing its first year that same spring. The private Christian school, which has just gotten permission from the state to award bachelor’s degrees, was born out of the nondenominational Church of the Highlands, the biggest religious congregation in the state and one of the largest in the nation. It claims a weekly attendance of 60,000 across more than two dozen campuses in Alabama and Georgia.

Long-established, religiously affiliated small colleges such as Birmingham-Southern are battling the same existential pressures weighing on non-religious liberal arts colleges nationwide: declining enrollment, rising operational costs and a deepening skepticism of higher education among families who fear ideological influence on their children or question whether steep tuition and fees are worth it.

But a different model of Christian education is on the upswing: Some of the nation’s biggest megachurches are getting into the college business, prioritizing job training and church culture over traditional liberal arts. A franchise-style model from a Christian university in Florida has made it easier than ever for them to launch.

The new schools are attracting big donors and growing their enrollment through a built-in base of believers — and some are pushing to access public funding.

States including Florida, Georgia and Minnesota have opened their state financial assistance programs to religious colleges in recent years. The change mirrors a broader push already underway in K-12 education, where states have funneled billions to religious schools.

Many of these new colleges eschew the regional accrediting that’s standard for more established universities. Some pursue alternative accreditation from religious nonprofits that may or may not be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

That means students’ college credits may not transfer to other schools or to graduate programs. And the costs of non-accredited coursework aren’t eligible for federal financial assistance offered through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

Supporters of the megachurch-affiliated schools say they’re a good option for students who want practical training for specific jobs, generally in ministry or business. They say students benefit from being closely connected to their local faith community.

But some experts question whether the schools’ lack of traditional accreditation could limit students’ options after graduation, or whether their close ties to one church could have an outsized impact on the school’s accountability and transparency.

“Public funding is something that everybody should be concerned about, no matter your politics, no matter your religion,” said Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University in upstate New York who has written books on the history of Christian education in America.

“And I think it’s everyone’s business if there are schools that are restricting the chances of students in a way that students aren’t aware of what they’re getting into.”

Financial aid

Schools such as Highlands College are growing their physical footprints with big donations from heavy hitters. A $20 million donation from the Green family, whose patriarch David Green founded the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, funded Highlands’ first two residence halls.

In March, 3-year-old Austin Christian University — born out of Texas-based Celebration Church, which has more than 23,000 members — broke ground on a $50 million complex thanks to a donation of the same size from Roger Bringmann, a vice president at California-based tech giant Nvidia.

The schools’ focus more closely aligns with many conservatives’ educational goals. Republicans in statehouses across the country have pushed to increase Christianity’s influence and presence in education, while President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed relaxing accreditation rules.

In Florida last month, Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier declared the state won’t enforce its constitutional ban on funding religious institutions, opening the door for state-funded scholarships for Christian colleges.

The newer Christian schools also may benefit from battles fought by their older counterparts.

Last year, Georgia agreed to allow religious colleges to participate in state-funded financial aid programs after a 64-year-old Christian college sued the state over its law that barred theological schools from public tuition assistance.

And after two century-old colleges filed suit in Minnesota last year, a federal judge struck down a 2023 state law that barred religious colleges from a state-funded dual enrollment program that lets high school students enroll in college credit courses tuition-free.

“We’ve done lobbying at the state level, working with the state legislators to get access to things like in-state, need-based grants,” said Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Southeastern University, in Lakeland, Florida, which has partnered with more than 200 churches across the country to help them launch colleges. “Depending on the need in each state and the availability of state funding, we try to access every scholarship dollar that we can for students.”

Many megachurch schools offer financial aid. But tuition and fees at more established church-affiliated schools can run into the mid-five figures — on par with their private college counterparts, but far above in-state tuition at big public universities.

At Highlands College, tuition, housing and fees total about $42,000 per year. The school, which focuses on training for the ministry, says 100% of its students receive scholarships. In-state tuition, housing and fees at the University of Alabama cost $28,196 per year. At Birmingham-Southern, the year it closed, those same costs totaled about $36,500.

But costs vary. At Elevation College, which plans to welcome its first class this fall and was launched by North Carolina megachurch Elevation Church, the tuition, housing and fees are about $19,936 per year. VOUS College of Ministry in Miami, based at one of the fastest-growing megachurches in Florida, charges $12,136 per year in tuition and fees, though that doesn’t include housing.

Single-church affiliations

Unlike more traditional schools that are affiliated with an entire denomination, these newer schools are often deeply entwined with the leadership at just one megachurch.

At Austin Christian, for example, the college president is Connor Champion, the son of Celebration Church’s founding pastors, Joe and Lori Champion.

Last year, Church of the Highlands founding pastor Chris Hodges stepped down from his role there to focus on being chancellor at Highlands College, and tapped the college’s president to become the church’s new head pastor.

Some critics say that when schools are closely tied to one church, rather than to an entire denomination, the church’s leadership and finances have an outsized impact on the school.

“You can end up with this insular, sometimes authoritarian power structure, which I don’t mean to say is unique to religious schools, but it is one of the hazards of this kind of institutional structure,” said Laats.

But having a college tied to a local church also can boost its credibility and accountability within that faith community, said Rick Ostrander, a longtime Christian college administrator who is currently the executive director for the Michigan Christian Study Center at the University of Michigan.

“There’s always the danger with new markets and new models that develop some bad actors or just some unhealthy situations,” Ostrander said, “but I think that’s less likely in this area than some other quote-unquote professional areas.”

Church franchise models

The Highlands model — practical, church-based job training paired with academic courses offered through an accredited partner university — is spreading, in part, thanks to a franchise-style approach from a Florida university that has made launching a church-based college easier than ever.

Southeastern University in central Florida is a private school affiliated with Assemblies of God, one of the world’s largest Pentecostal Christian denominations. Southeastern is accredited by a federally recognized regional accreditation body, and it’s one of the fastest-growing private nonprofit colleges in the country, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

One reason for that growth is it has partnered with more than 200 churches, including some of the nation’s largest, to offer accredited Southeastern degrees through local startup colleges. Some of these church colleges, such as Highlands, have hundreds of students; some just a handful. Southeastern provides the academics while the church provides the practicum classes.

About a third of the 13,600 students at Southeastern are at schools affiliated with their network partner churches, said Fitzgerald, who is chief of staff for Kent Ingle, the president of Southeastern.

The university helps the church colleges line up curriculum and instructors, he said, and helps secure the necessary state approvals.

“We make sure that their courses are up to accreditation standards,” Fitzgerald said. “We make sure that the faculty they have are well-qualified, and we’re able to provide a stamp of approval on pretty much what they’re already doing, and so it’s a match made in heaven, if you will.”

By offering educational degrees, a church can create a pipeline of future staffers who are steeped in its culture, a priority for megachurches intent on preserving their brand.

And it gives churches additional workers who run conferences, staff events or manage social media, all for college credit rather than wages. That can be a boon for high-revenue megachurches that rely on an army of volunteers.

Fitzgerald said he’s not aware that Southeastern has ever said no to a church that approached it about becoming a partner site. Revenue from student tuition and fees is split between Southeastern and the church college.

Coming changes

One of Southeastern University’s biggest success stories has been Highlands College in Birmingham. The school began offering unaccredited ministry courses in 2011 before joining the Southeastern network in 2017.

In 2023, Highlands was awarded its own accreditation by the Association for Higher Education, a network of Christian schools that has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. It now offers more than half a dozen bachelor’s degree programs.

This fall, the college will launch a new business school and a bachelor’s degree in business leadership. The Dunn School of Business is named in honor of the former CEO of a faith-based investment group that has invested millions in a church-planting network co-founded by Chris Hodges, the chancellor of Highlands College.

In Texas, Austin Christian University is focused entirely on business education, offering a bachelor’s of business administration degree through its partnership with Southeastern. Tuition, fees and housing are $35,000 per year. In addition to academic classes, students attend weekly sessions with Christian business executives and can work with Christian entrepreneurs on business projects in a “startup accelerator” program.

The business focus could help protect the school from coming changes at the federal level.

The Trump administration has been working to overhaul higher education, including proposing a new rule that would require undergraduate programs to show their graduates earn more than the median earnings of similarly aged adults with only a high school diploma, or risk losing access to federal student loans and grants.

Some Christian higher ed organizations, such as the Association for Biblical Higher Education and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, worry these provisions would have a disproportionately negative effect on Christian institutions, particularly those that train for traditionally lower-paying ministry or church roles.

Fitzgerald of Southeastern said he isn’t concerned that the federal overhaul will harm the newest crop of church colleges.

“We believe that as students begin to really reevaluate the return on investment of higher education, we think that unique models for education like this one are the ones that are going to thrive and succeed,” Fitzgerald said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequiera contributed to this story. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The reason has to do with the water cycle.

Water influences every aspect of our lives through a delicate cycle that transforms liquid water into vapor and back again.

As the Earth warms, more of that precipitation is arriving in intense storms that deliver more water than the landscape can handle. When storms drop a few inches of rain over a few days, the water sinks into the soil, nourishing plants and replenishing groundwater. But during heavy downpours, the rain can’t sink in fast enough, and much of the water runs off instead, often fueling flooding.

