The Department of Health and Human Services will administer programs under the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, while civil rights enforcement under Education’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, will be transferred to the Department of Justice. 

The move follows 10 earlier interagency agreements, or IAAs, with the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer several of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

The Education Department clarified in fact sheets that in the agreements announced Tuesday, it “will continue to perform all statutorily required duties and responsibilities.”

“The Trump Administration has been clear: as we scale back federal micromanagement when it hinders success, we are equally committed to bolstering the efficacy of federal oversight where it is essential,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Tuesday.

The administration has sought to do away with the 46-year-old department as part of Trump’s quest to return education “back to the states.” That push continues despite much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurring at the state and local levels. 

Congress created the Department of Education, and only Congress has the authority to abolish the agency. 

Special education

On a background call with reporters, a senior department official said OSERS “will maintain its independent statutory functions without interruption to vigorously enforce compliance with all of OSERS programs.” 

OSERS is responsible for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. The umbrella unit OSERS includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration. 

The official added that “students will not lose any rights, including their right to a free appropriate public education,” adding that “no agreement can alter the rights that students with disabilities are afforded under federal law.” 

“In coordination with and at the direction of OSERS, HHS will support meaningful stakeholder outreach; grant administration; enforcement, compliance, and monitoring activities; annual performance determinations and assessments; collection, reporting, and analyzing of data for monitoring compliance; and drawdowns of Federal funds,” according to a fact sheet. 

Civil rights oversight

Meanwhile, Education’s agreement with the DOJ is intended to “support and bolster the federal government’s enforcement of federal civil rights laws,” a senior department official said. 

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, is tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families. 

Under the agreement, “OCR will utilize the Civil Rights Division to evaluate, investigate and resolve complaints filed under the laws enforced by OCR,” the official said. 

The official also stressed that under the interagency agreement, OCR “retains management and leadership of OCR in accordance with federal law.” 

Education will also partner with the DOJ on student privacy protection, in which the Justice Department will “review complaints alleging privacy act violations, conduct necessary investigations and recommend potential resolutions,” per a fact sheet.

In another agreement, the DOJ will “provide technical assistance” in training and advisory services regarding the desegregation of public schools, according to a fact sheet.  

‘This isn’t efficiency — it’s chaos’

The announcement sparked fierce condemnation from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocacy groups Tuesday. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union representing Education Department workers, said the interagency agreements regarding special ed programs and civil rights enforcement “will leave our most vulnerable students and families who have been shut out of our education system without the services they need and without protection when they face discrimination,” in a Tuesday statement. 

“This isn’t efficiency — it’s chaos,” Gittleman added. “Secretary McMahon is yet again targeting historically underserved students, eroding public trust, and sowing dysfunction for the federal employees who are trying to do their jobs on behalf of the public.” 

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that “instead of helping kids get a great education, this administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the Department of Education,” in a Tuesday statement.

“It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students,” Murray added. “More kids with disabilities will be denied the education they are entitled to by law, and more college students who were harassed or assaulted will go without the justice they are owed.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, said the decision “will have dire, real-world consequences.” 

“Congress — the only body that can legally take such actions — has refused to follow the whims of the White House when it comes to abolishing the Education Department,” Weingarten said. “And parents, educators, students, and the disability and civil rights communities are rising up — and will fight in every way possible to reverse this in the courts, at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said administration officials have signaled they expect to share the text of the memorandum of understanding with lawmakers, though he didn’t know when. 

“Hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later,” he said. “But, you know, obviously it sounds like they’re not going public with it until later in the week. So we’ll see.”

Thune said he’s heard the deal sets up a 60-day framework for negotiators to reach agreement on more specifics, including about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

“I think at the end of the day the goal here is to make sure that Iran ends its nuclear program and whatever financial incentives they have should be conditioned upon that,” he said. “But we’ll see when we know more.”

President Donald Trump, speaking from the G7 convention in Europe, said he may hold a press conference in “a couple days” to release the text of the memorandum of understanding and appeared ready for a vote in Congress.

“What I would like to do is send it to Congress, saying you shouldn’t approve it. And I will get it approved. Whatever I say, they want to do the opposite,” he said. “It is not working too well for them, by the way.”

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven said he believes the plan is to vote to approve the Iran agreement at some point. 

“I think anytime you have Congress ratify something, it gives it longevity,” Hoeven said. “You can’t have the next president come in and change it with an executive order. So I think that’s a benefit. I think it helps strengthen it.”

Hoeven said he hasn’t heard from administration officials why they haven’t shared the text of the memorandum of understanding with senators, even in a classified setting. But he said he’s more focused on U.S. enforcement of agreements on Iran’s nuclear program in the long term. 

“The real issue is that we have something that we can enforce and that’s hard with Iran because they don’t honor any agreement,” Hoeven said.  

Is the agreement a treaty?

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he believes an agreement with Iran would represent a treaty and be subject to Senate approval. 

“It sounds like a treaty,” he said. “And if it’s a treaty, it certainly seems like it.”

That would require strong bipartisanship, since the Constitution sets a two-thirds threshold for the Senate to approve a treaty. 

Cassidy added it appears the administration will need the Israeli government — which initiated the attack on Iran with the United States — to stop its war in Lebanon in order to reach a final deal with Iran during the next two months.

“To make a deal, it takes two sides. In this case, maybe three, maybe four because you have Hezbollah and Israel,” Cassidy said, referring to a powerful Lebanese political party and militant group opposed to Israel. “Hezbollah can just stir it up with impunity if they want to under certain circumstances. So you tell me, I mean, it takes two to dance, and so now it takes four to dance. Can you pull it off in 60 days? I don’t know.” 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said the administration needs to be as transparent as possible about what exactly is in the memorandum of understanding it’s reached with Iran. 

“Minimally, there has to be maximum transparency,” he said. 

Tillis said it “makes sense” for the Senate to approve any final deal, saying President Barack Obama made a mistake when he didn’t have lawmakers ratify the agreement his administration struck with Iran in 2015. That deal was named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. 

“I’ve said repeatedly Obama made a mistake when he didn’t do the work to have it rise to the level of a treaty, and I believe that we should here,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s only good for two and a half years.”

Tillis said he wasn’t concerned Congress hasn’t received the text of the memorandum of understanding yet, but that it’s imperative the administration share those documents.

“Trust but verify,” he said.  

‘Essentially a surrender’

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said he “doubts” the memorandum of understanding is actually real, but that if it is, lawmakers should expect there are “side deals” the administration may not share. 

“If what’s reported is real, it’s Iran’s terms. I mean, it’s essentially a surrender. But I think that’s the only play we can make at this point,” he said. “We have to end this war and stop wasting money and stop killing Americans and civilians and stop driving up prices. So it’s a bad deal but he’s not going to get a better deal. So we just have to accept the humiliation. But I don’t even know if it’s real.”

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that lawmakers need to see the memorandum of understanding so she and others can “express our opinions.”

“But right now we can’t because it’s not fully out there,” she said. 

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., said he hadn’t seen the text of the memorandum of understanding or been briefed by administration officials. But he does believe the administration needs to submit it to lawmakers within five days, as outlined in a 2015 law. 

“My fear is that the details are not going to be as good as the president represents,” Warner said. 

Law requirements

Congress approved legislation in 2015 that requires any presidential administration to submit the text of a deal addressing Iran’s nuclear program within five days. Those documents don’t need to be sent to every lawmaker but are supposed to go to the congressional leaders as well as eight committees with jurisdiction. 

That transmission creates a 30-day review period for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee to hold hearings and briefings. 

The law created a pathway for Congress to approve a joint resolution of disapproval for any Iran nuclear deal. The House and Senate would likely need the support of at least two-thirds of members in order to override a likely veto from Trump. 

Congress overriding a presidential veto of a disapproval resolution would block the Trump administration from lifting sanctions on Iran, though that seems an unlikely scenario given both chambers are controlled by Republicans. 

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says a joint resolution of disapproval taking effect “would not invalidate the agreement itself but would affect only the possibility of presidential sanctions relief to Iran; nevertheless, precluding the President from providing such relief would almost certainly result in a dissolution of the agreement by Iran.”

The law, officially titled the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, also clears the way for Congress to approve a joint resolution of approval. 

The CRS report says that “would, upon enactment, allow the President to waive sanctions, apparently even if the review period had not yet elapsed.”

Congress taking no action during the 30-day review period would allow the administration to begin sanctions relief as soon as that deadline passes. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Lakanwal, an Afghan national, pleaded not guilty to 17 counts.

He appeared before federal Judge Amit P. Mehta, whom former President Barack Obama appointed in 2014, for a status hearing in the District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Department of Justice attorneys said the Trump administration is pursuing the death penalty, but could not give Mehta a timeline on the proceedings. 

The two guard members were attacked the day before Thanksgiving while on duty in a downtown Washington neighborhood blocks from the White House. 

U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died as a result of her injuries, and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 25, was severely injured but survived. The guard members were in the district as part of the president’s crackdown on crime, despite a continued decrease in violent crime.

The new indictment will replace the nine charges initially filed in December, to which Lakanwal also pleaded not guilty. 

Lakanwal used an interpreter during Tuesday’s status hearing and was flanked by two members of the U.S. Marshals Service. He used a wheelchair and appeared gaunt, compared to his previous appearance in court in February.

The next hearing is at 9 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 16.

Lakanwal’s charges include:

• Count 1, of Beckstrom’s murder while she was assisting Wolfe.

• Count 2, of the attempted murder of Wolfe.

• Count 3, of the attempted murder of a person assisting an officer and employee of the United States, who is referred to as R.R. in court documents.

• Count 4, of the attempted murder of a person assisting an officer and employee of the United States, who is referred to as E.S. in court documents.

• Count 5, of transporting a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with the intent to commit a felony.

• Count 6, of using a firearm during a crime of violence and causing the death of a person with a firearm.

• Counts 7, 8 and 9, of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. 

• Count 10, of first-degree murder while armed.

• Count 11, of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

• Count 12, of assault with the attempt to kill while armed of Wolfe.

• Count 13, of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

• Count 14, of assault with the intent to kill R.R. 

• Count 15, of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

• Count 16, of assault with the intent to kill E.S.

• Count 17, of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Asylum granted

Lakanwal was granted asylum last year after he came to the United States through a special humanitarian program for Afghanistan allies who served along with American forces. The allies fled the country after the Taliban took it over following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021. 

November’s shooting also spurred President Donald Trump’s administration to direct U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to halt processing legal immigration paperwork for nationals from Afghanistan, along with a dozen other countries. 

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Rhode Island struck down several Trump administration policies that ended processing for asylum seekers following the shooting in Washington. 

Last week, the Trump administration submitted a court document describing steps the government was taking to comply with resuming the processing of immigration applications. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“It is impossible today to make the case that the death penalty is a deterrent,” DeWine said. “I no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. … The most effective thing to deal with violent crime is to go after the repeat violent offenders and lock them the hell up, that’s what’s effective.”

DeWine is calling on Ohio lawmakers to either take action legislatively or have the death penalty on the Ohio ballot for voters to decide, but DeWine said he does not want to lead a citizen-initiated statue. 

“I don’t think (a citizen-initiated statue) is an effective pathway,” DeWine said. “It seems to me these things, the legislature decides if it gets on the ballot because the legislature pushed it on, unless there’s a whole bunch of money behind it.” 

Ohio lawmakers have introduced bills — Ohio Senate Bill 133, Ohio Senate Bill 134, and Ohio House Bill 72 — that would end the death penalty, but none of the bills have received a hearing. Any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered. 

Ohio’s death penalty was reinstated in 1981 after a law DeWine helped write passed and was signed into law. 

“I believed that in some cases capital punishment could serve as a deterrent to keep some people from killing,” DeWine said. “For me, it was the moral justification for having a death penalty. …  I’m responsible for that decision.” 

DeWine is in his final months in office as he is term-limited and said he has not talked to Ohio Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about the death penalty. 

“I felt that I had an obligation to explain to people why I now believe that the death penalty is not a deterrent, and why I believe that we should abolish the death penalty,” DeWine said. 

Ohio’s last execution was in July 2018, months before DeWine was elected governor. DeWine put a hold on all capital punishment due to not having enough lethal injection drugs to carry out the execution at the end of 2020. 

Ohio has 113 inmates on death row, the nation’s fifth-largest death row population, according to former Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Capital Crimes report that was published in April. 

Of the 337 people in Ohio who have received a death sentence since 1981, 56 people have been executed. Forty-one died of either natural causes or of suicide on death row, and 89 death sentences were overturned, DeWine said. 

Certainty and swiftness are the two things DeWine said he looked at when determining whether capital punishment is a deterrent — will the death penalty be carried out and how long does it take from sentencing to execution? 

“It would seem that if the death penalty were an actual deterrent for some people, it would need to happen quickly,” DeWine said. “Statistically, the odds of the death penalty actually being carried out are very low, and if it is carried out, it is all but guaranteed it will take a long, long time for that execution to happen.” 

The elapsed time between sentencing and execution ranged from 14 to 32 years for the last 10 people who were executed in Ohio — averaging 21 years, DeWine said. Those statistics omit the people who have died waiting to be executed or whose case was overturned.  

“The truth is that there is no prospect that these long delays will be substantially changed in the future,” DeWine said. 

Ohio averaged 14.25 death penalty sentences each year in the 1980s, and 13.6 death penalty sentences per year in the 1990s, a little more than five death penalty sentences per year in the 2000s, less than four death penalty sentences per year in the 2010, and only two people have been sentenced to death since 2020, DeWine said. 

“The odds of a murderer being indicted for capital offense are dramatically less today, and the odds of them being sentenced to death are even more remote,” DeWine said. 

“Throughout my career, I’ve always stated that the most important way to protect the public is to lock up violent criminals and to keep them out of society. That is a proven way of saving lives and protecting our citizens.”

DeWine also talked about the victim’s families. 

“One feeling, however, seemingly universally held by victims’ families is that the long, long wait to see if the death penalty is carried out is frustrating and very hurtful to these victims,” he said. 

“Any decision to officially end the death penalty in Ohio can not change the hurt and anger that we all feel in regard to these murderers, nor the deep sorrow we feel for the victims, and for the pains. These murderers ended the life of a precious human being.”

Death Penalty Action Executive Director Abraham Bonowitz said DeWine’s call to abolish Ohio’s death penalty is well-reasoned. 

“The legislature already knows this cannot be fixed, and if we can’t fix it, we must end it,” he said in a statement. 

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said he supports the death penalty in Ohio for the “most heinous crimes.”

“While I respect Governor DeWine’s perspective, I disagree with his conclusion that the General Assembly should eliminate capital punishment altogether,” he said in a statement.

DeWine said he respects Huffman’s opinion.

“Reasonable people for centuries have come down on both sides of this issue for thousands of years,” DeWine said. “There are good people on both sides who have thought it through and tried to figure out what is the right thing.” 

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, thanked DeWine for his support in trying to end the death penalty. 

“I have talked with countless families and advocates and have come to understand an absolute truth: the death penalty is not justice, but rather a component of a broken justice system,” she said in a statement. 

“Capital punishment is not the answer for Ohio. We must abolish the death penalty and seek justice for families by instituting life sentences without parole, ending their recurring trauma of the appeal process.”

Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, told reporters in April that the death penalty is a very complicated issue. 

“(It) elicits a lot of emotions from a lot of people, but I would imagine that if it were to come up for a vote, we would not have the votes in our Republican caucus to pass it,” he said.

He said he personally is “in the middle” when it comes to his own personal stance on the death penalty and sees some cases where the death penalty seems appropriate.

“I look at other cases where we’ve seen individuals who are on death row who end up being exonerated later on because there was exculpatory evidence that maybe was withheld, and you’d hate to see somebody go through the entire death row process and wind up being executed. … That’s a very small minority of those cases.”

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C. do not have the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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.

Republicans, Democrats and independents said corruption was a big problem permeating every government institution. More than 90% of respondents in each group said that was true — as did 92% of all respondents.

The poll was conducted among 2,000 registered voters between April 28 and May 6.

Perhaps the biggest surprise among its findings is that there’s so much agreement in an era of partisan polarization. For example, 65% of Democrats, 66% of independents and 56% of Republican respondents agreed that corporate political contributions were a major cause of corruption.

Perhaps less surprising is that corruption is surging to the fore because voters see it as related to their other top concerns. 

Respondents were asked if they agreed that, “Corruption is responsible for policies that benefit billionaires and big corporations at the expense of the American people.” Eighty three percent of Republicans agreed, as did 90% of independents and 95% of Democrats.

Those and many other responses indicate that large bipartisan majorities believe that many things that are perfectly legal in the United States are nevertheless corrupt.

“As for what qualifies as corruption, voters across party lines are in agreement,” the Brennan Center said in a written statement. “They understand corruption broadly, centered in part on the perception that government primarily works for the ultrawealthy and well-connected and doesn’t prioritize the interests of most voters. The poll finds that while 97% of voters say that a government official using their office for personal gain is corrupt, almost as many (89%) say the same about billionaires and big corporations having an easier time being heard than the general public.”

The poll’s findings might be corroborated by actual elections.

In Festus, Mo., in April, voters cast out four incumbent city council members just after they voted to allow construction of a hyperscale data center. Residents and opposition candidates told Politico the backlash was powered by voters who felt like they didn’t have any say in the project.

In Georgia, incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is trying to turn corruption — and its ties to economic pain — into a centerpiece of his campaign as he seeks reelection. 

“Voters link corruption directly to kitchen-table issues and the problems with government they experience daily,” the Brennan Center said. “Eighty-eight percent blame corruption for the persistence of today’s biggest problems that government has failed to solve, and 83% say corruption is responsible for public services not working properly.”

While respondents broadly agreed that corruption is a huge problem and that it’s rooted in government indifference to voters, there still were some stark partisan disparities.

For example, 97% of Democrats and 76% of independents agreed that President Donald Trump is corrupt. Just 34% of Republicans did.

But while there are such differences, huge, bipartisan majorities agree that much stricter regulations on how campaigns are financed are needed so that voters’ voices can be heard. 

“An overwhelming majority of voters across party lines support campaign finance reforms,” the Brennan Center said. “These include legislation to end “dark money,” or funds from groups that do not disclose their donors (85% overall, with 88% support among Democrats, 84% among independents, and 85% support among Republicans) and a constitutional amendment to overturn Supreme Court rulings that have struck down limits on money in elections (79% overall, including 84% support among Democrats, 81% support among independents, and 75% support among Republicans).”

It added that support for those measures extends across the country and through cities, towns and the countryside.

“Supermajorities in regions across the country support amending the Constitution to restore campaign finance limits, with backing from more than three-quarters of voters in the West (82%), South (78%), Northeast (81%), and Midwest (76%),” it said. “The same is true across the urban (81%), suburban (79%), and rural (76%) divide.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Not after more than 100 FBI agents raided an Ohio voter registration group that has been successfully registering racial minorities, the formerly incarcerated, and college students to vote for two decades.

Not after Trump leaned on Ohio Republicans to make voter ID a midterm issue in a state with one of the strictest state voter ID laws in the country — and GOP lawmakers did by rushing a pointless constitutional amendment to the Nov. 3 ballot to set that law in stone for purely political reasons.

Not after Trump’s Department of Justice intervened in a federal lawsuit to defend Ohio’s law requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) when they register — which voting rights advocates say will keep thousands of eligible citizens from casting a ballot. And that was just last week.

It has started. The federal government is being wielded as a partisan weapon to neutralize electoral threat ahead of the midterms.

In red Ohio. Where Trump won three times in a row with shapeshifter JD Vance, an Ohio U.S. senator for five minutes, as his running mate.

Where Republicans have a lock on every lever of power in state government from gerrymandered supermajorities in the legislature to all statewide offices and a 6-1 supreme court majority.

Conventional wisdom holds that the party in control of the White House is likely to lose seats in Congress in the midterm elections because those contests generally serve as a referendum on the president’s performance. But a solidly right-leaning, MAGA-loving Ohio should be in the bag for Trump, as well as those doggedly loyal to him, right?

Ask Ohioans who are paying up to 50% more for gas compared to last year, or more of their paychecks on food year-over-year.