Water also evaporates faster in warmer temperatures. So, despite an increase in total annual precipitation nationally, the landscape is drying out more rapidly as temperatures rise, resulting in more severe and frequent droughts.

I’m a hydrologist at UMass Amherst. My colleagues and I are documenting these broad shifts and what they mean for the future of the terrestrial hydrological cycle – the water cycle on land – and the people and ecosystems that depend on it. The effects are occurring across climates around the world.

A hydrological cycle out of sync

Fundamentally, the terrestrial hydrological cycle is controlled by two things: precipitation that adds moisture to the ground and evapotranspiration, meaning water that evaporates either from the land back into the atmosphere or from plants releasing it through their leaves.

Over the long term, the total amount of precipitation that falls, minus the total evapotranspiration sending moisture back into the atmosphere, determines how much water moves through the hydrologic system. That affects stream flow, soil moisture and the amount of water sinking into the ground and recharging aquifers.

During heavy precipitation in the U.S. Northeast, water is rapidly routed through the shallow subsurface rather than reaching deeper soil and groundwater storage. Julianna C Huba, et al., 2026

When this balance shifts or becomes out of sync with its natural state, it affects how water moves through the landscape. And that directly influences where water is available and how much is there.

These shifts in precipitation are occurring alongside longer growing seasons that allow the land to accumulate more heat. As temperatures rise, drier air also pulls more water from the landscape, increasing the risk of drought.

The changing timing of precipitation can result in counterintuitive feedbacks, as recent studies in the Northeast have shown.

In one study, scientists at Harvard Forest found that more intense storms are delivering greater amounts of water at rates exceeding the soil’s capacity to retain it. For example, in 2023 they found that high-intensity events in their research area made up about 42% of the year’s total precipitation.

When more precipitation is concentrated, with long gaps between storms, the surface soils have time to drain and dry out. This has contributed to drier atmospheric conditions as less water is available to evaporate from the land.

This effect from bursts of heavy rain with dry periods in between shows up in data. My research group at UMass found in a separate study that while wet years in the Northeast are becoming more frequent, dry years are also becoming more frequent.

Data collected by scientists with Harvard Forest, near Petersham, Mass., from 1964 to 2023 shows how precipitation has been increasing, with a large percentage of it coming from downpours. Samuel Jurado and Jackie Matthes, 2025, CC BY-NC-SA

During the wettest years over the past decade, we found an accumulation of approximately 2 inches of water in the shallow ground, contributing to higher water tables, more frequent flooding and damage to infrastructure during heavy rainstorms.

Conversely, during dry periods the landscape dries out rapidly, resulting in drought advisories, fires, water restrictions and crop failures in what is normally one of the wetter regions of the U.S.

Finding solutions

Many states are now incorporating climate science into decisions about infrastructure and land use to better understand the risks ahead. Massachusetts, for example, created a climate data clearinghouse to make research and data widely available. It also invested in computer models to examine potential future scenarios of water storage on the landscape so communities and farmers can prepare.

Communities can boost their resilience to extreme storms with urban designs and construction that take flood risk into account, include careful drainage as more areas are paved and add features such as rain gardens, riverside parks and bioswales that move and hold more water where needed.

To manage dry years, communities can implement conservation measures, such as limiting outdoor watering, subsidizing low-flow toilets and showers, and using water pricing to encourage more careful use. They can also teach residents how to use less water and generally be more mindful of water use.

On a larger scale, a new study using computer models indicates that more aggressive efforts to reduce the drivers of climate change – particularly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels – can reverse the trend of extreme precipitation, eventually returning to rates seen in the 20th century.

Until that happens, however, the world will have to adapt to a changing hydrological cycle.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Vermont’s new law bans the sale or use of paraquat without explicit approval from the secretary of agriculture. Widely used to control weeds in major crops across the country, that chemical is linked to Parkinson’s disease.

More than a dozen states have recently introduced legislation to ban or limit the use of paraquat, according to The Council of State Governments. 

“With Vermont leading the way, states across the country now have a clear path to end the use of one of the most toxic herbicides still on the market,” Geoff Horsfield, legislative director for the Environmental Working Group, said in a news release. “This is a turning point in the effort to protect public health from a chemical that has been tied to devastating neurological harm.”

The nonprofit research and advocacy organization has been pushing for an end of paraquat use, which is banned in more than 70 countries.

Lawmakers in nearby New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania are also considering paraquat bans. And bills to ban or limit its use have been proposed in Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says paraquat is one of the nation’s most widely used herbicides. But because of its inherent risks, only certified individuals may apply the herbicide and the agency warns against using it near home gardens, schools, parks, golf courses or playgrounds.

“Paraquat is highly toxic,” EPA’s website says. “One small sip can be fatal and there is no antidote.” 

Contact to the skin, swallowing or breathing the herbicide can cause lung damage, heart failure, kidney failure and has been linked to certain cancers. 

Agricultural giant Syngenta has faced thousands of lawsuits from people claiming the company did not warn consumers of the dangers of its weedkiller Gramoxone, whose key ingredient is paraquat. 

In March, Syngenta announced it would end global production of paraquat by the end of June. 

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The 31-page motion invokes Ohio’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act — the state’s new anti-SLAPP statute that took effect April 9, 2025 — and seeks dismissal of Miller’s claims with prejudice, an expedited hearing within 60 days, and a court order requiring Miller to pay her attorney fees, court costs, and other litigation expenses, all of which the statute makes mandatory if her motion is granted.

“Political candidate and Congressman Max Miller seeks to silence a woman who has information about his misdeeds,” the motion opens. “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Ohio’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (‘UPEPA’) prohibit him from succeeding.”

What Miller’s lawsuit alleges

Miller, who represents Ohio’s 7th Congressional District and is up for re-election in November, filed the underlying defamation complaint on May 13 in the same Cuyahoga County court. The lawsuit names Moreno along with her divorce attorney Andrew Zashin and his firm, Zashin Law, and seeks at least $25,000 in damages plus punitive damages “in an amount sufficient to punish Defendants and deter future similar conduct.”

Miller’s complaint focuses on two statements published in a May 7 Daily Mail article that TiffinOhio.net previously covered: that Miller hurled a pot of boiling water at Moreno during a June 2024 argument, with some of the water hitting her in the chest; and that Miller wrote his then-wife a handwritten letter the same day apologizing for “failing to protect her” without admitting to abuse. Miller’s complaint alleges Moreno “caused” those statements to be published.

Moreno’s UPEPA defense

Moreno’s motion, filed by The Chandra Law Firm of Cleveland, argues that Miller cannot succeed for four independent reasons under UPEPA.

First, the motion contends that accusations of abuse against a sitting congressman and congressional candidate are matters of public concern at the core of First Amendment protection. UPEPA, by statute, requires courts to “broadly construe and apply” its scope, and the motion cites U.S. Supreme Court precedent that criticism of public officials is “the kind of speech the First Amendment was primarily designed to keep within the area of free discussion.”

Second, Moreno argues that Ohio’s one-year statute of limitations on defamation has expired on any private statements she made about Miller — including statements to her parents, attorneys, and the court-appointed parenting coordinator dating back to 2024 and 2025.

Third, the motion includes a sworn affidavit in which Moreno states she has never spoken to a Daily Mail reporter, never directed anyone to leak information to the publication on her behalf, and ignored an August 2024 text message from Daily Mail reporter Kelly Laco that she attaches as an exhibit. The motion argues Miller himself publicized the underlying allegations through his own March 9 filing in the couple’s domestic-relations case and through an April 24 New York Post article that referenced the police reports — both publicly available sources reporters could have followed up on without any leak from Moreno.

Fourth, and most significant for the public record, the motion argues that the statements in the Daily Mail were true or substantially true.

What the affidavit and deposition say

According to the sworn affidavit Moreno filed with the motion, on Saturday, June 8, 2024, she told Miller she planned to leave him. She describes what followed as a two-part attack. First, Miller — who had just been cooking eggs — took the hot water from the pan and threw it at her. She fell to the floor in a fetal position, the affidavit states, after which Miller “took the sprayer from the sink and continued to spray me with hot water.” She took their daughter and fled to her parents’ home that day. Photographs documenting red marks on her body, taken the same day and attached to the affidavit, were also filed with the motion as exhibits.

The motion goes further, citing what it describes as Miller’s own admission to one part of that account. In an October 2025 meeting with court-appointed parenting coordinator Deborah Koricke, Moreno told Koricke about the hot-water incident. On May 12, 2026, Miller’s own divorce attorney Pamela J. McAdams deposed Koricke as part of the domestic-relations case. According to an excerpt of the deposition transcript filed as Exhibit A-7 to the motion, Koricke testified that Miller confirmed he sprayed Moreno with the sink hose. The motion cites Koricke Deposition Transcript at 16:6–14, and notes the full deposition is a public record in the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Division.

Miller’s admission, according to the motion, was limited to the second part of Moreno’s account — the sink-sprayer — and the motion concedes that “Miller did not say that the water was boiling.” His defamation complaint targets only the first part of the account: the Daily Mail’s description of him hurling a pot of boiling water. Moreno’s motion argues that distinction does not save Miller’s claim, because under Ohio law, substantial truth is an absolute defense to defamation. The “gist” or “sting” of the Daily Mail’s account — that Miller attacked his then-wife with hot water during the June 2024 incident — is true regardless of whether the water came from a pan or a sink hose, the motion contends, because Miller admitted to attacking her with hot water during the same encounter.

The motion also quotes from the handwritten letter Miller is alleged to have written. According to Exhibit A-1, the letter reads in part: “I do know you love me, protect me, and care for me. I failed to do that for you… I’m sorry I failed you and [daughter]. …I’m so sorry.”

A footnote in the motion asserts that “Miller previously falsely claimed that the letter didn’t exist,” citing a May 14 Politico article.

The motion also discloses that Bay Village police interviewed Moreno on February 23, 2026, as part of the open investigation into the couple’s then-2-year-old daughter’s broken collarbone. During that interview, Moreno told the officer about the 2024 hot-water incident, and the officer included her statement in the incident report — a document that is itself a public record and is attached as Exhibit A-8.

Miller dropped a separate case the day before

The motion arrives one day after Miller voluntarily dismissed a separate lawsuit he had filed against Moreno in February alleging she was pushing false domestic violence allegations against him. Miller’s filing dismissing that case Tuesday cited his daughter’s “well-being and best interests.” He did not move to dismiss the defamation suit.

Miller has denied the abuse allegations. His spokesperson told the Associated Press that Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services investigated several allegations that he abused his daughter and deemed them unsubstantiated. The May 13 complaint says the allegations are “simply an attempt to destroy my personal and professional reputation.”

Background and what’s next

Miller, 37, was elected to Ohio’s 7th Congressional District in 2022 with Donald Trump’s endorsement after working on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. He and Emily Moreno married at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in August 2022; he filed for divorce on their second wedding anniversary in August 2024. They share a 3-year-old daughter, with a joint-custody arrangement and $2,500 in monthly child support from Miller under their June 2025 divorce settlement.

The motion notes Miller’s history of using litigation in response to public abuse allegations. In October 2021, he sued former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham for defamation after she publicly accused him of physical abuse during their prior relationship. Miller dropped that suit in August 2023.

Under UPEPA, all other proceedings in Miller’s defamation case are automatically stayed until the court rules on Moreno’s motion or any appeal of that ruling concludes — and any adverse decision is immediately appealable as an interlocutory matter. The court must hold a hearing within 60 days unless it allows limited discovery, and must rule within 60 days after that hearing.

The case is Max Miller v. Emily Moreno, et al., Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Case No. CV-26-138810, assigned to Judge Joy Kennedy.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to wade into a legal fight between the Republican National Committee and a host of Democratic and voting rights groups over a series of voting restrictions in Arizona.

If the court takes the case, it could lead to a significant decision granting states greater leeway to purge alleged noncitizen voters close to elections and mandate that voters prove their citizenship — a key aim of the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s signature elections legislation that’s stalled in Congress.

The high court’s decision could arrive prior to the 2028 presidential election.

Voting in Arizona

Arizona requires individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, to vote in state elections. Residents who don’t offer documentation can still use a federal form to register, but can only vote in federal elections. 

Election officials must run the names of federal-only voters through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizens.

The Justice Department argues that the Supreme Court should affirm the Arizona law and find that it doesn’t violate the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law that sets rules for how voters are registered and when states can remove them from their rolls. The NVRA imposes strict limits on canceling registrations in the 90 days before a federal election.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Arizona’s law violates the NVRA.

“But that decision eliminates the flexibility the Act promises to States when enforcing their voter qualifications,” the Justice Department says in its brief.

While the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to take the case, the underlying petition was filed by the Republican National Committee. Its chairman, Joe Gruters, in a statement said it was “unacceptable” that the RNC was still having to defend the Arizona law.

“Federal law is clear: only U.S. citizens have the right to vote in American elections,” Gruters said.

Appeals court ruling

Mi Familia Vota, a Latino voting rights group that’s opposing the RNC in court, said in a statement the Justice Department’s brief shows “MAGA Republicans and their friends in the Trump Administration are once again trying to disenfranchise Latino voters in Arizona.”

Opponents of Arizona’s law argue the 9th Circuit decision was correct. The state law, they say, goes well beyond what’s allowed under the NVRA. Election officials may remove individual voters in certain circumstances in the run-up to an election but the law prohibits sweeping purges.

“States cannot circumvent the limits on systematic removals that Congress — exercising its express constitutional authority to regulate federal elections — put in place to ensure that eligible voters have adequate time to correct erroneous removal procedures, thereby protecting Americans’ fundamental right to vote,” the Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party argued in a brief filed Tuesday.

Democrats and voting rights groups warn about expanding use of Homeland Security’s SAVE system, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, that’s mandated under Arizona law. 

Initially a program used by states to check whether individual noncitizens were eligible for government benefits, the Trump administration has overhauled it into a tool that can verify citizenship by checking information in federal databases. 

SAVE can now check millions of names simultaneously. Many Republican states have begun uploading their voter rolls into SAVE to search for potential noncitizens. 

Critics of the program say SAVE has falsely flagged U.S. citizens, a problem that could be exacerbated if the Supreme Court allows its widespread use in the weeks before an election. Last-minute misidentifications could leave little time for voters to prove their citizenship.

Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said in an interview that the 90-day period serves as a “pencils down” time to minimize the possibility of errors just before elections.

“Anytime you’re matching one giant list to another giant list, you’re going to have mistakes,” Levitt said. “If you execute this systemic list maintenance two days before the election, those mistakes are going to keep eligible voters from voting.”

Voter purges

At a U.S. House hearing on the NVRA in December, Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, pointed to several voter purges, including a 2024 effort in Virginia, to highlight the dangers of last-minute removals. 

That August, Virginia’s Republican governor at the time, Glenn Youngkin, ordered election officials to scrub the state’s voter list for noncitizens. More than 1,600 voter registrations were canceled, with citizens swept up in the purge. The Supreme Court in October 2024 declined to overturn the purge.

“There is no dispute that states and localities must keep their voter rolls accurate and up to date,” Lakin wrote in her opening statement. “But the integrity of our elections is not threatened by the phantom menace of widespread noncitizen voting — it is threatened by aggressive purge practices that wrongfully strike legitimate voters from the rolls and by unnecessary barriers to registration that prevent eligible Americans from getting on those rolls in the first place.

Noncitizen voting

The specter of noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s second term, despite studies showing it’s an extremely rare occurrence. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.

Utah recently announced that a review of its 2 million registered voters identified just 27 confirmed noncitizens and an additional 25 “probable” noncitizens — a miniscule percentage of voters.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia in a so-far unsuccessful effort to force them to hand over private voter data so the information can be run through the SAVE system to search for noncitizens. In late March, Trump signed an executive order to restrict the transmission of ballots through the mail, though several lawsuits have been filed against it.

Trump also continues to demand that senators pass the SAVE America Act, even though it has stalled in the U.S. Senate. While the legislation would set a national proof of citizenship rule, some states have enacted or are weighing their own requirements. 

Republican attorneys general

Five states — Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, New Hampshire and South Dakota — ask for proof of citizenship when voters register for the first time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. One state, Wyoming, also requires proof when voters update their registration.

But Arizona was the only state before 2025 to maintain two separate voter rolls to enforce its proof of citizenship rules, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The distinction helps explain why the Arizona case is now poised for consideration by the Supreme Court.

A host of Republican state attorneys general, led by Kansas’ Kris Kobach, have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to take the Arizona case. They say the 9th Circuit gutted Arizona’s “common-sense measures” to protect its elections.

“This case presents yet another assault on State efforts to promote election security,” the states’ brief says.

In addition to Kansas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia signed on to the brief.

The Supreme Court has sent conflicting signals about proof of citizenship laws in the past. In August 2024, the court issued an unsigned order on its “shadow docket” allowing Arizona to enforce its proof of citizenship requirements for the 2024 election. 

But four years earlier, the justices declined to take a case over a Kansas proof of citizenship law. That left in place an appeals court decision blocking the law, which remains unenforceable.

The Arizona case would offer the Supreme Court a way to provide a more definitive opinion. If the justices decide soon to take it, they would likely hold oral arguments in the fall and potentially issue a decision next spring, more than a year before the 2028 presidential election.

The Justice Department’s brief says the case “offers an opportunity to resolve these important election-law issues outside the setting of a contested election.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The announcement came the same day the Ohio General Assembly’s Joint Data Center Committee held its first meeting in Columbus. Sen. Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin), who represents the 26th Senate District covering Seneca, Sandusky and five other counties, sits on the panel.

The Ohio Tax Credit Authority will stop accepting new data center tax exemption proposals after its scheduled meeting on Monday, June 1, where one existing tax exemption request will still be considered, according to the governor’s office. The pause does not affect data center construction itself or the sales-tax breaks already granted to companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta.