Ask families squeezed by housing costs, out-of-pocket medical fees, steep hikes in electric bills, or the childcare crisis. 

Ask voters — who were promised a “golden age” of prosperity and peace (“no new wars”) from the Trump-Vance campaign in 2024 — about inflation rising to a three-year high on spiking gas prices caused by Trump’s futile war with Iran.

Maybe the reason the FBI raided the Cleveland-based Ohio Organizing Collaborative, seized its computers and phones, and showed up at the homes of its staff members across the state to interrogate and intimidate is because Ohio has emerged as a highly competitive battleground state in 2026.

A U.S. Senate seat, governor’s race, and newly gerrymandered congressional districts are suddenly in play.

Maybe that’s why Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor, wrote an opinion column and picked an issue that polls well (voter ID) to exploit, and got Republican legislators to collude with him by approving a needless voter ID amendment for the fall ballot in less than a month.

Maybe the DOJ completely reversed its decades-long defense of voting rights to support voter suppression efforts in Ohio with the documentary proof of citizenship law precisely to disenfranchise thousands of Ohioans who lack ready access to documents like birth certificates or passports.

Maybe a surprise attack by federal law enforcement on community organizers, a redundant voter ID amendment, and the DOJ’s intervention against voting rights are all of a piece to manipulate the outcome of one election.

Maybe anything goes in election subversion to minimize risk to the status quo in the midterms. 

Look, the president’s approval ratings are at record lows and getting lower.

Trump insists he “doesn’t care about the midterms” but he does care about his wings being clipped by a Congress with majorities that check his power and hold him to account.

So when the twice impeached, convicted felon isn’t falling asleep in the Oval Office, he is conspiring to undermine the midterms, laying the groundwork to contest legitimate outcomes that don’t go his way. Like he did in 2020. Trump amplifies the same evidence-free claims about “rigged” elections he made six years ago or invents fraud allegations about vote tabulations that take too long. 

The man who plotted to overturn an election he lost and incited a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol with a lie that he won is determined to keep his unchecked supremacy with preordained midterm results.

Trump has made it clear he will do whatever is necessary to rig the rules and guarantee outcome. To that end he pressured Ohio Republicans to advance an election year voter ID gambit to boost turnout in the fall and even ram through last-minute legislation to suppress mail-in voting next year.

The pretext of disenfranchising voters through unwarranted restrictions is always (unsubstantiated) voter fraud. Trump lying about elections, with complicit Ohio Statehouse Republicans, is one tactic to sow baseless doubt before a single ballot is cast.

Targeting high-profile opponents is another.

But going after under-the radar groups, like the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, doing the work of democracy, registering voters, speaking for disadvantaged communities, battling injustice, is a new level of noxious from an authoritarian regime. 

It stokes fears of more trumped-up crackdowns ahead of the midterms. It chills activists fighting to make sure marginalized Ohioans have access to the ballot. And it confirms that the specter of the federal government used as a partisan weapon in service to a malignant narcissist is no longer conjecture in Ohio. 

It has started. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The SpaceX IPO made the world’s richest man even richer, grabbing headlines worldwide. But it is merely the most vivid illustration of a U.S. trend that has been accelerating since 2022.

The richest 1% of Americans held nearly a third of the country’s total wealth at the end of 2025, the largest percentage the Federal Reserve Board has recorded since it started monitoring the numbers in 1989. In 1990, the share was 22.5%.

The latest percentage, 31.9%, is likely the largest since the end of World War II, possibly heralding a return to the extreme wealth inequality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it is likely to balloon further as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other pro-business policies.

Today’s top 1% consists of about 1.4 million households with at least $12 million in net worth, holding a total of $55.9 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% consists of 67.7 million households with less than $264,000 in net worth.

Using different methods than the Fed, French economist Thomas Piketty has asserted that the richest 1% of Americans held nearly half the nation’s wealth in 1928 and 1929, just before the Great Depression. Their share declined after that, during a period of high marginal income tax rates (the percentage of tax you pay on your last dollar of income) and widespread discomfort with astronomical pay for executives. Instead, corporations plowed their profits into expansion and higher wages for workers.

But the share of wealth held by the top 1% began rising again in the 1970s, according to the Piketty data.

Piketty, who theorizes that unfettered capitalism always leads to high concentration of wealth, told Stateline in an email that “there’s nothing natural about this — it’s all due to policies.”

“If the super-rich capture the state and pay little tax, then it’s easy to accumulate a lot, but history suggests that politics can revert quite quickly,” Piketty wrote.

Another prominent economist who recently studied the wealth of California billionaires, Emmanuel Saez, described the current spike in the share of wealth held by the top 1% as driven primarily by the stock market boom. Saez is director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the University of California, Berkeley.

New taxes proposed

In at least a dozen states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia, lawmakers have proposed new taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers. Some of the proposals would tax annual incomes above a certain threshold while others would tax capital assets, including high-value stocks and real estate.

In California, advocates in April announced they had gathered enough signatures for a November ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires. The state’s billionaires held about $2.3 trillion in wealth as of June 10, assets that could generate almost $101 billion from the proposed tax.

This year, at least 12 billionaires left California. They include Lynsi Snider, who inherited the In-N-Out hamburger chain and moved to Tennessee, and car loan magnate Don Hankey, who moved to Nevada. However, moves into the state and new wealth created 23 new California billionaires this year. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has vowed to stay in California despite a potential $8 billion one-time tax bill.

There are no state-level statistics on the top 1%, though Census Bureau estimates from 2022 show the states with the highest shares of households with more than $500,000 in net worth are Hawaii (48%), the District of Columbia (47%) and Washington state (43%). Hawaii also has the highest average net worth at more than $1 million, mostly because homeowners in that state have an average of $600,000 of equity in their homes. The states with the next highest average net worth are California ($792,000), and Massachusetts ($751,000).

Conservative and liberal experts agree that a soaring stock market and business profits have made it a good time for the wealthy, while middle-class and lower-income people are doing less well, especially as inflation gobbles up wage increases. There’s also widespread agreement that Trump’s tariffs (since struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court) disproportionately harmed lower-income and middle-class people, and that the tax cuts in the broad tax and spending measure Trump signed last summer (commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The combined effects of the tariffs and the tax and spending law will help households with the top 10% of incomes most and hurt 70% of households between now and 2034, according to a June 1 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that drew on information from the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Chuck Marr, the center’s vice president for federal tax policy, pointed to the law’s extension of  a deep corporate income tax cut that dates from Trump’s first administration.

“Trump’s whole policy has really leaned into increasing this disparity,” Marr said. “You’ve got AI coming and globalization has shifted income and wealth upward, and instead of pushing back against that, Trump and others have leaned into it.”

Nevertheless, Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the U.S. government’s tax and spending policy is “still highly progressive in that low-income households receive benefits from the high-income households paying taxes.”

“It’s a little less so than it was prior to the passage of the (Trump tax and spending law) and the tariffs, but it’s still the case. It hasn’t changed the story that much,” Pomerleau said.

Marr agreed that the federal tax system is basically progressive, in that it uses taxes on high income earners to pay for the needs of low-income residents. But tax collections are low in the United States compared with other wealthy countries: Of the 20 wealthiest nations, only Ireland collects less government revenue as a share of GDP.

“Compared to other countries, inequality is high because we redistribute so much less money,” Marr said. “It’s a progressive tax system but it doesn’t raise a lot of money.”

Inflation divide

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, an accounting of national economic conditions released June 3, found a divide in how inflation, which has increased as a result of the war in Iran, has affected American spending.

“Higher-income households remained resilient and less sensitive to price increase, while middle-income households were described as ‘squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it,’ and low-income consumers showed greater financial strain,” the report said.

The “squeezing” analogy for the middle class came from a roundtable discussion of hospitality executives in the Kansas City, Missouri, area in late May, said Jeremy Hill, a regional economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Hill said there was a gasp in the room when one high-end restaurant chain executive said the chain could raise prices at will and keep expanding, hampered only by a shortage of high-end chefs to staff locations. Meanwhile, hotels, bars and restaurants serving the middle class are struggling to get people to come in and spend.

“It’s not that they (wealthy people) don’t care about inflation. They’re worried about what it might do to future demand or their own stocks,” Hill said. “But today, it’s not impacting the way they spend.”

The stock market’s recent run has contributed the most to the consolidation of wealth at the top. Rising real estate prices also have also added to wealth, especially for longtime homeowners.

“This has disproportionately helped those who already hold assets while the average American pays higher prices for everyday essentials,” said E.J. Antoni, chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “In other words, Wall Street got rich while Main Street got inflation.”

White Americans own outsized shares of assets such as stock and real estate, according to the federal statistics. White people are 57% of the population but own 82% of the assets, while Black and Hispanic people, who make up a combined 24% of the U.S. population, have less than 7% of assets. Asians are included in an “Other” category, which is about 9% of population and holds about  11.3% of the nation’s total assets.

By generation, Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 hold almost half of wealth, while Millennials and Gen X hold the lion’s share of liabilities, such as mortgages and consumer debt, that detract from net worth. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) have about 42% of liabilities and Gen X (1965-1980) have 35%, compared with 22% for Baby Boomers.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing for young people to be in debt as they build careers and pay off student loans, said Pomerleau, the American Enterprise Institute economist.

“Doctors with $450,000 in medical school debt might be in the bottom 10%, yes, but that person is going to be in the top 1% of wealth at some point in their lives,” Pomerleau said.

“You enter the labor force with a net liability, but you save over time, that liability is paid down, you’re paying off your mortgage, and that’s when your wealth starts growing.”

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The court accepted a case, Genalo v. Black, from New York state involving a legal immigrant from the Dominican Republic arrested by immigration enforcement after an assault conviction and held for 21 months during deportation proceedings. 

An appeals court ruling in the case found that an “unreasonably prolonged” detention requires a bond hearing in which the government must show “clear and convincing evidence” that the immigrant would be a flight risk or a danger to the community if released. 

The Supreme Court on Monday also asked attorneys for arguments about whether the immigrant’s 2020 release makes the case moot. 

Indefinite Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention for immigrants either with criminal convictions or a record of illegally crossing a border has become legally controversial. Some appeals courts have upheld the Trump administration detention policy, while others have declared it unconstitutional. 

Individual judges have mostly ruled that non-criminals in immigration detention are entitled to a bond hearing or should be freed outright. 

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The report, which analyzed a sample of 171 mass public shootings in the United States between 1999 and 2024, such as those at workplaces, schools or shopping malls, found that these attacks are rarely sudden or unpredictable. Instead, researchers describe them as the result of cumulative stressors, concerning behaviors and communications of intent that, if connected, could offer opportunities for earlier intervention.

An overwhelming majority of perpetrators, nearly 86%, communicated violent thoughts or intentions to at least one other person before carrying out an attack, a pattern researchers refer to as “leakage.” These disclosures most often occurred through in-person conversations or text messages and were typically made to people within the perpetrator’s immediate social circle, including friends, family members and coworkers. 

On average, warning signs were spread across more than two different groups of observers, meaning no single person had a complete view of the escalating threat, according to the report.

The researchers also found that perpetrators tended to experience multiple overlapping stressors rather than a single triggering event. On average, people had five distinct stressors prior to an attack, including mental health challenges, job-related difficulties and family problems. Researchers also identified an average of 6.6 concerning behaviors per perpetrator, including suicidal ideation and other forms of emotional distress or aggression.

Planning often unfolded over an extended period. The report’s authors found that perpetrators spent an average of nearly 10 months preparing for attacks, including researching locations and studying prior mass shootings. 

Firearms were most often obtained through legal channels, with nearly 60% purchased from federally licensed dealers. About one-third of perpetrators had at least one factor that would have legally prohibited them from possessing a firearm, according to the report.

Researchers also found that nearly two-thirds of perpetrators had prior contact with law enforcement, underscoring what they describe as missed opportunities for intervention when warning signs appeared across different systems but were not fully connected.

“Warning signs are regularly present, observable, and known to people in the perpetrator’s social network long before the first shot is fired,” Jaclyn Schildkraut, the executive director of the consortium and lead author of the report, said in a news release. “By understanding how these indicators cluster and by building robust pathways for everyday bystanders to report what they see, we can connect the dots and intervene before a crisis turns into a tragedy.”

The report argues that improving communication between schools, law enforcement, mental health providers and community members could strengthen efforts to identify and respond to potential threats. It also highlights the need for clearer pathways for reporting concerning behavior and better systems for assessing risk when multiple warning signs emerge across different settings.

Alongside the findings, the consortium is developing an open-source database and training tools aimed at helping threat assessment professionals and community members recognize pre-attack behaviors and communication patterns. 

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

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The meeting had been fabricated — arranged through weeks of text message exchanges with Columbus-based progressive blogger D.J. Byrnes, who posed as a fictional Ohio State football staffer in his newsletter, The Rooster. Ramaswamy is now the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, having won the May 5 primary with more than 82 percent of the vote. He faces Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and former Ohio Department of Health director, in the November general election.

How the prank unfolded

According to Byrnes’ account, published August 25, 2024, the scheme began after a Republican political acquaintance shared screenshots of a prior exchange in which someone had already posed as Day via a Google Voice number and received a cordial response from Ramaswamy. Byrnes decided to attempt his own contact.

On Monday, August 5, 2024, Byrnes texted Ramaswamy directly, introducing himself as “Tim Chitter” — a misspelling of the alias he intended to use — and claiming to represent the Ohio State football program. According to Byrnes’ published account, Ramaswamy responded within minutes. Text message screenshots published by The Rooster show Ramaswamy writing that he would “love to talk to the guys, very proud of them,” and immediately offering to connect Byrnes with his assistant to coordinate logistics.

Later that afternoon, Ramaswamy’s assistant confirmed a meeting for Friday, August 23, 2024 at 2 p.m. at Raising Cane’s at 2823 Olentangy Road — a restaurant Byrnes had proposed as a staging point before the group would supposedly head to the Woody Hayes Athletic Center together. Screenshots published in The Rooster show the assistant confirming the arrangement and noting that Ramaswamy is vegetarian.

On the morning of August 23, a screenshot in Byrnes’ account shows Ramaswamy sending a message at 6:03 a.m. stating he was “looking forward to meeting you today.” Hours later, according to the same screenshots, Ramaswamy asked what themes he should hit in his remarks to the team.

According to Byrnes, Ramaswamy also remained in contact with the Google Voice number he believed to belong to Day throughout the period leading to the meeting — a separate prankster Byrnes says he had no direct coordination with.

The meeting

Ramaswamy arrived at the Raising Cane’s parking lot that Friday, his security escort in tow. Byrnes documented the encounter on video. After a brief exchange — during which, according to Byrnes, Ramaswamy initially called him by the wrong name — it became apparent to the entourage that no coaching staff or team access awaited them. Ramaswamy subsequently attempted to reach the Google Voice number he believed to be Day’s, according to screenshots published in The Rooster.

The Rooster’s account of the prank, published three days after the meeting, included photographs, video, and the text message screenshots documenting the exchange.

The Rooster, the arrest, and Ramaswamy’s response

Byrnes and Ramaswamy have continued to cross paths in the nearly two years since. The Rooster reported in May 2026 that Ramaswamy was turned away by security when he attempted to enter the New York Knicks’ locker room following a playoff game in Cleveland. Ramaswamy denied the report and, in response to Byrnes’ coverage, characterized him as a “leftist blogger with mental health issues,” according to Signal Ohio. His campaign manager, Jonathan Ewing, called the report “100% fake” and Byrnes “a mentally unstable and unhinged left-wing blogger who may suffer from delusions,” according to the Daily Beast.

Byrnes was arrested on Tuesday, June 2 at the Ohio Statehouse while attending a legislative hearing on data centers and held for 23 hours in the Franklin County Jail. As TiffinOhio.net reported, Ohio state Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, emailed Kirtland Police Chief Jeremy Fisher in May requesting criminal charges against Byrnes over text messages Byrnes sent him, which included political commentary and a digitally altered image of the cartoon character Shrek. An affidavit in Byrnes’ arrest record describes the image as depicting Shrek “fully nude with an exposed and erect humanlike penis engaged in an act of masturbation.” Byrnes faces a first-degree misdemeanor charge of telecommunications harassment. The arrest warrant was signed by a judge Cirino had previously endorsed.

Cirino initially told reporters he “did not request any such thing” when asked about the arrest. Records reported in the days following the arrest contradicted that denial, showing he had emailed the police chief requesting charges. Cirino declined further comment. A spokesperson for Ohio Senate Republicans said the caucus would not comment due to the ongoing investigation.

The backlash was immediate and crossed party lines. Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin, a Democrat who has himself been a frequent target of Byrnes’ criticism, posted on X: “Didn’t realize having the Rooster thrown in jail for annoying me was an option this whole time??? Seems like censorship to me, unacceptable.”

In a statement, Byrnes said: “I believe that the facts presented in court will show that I’m innocent of the misdemeanor charge of telecommunications harassment.”

A pattern of vetting failures

Questions about Ramaswamy’s vetting of the people in his orbit extend beyond the 2024 prank.

As TiffinOhio.net reported in June, campaign finance records filed with the Ohio Secretary of State show Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign paid $14,000 to its contracted security firm, ARK Protection Group, in the weeks following the December 30, 2025 federal arrest of the firm’s employee Justin Salsburey — Ramaswamy’s personal family bodyguard — on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine. A final $2,000 payment was made to ARK Protection four days after the campaign publicly announced it was severing ties with the firm. ARK Protection Group closed on January 21, 2026, one day after that final payment cleared.

Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to questions about the post-announcement payment at the time of that report.

Ramaswamy, 40, is a Cincinnati-born biotech entrepreneur who ran for president in 2024 before briefly co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency. He resigned from that role ahead of President Trump’s inauguration and launched his gubernatorial campaign in February 2025.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Outstanding Biology Teacher Award, presented annually by the NABT, recognizes educators in grades 7–12 who demonstrate excellence in biology instruction, classroom innovation, professional leadership, and a commitment to advancing scientific literacy. Griffin was selected from candidates across Ohio following a competitive review conducted by biology educators from across the United States.

At Seneca East, Griffin teaches Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, College Credit Plus/AP Biology, CCP Marine Science, and Forensic Science. Her instruction centers on inquiry-based learning, hands-on investigations, scientific reasoning, and real-world applications that help students connect biological concepts to everyday life.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/brooke-griffin-seneca-east-ohio-biology-teacher-year/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The executive order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t provide lists of voters or meet other requirements. It has created a sense of deep uncertainty and concern among election officials as they consider how to comply, according to a review of court documents and interviews with election officials and experts on election administration.

The March 31 executive order, and a proposed Postal Service rule published June 2 that would put the order’s requirements into effect, raise serious logistical and procedural challenges for those running elections, they say. Rural areas with limited resources are especially at risk, but jurisdictions of all sizes could be forced to scramble.

The executive order is the latest step taken by Trump to assert control over state-run elections, along with the stalled SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. The Justice Department, under Trump’s control, is also trying to obtain state voter rolls.

“This is just another death by a thousand cuts that clerks have been experiencing since the 2020 elections,” said Barb Byrum, the Democratic clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, which includes Lansing.

First-ever national voter list

The order and the rule require states to provide lists of mail-in voters if they want the Postal Service to deliver ballots, marking the first time the federal government has created a national voter list. 

Mail ballot envelopes must meet certain design standards. And federal agencies have to compile lists of voting-age citizens to share with each state in an effort to root out noncitizen voters.

But Democratic states and voting rights groups argue the executive order — and the accompanying proposed rule — represent an illegal overreach by Trump because states administer elections under the U.S. Constitution. Trump and his Republican allies say the restrictions are necessary for election security and to combat noncitizen voting, which occurs extremely rarely.

The Postal Service didn’t respond to questions from States Newsroom. The agency has said the rule “will facilitate the faithful execution of federal law.”

Multiple lawsuits have been brought against the order, but a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May declined to halt it, partly because the Trump administration hadn’t taken enough action to implement its requirements. Another federal judge in Massachusetts is weighing a separate request to block the order.

With the executive order still in effect, at least for now, election officials and experts who work with them are taking the ramifications of it and the proposed Postal Service rule seriously.

“We don’t have a national voter registration list. We don’t have, currently, a list of sanctioned, authorized voters to vote by mail at the federal level,” said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at Election Center, operated by the National Association of Election Officials.  “That’s a big, big change in the way elections have always been conducted.”

Sweeping changes very quickly

In court papers filed in May, local election officials and local governments representing 26 jurisdictions across the country warned the executive order would “severely disrupt” local election administration and force the implementation of sweeping changes within months. Implementation of the order’s requirements will largely fall on local election officials, they argued.

Byrum was among the officials to sign onto the brief, along with others in Boston, and counties in Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Under the executive order, states that want to send ballots through the mail must provide the Postal Service with lists of voters they intend to provide a mail ballot. Local election officials will play a large role in helping states develop these lists, according to the court papers, and will have primary responsibility to help voters address any errors.

And Trump wants it all in place before November. The executive order’s proposed timelines “present a logistical nightmare for local election officials,” the officials warn.

“The general rule is don’t make changes before a big election because there’s always something you didn’t think about,” said Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a nonpartisan organization for election officials in jurisdictions of at least 250,000 people.

The proposed Postal Service rule says the agency would launch a portal where states would submit voter lists and make updates. But a number of questions remain, said Lopez, who previously spent a decade administering elections in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

The portal poses the potential for bottlenecks in the election system and it’s unclear what would happen if it was ever offline. The United States has a decentralized election system, with states each running their own elections. By contrast, the Postal Service portal would create a single point of failure, raising concerns about the security of information on tens of millions of voters.

Additionally, while every state maintains a voter registration list, there is no nationwide standard for the formatting of that data. It’s unclear whether the portal will accept data in a variety of formats — the proposed rule only says the Postal Service wouldn’t alter the data provided by states.

“It looks a little different across the country and therefore normalizing the data will be a process,” Lopez said.

Struggle for small, rural counties

The Department of Justice initially said in a court document that the Department of Homeland Security planned to obtain voter data from the Postal Service before backpedaling a few days later. Still, Homeland Security continues to have “preliminary conversations” about data sharing, the Justice Department said in a subsequent court filing.

DHS operates the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system that can scan voter data to identify possible noncitizens. The Justice Department has sued 30 states in an effort to force them to turn over their unredacted voter rolls, which include sensitive personal data such as dates of birth, driver’s license and full or partial Social Security numbers, for the purpose of running the information through SAVE.

The proposed Postal Service rule also imposes standards on ballot envelopes that states must meet if they want to send ballots through the mail.

Envelopes must include an election mail logo, be automation compatible and have a bar code that allows for tracking. These are already considered best practices — and many jurisdictions across the country already follow them — but the rule would make them mandatory.

Election offices in small, rural counties may struggle to comply. In many places, a single person is in charge of elections and may not even be on the job full time, Patrick said. 

“There’s rural offices all across the country, some of them don’t have their own computer in their office — they are sharing it with the tax assessor or whatever — they don’t have the ability to generate those serialized tracking codes, intelligent mail bar codes,” Patrick said. “Because they’re physically hand-writing these envelopes out or they’re using a rubber stamp with their address on it.”

Neither the executive order or the proposed Postal Service rule include any federal funding for implementation, something that would likely have to be appropriated by Congress.

Some Republican states have championed the executive order. A dozen GOP state attorneys general filed court documents defending the order and arguing that it “will enhance the security of absentee voting.”

“It is vital to the strength of our republic that we ensure only American citizens vote in our elections and that mail-in and absentee ballots are secure and reliable,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement earlier this spring.

But Matt Crane, a Republican who is the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said the executive order and the proposed rule mark an overreach by the federal government into duties best left to states and local governments. 

The biggest reaction among Colorado clerks, he said, has been, “why?”

“No offense to our friends at the post office,” Crane said, “but I trust our processes more than I trust theirs.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees last Tuesday issued a report saying that both programs will be insolvent in less than a decade.

That doesn’t mean the programs will shut down altogether, but it does mean a big cut in benefits. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that more than 2 million Ohioans will lose an average of $487 a month, and cost the state $12.1 billion starting in 2032.

Medicare Part A, the program that covers hospital and nursing-home care, is projected to be insolvent by 2033. 

If that happens, it will cut the amount going for care by 11% as more Ohioans get older and sicker, the committee estimates. This in a time when already-stressed rural and inner-city hospitals are losing billions due to Medicaid cuts, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund

Ohio is among the states that are more vulnerable to a shortfall. It has the 20th-largest population over 65, and the 18th-largest between 55 and 64, according to KFF. 

And AARP Ohio reports that the program keeps more than 700,000 Ohio seniors out of poverty.

The time to act is now, said AARP Ohio Director Jenny Carlson.

“The trustee report puts Congress on the clock,” Carlson said in an interview.

“We’ve got 2.5 million Ohioans receiving Social Security. We will continue to be fierce defenders of Social Security. We worked. We paid in. We earned these benefits. So Congress needs to act now to protect the full benefit and strengthen Social Security.”

Carlson said she’s particularly concerned about low-income seniors. The average Social Security recipient in Ohio gets about $1,900 a month — or $23,000 a year — in benefits. 

“For many Ohioans, that covers basic necessities,” she said. “Think about groceries, housing, utilities, prescriptions and healthcare costs.”

If their Social Security is slashed, state and local governments will be left to deal with the consequences, Carlson said.

“The risk is if you kick the can down the road — if benefits are reduced — that impacts basic necessities and it’s going to put more pressures on state budgets because people can become (Medicaid and Medicare) eligible. And eligible for food stamps,” she said.

“It also puts pressure on social services provided at the county level.”

Experts blamed the shortfall on several factors, including an aging population and decades of tax cuts and other policies that have accelerated income inequality. But they were most critical of congressional inaction.

The Social Security “Trust Fund is under strain because Congress has failed to update the program for the economy we actually have,”  Elizabeth Wilkins, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, said in a written statement.

“Too much income now flows to the top, where it escapes Social Security taxation. Too many workers have faced weak wage growth. And the government’s poor response to the Great Recession damaged workforce participation and wages, and, in turn, weakened the reserve.”

Wilkins was referring in part to the fact that wage earners pay a 6.2% Social Security tax only on their first $184,000 of income. That tax is matched by employers.

For its part, Medicare is taxed at an employer-matched 1.45% that has no income cutoff.

There is already less in dedicated revenue for Social Security retirement than there are scheduled benefits.

By 2032, “the fund’s reserves will become depleted and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 78 percent of total scheduled benefits,” the Social Security trustees said last Tuesday in a written statement.

The Medicare Hospitalization Insurance fund is also falling short. If it isn’t shored up, it will require an 11% cut in 2033, and that will grow to a 16% cut by 2040, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said.

When Social Security and Medicare faced insolvency in 1981, Congress passed bridge funding and created a commission to come up with a longer-term solution.

In 1983, Congress made amendments to the Social Security Act that were supposed to shore up the system for 75 years.

However, they didn’t perfectly predict the future — including how quickly inequality would grow.

In the years since, experts say, Congress has failed to address the problem.

“Instead of talking about solutions to these real funding problems, leaders in Washington instead demagogue each other over the issue, with both sides promising not to touch the programs,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in a written statement.

“Unfortunately, that promise is a tacit endorsement of the across-the-board cuts that will happen at exhaustion — an unacceptable outcome. No state would be spared from the consequences of failure to save these programs from insolvency — each and every member of the House and Senate has constituents that rely on the programs.”

The committee added that the Republican spending bill passed last summer only added to the problem.

It cut taxes for the richest 1% of Americans by about $1 trillion over 10 years while cutting a similar amount from health and nutrition programs for the poor — making inequality even worse.

“… thanks mainly to the tax cuts in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ and worsening demographics, Social Security’s projected shortfall is a full 16% worse than last year’s,” the budget watchdog said. “Medicare’s shortfall is 33% worse.”

The staff of Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, who voted for the bill, didn’t respond to questions for this story.

Husted’s Democratic challenger accused Husted of trying to make the Social Security shortfall even worse by proposing a balanced-budget amendment.

In announcing the amendment, Husted chided Congress for a “lack of discipline,” but he didn’t say Social Security and Medicaid would have to be cut to balance the budget.

A spokeswoman for former Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown blasted the proposal and other of Husted’s votes.

“Rather than focus on lowering costs for Ohio families, Jon Husted ended his first year in the Senate by proposing a plan that would cut back Social Security and Medicare,” the spokeswoman, Lauren Chou, said in an email.

“Husted has already voted nine times to raise health care costs and kick nearly half a million Ohioans off their coverage — all to give billionaires the largest tax cut in American history. Sherrod Brown fought to restore Social Security benefits to a quarter million Ohio workers and will continue to stand with hardworking Ohioans.”

Congress will likely face intense pressure to find a fix. 

One idea is to remove the income cap beyond which wealthy Americans stop paying into the system. But experts say that’s too little, too late.

“Congress waited too long for any one policy to solve this problem neatly,” Stephen Nuñez, the Roosevelt Institute’s director for stratification economics, said in an email. “If policymakers had acted 10 or 20 years ago, lifting the cap would have gone much further.”

Nuñez added, “Instead, runaway income inequality and economic mismanagement further eroded the program’s foundation. That’s why we need a multifaceted approach going forward. One that demands more from the wealthiest, closes loopholes that allow income to escape tax, and protects and expands benefits.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists several possible approaches:

• Six-figure limit — Capping annual benefits for the wealthiest retirees at the normal retirement age (67 for people born in 1960) at $100,000 for couples and $50,000 for individuals. It’s estimated to close 20% of the solvency gap if the cap is indexed to inflation.

• COLA cap — Capping cost-of-living adjustments and indexing them to a measure of inflation known as “chained CPI.” This is estimated to close 10% of the solvency gap if applied to the top quarter of recipients.

• Employer compensation tax — Replacing employer Social Security and Medicare contributions with a flat tax on all compensation — including massive CEO pay and their gold-plated benefits. That measure is estimated to close a whopping 66% of the Social Security shortfall and half of the Medicare gap.

With 38 million members nationally who are known for their tendency to vote, AARP is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the United States.

Carlson, the organization’s Ohio director, said it will press lawmakers to make sure Social Security and Medicare keep faith with the people paying into them.

“Advocacy is our backbone,” she said. “Consumers across the state and the nation need to know they have a strong voice in Congress and the states saying we will defend the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. We have been for 60 years.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement announced grants for abandoned mine land cleanup, brought about under a federal infrastructure law.

According to the Ohio River Valley Institute, the grants are meant to be used to repair waterways and land damage resulting from historic coal mining.

The abandoned mine land grants for 2026 amount to $679 million, but that amount is $45 million less than before congressional cuts were made to the program.

Eric Dixon, a senior researcher for the Ohio River Valley Institute, said the funding maintains “historic investment in cleaning up hazardous coal mine damage,” while also boosting job opportunities, as well as the safety and health of Appalachian communities.

“Unfortunately, the tens of millions in cleanup funding slashed by Congress means more families will have to wait for help with orange-tinted streams or crumbling home foundations,” Dixon said in announcing the funding.

An infrastructure law passed in 2021 started the process of reclaiming abandoned mine land with about $10.9 billion in grant funding nationwide over the next 15 years.

The funding cuts occurred in a January spending bill, in which the institute said funds originally meant for coal mining cleanup were redirected to other federal programs.

In grant funding distribution documents released after the $500 million cut was announced, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement said the loss would be “applied equally to the remaining 11 grant distribution years,” at about $45.5 million per year.

The institute said the congressional funding cuts are “equivalent to the cost of stabilizing around 10,000 acres of subsidence, which occurs when land above underground mines caves in.”

Ohio stands to lose nearly $3 million per year, starting this year, according to the federal agency.

So, while Ohio was set to receive $696 million between 2022 and 2036 to address abandoned coal mines, the reduction means the state will receive $664 million over the grant period, according to an analysis by the Ohio River Valley Institute.

Ohio has a state abandoned mine land program, as well as administration authority for the federal program “to address the highest priority problems resulting from coal mining that occurred prior to enactment of today’s stricter reclamation requirements,” according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Regulations began in earnest in the 1970s, but mining activity before then led to impacts including 1,300 miles of streams polluted by acid mine draining, nearly 119,000 acres of land in need of “major reclamation efforts,” polluted water supplies across the state, and acres of landslides, according to the ODNR.

In 1972, the state started its own reclamation program, with a state severance tax imposed on active surface mine operators.

A separate program called the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program gives state funding to projects around that use the land for other things.

Some of the approved projects include building construction, mine stabilization, and park improvements.

In Lawrence County, for example, $3 million was approved for a sports and recreation complex. Another $2.8 million was approved for a four-phase project in Athens County’s village of Glouster to reclaim downtown buildings, improve a village park, build a daycare facility and operate a workforce development program, according to the state.

The village of Leetonia in Columbiana County was approved for $3.5 million to construct a learning and history center, along with a conservatory and roadway improvement project in the area.

The area still has more than 200 ovens used during 19th-century coal mining.

“The overall goals of this project include interpreting the industrial and cultural history of the Cherry Valley, developing a trail system that integrates remaining industrial structures, developing the educational potential of the site, promoting local and regional access to the site, and fostering a connection to the regional trail system,” a profile of the project stated.

Surrounding states also saw federal funding losses, with Kentucky seeing a $4.7 million reduction in annual grant funds, West Virginia losing $8.9 million year over year, and Pennsylvania netting a $15.4 million annual loss. Indiana will see an annual loss of $1.5 million per year.

Pennsylvania and West Virginia saw the highest cuts grant cuts in the nation. Alaska and Texas were the only states to see no reductions in funds as a result of the cuts.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Supreme Court recently blocked a permit for what would be the state’s largest solar installation. The 800-megawatt Oak Run Solar Project still has a pathway to completion — the court reversed only one part of the state siting board’s prior approval — but it remains unclear how things will play out.

This is just the latest example of how state lawmakers and other officials have obstructed renewable energy development in Ohio. In total, they have thwarted more than 5.3 gigawatts of solar and wind projects over the last dozen years.

So says a recent analysis released by Save Ohio Parks, which opposes fracking and oil and gas extraction from public lands.

“It’s a lot of inexpensive power that we don’t have available to us. And it means fewer choices for consumers,” said Tom Bullock, executive director for the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio. ​“Boy, would that come in handy right now when electricity prices keep going up, up, up.”

Ohio, like many other states, is facing rising utility bills as well as massive new energy demand due to a wave of proposed data centers. The Save Ohio Parks report contends that clean energy could have helped rein in those energy costs while meeting a huge chunk of data centers’ demand if Ohio had allowed more development. The 5.3 GW of blocked clean energy would have also avoided large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution.

The state stepped up its pushback on wind and solar as each of those clean energy sources became more cost-competitive with fossil fuels and nuclear power.

A 2014 law that more than doubled property-line setbacks for wind turbines effectively blocked over 3.3 GW of utility-scale projects in the state, the report notes. Efforts in 2017 to roll back those restrictions failed, leaving Ohio among the nation’s most restrictive states for wind power.

“The economics of a wind farm don’t work when you need that amount of setback from a property line,” said Rachel Kutzley, a Save Ohio Parks board member who worked on the report.

Seven years later, Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 52, which lets counties ban new solar projects above 50 MW of capacity and ​“economically significant” wind farms able to produce more than 5 MW of electricity. SB 52 doesn’t let counties ban power plants that use fossil fuels or nuclear power.

Neither the Save Ohio Parks report nor a February 2026 paper in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy quantified how much clean energy generation the bans by Ohio counties have prevented.

Projects that were already in grid operator PJM Interconnection’s queue are not subject to outright bans under SB 52. The Ohio Power Siting Board, however, can deny permits for individual projects — and since 2021 it has rejected eight installations, making Ohio one of the toughest states for developing clean energy. The board has routinely referenced local government opposition when rejecting projects.

Those eight rulings alone have killed more than 1.1 GW of solar generation.

Developers withdrew five other applications for projects that would have added roughly another 1 GW, after adverse recommendations from the Power Siting Board’s staff or significant local pushback made it likely the full board would deny permits. The Kingwood Solar case, which challenges the board’s deference to local government opposition, is due to be decided soon.

Matt Schilling, a spokesperson for the Ohio Power Siting Board and Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said he did not have a comment on the report from Save Ohio Parks. ​“However, I will observe OPSB has approved 49 solar projects across Ohio with nameplate capacity totaling 9,250 MW,” he added.

Only about one-third of those approvals were for permit applications filed after SB 52’s effective date.

It’s not just solar and wind — Ohio has also stymied energy-efficiency efforts over the years, which would have additionally cut down on pollution and saved money for residents. The Save Ohio Parks’ report doesn’t consider the effects of the state’s infamous House Bill 6, which eliminated utilities’ energy-efficiency requirements after 2020.

Those impacts would have been quite sizable, said Mike Specian, a utilities manager with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, who shared his separate analysis with Canary Media.

If utilities had continued to achieve energy savings for customers after 2020, the cumulative savings could have been as much as 70 terawatt-hours, or 70 million megawatt-hours, Specian said. That high number is partially because energy-efficiency investments provide benefits, on average, for nearly a decade. ​“Those savings deliver year over year over year,” he said.

The mix of thwarted solar and wind projects alone likely would have displaced 7.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel plants, said Ben King, a director with research firm Rhodium Group’s energy and climate practice. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas that drives human-caused climate change.

King based that estimate on results from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Avoided Emissions and Generation Tool. Ohio’s lost clean energy generation could have cut millions of metric tons of pollution from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants with harmful health effects as well, the EPA tool shows.

The lost clean energy opportunities are also impacting consumers’ finances, although it’s hard to tell exactly how much because electricity prices reflect multiple components.

Ohio gets about 7.5% of its electricity from wind and solar, compared with 80.6% from coal and gas, according to federal data for 2025.

When it comes to the electricity dispatch market, ​“the generation we have less of is the least expensive in Ohio,” said Ashley Brown, a former member of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Solar and wind have no fuel costs, so their marginal costs for producing energy are very low. That competition also reins in bidding by producers of other forms of electricity, particularly fossil fuels, whose prices have soared even higher because of the Trump administration’s war on Iran.

“It really does force enormous price pressure on other forms of generation,” Brown said.

Less solar and wind generation has some effect on the capacity market, the mechanism PJM uses to ensure it will have enough energy producers available to meet future demand spikes. Last year, capacity made up about 16% of the wholesale cost of electricity, noted Jeff Shields, PJM’s senior manager for external communications. Even though renewables count less toward capacity than other types of energy, ​“we can use all the capacity we can get,” he said.

Renewables’ ability to come online more quickly than other sources could do a lot to curb inflation, said Bullock at the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio. ​“Unless Ohio takes action, consumers are locked on this escalator. We’re strapped to the escalator that keeps going up.”

Nevertheless, some Ohio lawmakers seem intent on making it harder — not easier — to build new clean energy projects in the state.

SB 294, reported out of the Senate Energy Committee on June 2, would further cement the state’s preferences for natural gas and nuclear power — and potentially make it even harder to get approval from regulators for solar and wind.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

I am a pre-service teacher who graduated from an Ohio university in May 2026. Beyond preparing to be a full-time teacher in the fall, I am also a public school advocate.

Public schools serve and protect the rights of all children in our country. In these times, it is critical for all school teachers to advocate for the public schools which are the roots of not only their careers, but the families and communities they serve.

As an educator, I believe that the policy affecting our schools, students, and jobs is something often overlooked by fellow teachers.

Through our teacher preparation courses, we learn to write lesson plans, to implement strategies for classroom management, and how to teach the state standards in interactive ways. However, a topic often omitted from the education and professional development of teachers is educational policy, or the process by which laws and policies for schools are created, deliberated and passed.

The local, state, and federal policy-making processes affect all educators. Teachers should care about educational policy because it affects their ability to make decisions and policy for their own jobs, as well as the funding their schools receive.

To put it simply, public schools across America are being threatened. Bills are being passed challenging the abilities of local educators to make their own educational decisions, as well as the funding that K-12 schools and teachers receive.