Local lawmaker on the review panel

The committee is co-chaired by Sen. Brian Chavez (R-Marietta) and Rep. Adam Holmes (R-Nashport). Along with Reineke, members include Rep. Thad Claggett (R-Licking County), Rep. Heidi Workman (R-Rootstown), Rep. Chris Glassburn (D-North Olmsted), Sen. Shane Wilkin (R-Hillsboro) and Sen. Willis Blackshear Jr. (D-Dayton).

The committee plans to meet weekly and will take testimony from data center workers, residents and companies such as Google and Meta. According to a statement from Holmes, the committee’s mission is to ensure Ohioans have “accurate, relevant and usable information concerning the economic, environmental, and security impacts of Ohio data center development.”

Reineke is currently the only declared candidate for Ohio Senate president in the next General Assembly, a position he could assume in 2027.

DeWine’s reversal

DeWine had previously defended the data center tax break. In June 2025, he vetoed a line in the state operating budget that would have ended the Ohio Department of Taxation’s authority to grant the exemption, calling the incentive “important as Ohio competes with other states for technology jobs and capital investment.”

House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) has been working to round up votes for a veto override.

In Wednesday’s statement, DeWine signaled a more cautious stance.

“Data centers are a critical component to today’s technology-driven economy, which depends on the virtual, large-scale exchange of information,” DeWine said. “One of the reasons Ohio has been so successful in attracting new businesses and creating new jobs is that we have invested in the data infrastructure needed to support complex technological innovation.”

He added: “I fully support the Ohio General Assembly’s work to study the issue and bring forward facts about data centers, including the local benefits to communities when tax exemptions are granted. As this work is ongoing, I believe it is appropriate for the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to pause its consideration of new data center tax exemptions while the full impact of data center growth in Ohio is being reviewed.”

The cost question

The governor’s office said data centers that have previously received sales and use tax benefits in Ohio reported a total capital investment of $27.2 billion in 2025.

The pause follows Signal Ohio reporting that revealed the state had underestimated the cost of the data center tax break by more than $1 billion, intensifying scrutiny of an incentive that has been on the books for years but has drawn growing criticism as the industry has expanded.

Roughly 200 data centers are estimated to be operating in Ohio.

Ballot effort continues

The legislative review is not the only pressure point on the industry. A volunteer-led campaign is gathering signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit construction of data centers with a peak load of more than 25 megawatts per month. Organizers need 413,487 valid signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1 to qualify for the November ballot.

DeWine’s office emphasized that Wednesday’s action only suspends the ability for data centers to request new tax exemptions in Ohio. “It is not a data center ban,” the release said.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The May 2026 report, titled Vivek Ramaswamy’s Data Center Portfolio: Divided Loyalties, draws on Ramaswamy’s 2025 financial disclosure filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission in April. The group says the filing shows holdings in chip manufacturers, cloud and data center operators, industrial real estate trusts, infrastructure funds, and cryptocurrency — sectors that all stand to gain from continued data center expansion in Ohio.

“As governor, Ramaswamy’s policies and investments could ensure that he continues to cash in while the rest of us fall behind,” Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern said in a statement accompanying the report. “Even if a data center project or policy isn’t in Ohioans’ best interest – it will almost always be in his.”

Ohio’s data center boom

Ohio is home to roughly 200 data center facilities and ranks fifth nationally by count, according to the Innovation Ohio report. The state and local governments have provided about $2.5 billion in tax incentives to the industry since 2017, and companies have announced plans to invest tens of billions of dollars more by 2030.

The cost of Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption alone reached approximately $1.6 billion in 2025, according to figures the Ohio Department of Taxation provided last week — about 11 times the department’s original $136 million estimate. Local sales-tax breaks added another $446.3 million in foregone revenue in 2024, the department said.

In March, the federal government announced plans for what would be the largest data center project ever built in the United States: a $33 billion natural gas power plant and up to $40 billion in data center construction at Pike County’s former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

What the report says about Ramaswamy’s holdings

Innovation Ohio’s analysis lays out Ramaswamy’s stake across what it calls the “AI data center supply chain”:

Chips and semiconductors. The report says Ramaswamy holds NVIDIA stock both directly and through the Strive U.S. Semiconductor ETF (ticker: SHOC), a fund he co-founded. NVIDIA makes the dominant AI processing chip used in data centers worldwide. The fund also holds Intel, which received $150 million in JobsOhio grants and up to $8.5 billion in federal CHIPS Act funding for its semiconductor campus in New Albany, according to the report. Ramaswamy’s SHOC holdings were valued between $1 million and $5 million on his 2023 federal disclosure.

Cloud and data center operators. The disclosure shows holdings in Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple — companies that operate large data center footprints in Ohio.

Real estate and infrastructure. Ramaswamy holds shares in four industrial real estate investment trusts — Prologis, Plymouth Industrial REIT, Rexford Industrial Realty, and Terreno Realty — as well as the NYLI CBRE Global Infrastructure Megatrends Term Fund, which targets digital infrastructure assets including data centers.

Energy. The report notes that Ramaswamy’s campaign received $16,615 from the Vistra Employee PAC. Vistra Corp. is one of three nuclear energy providers announced in January to power Meta’s Prometheus AI supercluster in New Albany. The report also flags that TerraPower, which it says is scouting Ohio sites for its Natrium reactor campus, is backed by NVIDIA’s venture arm.

Cryptocurrency. Ramaswamy holds Bitcoin and Ethereum personally through a Coinbase wallet, and his asset management firm Strive, Inc. holds more than $50 million in Bitcoin, according to the report. Ramaswamy has publicly backed Ohio House Bill 18, the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act, which would authorize the State Treasurer to invest up to 10% of state interim funds in digital assets and permit Ohio’s public pension systems to invest in crypto-linked products.

What a governor controls

The report argues that the conflicts run through nearly every state body that touches the data center industry. As governor, Ramaswamy would appoint all nine members of the JobsOhio board, which awards economic development incentives; control appointments to the state Tax Credit Authority, which approves and monitors corporate tax breaks; and oversee the Ohio Power Siting Board and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which permit new power generation and decide how the cost of grid upgrades is divided among ratepayers.

Industry donors

The report also highlights contributions from data center industry figures to Ramaswamy’s campaign, citing Ohio Secretary of State filings. Those donations include $16,615 from Rene Haas, CEO of ARM Holdings; $16,615 from Christopher Adams, CEO of Cleveland-based data center maintenance firm Park Place Technologies; and $33,231 combined from Reece and Frank Crivello of Phoenix Investors, a firm that converts industrial sites into data centers across 27 states.

Communities push back

The findings land as local resistance to data center expansion grows. Innovation Ohio’s report says at least 15 Ohio municipalities have enacted moratoriums on new data center construction, though other recent reporting from the Statehouse News Bureau and Ideastream Public Media puts the number of communities considering or enacting pauses at around 18, including Cleveland, where a one-year moratorium was introduced in April.

A separate group of citizens in Adams and Brown counties is gathering signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit construction of data centers with aggregate power demand exceeding 25 megawatts, according to Ballotpedia. Petitioners have until July 1 to qualify the measure for the November 3 ballot.

A pattern of overlap

The new report is the latest in a series of disclosures highlighting overlap between Ramaswamy’s investments and his policy positions. An April 13 analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, reported by TiffinOhio.net, found that Ramaswamy’s promotion of state cryptocurrency investment would directly benefit holdings tied to his asset management firm. The Ohio Capital Journal reported in April on Ramaswamy’s stake in a company receiving more than $830 million in state incentives.

“Ohioans need a leader who will support policies about data centers based on what’s best for the people, not his bottom line,” McGovern said. “Ramaswamy is far too entangled with this industry to make sure it does right by our communities.”

The Ramaswamy campaign did not issue a public response to the Innovation Ohio report as of publication.

The full Innovation Ohio report is available at innovationohio.org.

Ramaswamy faces Democratic nominee Amy Acton in the November 3 general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Supreme Court overturned a permit that state officials previously granted to a massive, 6,000-acre industrial-scale solar farm and battery operation in Madison County. 

In a ruling Tuesday, a fractured majority of Republican justices sided with a sweeping challenge brought by local and county officials against Oak Run Solar, which would sit in rural farmland between Columbus and Dayton. 

This makes for a significant setback but not necessarily a fatal blow to the facility. And it’s the latest in a series of legal roadblocks solar developers have faced from Ohio regulators and now, the state’s high court.

Four justices who formed a majority in the Oak Run case dismissed most of the alleged shortfalls in the solar farm’s application around aesthetics, wildlife and hydrology. However, they ruled that the project application to the Ohio Power Siting Board failed to include project renderings of its substations from public points of view. 

The court’s ruling reverses the issuance of the permit and orders the OPSB to “more thoroughly address” the visual impacts of the project. 

“By failing to provide any photographic simulations or pictorial sketches from public vantage points that show the substations’ support structures, which appear to be some of the project’s tallest features, Oak Run did not meet the rule’s requirements,” Justice Pat Fischer wrote for the majority.

The ruling is unusual in that over the past few years, it has been the gubernatorial and local appointees of the OPSB rejecting permits for utility-scale solar farms in Ohio. The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected lawsuits challenging several permits granted by the OPSB, but hasn’t yet ruled on multiple cases brought by developers seeking to reverse an OPSB denial. 