Teachers are being forced to exclude media from their classroom libraries, to expose the sexuality of innocent children, and to indoctrinate children with knowledge that those in power get to decide is “true.” Additionally, vouchers are taking away funds from public schools that need them.

In my home state of Ohio, for example, we are seeing bills proposed and enacted weekly that are affecting teachers in classrooms.

In 2025, one specific bill proposed that strongly affects teachers is Ohio Senate Bill 113. This would completely and entirely ban diversity, equity, and inclusion in K-12 public schools. If any K-12 public school chose not to comply, they would lose funding.

How might your classroom look different if any topic surrounding “identity” was completely banned? This bill eliminates the ability of school districts to make their own well-informed policies regarding inclusivity and DEI in their school buildings.

Iowa, South Carolina, and Oklahoma are considering similar legislation.

Diving deeper into the Buckeye State, public school funding is an imminent issue in educational policy.

In 2023, Ohio passed Ohio House Bill 33, the state budget, which enacted universal vouchers. Ohio now has one of the largest voucher programs of any state in America; as a result, the funding of public schools faces intense negative effects.

Additionally, throughout the next two years, Ohio schools expected $3 million dollars toward public education. However, the Fair School Funding Pan, which was to be passed as part of the budget, was underfunded. Districts are now relying on local levies more than ever.

This hurts how our classrooms are supported by our districts, fiscally. This example highlights how the lack of funding toward public schools across the country places an attack on educational policy.

These harmful legislative attacks on public education are seen country-wide. In 2023 in Texas, S.B. 10 was passed, requiring all K-12 classrooms to display a copy of the 10 commandments.

As a public school teacher, I am curious as to how this honors the separation of church and state. Teachers and local educators should possess the right to make educational decisions, not follow generalized ones mandated by state and federal law makers.

Moving into Florida, the parental rights bill H.B. 1557 was enacted in 2022. This bill, masked as a way to get parents more involved in their children’s schooling, requires school personnel to inform parents of each child’s physical and mental well being.

Some districts see this as a threat, and are requiring all educators to report if a child confides their sexual identity with them. This puts all teachers in a very bad position, and could cause us to face consequences if we do decide to be a safe and trusted adult for a student.

The safety of our students should be a priority for districts, who should have the ability to make policy regarding parental rights.

These threats are seen at the federal level, too, with orders such as Executive Order 14190.

This executive order, coming from the 2nd Trump administration, would end “indoctrination” in public schools by forcing teachers to promote a “patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand.”

As teachers, I think we all can agree that our daily jobs don’t include indoctrinating students. We have too many curriculum requirements, state standards, and district requisites to focus on accomplishing during our short school days.

Sadly, these bills aren’t even a fraction of the total number of legislative attacks coming from the local, state, and federal level weekly, all across the country.

As teachers, we are in the front line of the aggression against public schooling. We need to involve ourselves in the world of education advocacy to save our students, jobs, and communities as a whole.

To read more about ways teachers can get involved click here.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that a company has expressed interest in potentially building one north of the city of Upper Sandusky.

Since news first broke about the potential data center, people have been quick to share their opinions on the internet. A post showing the initial headline and first few paragraphs of my first story about a data center being discussed at an Upper Sandusky planning commission meeting had nearly 500 comments and 266 shares just in the past 10 days.

People are riled up, but why? I thought it would be a good idea to share a bit about data centers in my column today.

Data centers are the fundamental physical infrastructure of the modern digital economy. They house the servers, networking equipment and storage systems that power the internet, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Without them, everyday online services — from streaming media and e-commerce to banking and social media — would cease to function.

So yes, they’re important, and as things like generative AI become more and more prevalent in our society, data centers are increasingly necessary — but they come at a cost.

The first is the drain on resources.

Data centers require continuous, high-volume electricity. The surge in AI processing has caused some modern hyperscale facilities to consume as much power as a small city. Early data centers that tapped into the local electric grid consumed a massive amount of electricity and caused electric rates to spike drastically.

The initial proposal for a data center in Upper Sandusky would not connect to the electric grid, so it wouldn’t have that problem. Instead, a 150-megawatt natural gas power plant is being proposed to be built on 50 acres of land. The energy produced by the power plant would feed a data center on the remaining 100 acres of the property, with neighboring properties also being allowed to tap into the produced electricity.

Some data centers also utilize a significant amount of water to help cool their servers. A representative from Smartland Energy said the proposed data center in Upper Sandusky would use a maximum of 100,000 gallons of water per day, which would not require any additional expansion of the city’s current water treatment plant. Drought prone areas like the western united states would have bigger water issues.

Pollution is another concern. Natural gas power plants are over twice as efficient for the environment compared coal plants, but they still produce 800 to 900 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of energy created. They also are not zero-emission, as a significant amount of nitrous oxide and unburned methane can be released into the environment.

The water used to cool data centers also can get polluted. As cooling systems for data centers operate, trace amounts of metals like zinc, lead and copper can leach from system components into the water. Data centers also use chemicals like biocides to prevent mold and algae and corrosion inhibitors to maintain their cooling systems, which can end up in wastewater.

Noise and light pollution also can be a problem. The constant hum of cooling systems, industrial HVAC units, and backup generators can generate disruptive noise levels, sometimes reaching up to 100 decibels. Furthermore, some large facilities require continuous 24/7 exterior lighting which creates localized light pollution that can disrupt the body’s circadian rhythms and disturb migration patters of wildlife.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to keep an eye on with data centers is the tax deals they have with the state of Ohio. To offset some of the above negative effects, data centers should provide a significant amount of tax resources to the communities they are built in as well as increased jobs and local infrastructure.

The proposed data center and power plant would bring approximately 100 permanent jobs and improved natural gas and internet infrastructure, but what about taxes?

Massive tax abatements for data centers are becoming a serious problem for the state of Ohio.

Republican lawmakers established a tax exemption in the early 2010s to lure technology companies to Ohio. At the time, they didn’t foresee the modern hyperscale and electric-intensive data centers that would be required to facilitate the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency boom.

For facilities that cost $100 million or more to build, the exemption allows developers to waive up to 100% of Ohio’s 5.75% sales tax for up to 15 years. The proposed data center in Upper Sandusky was estimated to be a $600 million investment (with an additional $300 million for the power plant).

Last year alone, tax breaks for data centers cost the state of Ohio nearly $1.6 billion in potential tax revenue. Local tax revenue is affected as well. Approximately $166.8 million was lost from local sales tax revenue in 2024 in Ohio.

Some data centers come with benefits. A school district in Louisiana was able to give its teachers $50,000 bonuses with the windfall of sales tax that came with a massive data center in the school’s district.

So the question residents of Wyandot County need to ask themselves is simple. Does this proposed data center come with huge tax abatements? If so, how does the local community actually benefit in any way from its existence?

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Over a roughly 80-minute session, council also held a public hearing on the 2027 tax budget that drew no public comment, passed a utility easement on an emergency basis, advanced a tax-increment financing measure, and referred new traffic-signal and sewer-replacement legislation to committee. All seven council members were present, and Council President Bridget Boyle presided.

Water Pollution Control Center Superintendent Kevin Hughes briefed council on the next major phase of the plant’s long-term upgrades: a high-rate treatment system that will sharply increase how much flow the city can treat during heavy rain. Hughes said the project carries a price tag of about $27 million, that the construction bid was recently awarded to Adena, and that work is expected to begin in the next couple of months, with the system set to be online by July 2028.

The system, a cloth-media filtration technology marketed as AquaStorm, will treat up to 32 million gallons a day, Hughes said. Combined with the existing plant, that would let the city treat up to 45 million gallons a day during consecutive rain events. Hughes tied the work to the city’s long-term control plan, which aims to limit combined sewer overflows — events that send untreated sewage into the Sandusky River — to no more than four per year. A 2021 upgrade had already raised the plant’s capacity from 4 million to 13 million gallons. Background on the plant’s history is available on the city’s Water Pollution Control page.

Hughes also told council the city has signed a contract with Voltus, a “virtual power plant” operator that pays large energy users to cut electricity demand during grid stress by running their own generators. He said the arrangement pays the city $12,000 a year plus $1,425 an hour during curtailment events, and took effect June 1.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-27m-wastewater-plant-construction-youth-sports-complex/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

At a March 2025 Republican dinner in Wintersville, Ramaswamy put the ambition plainly: “It takes two years to build an AI data center or Bitcoin mining firm or whatever — all of which I want in the state, by the way.” He has repeatedly called Ohio’s data center boom good, including on his verified account on X, and has argued that rising electricity prices should be answered by producing more energy rather than slowing the facilities driving the demand.

A portfolio that spans the supply chain

A May 2026 report from the progressive group Innovation Ohio, titled Vivek Ramaswamy’s Data Center Portfolio: Divided Loyalties, examined Ramaswamy’s financial disclosure filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission in April and concluded that his holdings touch every part of the data center supply chain — chip manufacturers, hardware suppliers, real estate developers, the companies that operate the facilities, and the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency firms that depend on them. Each of those sectors stands to benefit from the expansion Ramaswamy is selling.

The report’s central argument is about leverage. As governor, Ramaswamy would appoint the boards of JobsOhio, the state’s private development arm that hands data centers their incentives; the Ohio Power Siting Board, which approves where they are built; the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which sets the rules they operate under; and the Tax Credit Authority, which grants their tax exemptions. “Ramaswamy is far too entangled with this industry to make sure it does right by our communities,” Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern said in releasing the report, which contends his policy decisions and his personal balance sheet would point in the same direction.

The cryptocurrency thread runs deeper than the portfolio. Bitcoin mining depends on the same energy-hungry infrastructure Ramaswamy wants to expand, his company holds a substantial Bitcoin position, and crypto-industry figures have poured money into his campaign — including a cluster of maximum donations from the founders of a venture under U.S. Senate scrutiny. Ramaswamy has continued to headline data center industry events while campaigning.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has not publicly responded to the Innovation Ohio report, and he has not addressed Gov. Mike DeWine’s recent decision to pause new data center tax breaks. His broader argument has been consistent: he frames the buildout as a generational economic opportunity for Ohio and contends the state’s energy strain is a reason to deregulate and expand power production, not to restrict the industry.

The pushback is loudest in his own base

The most striking part of the story is where the resistance is coming from. The organized opposition to Ohio’s data centers is rooted in the rural, conservative parts of the state that form much of Ramaswamy’s political base. A group of residents from Adams and Brown counties in southwest Ohio cleared the Ohio Ballot Board in April and began gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment to ban data centers that draw more than 25 megawatts of power a month. By Innovation Ohio’s count, 15 Ohio communities have already enacted local moratoriums on new construction.

That backlash is being driven by cost. The state’s data center sales tax exemption cost Ohio about $1.6 billion in 2025 — roughly 11 times the Department of Taxation’s $136 million estimate, according to figures reported by Signal Ohio. Between 2017 and 2024, the industry collected an estimated $2.5 billion in state and local breaks while creating relatively few permanent jobs. A single large data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel reports, and many Ohioans saw their electric supply prices climb sharply in 2025.

The grassroots route may not reach voters this year. As of mid-May, the amendment’s backers had collected roughly 27,000 of the more than 413,000 valid signatures required by the July 1 deadline, making the November ballot unlikely. But the sentiment behind it is not confined to Ohio: a Gallup poll released May 13 found that 71% of Americans oppose construction of an AI data center in their local area.

The brakes — and who would hold them

For now, the industry’s growth is being checked by the same officials a governor influences. On May 27, DeWine paused new data center tax exemptions while a legislative committee studies the industry, though he stressed the move was not a ban and noted that exemption recipients reported $27.2 billion in capital investment in 2025. That review is itself shadowed by conflict-of-interest questions: the co-chair of the legislature’s Joint Data Center Committee, Sen. Brian Chavez, leads the panel despite an unresolved ethics complaint over energy-sector stakes. An effort to send a broader regulatory package to DeWine’s desk — House Bill 646, which would have created a separate electric rate class for data centers, halved their local tax abatements and regulated their water use — collapsed in the legislature on June 10 and is unlikely to move before November.

Whoever wins in November inherits those levers — the pause, the appointments, the veto pen DeWine used in 2025 to block a repeal of the exemption — and the two candidates point in opposite directions. Ramaswamy has signaled he would press the accelerator, casting expansion as an economic opportunity and favoring energy deregulation over new limits on the facilities. His Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, has staked out the opposite approach in her “ActOn Lowering Costs” agenda, calling for more guardrails on data centers — including requiring them to pay added utility and environmental costs and to be built with union labor — alongside a push for cleaner, lower-cost energy and a restoration of efficiency programs cut under House Bill 6.

The choice arrives as the buildout is projected to accelerate. A University of Virginia analysis projects Ohio will add 77 data centers by 2030, roughly the span of the next governor’s term. The race is essentially tied; the general election is Tuesday, November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Tiffin police have identified five men they say forced their way into a Market Street Flats apartment early Saturday and assaulted three residents, the department said Monday. Two of the men are jailed on first-degree felony aggravated burglary charges, and three remain at large under arrest warrants.

Officers responded at approximately 2:57 a.m. Saturday, June 13, to a reported burglary in progress at the complex at 1730 W. Market Street and found men with facial injuries consistent with an assault, according to the department.

Chandler Norville, 19, of New Riegel, and Will Kurtz, 20, of Tiffin, were taken into custody shortly after the incident and charged with aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony, police said. Both remain held at the Seneca County Jail.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-police-name-5-suspects-market-street-flats-assault/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The income came from a forced payout of stock tied to Heartland Bank’s merger with German American Bancorp, which closed in February 2025, NBC4 reported. Husted’s Senate financial disclosure separately reports $27,575 in board compensation from Heartland Bank. He served as a director of the bank from 2022 until he resigned in January 2025 to join the Senate.

Husted’s office told NBC4 the matter was “nothing more than ordinary business” and a standard disclosure filing. According to the station, the office said the stock payout was required under board members’ contracts as part of the merger agreement — an obligation that applied to all directors — and that the compensation reflected only the period when Husted was an active board member. The office disputed characterizations of the payout as a special favor.

Husted and his wife continue to hold German American Bancorp stock valued at up to $65,000, the disclosure indicates. The holding represents the same investment Husted previously reported in Heartland Bank, which converted to German American shares in the merger. The filing also lists a Heartland Bank deposit account valued between $100,001 and $250,000.

A board seat held as lieutenant governor

Husted joined Heartland Bank’s board of directors in 2022 while serving as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, after he and his wife, Tina, purchased shares in the company. The bank did not publicly announce the appointment for roughly two months, and it became known only after news organizations reported it.

The arrangement drew conflict-of-interest scrutiny at the time because Husted was the state’s second-highest elected official. A spokesperson said in 2022 that Husted had no oversight of the Ohio Department of Commerce or its banking regulators and would recuse himself if any conflict arose.

When Heartland later merged with German American Bancorp, the transaction was overseen by the Ohio Department of Commerce — an agency whose director was appointed by the DeWine administration in which Husted served. Under the merger terms, Heartland shareholders received German American stock, and the company’s share price rose sharply after the deal was announced. Earlier reporting traced Husted’s investments in companies tied to his official duties.

A live issue in the Senate race

The disclosure surfaces as congressional stock trading has become a flashpoint in Ohio’s U.S. Senate contest. TiffinOhio.net reported in February that Husted had not taken a public position on legislation to bar members of Congress from trading individual stocks, and that he later opposed such a ban, arguing it would restrict lawmakers’ ability to manage their personal finances without government interference.

It is not the only part of Husted’s record drawing scrutiny in the campaign. TiffinOhio.net has also documented previously unreported 2019 meetings tied to the House Bill 6 scandal, the utility-bailout law at the center of what a federal prosecutor called the largest bribery scheme in Ohio history.

Husted’s Democratic opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, has made banning congressional stock trading part of his campaign. Brown won the Democratic nomination in May and faces Husted in the Nov. 3 special election for the remaining two years of the term vacated when JD Vance became vice president. Recent polling has shown the two running neck-and-neck.

For Ohio voters, the disclosure offers a concrete look at the financial entanglements of a sitting senator who built his record on state economic-development policy — and a test of how transparency and conflict-of-interest questions will figure into one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“Ships are starting to move, many loaded up with Oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote on social media. “They are going along the Southern ‘Highway,’ which is totally safe, secure, and pristine. There are other areas of travel, also!!!”

Trump said Thursday administration officials had “made a great settlement of the war” with Iran but that details on a memorandum of understanding were still being worked out. 

An administration official, who did not want to be identified by name, said on a call with reporters organized by the White House on Friday that negotiators were still trying to figure out how to remove nuclear material from Iran. 

“This is very combustible stuff, very volatile stuff. We’re not just going to, like, go down there with a backhoe and a guy with a backpack and start taking it out,” the official said. “The technical details need to be figured out, but I think there’s a commitment to do that.”

Negotiators for the two countries appeared to reach a final agreement over the weekend with Trump posting on social media Sunday that a “Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete.” 

“Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Trump added. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”

He wrote in another social media post the Strait of Hormuz would open once leaders from both countries formally signed the agreement Friday. That timeline appears to have changed as of Monday morning.

No specifics known yet

The details of the final agreement have not been released publicly, though the administration official said last week that if Iranian leaders followed the steps, they would receive sanctions relief. 

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote in a social media post that the “peace deal” between the U.S. and Iran included “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

He added that an official signing ceremony had been scheduled for Friday in Switzerland. 

“With the agreement now in place, mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week,” Sharif wrote. “These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not issued a statement as of Monday morning saying whether he supports the deal, though his minister of national security appeared to oppose it. 

“Trump’s agreement does not bind us,” Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in a social media post. “Israel is not subject to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign nation!”

Israel and the United States began the war in Iran together, but the Israeli military has also struck targets and taken territory inside Lebanon during the past few months. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed Ohio Senate Bill 341 last Wednesday, but the bill was not brought up for a full Senate vote later that day. 

“We had a lot of other bills that we’re going to pass that got out of the committee this week. It’s probably going to be something that’s going to make the floor at some point this session,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said when asked why the bill wasn’t brought up for a vote. 

Under current law in Ohio, 17-year-olds are able to marry someone up to four years older than them, as long as a juvenile court signs off on it. This bill would require Ohioans to be 18 to get married. 

State Senators Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, and Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp., introduced the bipartisan bill earlier this year. The bill has had no public opponents, but the bill stalled in committee for a stretch of time.

“The House could throw in the success sequence, which I think is utterly ridiculous, but this chamber can’t pass a bill to ban underage marriage, so I don’t know how we can somehow justify one and not justify the other,” DeMora said, referring to the Ohio House adding to public education requirements what advocates call the “success sequence” of graduating high school, getting a job, getting married, and having a baby, in that order, to a bill that recently passed. 

More than 5,000 Ohio children have been married as minors since 2000 and nearly 300,000 minors nationally were married between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last, an organization dedicated to ending underage marriage. 

“It’s just unbelievable that a bipartisan common sense bill that has no opposition from the public, that costs nothing, it has a $0 price tag, it harms no one except creepy men who prey on teenage girls, it is absolutely mind-boggling that a bill like that is not moving,” said Fraidy Reiss, Unchained At Last founder and executive director. 

She said there was so much hope when the bill passed out of committee on Wednesday, but that hope quickly turned to “beyond disappointed and offended and shocked” when the bill was not on the Senate agenda. 

“Shame on Ohio legislators for going home for the summer to enjoy their summer vacation, while girls in Ohio can legally be trafficked under the guise of marriage and can be entered into a form of modern slavery,” Reiss said. 

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said she did not know why the child marriage ban bill was not voted on. 

“It seems to me like it’s a no-brainer,” she said. “I think it’s a shame that we haven’t brought it forward and just passed it. I know I could think of a couple of creative ways of getting it passed through by just attaching it to some other bill, so we keep hoping that maybe that’ll happen.”

She said there seems to be some resistance from the Republican caucus since it hasn’t passed. 

“I really don’t know,” she said. “Clearly someone has some problems with it yet, which is too bad.” 

Seventeen states have a law banning child marriage, according to Unchained At Last. 

The Ohio lawmakers are now on break and will come back after the November election. Any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered. 

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.

Ohio House Bill 3 passed the Ohio Senate and the House concurred with changes made, so it now goes to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Ohio state Reps. Cecil Thomas, D-Cincinnati, and Bernie Willis, R-Springfield, introduced the bill. 

“As the parent of three young kids who get on the bus every morning and get off in the afternoon, I really appreciate my colleagues taking the time to work on this and strengthen safety for all kids in Ohio,” said state Senator Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson.

The bill increases the penalties for illegally passing a stopped school bus with a fine that would range from $250 to $1,000. Repeated offenses could lead to a license suspension, a required safety course and a $2,000 fine. The current penalty for illegally passing a stopped school bus in Ohio is between $0-$500.

The bill also authorizes the use of school bus camera requirements as a way to record drivers illegally passing a school bus. 

“The goal of this legislation is really to change behavior and deter those from putting our children at risk through the reckless action of passing a stopped school bus,” said state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green. 

“There’s no destination that a driver needs to get to that’s worth more than a child’s life.” 

The Ohio State Highway Patrol issued more than 16,000 citations for passing stopped school buses from 2018 to August 2023, Gavarone said. 

“That’s more than 16,000 times that a child’s life was placed in danger due to the reckless action of a driver,” she said. “No parent should ever have to worry about their child traveling to and from school.” 

The Ohio Department of Public Safety reported in 2021 more than 14,000 citations were issued over a four-year period for illegally passing school buses, Paul Imhoff, government relations director of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said during his testimony last year.  

The bill does not require seat belts on buses. 

Seat belts are optional on large school buses weighing more than 10,000 pounds and 63% of Ohio school districts have at least one bus that has a seatbelt, said Lacey Snoke, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. 

Only eight states require seat belts on school buses: New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, and Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Several states allow cameras, and Nevada, Arkansas, and New York have both laws in place. 

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine assembled the Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group in 2023 after Aiden Clark, a Northwestern Local Schools elementary student, died in a school bus crash. The Working Group issued 17 recommendations last year, but requiring seat belts on buses was not one of them.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommends states mandate school buses to have over-the-should and lap seat belts for all passengers.

There were 976 fatal school-transportation-related traffic crashes from 2013 to 2022 and 1,082 people were killed in those crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

Republican state Sens. Nathan Manning and Kristina Roegner were the only lawmakers to vote against the bill. 

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.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which predicts election outcomes, moved three races — in North Carolina, Alaska and Ohio — in Democrats’ favor. After the changes, the University of Virginia-based forecaster considers four contests pure toss-ups: Alaska, Ohio, Maine and Michigan. 

Democrats would have to sweep those races, and win competitive races in which they’re favored in Georgia, New Hampshire and Minnesota, to gain control of the Senate, which Republicans now hold with a 53-47 majority. 

That’s a tall task for Democrats, but it represents the best chance the party has seen this midterm cycle. 

In North Carolina, the race to succeed retiring Republican Thom Tillis is trending toward Democrats due to “big picture political factors” such as President Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings, the tip sheet said. Former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, easily won the state’s March primary and will face former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley in November.

The party that controls the White House is typically at a disadvantage in midterm races, and Trump’s underwater favorability in North Carolina only makes that race harder for Republicans, the Crystal Ball writers said.

The three ratings changes make “Democrats’ path to the majority clearer, but we still favor Republicans in the overall race for the Senate,” authors Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman wrote. 

Proven candidates

Two Democratic candidates who have won statewide elections in Republican-leading Ohio and Alaska buoy Democrats’ chances there. 

In the Buckeye state, former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is seeking to return for a fourth term in a favorable Democratic year after Republican Bernie Moreno ousted him in a GOP-dominated cycle two years ago. Brown will face Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who has never won election to the seat but was appointed to replace now-Vice President JD Vance after the 2024 election, in the fall.

And former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who in 2022 won a special election to become the first Democrat to represent Alaska in the House in a half-century, is challenging incumbent Dan Sullivan.

Questions in Maine, Michigan

The forecaster did not change its toss-up rating for Maine, which is the only Republican-held Senate seat contested this year in a state Trump lost in 2024 and was considered among Democrats’ best pickup opportunities at the start of the cycle. 

Political newcomer and Marine Corps veteran Graham Platner won the June 9 Democratic primary after his strongest opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign. But some experts question his strength in a general election after more personal scandals were reported between Mills’ departure and primary Election Day.

The Crystal Ball article Thursday compared Platner to weak Republican candidates who likely cost the GOP seats in favorable election years 2010 and 2022.

The Maine race “features an embattled Democratic nominee, veteran Graham Platner, an anti-establishment candidate who may wind up being Democrats’ answer to weak, outsider GOP nominees from the Tea Party era (and, more recently, the 2022 midterm) that cost Republicans winnable races,” they wrote.

The authors also said Democratic candidate quality will be a key factor in Michigan’s open seat. 

The race will likely keep the toss-up label at least until the Aug. 4 primary, they said. 

Former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed has led some recent surveys in the three-way Democratic race, but polls the worst against GOP nominee former Rep. Mike Rogers. U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens appears to be Democrats’ strongest general election candidate, the forecasters said. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Burkhart, 39, entered the plea at a final pretrial hearing on Monday, June 8. The following day, Judge James W. Conway granted the state’s motion to revoke Burkhart’s bond. Sentencing is set for Tuesday, July 21 at 9 a.m. in Huron County Common Pleas Court.

As part of a plea agreement, 15 other charges were dismissed, including three strangulation counts and aggravated burglary — the most serious charge in the original indictment, a first-degree felony. Burkhart pleaded guilty to seven charges, including aggravated possession of drugs, grand theft when the property is a firearm or dangerous ordnance, and misdemeanor assault, according to the Sandusky Register and WLKR Classic, which reported the plea last week.

What the indictment alleged

A Huron County grand jury indicted Burkhart on 22 counts on Oct. 3, 2025, according to court records. The indictment alleged that on Sept. 19, 2025, Burkhart entered a residence by force, stealth, or deception with purpose to commit assault, theft, and strangulation, and that he inflicted or threatened physical harm on the victim. The most serious charge, aggravated burglary, is a first-degree felony.

Among the items the indictment alleged Burkhart took from the victim were a Smith and Wesson revolver, a quantity of Oxycodone-Acetaminophen — a Schedule II controlled substance — and jewelry, watches, and other personal property valued between $1,000 and $7,500, according to the indictment. Separate counts alleged Burkhart possessed methamphetamine and trafficked Gabapentin.

Three separate strangulation counts alleged Burkhart caused or risked serious physical harm to the victim by means of strangulation or suffocation. A fourth count alleged the victim was a family or household member of Burkhart, or a person with whom he was or had been in a dating relationship.

Three menacing by stalking counts alleged a pattern of conduct dating back to May 1, 2025 — more than four months before the September 19 arrest. One count alleged Burkhart trespassed on premises where the victim lived. Another alleged he had a history of violence toward the victim or another person.

The indictment also included two counts of tampering with evidence, one count of obstructing official business — which alleged the offense created a risk of physical harm — and two counts of telecommunications harassment. Forfeiture specifications sought Burkhart’s 2006 Cadillac Escalade, a cell phone, and $310 in cash as drug proceeds or instruments of the offenses.

Background

The case began on Sept. 19, 2025, when Huron County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a domestic disturbance in Bellevue. Bellevue police initially handled the call but asked the sheriff’s office to take over after learning that Burkhart, an elected city official, was involved. Deputies located Burkhart later that evening at a Madden Street residence. According to a sheriff’s office release, he allegedly attempted to flee on foot and was seen discarding suspected narcotics.

Burkhart had served as an at-large council member and chaired the council’s Public Safety Committee at the time of his arrest. Despite the pending charges, he remained on the November 2025 general election ballot and received 84 votes — 12.3 percent — finishing last in a four-way race for three at-large seats.

In February 2026, a bench warrant was issued after Burkhart failed to comply with bond conditions. Bond was reinstated at a hearing the following day. Bellevue Municipal Court records show a separate violation of protection order charge filed Feb. 2, 2026 was dismissed on March 16, 2026; a journal entry in that case notes Burkhart acknowledged probable cause for the charge.

Burkhart publicly identified himself as a Trump supporter and MAGA Republican on social media, and shared photos of himself at Trump rallies and posing with Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s endorsed candidate in the 2026 Ohio Republican gubernatorial primary.

No public statement from Burkhart or defense attorney John F. Hirschauer was available as of publication.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The grand jury indicted Essert on June 11, 2026, on 56 counts of sexual battery and 14 counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. All charges are third-degree felonies. If convicted on all counts, Essert faces a maximum sentence of 280 years in prison.

Alleged offenses span 5 years across 2 Ohio counties

Authorities said the alleged offenses occurred between 2005 and 2010, when Essert worked as an instructor with the Young Marines and as a teacher at Scarlet Oaks in Sharonville, Ohio. The victim was a student of Essert’s during that period. The alleged offenses took place at multiple locations across Clermont and Hamilton counties, investigators said.

Officials said the charges in Thursday’s indictment are separate from and unrelated to an earlier investigation involving Essert that had been reported by local media.

‘No one is above the law’

“It takes tremendous courage for a victim to come forward, especially when the accused wears a badge and holds a position of authority,” Clermont County Sheriff Chris Stratton said. “Today’s indictment demonstrates that no one is above the law. Every victim deserves to be heard, and every allegation will be thoroughly investigated and pursued in accordance with the law.”

Essert was taken into custody at 7:06 p.m. Thursday by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Tactical Investigations Section in Seminole, Florida, without incident. He was transported to the Pinellas County Jail, where he remained incarcerated as of Thursday awaiting extradition to Clermont County.

“I am thankful for the outstanding support from Prosecutor Tekulve’s Office throughout this investigation,” Sheriff Stratton said. “This indictment reflects our shared dedication to public safety and enforcing the law.”

Clermont County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Tekulve credited cooperation between the two offices. “This investigation is a perfect example of how victims are protected and served regardless of the name or title of the perpetrator,” Tekulve said. “The Prosecutor’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office worked seamlessly in this effort.”

The Sheriff’s Office said anyone who believes they may have been a victim of similar conduct should contact law enforcement immediately, adding that information from victims and witnesses may assist the ongoing investigation.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The donors include Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, the two entrepreneurs who founded World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture; their spouses; and Zachary Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder and the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. The chief executive of Paxos, a major stablecoin company, gave the maximum the same day. Together, the cluster routed roughly $116,000 into Ramaswamy’s campaign account, nearly all of it on May 5 — primary day — or the morning after, according to the post-primary campaign-finance report his committee filed with the Ohio Secretary of State ahead of Friday’s deadline.

The donations land at a precise intersection of money and policy. Ramaswamy has said he wants to be “the strongest pro-Bitcoin governor in the nation,” has personally held Bitcoin and Ethereum, and co-founded a company that has bet roughly a billion dollars of its corporate treasury on Bitcoin. The crypto industry’s most politically connected operators — some of them under federal scrutiny in Washington — were writing him maximum checks as he locked up the nomination to run a state he has promised to turn into a haven for their industry.

Who gave, and when

Ohio caps contributions to a statewide candidate at $16,615.67 per election — the ceiling in effect from February 2025 through February 2027. The following donors each gave at or within a rounding cent of that maximum, according to the committee’s filing:

Chase Herro, of Boca Raton, Florida, listed his occupation as “Co Owner WLFI.” He gave $16,615 on May 5. His wife, Jennifer Herro, gave the same amount the same day. Herro is one of the two principal architects of World Liberty Financial, described by DL News and others as a self-styled “dirtbag of the internet” whose résumé includes a stint in prison on drug charges and a string of failed online ventures.

Zachary Folkman, listing an address in Dorado, Puerto Rico, and an employer of “Axiom Management Group,” gave $16,615 on May 5; Alexandria Folkman, at the same Dorado Beach address, gave the same amount the same day. Folkman is World Liberty’s other founding partner. Axiom Management Group is the Puerto Rico limited-liability company that Folkman and Herro co-own and through which, according to corporate disclosures reported by DL News and others, the two collect World Liberty’s founder share of revenue.

Zachary Witkoff, of Miami Beach, listing his employer as “SC Financial,” gave $16,615 the day after the primary, on May 6; Sophi Knight Witkoff gave the same amount the same day. Witkoff is a World Liberty co-founder and the son of Steve Witkoff, the real-estate investor President Trump named as his special envoy to the Middle East.

Charles Cascarilla, of Miami, listing his title as “CEO Paxos,” gave $16,615 on May 5. Paxos is one of the largest issuers of dollar-pegged stablecoins, a corner of the industry whose fortunes turn heavily on federal and state regulation.

Ohio’s primary was held Tuesday, May 5. Ramaswamy won the Republican nomination that night. The campaign’s filing shows 16 maximum-level contributions dated that day — the single biggest day for max-out gifts in the entire post-primary period — with the Witkoff donations following the next morning.

What World Liberty Financial is

World Liberty Financial is the decentralized-finance company at the center of the Trump family’s move into crypto. Founded in 2024 by Folkman, Herro, Zachary and Alex Witkoff, and Trump family members, it issues a stablecoin called USD1 and a governance token, WLFI. A Trump business entity owns a controlling stake and, under the company’s own disclosures, is entitled to 75 percent of net proceeds from token sales, with 12.5 percent each going to the Witkoffs and to Folkman and Herro.

By the company’s and outside reporting’s accounting, the venture has been extraordinarily lucrative for the families behind it. A Wall Street Journal analysis found World Liberty generated at least $1.4 billion for the Trump and Witkoff families since late 2024 — more cash in 16 months than Trump’s real-estate business produced in eight years — with the Witkoffs alone earning at least $200 million.

It has also drawn sustained scrutiny in Washington. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley demanded the company preserve its communications with federal agencies over a $2 billion Emirati-linked transaction that used its stablecoin; the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened a preliminary inquiry into potential conflicts of interest in the Trump crypto ventures; and the ranking member of the House select committee on China sought records about a reported deal giving an Abu Dhabi royal’s representatives a 49 percent stake. Herro and Folkman, separately, are the subject of a fraud lawsuit by an investor in their previous venture, Dough Finance, which collapsed after a 2024 hack; the case is set for trial in Miami federal court. The lawsuit is a civil matter, and Herro has not been found liable.

The policy the money sits next to

Ramaswamy has made crypto and the data centers that support it a centerpiece of his campaign, and as governor he would sit close to decisions that could move the price of the assets he and his donors hold.

The clearest mechanism is House Bill 18, the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act. The measure would let the state treasurer invest up to 10 percent of certain interim state funds — including the general revenue fund and the rainy-day fund — in digital assets, and it amends the statutes governing Ohio’s five public pension systems to address their investments in crypto-linked exchange-traded products. The bill restricts eligible assets to those with a market capitalization of at least $750 billion, a threshold that as a practical matter only Bitcoin meets. In January 2025, while still co-leading the federal Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy publicly praised the bill on X as “a thoughtful & powerful bill.”

Ohio’s five pension systems hold roughly a quarter-trillion dollars in assets. The governor does not control them outright, but appoints an investment-expert trustee to each board — and a provision slipped into the 2025 state budget shifted the teachers’ pension board toward a majority of government appointees. A governor also shapes the broader policy climate and the posture of the treasurer, who would decide whether to buy crypto at all under HB 18. Chris Tobe, a financial analyst and former Kentucky pension trustee, told the Center for Media and Democracy that an Ohio governor holds “great influence” over state funds, and warned that Ramaswamy’s crypto ties could create conflicts at the intersection of public-pension oversight and personal financial interest.

Any large institutional buyer entering the Bitcoin market tends to push its price up. That is the through-line connecting the policy to the donors: the people funding Ramaswamy’s campaign are in the business of selling, holding, and building on the digital assets a Ramaswamy administration could steer Ohio toward.

Ramaswamy’s own stake

The candidate is not merely an ally of the crypto industry; he is an investor in it. His April financial disclosure with the Ohio Ethics Commission shows he personally holds Bitcoin and Ethereum and retains a roughly 10 percent stake in Strive, Inc., the firm he co-founded that has converted most of its corporate treasury into Bitcoin. As of May, TiffinOhio.net has reported, Strive held more than 15,000 Bitcoin worth roughly $1.1 billion — a bet that has cost the company hundreds of millions on paper, since it bought in at an average price well above recent levels. Every increase in Bitcoin’s price moves both the company and its co-founder closer to recovering those losses.

The crypto-founder donations are the latest entry in a pattern this newsroom and others have documented across Ramaswamy’s investment portfolio: holdings and backers concentrated in the very industries — crypto, data centers, the power needed to run them — that he has pledged to champion as governor and that the state he seeks to lead would regulate, subsidize, and, under HB 18, potentially invest in.

Ramaswamy won the May 5 Republican primary with more than 82 percent of the vote and faces Democrat Amy Acton in the general election on Tuesday, November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The original report, as published June 13, appears below and has not been altered.

TIFFIN, Ohio — Four adult men were hospitalized early Saturday after eight suspects allegedly forced their way into an apartment at Tiffin West Apartments and attacked the occupants, the Tiffin Police Department said. Two suspects have been charged with aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony.

Officers responded at approximately 2:57 a.m. Saturday, June 13, to 1730 W. Market Street following a report of a burglary in progress and multiple injuries. Police found four adult male victims suffering significant facial and head injuries. Detectives determined the men were assaulted by eight male suspects who allegedly forced entry and attacked them using their fists and objects as weapons.

Investigators said the incident followed an earlier confrontation late Friday evening near the former Big Lots parking lot in Tiffin, during which a male victim was assaulted and had a hat and chain necklace taken from him.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/8-suspects-force-entry-tiffin-west-apartments-4-hospitalized/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A progressive organization that says it was raided by the FBI is a little-known but integral player in progressive politics in Ohio.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a nonpartisan organization, but works closely with Democrats on issues like voter registration, political organizing and ballot-issue campaigns.

The group was founded in 2007 and has since grown to be one of the most well-funded political organizing operations in the state. The OOC and its political arm, the Ohio Organizing Campaign, together received nearly $55 million from 2020-2024, according to the organizations’ public tax filings for the most recent years available.

Its fundraising goes up and down with election cycles and reached its highest level on record in 2024, when both OOC entities brought in a combined $20.9 million.

The organizations spent nearly $42.9 million during that time. 

Prentiss Haney, a leader with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, didn’t return messages from Signal Statewide. But he told the Statehouse News Bureau that FBI agents came to the organization’s Northeast Ohio offices on Thursday, searching and sometimes taking electronic devices and laptops.

People the FBI talked with described the investigation as related to voter fraud, Haney said. Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Northern Ohio and the FBI field office in Cleveland haven’t responded to messages. 

MS Now first reported the raid.

The investigation arrives in the middle of a politically charged year for voting in Ohio. Polls show competitive races for U.S. Senate and governor, and Democrats are hoping for their first statewide win since 2018. It also comes as the Trump administration has opened election fraud inquiries in several states, including Georgia and Michigan. 

What does the Ohio Organizing Collaborative do?

The organization describes itself as building “transformative relational power with everyday Ohioans for statewide social, racial and economic justice.”

While publicly-available tax filings only offer broad categories of its spending, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative is involved in voter registration drives and political organizing, with affiliates that specifically target Black churches, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their families, women and college students. 

It has also gotten involved with redistricting, the process of redrawing state legislative and congressional lines. In 2021, it partnered with the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal elections law center, to sue the Republican-controlled Ohio state government over state legislative district maps. 

The Brennan Center issued a statement about the FBI raids, calling it in part “an egregious abuse of law enforcement for political ends, and it fits a pattern of federal inquiries targeting voting infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections.”

In recent years, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative has served as a financial hub for other progressive state organizations, tax filings show. In 2023 and 2024, the OOC gave almost $1.2 million to groups like the Ohio Environmental Council, an environmental group, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a Black civil-rights organization whose leader holds a top position with the Ohio Democratic Party, Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal think tank, and Innovation Ohio, a liberal advocacy group.

The OOC has also been involved in ballot issues, both at the local and state levels.