Some Republicans on the court wanted to go further. GOP Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy sided with local governments who said the developers failed to provide enough water quality and fire safety information on the operation. She called the court’s opinion “arbitrary and unreasonable” in a partial concurrence opinion. 

Justice Jennifer Brunner, the lone Democrat on the court, dissented. She said while developers didn’t include some specific renderings in their application, the OPSB still managed to thoroughly consider the viewshed impacts of a massive project area. 

A project spokesperson framed the ruling as a positive.

“The OPSB’s permit approval was largely upheld with only one clarification required: examining the visual impact of the project substations,” said Samantha Sawmiller, a senior development manager with Oak Run.

“Oak Run looks forward to working with OPSB to address this last open item so we can provide a significant opportunity for long‑term economic investment in Madison County while supporting Ohio’s growing energy needs.”

Oak Run Solar

Developers with Oak Run Solar, a project from Savion, a subsidiary of oil giant Shell, say the project would generate 800,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power 170,000 households.

The site would also include two, 150 megawatt batteries, enabling 24/7 storage alongside a generation operation that only runs during daylight hours. 

Plus, the site would be an “agrovoltaic” project, meaning it might include things like beekeeping, sheepgrazing, and groundcover gardening around the project, according to an OPSB writeup of the project. 

The developers filed the total cost of the project under seal, meaning it’s not publicly available. But they say they will hire 3,033 construction workers and 63 long-term workers; generate $8.3 million per year in economic output once operational; and pay an estimated $7.2 million in Madison County taxes. 

Much of the land is owned by Midwest Farms LLC, which spent millions on the land around 2009, property records show. Business records obtained at the time by the Columbus Dispatch linked Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the entity, but Savion didn’t respond to inquiries about Gates’ ties to the project.

Rough road for solar in Ohio

A mixture of a state law passed in 2021 that favors local opposition over renewable energy development, and a receptive regulatory panel on the OPSB, has repeatedly stymied renewable developers in Ohio. 

Since 2020, the OPSB has rejected seven solar farms. In each case, they haven’t identified any technical shortcomings. Rather, the projects haven’t met a requirement to satisfy the “public interest, convenience or necessity” due to the objections raised by township and county officials. 

Solar energy has drawn significant grassroots pushback in Ohio. Rural communities have stuffed public hearings around the state to object to permits. Counties and townships have taken to the courts to challenge permits after they’re granted. And last month, Richland County narrowly voted to uphold a ban on wind and solar facilities throughout most of the county.

Republican commissioners in 27 counties around Ohio have banned wind and solar in their jurisdiction. While state laws prohibit this kind of local control on oil or gas projects, the 2021 law passed by statehouse Republicans provided unique powers to local governments to kill wind and solar projects.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But Beijing has not confirmed the figure and farm groups expressed skepticism that the deal would materialize.

“I think we are cautiously optimistic when it comes to these things because we’ve been on both sides of this equation. You know, the first time we went through the tariff crisis, we lost 20% market share,” said Todd Main, director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association.

President Donald Trump visited Beijing in May for talks. Two days after the U.S. delegation returned, the White House shared a list of achievements reached between the two countries. 

This included a commitment that China would increase U.S. beef imports and buy at least $17 billion per year in additional U.S. agricultural products over the next three years. In a statement to Medill News Service on May 20, the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not confirm the $17 billion or the time frame. However, it discussed progress on the trade of beef and other agricultural products. 

Tariffs hit hard

American farmers have been caught in a cost pinch for years. Grain prices are down, and the costs of machinery and fertilizer are up, making it harder for farmers to break even. 

Last year, these pressures were exacerbated as the Trump administration placed high tariffs on Chinese imports, sparking Beijing to retaliate by halting imports of U.S. agricultural products. 

China is the world’s largest importer of agricultural products. This hit Midwestern farmers particularly hard. Iowa and Illinois produce the most soybeans in the United States, and China is their largest market by far.

If Beijing were to follow through on the commitments announced by the White House, it would increase total U.S. farm exports to China to $28 billion to $30 billion a year, according to Reuters. While this would be below the $38 billion exported in 2022, it would be higher than the $24 billion in 2024 and much higher than last year’s $8 billion. 

A return to predictable trade relations between the U.S. and China would benefit farmers, said Chris Chinn, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

“This announcement is a great first step in what we hope is a full commitment to purchasing American products,” he said.

Jerry Costello II, director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, echoed this sentiment while expressing doubts at the likelihood of the deal panning out.

“If China truly committed to purchasing an additional $17 billion in U.S. agricultural products for three years and followed through on the purchases, it would provide meaningful support for Illinois farmers,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.”

When asked to confirm the $17 billion number, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy notably omitted any mention of the figure or the time frame. 

“It is hoped that both sides will create favorable conditions for two-way agricultural trade by jointly reducing tariffs, removing non-tariff barriers, and expanding market access, so as to promote the recovery and continuous expansion of cooperation in agricultural trade,” the spokesperson said. 

China also resumed registration of U.S. beef suppliers after the summit, according to the spokesperson.

Soybean imports cut off

After the Trump administration imposed sprawling tariffs on China last year, China halted imports of U.S. soybeans for several months. In November, the U.S and China reached a trade agreement in which China committed to purchasing 12 million metric tons of soybeans by the end of February. The order represented a sharp decrease from 2024 levels.

“The ag industry has heard big promises before, but the actual trade commitments have often failed to materialize,” Costello said. “During previous trade agreements, China fell well short of its pledged purchases, leaving farmers to suffer the economic impact.”

Lance Muirhead, a seventh generation farmer in Macon County, Illinois, has felt the costs of the trade war first hand. As a direct result of ongoing trade disputes, he has had to tighten the budget on the farm he operates together with his family, he said.

“It has put a halt on us buying any new equipment we might have been in the market for,” Muirhead said. “I run a 16-year-old combine that I’d like to upgrade to a slightly newer model, but that’s just not in the budget the way commodity prices have been.”

He is “skeptically optimistic” about the new proposed trade agreement. While a tweet or a promise can have positive effects on the market, that hype is short-lived unless commitments are followed through with concrete purchases the way they were last fall, he said.

“I think the proof will be in the pudding and only time will tell, but I sure hope the agreement is executed,” he said. “When China has that big of a basket, it’s hard not to want to put all of your eggs, or soybeans, into it.”

‘Just fluff’?

Senator Adam Schiff, D-Calif., also expressed skepticism.

“There’s a long history of the president coming back and misrepresenting what he’s achieved. My first question is, are any of these commitments real or are they just fluff?” Schiff, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, told Medill News Service.

When China halted imports last year, it was a massive blow to U.S. soybean exports, said Main, of the Illinois Soybean Association. It’s a market that has been built up over the last 30 years, and establishing new markets takes time. 

Even if the deal were to pan out, soybean farmers still should diversify their buyers so they are no longer so reliant on China, he said.

“If you look out a decade or so, we know that long-term China is not going to be the dominant buyer that it once was,” Main said. “And so we have to pivot.” 

Medill News Service articles are reported and written by graduate student journalists in the Washington program of the Medill School at Northwestern University.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Another Central Ohio public safety leader has come forward to say he was molested by former Ohio State University doctor Richard Strauss.

Tim Becker is Gahanna’s public safety director and a former deputy chief of the Columbus Police Department. Becker explained former Columbus Fire Chief Jeff Happ’s decision to publicly share his abuse helped encourage him to do so as well.

“As a police leader, I often stood in front of cameras and urged crime victims and witnesses to come forward and share their stories,” Becker said. “I hope my example today inspires others.”

Becker also called for his alma mater to “hold itself accountable and do the right thing.”

“This is the right time, and these are the right reasons,” he said. “Although decades have passed, the wounds have not healed. It’s time to hear the victims and bring closure.”

Strauss and Ohio State

For nearly two decades Dr. Richard Strauss sexually abused patients under the guise of medical care. As a team doctor, many of Strauss’ victims were student athletes, but he is said to have preyed on other students as a physician at Ohio State’s Student Health Center as well.

Strauss was forced out by the university in 1998 but received emeritus status from the school’s board. He died by apparent suicide in 2005.

According to an independent investigation commissioned by the university in 2018, Strauss abused at least 177 male victims during his tenure at the school. But even that figure dramatically underestimates his impact. OSU has already settled with 317 victims. More than 200 others are still pursuing lawsuits against the school.

Earlier this month, Attorney General Dave Yost filed a motion in federal court urging the judge to dismiss 77 of the claims against Ohio State. Yost contends any abuse that occurred before Oct. 21, 1986 — the date Congress passed a law allowing states and universities to be sued for failing to prevent sexual abuse — should be thrown out.

Yost’s motion comes just days after he announced he will resign his post in June to take a job with the right-wing Christian nonprofit law firm Alliance Defending Freedom.

In a statement, OSU spokesman Chris Booker said since 2018, Ohio State has “sincerely and persistently tried to reconcile with survivors, including former football student-athletes, through monetary and non-monetary means, including settlements, counseling services and other medical treatment.”

The settlements so far have topped $61 million, Booker said, “and we remain actively engaged in mediation.”

“All former students who filed lawsuits have been offered the opportunity to settle,” the statement said.

Becker’s decision to share his story

Unlike many of Strauss’ victims, Becker wasn’t a student athlete.

“A rash from cycling led me to the Student Medical Center, where I suffered a sexual assault at the hands of Dr. Strauss,” he said.

“I did not report this crime at the time it occurred,” Becker continued. “I was very young. It was my word against the doctor, and I honestly feared that I would not be believed.”

Outside of the exam room, Becker said he would regularly see Strauss in the showers at OSU’s former athletic facility, Larkins Hall.

“I’d be the only person in the shower, and all of the sudden he’s standing right next to me,” Becker said. It felt like Strauss was stalking him, he said, and eventually Becker stopped going to the facility. He said there’s no way school officials were unaware of that aspect of the doctor’s behavior.

“I don’t think there’s any way possible,” he said. “He was so public about it, and there was so many people around.”

In the years since, the experience ate at him. Becker said he was vaguely aware of the Strauss lawsuit, but since he wasn’t a student athlete, he didn’t think it applied to him. When he saw news stories about Strauss, he changed the channel.

“Just seeing the picture of Dr. Straus triggered that trauma,” he said.

But earlier this month, former Columbus Fire Chief Jeff Happ shared that he was abused by Dr. Strauss as a high school wrestler at Bishop Ready in Columbus. Strauss saw youth athletes around the city as part of a supposed body fat study. Happ was just 15 the first time Strauss abused him.

Another Bishop Ready wrestler and retired Columbus Fire Captain Todd Schroeck came forward at the same time to share that he was also abused by Strauss as a high school athlete.

“I just wanted to step forward and tell others it’s time to be brave,” Schroeck said Tuesday. “It’s okay if you’re a victim, that doesn’t define who you are.”

As a high-ranking law enforcement official, Becker had interacted with Happ several times professionally and he reached out to speak to him. Happ put Becker in contact with Mike DiSabato, a wrestler who was first abused by Strauss in high school, who has become one of the leading voices pushing Ohio State University to make amends.

“For way too long, we have shamed sexual abuse victims over and over again,” DiSabato said. “And tragically, tragically here at the Ohio State University, we have shamed and traumatized sexual abuse victims in a way that is unspeakable. For eight years, sexual abuse victims have been fighting for accountability, fairness, and justice.”

Becker is not currently a part of litigation against the university and said he has not yet decided if he will join the lawsuit.

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

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. [View the original article.](https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/05/27/columbus-public-safety-leaders-say-they-were-abused-by-osu-doctor/)

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

About 80 people recently submitted opponent testimony for Ohio Senate Bill 113, which would require every local board of education in the state to adopt a policy that would end any current diversity and inclusion offices or departments and ban any diversity, equity, and inclusion orientation or training. 

“This bill is frustratingly vague about what does and doesn’t qualify as prohibited diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives,” Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said during last week’s Ohio Senate Education Committee meeting. 

ACLU of Ohio Legislative Director Gary Daniels also pointed out the lack of DEI definition in the bill.

“When school administrators, school staff, parents, stakeholders, and the state legislature all get to define for themselves (and others) what is “diversity, equity, and inclusion” then everything is diversity, equity, and inclusion and subject to banning,” he said. 

State Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, introduced the bill last year which would also prevent the creation of any new such offices or departments and using DEI in job descriptions. Brenner recently lost his Republican primary race, meaning next year will be the first General Assembly without him since 2011. 

Less than 10 people gave supporter testimony on the bill last year. 

“SB 113 would seemingly outlaw efforts to recruit and retain more Black teachers, even though the data shows that it is objectively a good thing for students when school districts make an effort to hire a diverse teaching staff,” Cropper said. 

Black students who have one Black teacher in elementary school are 13% more likely to enroll in college and those who have two Black teachers are 32% more likely, according to a 2018 study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

“(DEI is) not saying that we hire a lesser person or lesser qualified person because of the color of their skin or because of their gender,” Cropper said. “It means making sure that we’re opening opportunities to diverse populations and that when looking at all the people who are applying for that position.”

Schools with DEI initiatives had 30% fewer instances of homophobic remarks and LGBTQ students are 25% less likely to experience depression and anxiety in schools that promote inclusion, according to the 2021 National School Climate Survey by GLSEN. 

“DEI efforts are not about lowering standards, they are about removing barriers so standards can be met fairly,” said Joshua Meek, Equality Ohio’s statewide advocacy manager. 

Heather Fairs, with the Ohio School Counselor Association, said this bill would make it more difficult for schools to support every student’s academic, social, and emotional growth. 

“Restricting discussions, programs, or training related to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, or culturally responsive support could unintentionally limit a school counselor’s ability to identify barriers to student success and provide appropriate interventions,” she said.

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said he hasn’t had a chance to look at the bill. 

“There are some teachers that have been taught in the last several years in universities that these particular concepts need to be pushed as a primary part of education, even for very young children,” he said. “I think most parents and most of the public think that’s ridiculous that you’re talking about that to a second grader or third grader.”

Ohio Rep. Phil Robinson, D-Solon, said he has never heard parents, teachers, or administrators come in to testify against DEI in K-12 schools. 

“They do come in to talk about how we need more resources to be able to pay our teachers,” he said. “We need more resources for our textbooks and things of that nature. We don’t need to chase culture wars and salacious headlines.”

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.

“I went back to Bowling 1, we dismissed it as moot,” Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy said on May 20. “Why are we back here, why didn’t that resolve the case?”

An attorney representing Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said she’d be satisfied “if the court were to simply put an end to the years of litigation and the waste of judicial resources as well as attorney resources litigating a case that simply has no point.”

An attorney representing Ohioans who were eligible for pandemic-era benefits said DeWine should have to ask the U.S. Department of Labor for benefits that weren’t received, because the governor “lacked the legal authority” to withdraw from a federal program nearly five years ago.

Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program

The story of the case heard as part of May 20 oral arguments stretches back to 2021, when a group of individuals who were eligible for money under a pandemic-era federal program sued the state for ending its participation before the program ended in September 2021.

Before that, in March 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act. The measure did a number of things meant to aid Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, including creating extra unemployment benefits through the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program. That included $600 per week in extra funds, from March to July of 2020, and $300 per week in extra benefits after that time. The program was closed in September 2021.

States were not required to participate, but Ohio did, at least at first. Attorney Mathura Sridharan from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office told the court the extra money “disincentivized returning to work, tightening labor markets,” which led to DeWine’s decision to withdraw from the program in June 2021. Ohioans returned to the pre-pandemic unemployment system and benefits.

That same year, individuals entered into a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, arguing that DeWine should not have taken the state out of the program. The Franklin County court said the CARES Act was not named as one of the federal laws in a “cooperation statute,” an Ohio law related to unemployment compensation that requires the state, through the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to “cooperate with the United States Department of Labor to the fullest extent” consistent with state law. The statute requires the ODJFS director to do so through actions like adoption of rules and regulations “as may be necessary to secure to this state and its citizens all advantages” available under specific federal statutes. Because the CARES Act was not included, the state was not mandated to participate, the court ruled.

The 10th District Court of Appeals, however, reversed this decision, concluding that the governor was compelled to seek benefits through the CARES Act.

Upon review in 2022, after the program had ended, the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the case as “moot.”

In 2023, the Ohio legislature made changes to the “cooperation statute.” Lawmakers added a section that states nothing “precludes the director from ceasing to participate in any voluntary, optional, special, or emergency program offered by the federal government,” including CARES Act programs. Sridharan said lawmakers also explained that the governor has the authority to withdraw from the programs.

The case returned to a lower court, with attorneys for benefits recipients saying the supreme court’s dismissal didn’t cover all of the issues brought forth in the case, just the request that the court temporarily compel the state to continue being a part of the program while the court case was being decided.

Franklin County’s common pleas court this time ruled that the governor should have taken “all action necessary” to reinstate the program in Ohio. On appeal, the 10th District upheld the decision, leading to the second appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.

“The lower courts’ decisions trample a trifecta of the other branches’ powers: they defy this court’s first dismissal, the (general) assembly’s statute, and the governor’s discretion,” Sridharan wrote in documents to the supreme court.

The power to end the program

In oral arguments in front of the Ohio Supreme Court this week, the state and attorneys representing individuals who were eligible for the benefits argued over the cooperation statute once again. The state maintained arguments that the case had already been decided by the supreme court and the program was long gone, while attorneys for benefits recipients said the program should have stayed in place and DeWine should ask for the money they may have received.

Attorney Andrew Engel, of the law firm DannLaw, said the case boiled down to a matter of authority, particularly who had the power to allow Ohio to join the benefits program, and who was authorized to end the participation.

Kennedy pointed to federal rules that allowed states to give 30-day written notice to terminate the benefits program.

“That’s what the governor did, because on May 13 (2021), the governor announced he would end the state’s participation in the … program, with an effective date of June 26th, so that was 30 days and then it closed,” Kennedy said.

The federal law states that the the governor can agree to join the program, but under state unemployment benefits law, according to Engel, only the Ohio General Assembly has the power to end participation and stop benefits.