In 2021, the OOC backed a successful Cleveland charter amendment to create a community police commission, and supported a failed Cleveland amendment to create a process to allow citizens to provide input to drafting the city budget.

It gave $250,000 to the August 2023 campaign to defeat Issue 1, a Republican effort to block an abortion-rights amendment that voters approved the following November. It also gave $300,000 to the campaign backing the redistricting-reform amendment that voters rejected in November 2024. 

And most recently, the OOC pushed to revive a ballot issue that would expand state voting access laws via a state constitutional amendment. The group got permission from a state panel to begin collecting voter signatures in November 2024, but there haven’t been signs of an active campaign to actually qualify for the ballot 

Who funds the Ohio Organizing Collaborative?

As a nonprofit organization, the OOC is not required to disclose its donors.

But Signal Statewide reviewed dozens of public tax filings from large foundations that reveal donations to the OOC.

One is the Gund Foundation, which reported giving the Ohio Organizing Collaborative about $800,000 from 2021-2024 for voter engagement efforts and to conduct a poll for the viability of a childcare tax levy.

But most of the money OOC gets comes from a network of left-leaning foundations that fund political organizing and politics across the country. 

These include the Tides Foundation, the Open Society Policy Center and the Foundation to Promote Open Society –  both are connected to liberal billionaire George Soros – and the Ford Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Some of the OOC’s large donors are dark-money groups that also contributed to the failed 2024 redistricting amendment, including the New Venture Fund, America Votes and the Sixteen Thirty Fund. 

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative hasn’t gotten in legal trouble as an organization, although a paid canvasser in 2017 pleaded guilty to voter fraud charges, in part for falsifying signatures on voter registration forms. 

Democratic politicians blast FBI raid

Reports of the raid drew a swift round condemnation from many prominent state Democratic politicians, including U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown of Cleveland, governor candidate Amy Acton, U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, Secretary of State candidate Allison Russo and Ohio Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde. They all said Ohioans should feel safe registering to vote in November.

Acton issued a statement saying she is “deeply troubled” by the raid. Brown called the raids “deeply disturbing” and “a transparent attempt at silencing Ohioans and their ability to vote in free and fair elections.”

“The FBI should immediately make public any and all activities around these raids in Ohio. For years, Ohio has had safe and secure elections that have been administered in a bipartisan fashion. Any attempt to intimidate Ohio voters is wrong, and will not work,” Brown said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Two Ohio congresswomen are slamming the FBI over reports that agents on Thursday searched the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, an organization that advocates for voting and labor rights and against outsized corporate power.

Agents also reportedly fanned out across the state to interview people who have worked with the collaborative and in some cases seized their electronic devices such as phones and laptops.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Prentiss Haney, a board member of the organizing collaborative, confirmed to multiple news outlets that FBI actions happened on Thursday. He and others with the organization couldn’t immediately be reached.

Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, who represents Cleveland, said her inquiries haven’t been answered, either.

“My office has contacted the FBI demanding information, and I am deeply concerned that this is an effort to use federal law enforcement to intimidate and halt voter registration and organizing efforts,” she said in a written statement. “This is an unprecedented attack on democracy: these raids must end immediately.”

The collaborative was formed in 2007.

“Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a grassroots people-centered power organization,” its website says. “We unite base-building community organizing groups, student associations and faith organizations, with labor unions, and policy institutes throughout Ohio. It is our mission to organize everyday Ohioans, building transformative power organizations for racial, social, and economic justice. Our vision is to build a democratic multi-racial populist governing coalition in Ohio.”

Brown said the searches, seizures and interrogations appeared to an effort to harass voting-rights groups ahead of November’s midterm elections. 

“Unfortunately, this appears to be part of a systematic effort by (President Donald) Trump and (Director) Kash Patel’s FBI to attack our elections and perpetuate more myths of voter fraud — all to undermine and challenge any election result that Trump does not agree with. It’s an attack on the People.” 

In a written statement, Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes said the FBI action was “an apparent effort to use federal law enforcement to intimidate community organizers and halt voter registration. Voter registration and lawful voting by American citizens is not fraud.” 

Sykes added, “This egregious federal overreach is another example of coordinated efforts to suppress voting rights and voter registration, and it amounts to an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”

Former Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against incumbent Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted in November, also said the FBI’s actions were highly disturbing — especially since the agency hasn’t explained what the organizing collaborative is supposed to have done wrong.

“Reports of the FBI raiding a voting rights organization in Ohio are deeply disturbing and are a transparent attempt at silencing Ohioans and their ability to vote in free and fair elections,” Sherrod Brown said in a written statement. “Federal law enforcement should never try to intimidate eligible voters from exercising their right to participate in democracy.

He said that the FBI should immediately make public any and all activities around these raids in Ohio.

“For years, Ohio has had safe and secure elections that have been administered in a bipartisan fashion. Any attempt to intimidate Ohio voters is wrong, and will not work. Millions of Ohioans are ready to hold Washington politicians accountable for voting time and again to raise the cost of gas, groceries, and utility bills,” he said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said from the bench the agreement must be signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“The balance of harms tips in the favor of the plaintiff,” said Brinkema, a Clinton administration appointee.

Brinkema had already temporarily blocked the fund on May 29 on an emergency basis.  

The prospect that the fund would pay Trump’s supporters, including those who assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, sparked multiple lawsuits, including the filing in Virginia. 

Plaintiffs included a former Department of Justice Jan. 6 prosecutor who was fired last year and a protester at an immigration raid last year who was charged with a felony, and has since been acquitted by a jury. The plaintiffs are represented by the legal advocacy groups Democracy Forward and Common Cause. 

The Department of Justice announced the creation of the fund, in the amount of $1.776 billion, on May 18 in exchange for President Donald Trump voluntarily dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for the leak of his tax returns nearly seven years ago.

This is a developing report that will be updated.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts demanded that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott pay out refunds to small businesses for the tariffs that the court later determined President Donald Trump was not actually empowered to set. 

In their letter, the senators condemned what they called the administration’s continuous efforts to complicate and dodge the refund process and sought full compensation for all importers who together paid roughly $166 billion in tariff taxes under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. 

Small businesses “deserve better, and the CBP needs to answer for this debacle,” they wrote. 

President Donald Trump aggressively placed tariffs on countries across the globe early in his second term, making the import taxes a centerpiece of his economic agenda.

But the U.S. Supreme Court found Trump’s stack of global tariffs, which he began implementing in early 2025, to be illegal in a February ruling, saying that his use of the emergency tariff act exceeded his powers as president. 

Soon after,the U.S. Court for International Trade instructed CBP to issue refunds to the businesses that had borne the costs. 

But according to court documents filed May 26, the Trump administration has refunded only about $20.6 billion of the tax money, while another roughly $85 billion remains in the processing stage, leaving more than $60 billion that is not even in the process of being returned. 

“That means tens of billions of dollars unlawfully collected from American businesses remain in government hands months after the courts ordered their return,” Markey and Wyden wrote.

Markey is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, and Wyden holds the same position on the Finance Committee, which sets tax policy. 

An ongoing price to pay

Many small business owners struggled under the weight of Trump’s tariffs while they were in effect, forced to raise prices, lay off employees and give up hopes of expansion to offset the costs.

Now, they are still dealing with financial pressures as they wait for repayment from an administration that has, in Markey and Wyden’s words, “slow-rolled implementation of the refund process from the outset.”

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the administration took weeks to announce a refund procedure, the senators wrote. 

CBP eventually settled on a new claims tool called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE, for the roughly 330,000 importers who paid tariffs to submit refund requests. The system went live in April. 

The lawmakers also pointed to Trump administration claims that some businesses may need to pursue individualized claims through litigation in order to receive tariff refunds, a process that could take up to years to settle. 

“This entire episode raises serious questions about whether the Administration is intentionally slowing the refund process in order to retain access to unlawfully collected funds for as long as possible,” they wrote in their letter. 

The senators included a list of refund-related questions for CBP in their letter and requested that the agency send written responses by June 24. 

A spokesperson for CBP acknowledged a request for comment Thursday, but said they could not guarantee a response in time for publication.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship company, whose chief executive is an ally of the president’s, will stage the seven-fight card that has drawn curiosity, outrage, a legal challenge and lots of money.

The organization, led by Dana White, who delivered primetime speeches for Trump at the last three Republican National Conventions, is expecting over 65,000 fans at the two-day festival on the Ellipse beginning Saturday. 

The event reportedly cost $60 million, according to a government court filing. VIP sponsorship packages, including a chance to sit cage-side under “the claw” on the lawn of what’s often referred to as “The People’s House,” could cost up to the widely reported price tag of $1.5 million. 

Corporate organizers were laying finishing touches this week on a 92-foot red, white and blue structure that towers over the White House and reaches a radius around the fighting “octagon” — still under protective covering — to fit roughly 4,300 exclusive seats.

Space for tens of thousands more spectators who can watch the fights on large screens is designated on the Ellipse, which will be open only to ticketholders and UFC-approved media. Up to 120,000 fans who scored free tickets in a lottery are expected, according to the administration. Additionally, the administration has invited 1,000 members of the armed services.

The event, which is billing itself as “UFC Freedom 250,” is not affiliated with the national nonpartisan organization America 250, a commission created by Congress to mark the nation’s semiquincentennial.

A June 10 promotional UFC article described the event as a “celebration of how far mixed martial arts has come and how deeply the UFC has embedded itself into mainstream sports and culture.” 

The main card will feature lightweight title champion Ilia Topuria up against interim champion Justin Gaethje and a heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane.

The advertising blitz on grounds owned by the federal government has inspired accusations of corruption. Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project, which is suing to stop the event, said the main purpose is “to enrich the President and his friends.” 

Corporate tie-ins

The event has provided corporate advertising opportunities, including for companies with close ties to Trump, and “came together by special invite from the President of the United States,” according to UFC’s press materials. 

Dodge and Crypto.com are primary sponsors. Dodge is heavily promoting its line of Ram trucks at the event and Crypto.com will offer a $1 million in Cronos, the company’s digital currency, bonus pool to the evening’s top fighters. 

The fight will stream on Paramount Plus, the platform owned by Paramount Skydance, the mega-media company whose high-profile 2025 merger the Trump administration approved. UFC recently reached a $7.7 billion deal with the streamer giving it exclusive streaming rights for seven years.

The White House collaborated with sports apparel company Fanatics to create an exclusive “USA 250” patch and logo that will be featured on fighters’ uniforms and on merchandise for sale, according to the UFC.

The “Octagon girls,” scantily clad young women who are fight mainstays and promoted by the company, “will wear a variety of custom outfits that will align with the overall theme of UFC FREEDOM 250 and further celebrate America’s history,” according to press materials.

Trump has made no secret of his support for the MMA fight promotion company owned by his friend. He began promising a UFC fight on the White House lawn while on the campaign trail in 2024. 

The president purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in TKO Group Holdings, UFC’s parent company, in March, according to public reporting and court filings.

In April, as Vice President JD Vance was in Pakistan wrapping up failed peace negotiations to end the U.S.-Iran war, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared together at a UFC cage match in Miami. 

A press conference is scheduled for the event Friday at the Lincoln Memorial and the Georgia-based Zac Brown Band is set to perform Saturday night, according to a court filing from the government. 

Block attempt

Critics have panned the event as a “corrupt scheme,” and some are hoping for a last-minute court order to stop the event altogether.

The nationwide anti-Trump organization No Kings has partnered with the Committee for the First Amendment to host and livestream a concert from New York City that will feature Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright and Bette Midler. 

The groups are encouraging people to organize watch parties for the concert, which will occur at the same time as the “UFC cage fight spectacle,” No Kings organizers said in a statement.

The Public Integrity Project, an anti-corruption advocacy organization, is backing two Virginians who say the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior are illegally lending out the public land for a massive event without permission from Congress and necessary environmental reviews.

“If this fight is allowed to proceed, it will be only the beginning, and our national monuments will become little more than branding opportunities for the rich and well-connected. We plan to stop that,” Ballou said in a statement June 6 upon filing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The plaintiffs, a Vietnam War veteran and a civic activist, requested an emergency order from the court to halt the fight while the case plays out.

Legal decision coming 

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, issued an order Thursday stating he would not schedule an emergency hearing but rather decide based on written briefs.

In its response, the Trump administration dismissed the lawsuit as meritless, and noted that it did not name UFC as a defendant. Department of Justice lawyers wrote the plaintiffs are “two individuals: one who plans to walk past the event (intentionally ‘coming to the nuisance’) and another who might happen to drive past it.”

“Two Plaintiffs with idiosyncratic preferences cannot use equity to upend an event of this cost and magnitude at the last minute and spoil the evenings of tens of thousands of other Americans who wish to celebrate their pride in their country in a manner that Plaintiffs disdain,” the DOJ argued.

“No one is holding Plaintiffs in a jiu jitsu lock, forcing them to watch UFC Freedom 250 against their will,” the brief continued. “The public interest does not favor allowing them to exercise a heckler’s veto, particularly at this late date.”

The White House, which has referred all questions about the event to the UFC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mehta’s decision to not hold a hearing.

The UFC did not respond to questions, including a request for comment on the pending lawsuit, the cost of the event and sponsorship packages, how many tickets have been sold and if the organization has a weather contingency plan for possible storms. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Supreme Court in April issued a landmark opinion on a long-running conflict, ruling that submetering companies are public utilities – a technical finding that triggered a broad set of financial and legal protections for tens of thousands of renters in submetered apartments. 

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate voted roughly on party lines to send to Gov. Mike DeWine legislation to roll that decision back. The final roll call came around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday. 

Submetered customers – those who pay bills to a middleman instead of a distribution utility – under the bill would lose some legal advantages held by traditional utility customers, like the ability to shop around for better energy prices or for low-income earners to enroll in payment assistance programs funded by utilities. And they could be stuck with a quasi-utility company that’s regularly accused of unfair billing practices. 

For those reasons, Angela O’Brien, deputy director of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s legal advocacy for electric ratepayers, said the bill turns submetered renters into “second-class utility consumers.” And she has emphasized years of news stories about tenants facing alarmingly high utility bills from unregulated submetering companies. 

Better Business Bureau pages for Nationwide Energy Partners and American Power and Light, another submeterer, are laden with charges of unfair billing or fees, most of which are denied by the companies. Over the past five years, state regulators have received 604 people complaints against the two companies combined, according to a spokesperson for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

But industry players and Republicans say the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling set up a confusing legal standard, where the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is required to regulate submeterers but given no guidance as to which kinds of companies are included or what kind of rules to establish. For that reason, they say lawmakers needed to act. 

Plus, they say the new legislation codifies several new legal protections for submetered customers that didn’t exist before the Supreme Court’s ruling. 

“The last thing I want is a department making rules over an entire industry without any legislative direction,” said Rep. Dave Thomas, an Ashtabula Republican who sponsored House Bill 173, legislation that predated the court’s ruling, in an interview Thursday. 

Industry spans at least 55,000 Ohioans

Starting around the 2000s, “submetering” companies began showing up at newly built apartment complexes. They struck deals with landlords, paying them tens of thousands of dollars per tenant to assume electric distribution operations behind the master meter. Industry operators buy electricity in bulk prices and resell it at the traditional rate, pocketing the difference. 

The companies source electricity, deliver it to customers’ residences and bill them for it every month. This “exactly” matches the legal definition of the electric utilities the PUCO has regulated for more than 100 years, according to the Ohio Supreme Court. 

But these submetered customers have lacked some legal protections other customers get like price controls, billing standards, payment assistance and the ability to shop among suppliers for better prices. 

Nationwide Energy Partners has said it has about 34,000 electric customers. American Power and Light has about 21,000, per its legislative testimony. 

Tenants and ratepayer advocates have long accused submetering companies of price gouging, a charge its advocates in Columbus have denied, along with other practices like charging tenants for electric use in common areas. 

The PUCO has declined to investigate or intervene, saying the agency lacks jurisdiction. 

House Bill 173 would unwind the classification of submeterers as public utilities. It would, however, establish protections for submetered customers. This would include ending the practice of the industry passing “common area” charges on to tenants; requiring they resell power at a 3% discount compared to the region’s standard service offer; and others. 

Submetered customers lose protections

The legislation would move Ohio backward by creating a weaker, separate set of legal protections for submetered customers compared to traditional electric ones, said O’Brien, of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. 

For instance:

• They couldn’t shop for their own electric supplier, who might provide a cheaper price than the utility’s default offer

• They’re ineligible for a utility-funded program that allows low income earners to pay a reduced bill every month, used by hundreds of thousands of Ohioans

“Utility consumers should not lose protections simply because they live in an apartment or condominium rather than a single-family home,” she said. 

“A family living in an apartment or condominium should not receive fewer rights, fewer protections, and fewer choices than a family living across the street in a single-family home.”

American Electric Power, a major utility in central Ohio where the submetering industry is concentrated, has tussled with the industry for years. That includes fights at the PUCO and the successful appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, demanding that the state recognize that submeterers are operating as unregulated electric utilities, even if under a different trade name. 

Frank Strigari, a company lobbyist, told lawmakers that submeterers add no value and only extract money from an electric market that was working fine without them. A company spokesperson said Thursday that submetering harms Ohioans through higher electric bills. 

“We are disappointed the bill passed,” the company said. 

AES Ohio and Duke Energy, two other major investor-owned utilities here, opposed the bill, as well. 

Sen. Bill DeMora, a Columbus Democrat, said the bill would have been a good idea before the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision. But now, he said, lawmakers are only rolling back protections that exist under the status quo and “screwing” customers. 

He represents a district with a concentration of submetered apartments. He gets plenty of complaints from tenants, but no happy campers. 

“I’ve never heard anyone who’s submetered say anything nice about submeterers,” he said. 

Others, including the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund, Legal Aid and AARP Ohio, all urged lawmakers to reject the bill as well. 

Submeterers say they need legal clarity

Teresa Ringenbach, a lobbyist for Nationwide Energy Partners, a Columbus-based submetering company named in AEP’s lawsuit, testified in support of the bill. 

Rather than settle the issue, the Supreme Court’s ruling called lawmakers to action because regulators lack the legal guidelines they need. 

“The Court’s opinion removed that legislative anchor,” she said to lawmakers during committee testimony. “In more than 25 years practicing before the PUCO, I have never seen a situation where the Commission could operate with so little direction or oversight from the General Assembly.”

Rep. Thomas, the bill sponsor, said it’s true that submetered renters would lose their ability to shop around for power. While the landlord (technically the utility’s customer) could do so, Thomas conceded that he or she might not pass those savings on. This is “inherent” with the business model of submetering.

But that’s part of a compromise, he said. Customers lose access to some bill payment assistance programs, but it codifies eligibility for another while also guaranteeing other safeguards like disconnection protections into law.  

Champion Real Estate, an investment, development, and management firm focused on multi-family housing, as well as the Ohio Manufactured Homes Association, both supported the legislation.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio Senate Bill 276 passed 58-36 during Wednesday’s House session and the Ohio Senate concurred with the changes made to the bill later that night before going on summer break. 

Ohio Republican state Reps. Haraz Ghanbari, Gayle Manning, and Jason Stephens joined Ohio House Democrats in voting against the bill. 

State Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, introduced the bill, which originally began as legislation that would allow Ohio to join the Interstate Compact for School Psychologists, which allows licensed professionals to provide services across state lines.

The bill passed the Ohio Senate unanimously in November. 

The Ohio House Education Committee made changes to the bill, including adding the success sequence. 

“Young people are statistically far less likely to live in poverty when they complete high school, work full time, and marry before having children,” said Ohio Rep. Sarah Fowler-Arthur, R-Ashtabula. 

“This gives young people tools to make informed decisions about education, work, family, and their future stability.” 

The Heritage Foundation — the right-wing think tank that published Project 2025 — provides model legislation for the success sequence.

The bill requires the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to have a curriculum list for the success sequence for grades 6-12 and this would be a graduation requirement.

Following these sequences of events means people are “overwhelmingly less likely to live in poverty in adulthood,” the bill says.

However, a 2021 study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found those who finish high school, work full time, and get married are less likely to experience poverty, but the order did not matter much. 

“I feel like some of us must have missed the basic statistical lesson that correlation is not causation,” said state Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna. 