“What we’re saying is under Ohio law, that process did not include the governor making a unilateral decision,” Engel told the supreme court.

The attorney said DeWine must now ask for the money benefits-eligible Ohioans would have received if the state hadn’t left the program. He added that because Congress appropriated the money “without fiscal year limitation,” the money should still be available until it’s appropriated for some other purpose.

Sridharan expressed skepticism that the funds were still available, but nevertheless asked the court to align their ruling in the current appeal to their previous ruling.

“This case expired when the program expired back in 2021,” she said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The top Trump Administration official over Medicaid and Medicare vouched for Gov. Mike DeWine’s leadership on Tuesday as the governor has faced increased criticism from within his own party over how he’s tackled Medicaid fraud.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, praised DeWine’s decision to use $25 million of Ohio’s share of federal rural health funding to help expand Ohio SEE, a state program that provides vision checks and glasses to needy children. Oz and DeWine spoke with reporters at an elementary school in Dublin, where kids received new glasses as part of a ceremony highlighting the program.

Oz said he was impressed with visits earlier in the day with the local U.S. attorney and to a home health services provider who was convicted of defrauding Medicaid, including for billing for dead and ineligible patients.

“I trust Gov. DeWine,” Oz said, before later saying, “We’ve got a massive issue nationwide. I only ask for one thing: partners, governors that we can work together with, who believe there’s an opportunity to make the system work better.”

Oz’s visit, which DeWine said was planned months ago, was freighted with extra meaning given the particular political moment the governor faces. DeWine, who is nearing the end of his eight years as governor, has drawn sharp criticism from Republicans in Columbus and Washington, D.C. alike after a conservative website’s recent series highlighted instances of potential fraud in Ohio’s Medicaid program.

DeWine targets Medicaid fraud

The articles in the Daily Wire focused on home health care, in which unlicensed aides help homebound patients with non-medical services. The series comes as President Donald Trump has targeted mostly Democratic states with fraud crackdowns, although fraud is a longstanding issue in the massive program, which provides healthcare coverage to those with disabilities and low incomes, covering a quarter of Ohio’s population.

Nearly all states provide similar services. DeWine has said home health services are necessary to keep people out of nursing homes, which cost more and often can provide a lower quality of life. Amid the federal crackdown, DeWine has announced measures intended to reduce or prevent potential fraud in the program, including temporarily pausing the approval of new providers and reimplementing GPS tracking measures on home aides.

Asked Tuesday whether Medicaid should stop paying for these types of home health services, Oz said states need to figure out how to determine whether someone actually needs them. And he praised DeWine’s new anti-fraud measures.

“Ohio jumped on it immediately, and the governor actually made it part of a platform for the state to take this issue seriously. I think the American people want to know their tax dollars are spent wisely,” Oz said.

‘But Vivek is not the governor’

While in Columbus, Oz also met with another Republican leader: Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP nominee for Ohio governor in the November election. Ramaswamy is running against Dr. Amy Acton, a Democrat who previously served as DeWine’s state health director.

Oz said he and Ramaswamy had a pull-up competition, in which Oz suggested Ramaswamy was helped by his background as a high-ranked prep tennis player.

Here’s the video evidence so readers can judge for themselves.

The one-and-only @DrOzCMS gave me a challenge in the backyard today. Practice what we preach! 💪🏼 pic.twitter.com/AcwoJfA90x

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 26, 2026

The two also discussed Ramaswamy’s ideas to fight Medicaid fraud. Ramaswamy announced his plan last week, which includes seeking federal support for Ohio to keep a larger share of any fraud recovery. Typically, Ohio returns two-thirds of any such money to the federal government, since the feds provide two-thirds of the program’s funding.

Oz was diplomatically noncommittal about Ramaswamy’s idea. He called it a “very innovative idea” and said he referred Ramaswamy to the federal official who directly oversees the Medicaid program.

“But Vivek is not the governor. Here is the governor,” Oz said, gesturing toward DeWine. “What do you think?”

DeWine was succinct in his response.

“I’m open to any kind of idea,” DeWine said. “I thought it was a very intriguing idea.”

In a message, Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson Evan Machan said Ramaswamy “has laid out a practical plan to crush Medicaid fraud in Ohio and make healthcare more affordable for Ohioans.”

“Vivek has the unique skills and relationships to deliver lower healthcare costs for our state, and he looks forward to working collaboratively with CMS to implement his vision starting in January 2027,” Machan said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ronald E. Callahan, 68, of Tiffin, faces a fifth-degree felony charge of attempted importuning after vigilante group Dads Against Predators (D.A.P.) confronted him March 11 at a Fremont Denny’s, alleging he had communicated online with a decoy posing as a 14-year-old boy and arranged to meet in person. He was arrested the following day.

At Callahan’s most recent pre-trial hearing on May 7, Assistant Fremont Prosecutor Dawn M. Haar extended a plea offer “dependent on review of evidentiary issues & electronic evidence,” according to the court’s case management entry. A similar entry from the April 14 pre-trial also referenced a plea offer extended by Haar, contingent on evidentiary review. The terms of the offer have not been made public.

Callahan, who has retained private attorney John M. Kahler II, has demanded a jury trial and waived speedy trial time at both pre-trial hearings.

Defense sought to excuse Callahan from May 7 hearing

Ahead of the May 7 pre-trial, Kahler filed a motion April 28 asking Judge Daniel L. Brudzinski to excuse Callahan from physically appearing at the hearing. The judge denied the motion in a written entry April 29, ordering Callahan to appear in person. The docket reflects a similar motion filed by Kahler ahead of the April 14 hearing.

Final pre-trial set for June 9

Brudzinski has set a final pre-trial hearing for 10 a.m. June 9 at Fremont Municipal Court. Final pre-trials in Ohio criminal cases typically mark the deadline for a plea agreement or trial setting.

If Callahan is convicted on the amended charge, he faces a presumption of prison time under Ohio law. A mandatory prison term applies because the offender is alleged to be ten or more years older than the purported victim and to have arranged a meeting for sexual activity. Callahan is 68. A conviction would also require him to register as a sex offender for 15 years.

Background

Callahan was originally charged with a third-degree felony count of attempted importuning. On March 25, Fremont Law Director James Melle filed a motion to amend the charge, which Brudzinski granted the same day. The amended charge — a fifth-degree felony — more precisely reflects the facts alleged in the case, specifically that the decoy was posing as a 14-year-old, not a child under 13.

Video of the Denny’s confrontation spread rapidly on social media after the incident. Fremont Police Chief Derek Wensinger has said his department and Sandusky County detectives investigated the incident, while noting D.A.P. conducts sting operations outside the parameters of lawful law enforcement investigations.

Callahan operates Ron’s Photography Studio, a self-described “Christian photography business” in the Tiffin area. Court records describe him as a lifetime Seneca County resident employed at NWO Ortho in Tiffin and as a housekeeper registered with the Mental Health Board, with approximately 40 years of prior employment at Heidelberg University in Tiffin.

Callahan has pleaded not guilty and remains free on a $5,000 surety bond with a court order barring contact with any minor.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

New national polling and on-the-ground organizing across rural Ohio suggest the vision is colliding with the people who would have to live with it.

A Gallup poll released May 13 — the firm’s first ever measuring local opinion on AI data centers — found that 71 percent of Americans oppose building one in their local area, including 48 percent who are strongly opposed. Roughly a quarter favor the idea, and only 7 percent strongly favor it. Opposition to local data centers runs higher than opposition to local nuclear power plants, 71 percent to 53 percent.

Gallup reported that opposition crosses political and demographic lines. Forty-six percent of respondents said they worry “a great deal” about the environmental impact of AI data centers, and another 24 percent worry “a fair amount.” The polling firm noted that politicians who favor data centers in their area “are likely taking a politically risky stance.”

Ramaswamy has spent the past year doing exactly that.

”The next Silicon Valley”

In a Fox News appearance ahead of his February 2025 campaign launch, Ramaswamy framed his vision plainly: “As if Silicon Valley led the way in the American economy for the last ten years, I want to make sure it’s the Ohio River Valley for the next ten years.”

He repeated the line throughout the primary campaign, often paired with calls to “unshackle” Ohio’s energy production, attract more semiconductor and AI infrastructure, and welcome Bitcoin mining operations into the state. After easily defeating nonprofit founder Casey Putsch in the May 5 Republican primary, Ramaswamy now faces Democrat Amy Acton, the former state health director, in November.

The pitch is built around a state that is already among the most aggressive data center hosts in the country. Ohio has roughly 200 data centers — the fifth-most of any state — and companies have announced plans to invest up to $40 billion more by 2030. Since 2017, the industry has collected an estimated $2.5 billion in state and local tax breaks, including sales tax exemptions and property tax abatements of 75 percent that can last 15 to 30 years.

What Ramaswamy has not done is reconcile that pitch with the costs Ohio communities are already paying.

Rising bills, strained water, few permanent jobs

A single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as 80,000 to 100,000 homes. At an August 2025 Ohio Chamber forum, Ramaswamy himself acknowledged that Ohio’s electricity costs are roughly 50 percent higher than they were and projected to climb another 50 percent. He attributed the increase in part to data center demand, then argued the answer was to build more data centers and produce more fossil fuel energy to power them.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s own analysis has flagged water as another flashpoint. Under the most likely growth scenario modeled by the Chamber, central Ohio — where most data centers are concentrated — faces 56 instances where water demand outstrips supply by 2040.

The job-creation case has also frayed under scrutiny. While construction crews build new server farms in waves, the permanent workforce at a finished facility is often a fraction of what a comparable industrial site would employ. A University of Virginia analysis found that as of 2024, Ohio’s data centers had generated roughly 22,300 short-term construction jobs but only about 4,500 permanent positions. Policy Matters Ohio found that of the nearly $1.1 billion in private investment Gov. Mike DeWine announced for the state in 2024, more than 90 percent was new Microsoft data center construction — which accounted for less than 5 percent of the new jobs created.

One recent Ohio data center project received a $4.5 million state tax exemption to create 10 permanent jobs.

Rural Ohioans push back

The backlash Ramaswamy is wagering against has organized itself into something more durable than a few town hall complaints.

A group of residents from Adams and Brown counties in southwest Ohio — operating as Ohio Residents for Responsible Development — cleared the Ohio Ballot Board on April 3 and is now gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment that would ban construction of any data center using more than 25 megawatts of power. The all-volunteer effort must collect more than 413,000 valid signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1 to make the November ballot.

“It’s definitely not one county. It’s definitely not only rural areas, although the push is coming from rural areas,” Austin Baurichter, a lawyer working with the group, told the Statehouse News Bureau. “And I would say, don’t ever count out the people out here. Don’t ever count out the voices of us Ohio residents on making it known what we want to do.”

At least 15 Ohio communities have enacted moratoriums on new data center construction, according to the same reporting. Lawmakers in at least 11 other states have introduced legislation to temporarily ban or restrict data centers.

The Ohio General Assembly has begun trying to catch up. The Ohio House passed a revised version of House Bill 646 on March 18, which would create a 13-member Data Center Study Commission to examine the industry’s effects on water, electric infrastructure, farmland, tax incentives and local government and report back with recommendations within six months.

Ramaswamy has not publicly endorsed a study, a moratorium, or any structural change to the tax incentive regime that has fueled the buildout. His verified social media posts on the subject continue to describe the data center boom as “good” and frame the conversation around producing more energy rather than examining what is consuming it.

A wager against where Ohio is going

Ramaswamy’s own financial position adds another layer to the politics. His Dallas-headquartered asset management firm, Strive, disclosed in a May 19 SEC filing that it now holds 15,391 Bitcoin — making it the ninth-largest public corporate Bitcoin treasury in the country. Bitcoin mining is one of the most electricity-intensive uses of data center infrastructure, and Ramaswamy has explicitly said he wants Bitcoin mining operations in Ohio. His top two super PAC donors, who together have given roughly $24 million to support his campaign, are crypto investors.

The competitive math of the November race also makes the data center issue more than abstract. A BGSU/YouGov poll conducted April 7-14 showed Ramaswamy leading Acton 48 to 47 percent — within the margin of error. A Democrat has not won the Ohio governor’s office since Ted Strickland’s 2006 victory, but the structural advantage Republicans have enjoyed for nearly two decades is not insulated from a backlash that, as Gallup found, crosses party lines.

The Adams and Brown county petitioners have until July 1 to qualify their amendment for the November ballot. If they succeed, Ohio voters could end up casting two related votes the same day — one on whether to allow the kind of large-scale data center expansion Ramaswamy is selling, and one on whether to hand him the office that would help deliver it.

Ohio’s general election for governor is November 3, 2026.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A gunman opened fire at a U.S. Secret Service checkpoint at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue and was killed when agents returned fire. One bystander was also shot and injured, according to the Secret Service. 

President Donald Trump was inside the White House during the incident but was unharmed, and no ongoing operations were impacted, according to the agency.

“This second attack on the President this month underscores the critical need for top level, state of the art security at the White House, including the Ballroom, a knitted, unified, cohesive part of the East Wing Project, which is vital for National Security, and is being constructed to ensure that the President can perform his constitutional duties in a safe and heavily secured facility,” Blanche argued.

The acting attorney general, Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, filed the supplemental brief Sunday opposing a federal court order that temporarily halted any above-ground construction on the ballroom.

Shooting at press dinner

The proposed ballroom “will provide a ‘SAFE HAVEN’ from attackers such as the one last night, and on April 25th,” Blanche wrote, referring to the gunman who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month.

The alleged shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, who pleaded not guilty, is charged with attempting to assassinate the president and is being held in jail in Washington, D.C., awaiting trial. 

The Trump administration and his supporters in Congress amped up calls for a secure ballroom following the shooting at the historic annual dinner where Trump, the first lady and several Cabinet officials safely evacuated.

But skepticism among some Senate Republicans of using taxpayer dollars has all but scuttled a $1 billion Secret Service funding proposal — $220 million of which was earmarked for the ballroom.

Trump maintains the ballroom will be funded by private donors and routinely speaks about the project at unrelated events.

Drone port, sniper facilities

Blanche slammed the lawsuit against the White House construction project as “meritless.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed the suit in December, less than two months after Trump demolished the White House East Wing to make way for the large structure. 

The lawsuit, Blanche argued, “has been a great attack on our Country in that the Military, Secret Service, and Law Enforcement are not happy that all of these Top Secret features have been revealed to potential enemies, criminals, and all others, including the fact that there will be a major drone port and Government sniper facilities on the heavily secured roof of the Ballroom.”

The proposed ballroom is slated to have “bomb shelters, a state of the art hospital and medical facilities, Top Secret military installations, structures, and equipment,” according to the court filing.

Trump posted an image of the filing on his Truth Social platform Monday morning.

The president also thanked the Secret Service on Truth Social in the wee hours of Sunday. 

“This event is one month removed from the (White House Correspondents’ Dinner) shooting, and goes to show how important it is, for all future Presidents, to get, what will be, the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C. The National Security of our Country demands it!” he wrote.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

DeWine was the guest at last week’s Columbus Metropolitan Club forum that was moderated by Ohio Public Radio and TV reporter Jo Ingles. DeWine, who is term-limited, has about 230 days left as Ohio’s governor. 

“Part of what I’m trying to do in the last 235 days is to finish your work,” he said. “Work is never done.”

DeWine endorsed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for governor earlier this year, despite working alongside the Democratic candidate Amy Acton when she was the director of the state health department. 

“It’s clear where I stand,” DeWine said. “I’m a Republican. I’m for the Republican nominee. The Republican nominee is Vivek Ramaswamy.” 

DeWine said he has had many discussions with Ramaswamy, who said earlier this year he wants to consolidate Ohio colleges and universities — saying “We have too many of them.”

“When you ask him one of the most important things you want to do, (Ramaswamy’s) answer is to grow jobs, bring companies in, and second, make sure that we have educated people,” DeWine said. “We should not mistake governing for the campaign.”

Despite DeWine’s loyalty to the Republican Party, he has disagreed with President Donald Trump over issues including Haitian immigrants, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and the 2020 election. 

“The job of the governor is to be the governor of the people of the state of Ohio,” DeWine said when asked why is not more critical of Trump. 

“I cannot wake up every morning and think … what did the president do? … My job is to focus on the people of Ohio, and what I can actually do, and what I can accomplish.” 

On the topic of state politics, DeWine signed a bill into law in 2023 that requires citizens to show photo identification before voting, but stopped short of endorsing a constitutional amendment Ohio Republicans are trying to put on the ballot. 

“I haven’t seen the final language on it,” he said. 

DeWine has been saying for months he will make an announcement about Ohio’s death penalty and hinted during the forum that it will be coming soon. The last person to be executed in Ohio was in 2018, shortly before DeWine took office in 2019. 

“I don’t want to build this up because I’m going to do it shortly, and I think there’s been a lot of hype about this, but there really shouldn’t be,” DeWine said. “It’ll simply be Mike DeWine reflecting on the death penalty.”

Thinking back on his time in office, DeWine said his “biggest mistake” was signing the gambling bill into law in December 2021. 

“What I did not anticipate — and I should have — is the massive, massive amount of money that these gambling companies would come in … and they flood the airways,” he said. 

More Ohioans are gambling and losing money, and athletes are being abused online as a result of sports betting, DeWine said. 

He said the most important work he has done is focus on Ohio’s children — specifically through the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program, requiring Ohio schools to teach the science of reading curriculum, and creating the Ohio Student Eye Exam (OhioSee) program that provides students in kindergarten through third grade comprehensive eye exams and glasses at schools. 

“If we’re serious about reading, if we’re serious about early childhood development, what we call Ohio See, I hope the next governor will take OhioSee … and run with that,” DeWine said. 

DeWine, who will turn 80 the week he leaves office in January, plans to spend more time with his 28 grandchildren after his term expires. He said is going to set up a center at his alma mater Miami University. 

“We’re not sure exactly what, but we think it’s going to be a focus on children,” said DeWine, who graduated with a degree in education. “One thing I would like to do is to help social studies teachers.” 

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.