“It completely misses the fact that there are so many other explanations for why so many people struggle in life so much. … Teaching that graduation, then work, then marriage, and then kids equals success also leaves out all of the unique ways that people live in our state.”

Ohio Senate Bill 156, a standalone success sequence bill, passed the Ohio Senate last year accross party lines.

State Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, shared the story of his mom who graduated high school, got a job, got married, and eventually gave up her job to raise her two children. 

“Her path did not follow a fairytale outcome,” Brennan said. “She suffered horrible abuse from her husband, lost everything when he left. She’s forced to work two low-paid, non-union jobs, supplemented by public assistance to keep clothes on her kids’ backs, food on the table.”

She later died of breast cancer. 

“The so-called success sequence did not save my mother,” Brennan said. “It didn’t shield her from poverty or systemic societal problems. … Just because some individuals who follow a certain pathway avoid poverty, it doesn’t mean those steps cause success for everyone.” 

Brennan also said teaching the success sequence is one more burden on teachers. 

“They’re already stretched thin, and this part of this bill adds another requirement,” he said. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a hearing before the Ohio Senate Health Committee, physicians emphasized the informed consent that’s already part of the standard of care under they were trained to use.

They said Ohio House Bill 347 not only bars patients from getting timely care, but creates disparate treatment for those who treat individuals who can get pregnant.

“Requiring physicians who perform abortions to do this, without similar requirements for all other procedures, is discriminatory and frankly, it is patronizing to people seeking abortion that they would need extra rules and time to decide about abortion,” said Dr. Elise Berlan, an Ohio physician who treats pediatric and adolescent patients.

Berlan and other opponents of the bill spoke at the last expected hearing of the committee before legislators head for a break that may last until after the November election.

The committee didn’t vote to advance the bill before the break, but heard from several Ohioans about their feelings on the bill.

Ohio House Republican lawmakers passed H.B. 347 along party lines in March.

Abortions rights advocates who spoke in the most recent hearing gave similar arguments to those in previous hearings when the bill passed the House.

They criticized the bill for not only being unnecessary, but also in conflict with a 2023 amendment to the Ohio Constitution that established rights to abortion and other reproductive health issues.

H.B. 347 would establish a requirement in Ohio law that physicians meet with patients 24-hours before an abortion procedure, which sponsors and supporters of the bill said allows patients to receive and reflect on needed information about risks and methods of abortion procedures.

A 24-hour abortion care waiting period has been in state law before, but a Franklin County court called off enforcement of the law until a lawsuit has been completed.

In pausing enforcement, Judge David C. Young cited the constitutional amendment passed by voters as part of his ruling.

Dr. Annalise Celano, a family medicine resident physician, said informed consent is already a “critical, and heavily mandated, piece of all medical care.”

“Informed consent ensures that our patients know the benefits and risks of any procedure or medication indicated, enabling autonomy and empowerment for the patient to make the best healthcare decisions for their lives,” Celano told the committee.

The doctor said the 24-hour waiting period could create more barriers to care, and having physicians provide state-mandated information, including information about abortion “reversal” that she and Berlan said has been debunked in multiple medical studies, would not help her empower her patients.

“H.B. 347 would be legally forcing me to coerce my patients into doing what state legislators want them to do, not what is best for them and their family,” Celano said.

Unlike decisions such as which antibiotic to use for an infection or a particular inhaler to be used for asthma, reproductive health decisions are “highly sensitive to patients’ priorities and values,” Berlan said.

However, the same delays that are included in H.B. 347 aren’t being considered for other procedures, like vasectomies.

“Having worked in urology for a number of years prior to medical school, I saw the consent process for (vasectomies) quite a few times,” Celano said.

“I can assure you that nowhere in the process of consent was there counseling on anxiety, depression, or PTSD.”

The bill has until the end of the year to come up for a vote before it would need to be reintroduced as new legislation in the next General Assembly.

Committee chair state Sen. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, said “unless something extraordinary comes up,” he does not plan to hold another committee until after the legislature’s break, “most likely in November.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The settlement comes after the university had previously reached six other settlements with more than 300 more former athletes totaling $61 million. The latest agreement effectively ends much of the eight-year-long legal battle between victims and the university, as the university said all remaining victims but one had agreed to settle. 

During a June 3 Board of Trustees meeting, members unanimously voted to approve the settlement resolution, saying 279 of 280 victims had agreed. Ohio State President Ravi Bellamkonda said reaching a final resolution is a critical step for the university.

“The survivors of the Strauss abuse are all Buckeyes, will always be a part of our family and our community, and I continue to believe that,” Bellamkonda said. “We continue to be very grateful to them for their courage in coming forward, and reaching a final resolution is very important to us and is an important step forward.” 

Ohio State has been fighting lawsuits in federal court since 2018. The passed resolution allows the Ohio Attorney General and the university’s general counsel to finalize settlements with the plaintiffs. 

Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male victims between 1979 and 1996 during his time as a physician for Ohio State’s Athletics Department and at the university’s Student Health Center, according to an independent investigation commissioned by the university.

Strauss retired from Ohio State in 1998 and died by suicide in 2005 at age 67. 

Strauss victims have been calling for action from the university for years, a group that includes 30 former Ohio State football players and former Columbus Division of Fire Chief Jeffery Happ. 

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a motion on behalf of the university May 10 asking to drop 77 Strauss abuse cases. He argued that any claims of abuse before Oct. 21, 1986 should be thrown out due to a congressional law allowing states and universities to be sued in federal court for failing to prevent sexual abuse of students. 

Survivors of Strauss have also claimed Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan knew about the abuse during his time as an Ohio State wrestling coach from 1987 to 1995. Jordan has repeatedly denied knowing about any abuse. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio House passed Ohio Senate Bill 19 with a 84-12 vote on Tuesday and the Ohio Senate concurred with changes made to the bill during Wednesday’s session.

State Rep. Michelle Teska, R-Clearcreek Twp., joined some Ohio House Democratic lawmakers in voting against the bill, which previously passed unanimously in the Ohio Senate. 

“This bill is about meeting students where they are,” said Ohio Rep. Sarah Fowler-Arthur, R-Ashtabula. “For the student ready to accelerate, it opens the next door. For the student that is struggling, it provides targeted supports, especially in mathematics and reading.”

State Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, introduced the bill, which requires school districts or individual schools to provide academic interventions for free to students who scored at a limited skill level in a state assessment test in math or English language arts, or both. 

The interventions include high-dosage tutoring, additional instruction time, an extended school calendar, and participating in a learning support program. 

“Senate Bill 19 helps to make sure that students who need additional support are not falling through the cracks, that they receive a more consistent support that is tied directly to the instruction happening in their classroom,” Fowler-Arthur said. 

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

The bill now also requires automatically advancing students who test highly in math to move onto advanced math courses. 

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce would be required to make a list of high-quality core curriculum and instructional materials. 

“Mathematics proficiency opens doors,” said state Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma.

“When students fall behind in mathematics, the consequences can follow them for years. … The legislation is not perfect. There are still provisions I would have preferred to see handled differently there. There are sections I will continue to monitor closely, as will others, as they’re implemented.” 

The Ohio Education Association said the bill is well-intentioned. 

“Struggling students need to be caught up, but classroom teachers already know that,” said OEA President Jeff Wensing. “I still think we can continue to work together to do better for the students in public education across our state.” 

Science of reading

The Ohio House Education Committee added a carveout that would excuse Ohio’s classical schools from having to teach the science of reading, which is based on decades of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. 

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

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has said one of the most important things he has done is require Ohio schools to teach the science of reading curriculum.

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

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

More than 40 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based instruction since 2013, according to Education Week. 

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.

Yet beyond the immediate physical threats posed by collapsing structures, explosions, spills, and rapidly spreading flames, firefighters also repeatedly confront a far less visible menace: toxic contaminants released amid conflagrations and hazardous material incidents.

Unfortunately, over the years, studies examining firefighter health outcomes have raised growing concerns about the cumulative effects of such exposures — particularly as cancer now accounts for roughly 66% of line-of-duty deaths among career firefighters nationwide.

As such risks continue to escalate, attention has correspondingly intensified within the military fire services, whose specialized environments frequently involve aircraft troubles, fuel suppression operations, and chemical leaks that may have lasting repercussions. 

Across Ohio, these issues are particularly relevant given the state’s extensive manufacturing infrastructure, transportation corridors, military installations, and densely populated urban centers, which collectively shape the range of emergencies and harmful combustion byproducts firefighters confront.

That said, the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer — launched by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in 2023 — has emerged as a crucial initiative to strengthen scientific understanding and finally combat the occupational cancer risks in the fire service.

However, the registry’s effectiveness ultimately depends on sustained participation from firefighters themselves, since every enrollment contributes valuable evidence vital for future protection standards as well as preventive measures and relevant policy decisions.

The Expanding Threat of Toxic Exposure for Ohio Firefighters

Firefighters throughout Ohio endure conditions that present diverse and evolving occupational hazards.

Essentially, the state’s nearly 40,000 crews not only respond to residential and commercial fires but also routinely manage vehicle collisions, industrial accidents, perilous material releases, and rescue operations along major transportation and manufacturing hubs.

Yet while their acts are noble, they frequently encounter gases and other materials that can emit carcinogenic compositions, such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid, and heavy metals.

Once released, many of these substances can enter the body and trigger debilitating illnesses. In fact, specific research has further reinforced these concerns.

Examining more than 900,000 cancer cases logged from 1996 to 2019 under the Ohio Cancer Incidence Surveillance System, the recent analysis found that firefighters demonstrated increased odds of several malignancies — most notably those affecting the brain, thyroid, esophagus, and skin — compared with both the police and broader population.

Such findings align with mounting national evidence recognizing firefighting as an occupation associated with heightened cancer risk. 

For military firefighters, the danger may become even more complex, as they typically operate in environments that heavily rely on advanced yet contaminated equipment.

Consistent with this, the Department of Defense has earned a reputation as one of the largest users of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), initially developed in the 1960s to suppress fuel-based fires rapidly.

Regrettably, what the authorities and health experts failed to discover sooner was that this tool’s composition — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — is highly persistent in the ecosystem, allowing it to cause pollution across over a dozen installations in Ohio, including Newark Air Force Base and Gentile Air Force Base.

Besides AFFF, materials used in insulation and fireproofing systems aboard naval vessels are also notorious for containing asbestos, lead, VOCs, and other toxic components — threatening the health of military firefighters who handle them during emergencies.

The Firefighter Registry Can Help Protect Firefighters

One of the most persistent obstacles in tackling firefighter cancer risks is the lack of sufficiently comprehensive long-term exposure data.

Although individual diagnoses continue to emerge across the fire service, isolated cases alone often cannot fully establish broader occupational patterns needed to guide policy reform and workplace protections.

With this, the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer was created to address this limitation by collecting occupational histories, exposure information, and health data from firefighters in Ohio — and nationwide — within a centralized research framework.

As participation increases, such a systemic tool can help researchers better identify how different firefighting environments, duties, and exposure patterns contribute to long-term cancer susceptibility.

In addition, this effort carries substantial implications for veterans seeking access to healthcare and other benefits.

While certain toxic-related conditions are already recognized under the Honoring Our PACT Act, some illnesses — even those associated with PFAS — still require extensive documentation before claims can proceed. 

The National Firefighter Registry may help narrow these evidentiary gaps over time. Since enrollment officially opened in 2023, almost 50,000 responders from across the country — including more than 1,000 residents in Ohio — have joined, making it the nation’s largest firefighter cancer research cohort to date.

Nevertheless, participation still represents only a fraction of the American fire service workforce, which comprises well over one million firefighters.

Expanding enrollment, therefore, remains essential.

Every additional participant strengthens the collective body of evidence used to improve occupational safety standards, guide future health research, and support informed policymaking for firefighters and veterans alike.

For active-duty personnel, retirees, volunteers, and military firefighters throughout Ohio, participation in the registry is more than a personal contribution to research — it is an investment in building a stronger scientific foundation to protect future generations of emergency responders.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

State versions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act include some of the federal law’s approaches to fighting discrimination, including prohibitions against voter intimidation and vote dilution — that is, drawing electoral maps that distribute racial minorities across districts in a way that denies them the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

The state laws also typically require local jurisdictions to get state approval before changing their election maps and policies. Those so-called preclearance provisions matter because its federal counterpart within the Voting Rights Act was rendered unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013.

Many of the state laws direct courts to consider a variety of ways to solve discriminatory voting policies, and aim to push voters and government officials to work together to head off lawsuits.

Unlike the federal Voting Rights Act, the state laws do not apply to congressional elections.

Ten states currently have their own versions of the federal Voting Rights Act: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington. California’s is the oldest, enacted in 2002, while Maryland’s is the newest and passed in April.

Already this year, lawmakers in at least nine other states (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Vermont) have introduced their own Voting Rights Acts.

“As Washington continues chipping away at fundamental voting protections, it’s up to the states to stand up and ensure our elections remain free, fair and accessible to all eligible voters,” Michigan state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, a Democrat, told reporters at a May press conference announcing the reintroduction of legislation dubbed the Michigan Voting Rights Act.

All of the state voting rights bills introduced this year were sponsored by Democrats, with the exception of Vermont, where two Republicans joined with their Democratic colleagues.

The efforts have taken on added urgency since the U.S. Supreme Court’s May ruling in Louisiana v. Callais all but nullified a provision in the federal Voting Rights Act that required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect their chosen candidates.

The court was considering whether Louisiana’s intentional creation of the state’s second majority-minority congressional district was unconstitutional. In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that by considering race in drawing the district, Louisiana had engaged in the “very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”

“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating (the district) and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito wrote.

In the wake of the Callais decision, conservative lawmakers in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee rushed to redraw or alter their congressional election maps to benefit Republicans. Critics say those changes will weaken the electoral  power of Black and other minority citizens. The redistricting push came as other states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, have also updated their congressional maps in an effort to shift partisan balances.

The federal Voting Rights Act followed decades of marching, lobbying and protesting by Black Americans to guarantee their right to the ballot box and end state-sponsored voter suppression. In a nod to that legacy, several of this year’s voting rights bills, including those in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and New Jersey, were named for Civil Rights champions and Black lawmakers.

“Named after one of the first Black state legislators in Georgia, the Henry McNeal Turner Voting Rights Act will provide absolutely crucial protections and expand the rights of Georgia voters so that they have an equal chance to participate without fear of discrimination in free and representative elections,” said Georgia state Sen. Nikki Merritt, who chairs the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, in a February 2026 statement announcing Georgia’s Voting Rights Act bill. It later died in committee.

The state efforts come as American voters’ confidence in the fairness of state and local elections has dropped to its lowest point in years, according to a poll from PBS News, NPR and Marist, a nonpartisan polling center.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are concerned that the Callais ruling could weaken their state laws. Maryland’s brand-new voting rights law took effect in April, just one day before the Supreme Court’s Callais decision.

The Maryland law’s lead sponsor, Democratic state Sen. Charles Sydnor III, called the ruling “a gut punch,” Maryland Matters reported in April. But he said he expects the new state law will hold, even if the federal decision limits its enforcement around race-based protections.

“I believe we have a tool that can be used in other ways if people are being discriminated against or harmed,” he said.

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.

According to the Ohio Lottery, the man realized his mistake only after household members had already moved the trash outside to a large disposal bin. He searched through the dumpster, found the discarded ticket, and confirmed it was a top-prize winner.

After required state and federal tax withholdings of 26.75%, he will receive $73,250.

The winning ticket was purchased at Circle K #5706, located at 418 Walton St. in Willard.

Bingo Times 25 is a $5 Ohio Lottery scratch-off with a top prize of $100,000. As of June 5, 2026, seven top prizes remained available statewide.

The Ohio Lottery has contributed more than $34 billion to K–12 education in Ohio since 1974. For more information, visit ohiolottery.com/supportingeducation.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Planned by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership, the rally prompted criticism that it blurred the lines separating church and state. According to the Pew Research Center, 73% of adults agree that religion should be kept separate from government policies, and only 19% of Americans say the United States should stop enforcing that principle.

But figures allied with the Trump administration have challenged the premise that the U.S. government should be – or was meant to be – separate from religion. In 2023, Johnson remarked that “The separation of church and state is a misnomer … it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church – not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life.”

As a scholar of American legal and religious history, I have written extensively about the development of religious freedom in the U.S., and the origins of the separation of church and state.

Two of the Founding Fathers shaped American views on these topics more than any other: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Yet their views have also become lightning rods for controversy as the “wall” between church and state comes under scrutiny.

My 2024 book, “The Grand Collaboration,” seeks to answer several questions: What was Jefferson’s and Madison’s understanding of religious freedom? And why were they so deeply committed to that principle?

Bedrock of law – in Virgina and beyond

Jefferson wrote the Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom in 1777, the most comprehensive declaration of religious freedom at the time. The bill guaranteed freedom of conscience, protected religious assemblies from government oversight, prohibited government funding of religious institutions and boldly declared that religious opinions were outside the authority of civil officials.

Several years later, Madison guided these ideals into law. His “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” a protest against a proposal to support Christian teachers with tax money, affirmed the values of church-state separation and religious equality. He helped defeat the proposal – and set the stage for Virginia to adopt Jefferson’s bill.

As president, Jefferson went on to pen a letter to a Baptist association in Connecticut where he immortalized the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state.”

The Bill of Rights contains two clauses about religion, both in the First Amendment: that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What qualifies as “establishment of religion,” however, is open to debate.

In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced church-state separation as the guiding principle for interpreting the religion clauses, relying extensively on the two Virginians’ writings and actions. As Justice Hugo Black wrote, “In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between Church and State.’”

The duo’s documents served as the authority for the legal principle of church-state separation, and for more than five decades, their bona fides remained unquestioned in the law.

Shift at SCOTUS

Criticism of church-state separation intensified in the 1980s. As the religious right grew into a political force, commentators argued that the concept was anti-religious and did not represent the prevailing views about church and state during the founders’ time.

In recent decades, such arguments have attracted politicians and jurists, including members of the Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas has written that the court’s earlier separationist interpretations of the Constitution “sometimes bordered on religious hostility.” Legal scholar Philip Hamburger has declared that “the constitutional authority for separation is without historical foundation” and “should at best be viewed with suspicion.”

Several recent Supreme Court decisions have rejected a separationist approach to church-state matters. For example, the conservative majority has allowed taxpayer dollars to be used at religious schools, the display of religious symbols on government property, and religious expression by public school employees.

In a 2022 dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor bemoaned that the court has turned the separation of church and state from a “constitutional commitment” to a “constitutional violation.”

The justices’ earlier reliance on Jefferson and Madison has borne the brunt of criticism that their views on church-state matters did not represent their peers, or that neither man was in favor of separation as he has been portrayed.

Exchange of ideas

To better understand Jefferson’s and Madison’s beliefs, I examined many of the 2,300 letters between the two on “Founders Online,” a National Archives website. I also looked at correspondence with other acquaintances.

Both founders had deistic leanings, meaning they believed in a supreme being, but thought science and reason were the best paths to understanding religion. They were only nominally observant Christians, but more protected from religious intolerance than other “dissenters” due to their high social standing and affiliation with the Anglican Church.

All the more striking, then, that they worked throughout their lives to advance religious freedom.

Religious matters were never far from their minds. For instance, in Madison and Jefferson’s exchanges discussing the need for a bill of rights, freedom of conscience was invariably at the top of the list. Both were convinced that government should avoid supporting religion, even if no particular religion was given preference. They also insisted that people should have broad religious freedoms.

These views were clearly on the vanguard, but other religious rationalists and religious dissenters also advocated a comprehensive understanding of religious freedom.

Both men were committed to advancing religious freedom because they saw it as deeply entwined with freedom of inquiry and conscience. “Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error,” Jefferson wrote in 1784. Allowing people to investigate ideas freely “will support the true religion,” because “Truth can stand by itself.”

Similarly, Madison declared “the freedom of conscience to be a natural and absolute right.”

In their view, free inquiry was the fount of other rights. Religious freedom, for example, was a subset of freedom of conscience. And a healthy separation of church and state was key to ensuring those freedoms.

‘A pillar of support’

The letters reveal the extent to which Jefferson and Madison complemented and reinforced each other’s attitudes toward church and state. They also reveal the close intellectual and emotional affection that each man held for the other, and how much each man valued the other’s support.

In their final exchanges before Jefferson’s death on July 4, 1826, he implored Madison, “To myself, you have been a pillar of support thro’ life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.”

Madison responded with similar affection: “You cannot look back to the long period of our private friendship & political harmony, with more affecting recollections than I do.”

Jefferson’s and Madison’s half-century of collaboration on behalf of religious freedom and equality is an important chapter in the nation’s founding history. I believe its legacy should be remembered and celebrated, not discarded.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 25, 2024.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The records land in the middle of a governor’s race that Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee, has built largely around attacking Democrat Amy Acton’s record leading the Ohio Department of Health during the first year of the pandemic. Ramaswamy’s campaign and Roivant Sciences, the company he founded, did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment.

What the filings show

Two disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate account for the spending. In a first-quarter 2021 report, the law and lobbying firm Baker Donelson disclosed $50,000 in income from Roivant Sciences for lobbying the Executive Office of the President and the National Institutes of Health on “issues related to COVID-19 therapy development and approval.”

A year earlier, the Tiber Creek Group reported $20,000 from Roivant in a second-quarter 2020 filing covering lobbying of the U.S. House and Senate on the “development of therapeutics for COVID-19 and other respiratory conditions.”

Ramaswamy founded Roivant in 2014 and ran the company throughout 2020. He stepped down from its board in early 2023, shortly before launching his presidential campaign.

The candidate vs. the record

On the trail, Ramaswamy has branded Acton “Dr. Lockdown,” accused her of spreading “Covid ideology” and said her role in Ohio’s pandemic response “disqualifies her” from the governor’s office. Acton’s campaign told Politico that rhetoric is contradicted by what Ramaswamy was doing as a biotech executive at the very same time.

Ramaswamy’s position has not been uniformly anti-intervention, and the lobbying is consistent with at least part of his stated 2020 view: in a May 2020 Fox News appearance, he argued that developing Covid-19 therapeutics could allow the country to take a more measured approach than blanket restrictions. The Associated Press has reported that Ramaswamy supported vaccines during the pandemic, received one himself and encouraged mask-wearing, while saying he never backed government mandates for either.

But the public record shows his 2020 footprint went well beyond drug development. Ramaswamy advised Ohio’s own Covid-19 response that year, working with then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted — by his own account in a 2021 op-ed — and backed measures even the DeWine administration considered overreach, including mandatory antibody testing and stay-at-home orders for Ohioans without immunity, as TiffinOhio.net reported Wednesday. Gov. Mike DeWine, for his part, has said the pandemic closure decisions Ramaswamy attacks were his own, not Acton’s.

A Covid record under growing scrutiny

The lobbying disclosures add to a string of pandemic-era episodes that have followed Ramaswamy into the race. The Associated Press reported in May that Datavant, a health-data company incubated under Roivant, pushed for a national Covid-19 registry that would have let the small share of Americans with natural immunity return to normal life while the rest of the population remained, in the proposal’s framing, “segregated” — as TiffinOhio.net previously reported.

This March, Genevant Sciences, a Roivant subsidiary, announced a $2.25 billion settlement with Moderna over the unauthorized use of Genevant’s and Arbutus Biopharma’s patented technology in Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines. The settlement came roughly 3 years after Ramaswamy left Roivant’s board.

And in 2023, Mediaite reported that Ramaswamy paid a Wikipedia editor who removed the reference to his service on Ohio’s Covid-19 Response Team from his page — at the candidate’s “explicit request,” according to the editor’s own disclosure notes — days before he announced his presidential run.

A Ramaswamy-aligned super PAC has meanwhile continued pressing the Covid attack on Acton; a TiffinOhio.net fact-check published Tuesday found one of its recent ads made false claims about her record.

Democrats pounce ahead of November

The Ohio Democratic Party amplified the lobbying report within a day. “Scam artist Vivek Ramaswamy has given Ohioans yet another reason to not believe a word he says,” party spokeswoman Katie Seewer said in a Thursday statement, pointing to the registry proposal, the Moderna settlement and the newly surfaced lobbying as evidence that Ramaswamy’s attacks on Acton conflict with his own conduct during the pandemic.

Ramaswamy faces Acton — who is attempting to become the first Democrat elected Ohio governor in more than 20 years — in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Husted’s office says Dunn has been working with the committee on his reporting obligations. “Our office holds our team to the highest ethical standards. In this case, Mr. Dunn has been in regular contact with the Ethics Committee to ensure he has reported everything to their satisfaction,” spokesperson Olivia Tripodi said in a statement to NOTUS, which first reported the arrangement Thursday. The statement described Dunn’s Senate role as a capstone to his career in public service.

The disclosure at the center of the complaint is Dunn’s personal financial report covering calendar year 2025, filed with Congress on May 14. It lists $22,652 in self-employment income from Statehouse Impact Group LLC, a lobbying and government-affairs firm headquartered in Columbus, paid while Dunn served as Husted’s senior adviser and counsel.

A firm that carried his name for 2 decades

Dunn’s ties to the firm run deeper than a consulting contract. According to the 5-page complaint filed Friday, May 29, by attorney Anne Griffin of Columbus, the company was incorporated with the Ohio Secretary of State as Sean P. Dunn LLC in June 2002 and operated for years as Sean P. Dunn & Associates, with Dunn as its founder and president. It adopted the Statehouse Impact Group name on Feb. 28, 2025 — days before Dunn began his Senate employment on March 3, 2025, according to the complaint. The firm’s own website still describes one of its vice presidents as a longtime leader at “Statehouse Impact Group (formerly Sean P. Dunn and Associates).”

The complaint states that Dunn was registered to lobby in Ohio as recently as Feb. 26, 2025, and that the firm’s clients include AES Ohio, AT&T, Cordata Health, General Cigar, Meta Platforms, the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, the Ohio Hospital Association and Philip Morris International.

Beyond the consulting fees, the complaint notes that Dunn’s 2025 disclosure also reported between $100,001 and $1 million in unearned income from Statehouse Impact Group.

What Senate Rule 37 prohibits

Griffin’s complaint argues the arrangement violates Senate Rule 37, the chamber’s conflict-of-interest rule. Senate staffers earning above a baseline threshold are barred from receiving compensation for “professional services,” a category that includes consulting. The complaint contends a stricter provision also applies: because Dunn’s pay exceeded 120% of the GS-15 federal salary level — the complaint cites congressional salary records showing he earned $97,558.32 over a 6-month period in 2025 — he is prohibited from receiving any compensation from a firm that provides professional services involving a fiduciary duty, regardless of his own role there.

The complaint also implicates Husted directly. Under Senate rules, a supervising senator bears primary responsibility for preventing conflicts of interest among staff — a duty Griffin argues Husted “appears to have failed” to meet. The complaint requests an immediate investigation to determine whether Dunn’s compensation from the firm violated Senate rules, and separately whether Husted knew of the conflict and took no steps to prevent it. “An investigation is necessary to ensure Mr. Dunn complies with Senate Rules and to assure the citizens of Ohio that the office of their U.S. Senator is not acting for private gain,” Griffin wrote.

Husted’s office did not respond to NOTUS questions about the nature of Dunn’s work for the firm, and did not acknowledge a question about whether it was aware of the complaint. Griffin did not respond to questions from NOTUS. The Senate Ethics Committee — whose longstanding practice is to neither confirm nor deny that a complaint exists — also did not respond.

Watchdogs see a leverage problem for Ohio lawmakers

Government ethics watchdogs told NOTUS the dual role creates pressure inside the Ohio Statehouse, where legislators and staff weighing requests from the firm know one of its consultants also serves one of Ohio’s 2 U.S. senators. Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, called the arrangement flatly unethical, telling NOTUS that “firewalls are a myth.” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight said a lobbyist who also works for a sitting senator carries “additional juice and leverage” into any advocacy meeting with Ohio lawmakers.

Whether the complaint produces consequences is another question. A NOTUS investigation published in January found that the committee has reviewed 2,007 complaints since 2007 without once imposing formal discipline. The committee does issue advisory opinions guiding staffers’ outside employment, but it keeps those opinions confidential.

A widening ethics file

The complaint adds to a series of ethics-related controversies surrounding Husted as the campaign intensifies. In late May, the campaign-finance reform group End Citizens United named Husted 1 of only 3 senators on its 2026 list of the most corrupt lawmakers in Washington, as TiffinOhio.net previously reported. The group cited more than $550,000 in corporate PAC money Husted has accepted since joining the Senate, much of it from the insurance industry, along with a $3,500 donation he took in September 2025 from billionaire Les Wexner — a onetime close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Two months after accepting that donation, Husted voted to block a Senate amendment that would have compelled the attorney general to publicly release investigative documents related to Epstein.

Husted has also drawn criticism for his responses to constituents on affordability. On May 19, asked on an Ohio podcast what he was doing about gas prices — which climbed as high as $4.78 in Ohio amid the U.S. conflict with Iran — Husted replied: “What do you want me to do?” That same day, he voted against a war powers resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran; the measure advanced 50-47 with 4 Republicans crossing over.

A new front in the Senate race

The complaint lands as Husted — the former Ohio lieutenant governor and secretary of state appointed in January 2025 to fill Vice President JD Vance’s Senate seat — campaigns to keep it. He faces Democrat Sherrod Brown, the former 3-term senator, in a nationally watched special election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The Ohio Democratic Party seized on the report within hours. In a statement Thursday, Senior Communications Advisor Tony Wen called Husted corrupt and tied Statehouse Impact Group to the FirstEnergy utility bailout scandal. “Ohioans deserve better, and they will vote Jon Husted out in November,” Wen said.

Husted’s own connection to the FirstEnergy scandal and House Bill 6 is documented. Internal FirstEnergy records released in 2024 allegedly show the then-lieutenant governor played a central role in passing the 2019 utility bailout law at the center of Ohio’s largest-ever corruption scandal, as TiffinOhio.net previously reported. Public Utilities Commission of Ohio rate data show the average Ohio household now pays about $663 more per year for electricity than when the law took effect.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health director who led the state’s early COVID-19 response, released the plan — branded the “ActOn Lowering Costs” agenda — on Monday, April 6, at a roundtable with small business owners at a Columbus coffeehouse. The $1,778 figure is the campaign’s own estimate for a family of four at that income, but the tools behind it — a refundable earned income credit and a child tax credit — have an independent research record in Ohio, and one of them was proposed in nearly identical form by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine before lawmakers in his own party stripped it from the state budget.

“As governor, my number one priority will be lowering costs for working families,” Acton said at the rollout, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.

How the Working Families Tax Cut would work

The plan’s first piece is a refundable state earned income credit, which the campaign estimates would support up to 775,000 working families. Ohio already has an earned income credit set at 30% of the federal version — but it is nonrefundable, meaning families with little or no state income tax liability never see its full value. A refundable credit pays out the difference in cash, reaching the lowest-paid workers the current credit leaves behind.

That distinction is not a partisan talking point. Research from Policy Matters Ohio, citing modeling by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, found that even a modest 10% refundable state EITC would reach an estimated 1.75 million Ohioans, including 670,000 children. The federal version of the credit lifted roughly 5.3 million Americans above the poverty line in 2021, and 26 states plus the District of Columbia already offer refundable state versions. Ohio is one of only a handful of states with a credit that is not refundable.

The second piece is a child tax credit: $1,000 per year for each child aged 0 to 6 and $500 per year for each child aged 7 to 18, for families earning up to $85,000. The campaign says it would reach more than 1.4 million Ohio children. The structure closely tracks the Thriving Families Tax Credit that Ohio lawmakers have already introduced as House Bill 290, with Acton’s version extending eligibility to higher ages and incomes. An analysis of that similar proposal by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimated it would cut Ohio’s child poverty rate by about 16%, moving roughly 48,000 children out of poverty.

The idea has crossed party lines before. DeWine, a Republican, proposed a $1,000 refundable child tax credit for children under 7 in his 2025 budget. The Republican-controlled Ohio House removed it before passage.

Healthcare: drug prices, medical debt, and Medicaid

The agenda’s healthcare plank cites campaign figures that more than 120,000 Ohioans have dropped Affordable Care Act coverage since 2025 and that 11 rural hospitals in the state are at risk of closure.

Acton proposes launching “Ohio Rx,” an online platform that would use the state’s purchasing power through its Medicaid single pharmacy benefit manager to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for all Ohioans, not just Medicaid enrollees. She would also require that out-of-pocket spending on medications and healthcare supplies count toward insurance deductibles.

On medical debt, Acton pledges to direct the state on her first day in office to join Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo, which the campaign says have relieved nearly $1 billion in medical debt for residents by purchasing it for pennies on the dollar. The plan also calls for cracking down on surprise billing and aggressive collections, expanding hospital and insurance price transparency, and cutting Medicaid red tape and approval wait times.

Undoing HB 6: energy bills and the bailout’s long shadow

The energy section reaches directly into the fallout from House Bill 6, the 2019 utility bailout law at the center of the largest public corruption scandal in Ohio history — the scheme that sent former House Speaker Larry Householder to federal prison for 20 years. Beyond the bribery, HB 6 carried a quieter cost for ratepayers: it eliminated the energy efficiency, demand response, and renewable portfolio standard programs that gave households and small businesses tools to cut their usage and their bills.

Acton pledges to reinstate those programs. She also says she would appoint Public Utilities Commission of Ohio members who are “not beholden to utility companies” and work with the attorney general to restore funding to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s ratepayer advocate, whose budget has been cut even as utility rate cases have multiplied.

The plan sets out cost guardrails for data centers — requiring the projects and their investors, not taxpayers and surrounding communities, to cover the additional electricity, gas, water, and environmental costs they generate — along with transparency requirements, union labor, and community benefits agreements. Acton also commits Ohio to working with the 12 other states in the PJM regional grid to push for lower power costs. In the plan, Acton writes that she and her husband, Eric, saw their own electric bill jump $140 in a single month last summer.

Wage theft, junk fees, and scams

The consumer protection plank includes a first-day executive order requiring rapid turnaround on wage theft cases; the campaign says more than 213,000 Ohio workers are shorted through unpaid overtime, sub-minimum wages, stolen tips, and misclassification as independent contractors. Acton backs House Bill 563, sponsored by state Rep. Mark Hiner, a Republican from Howard, which would require ticket sellers and online marketplaces to show the full cost of a ticket — fees included — up front, and pairs it with a “First Click Guarantee” that the first price a buyer sees is the price they pay. The plan also proposes a price-gouging hotline, anti-scam protections for seniors, a modernized SNAP EBT system to prevent benefit theft, and parental controls on in-app purchases.

Two tax plans, two theories of who gets help

Neither candidate has fully explained how the state would absorb the cost of their tax promises. The Statehouse News Bureau reported that Acton offered few funding specifics at her rollout, and Ohio Republicans have launched a website claiming her agenda would add $21 billion in spending and require doubling the state income tax — a partisan estimate the campaign disputes. Ramaswamy spokeswoman Connie Luck said the agenda means “billions in new spending, higher taxes and bigger government.”

But the same question hangs over Ramaswamy’s side of the ledger, at a much larger scale. His signature proposal is phasing out Ohio’s income tax, which brought in more than $10 billion last fiscal year — roughly a quarter of the state’s operating budget — and he has not specified which programs he would cut to cover it. As TiffinOhio.net reported last week, Legislative Service Commission analysis of the related capital gains repeal found 81.6% of its benefit would flow to Ohioans earning more than $200,000 a year, while those making under $100,000 would receive 7.3%.

That is the contrast likely to define the affordability debate this fall: Acton’s credits are capped at $85,000 in household income and aimed at the bottom and middle of the wage scale; Ramaswamy’s cuts deliver their largest gains at the top. Acton, for her part, has called Ramaswamy’s leadership a danger to Ohio, and Democrats say his tax plan would blow a $10 billion hole in the state budget.

Acton, who was unopposed in the May 5 Democratic primary, is running with former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper as her lieutenant governor candidate. Ramaswamy won the Republican primary with more than 82% of the vote. The general election is November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The senators, led by Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee ranking Democrat Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, asked the CFTC to offer guidance to those participating in bustling prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket in an effort to restrict event contract manipulation and insider trading, according to the June 1 letter.  

“The volume of event contracts trading on prediction markets has grown exponentially over the past 18 months,” the senators wrote. “These markets have a significantly higher proportion of retail participants than traditional derivatives markets, heightening customer protection concerns.”

The senators sent the letter before the CFTC proposed rules Wednesday that would ban bets on war, assassination and other extreme events, which critics said did not do enough to rein in the industry.

Lawmakers also want the CFTC to conduct detailed reviews of participating futures markets  to ensure that their policies and procedures are clearly outlined and that they are equipped with adequate resources to prevent market abuse. 

On a similar note, they wrote that the commission should instruct the markets to monitor the terms and conditions of event contracts, as ambiguous contract language can lead to conflicts over resolution and payout once an outcome has occurred. 

“Sufficient resources should be devoted to anticipating and addressing such issues prior to contract listing, rather than after problems arise,” the senators wrote.

In addition to Klobuchar, the letter was signed by Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons of Delaware, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Concerns around insider trading

Prediction markets allow consumers to bet on the outcomes of future events and trade in products commonly called event contracts. 

Most event contracts offer two possible outcomes, presenting traders with the option to bet either “yes” or “no.” The price of each outcome at any given time, expressed as a fraction of a dollar, corresponds to the market’s forecast of an outcome occurring, with $1 meaning 100%. Consumers who correctly predict an outcome then earn a profit equal to the difference between the price at which they bought and the end fixed payout, typically $1, according to the CFTC.

That system leaves the markets vulnerable to manipulation by people with inside knowledge of an event, which is partly what prompted the Democratic senators to write the letter, they said.

For example, a U.S. soldier was charged in April with making more than $400,000 on Polymarket by betting the United States would launch a military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors say the soldier used classified information to make the wagers in advance of the operation.

The senators did not give the CFTC a deadline to carry out their requests. Rather, they urged the commission in their letter to consider their recommendations as it continues to “develop rules and guidance for the prediction market industry.”

The CFTC did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment in time for publication. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Commissioner Frank Bisignano instead deferred to lawmakers, who will need to make changes to the safety net program for tens of millions of Americans before it reaches insolvency in six years.  

Bisignano’s testimony came just one day after the Social Security trustees said in their annual report the Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund will “become depleted” in the fourth quarter of 2032, earlier than previously expected. Once that happens, benefits will automatically drop by 22% and gradually decrease from there. 

“I always thought my job was to make it perform as well as possible so you all have a set of options and choices to decide on how this great American program, which is, you know, fundamentally called by some the largest insurance program out there, others could call it the largest retirement program out there. Anyway, the idea is to make it perform well so you all can make the decisions,” Bisignano said. 

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee on Social Security and subcommittee on Work and Welfare, who held the two-hour hearing, were pleased with the statistics Bisignano shared about his administration of Social Security. 

Democrats on the panels, however, were skeptical that he was giving a full picture of the delays that some Americans face when trying to apply for benefits or ask about an issue they’re having with the program. 

Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny Davis, ranking member on the Work and Welfare subcommittee, said the Social Security Administration’s “statements about customer service do not always appear to reflect the reality Americans experience.” 

“Press releases claiming dramatic improvements in SSA customer service, particularly on the 800-number, conflict with reports from AARP and our constituents,” Davis said. “People across the country report waiting in long lines at Social Security offices or being turned away and told to make appointments, only to discover no appointments are available. 

“Similarly, it seems misleading to claim a zero call wait time for seniors that waited hours or days for a call back, or to praise short call wait times for people whose problems are not resolved.”

Debate over statistics

Bisignano testified that he ushered in “the best all-around performance ever at the Social Security Administration.”

“More than 99% of our field offices are open and serving the public, with average wait times reduced to 20 minutes, a 30% improvement. No field offices closed due to staffing,” he said. “We now answer 90% of calls to our 800-number and have reduced average wait time to five minutes, a 75% improvement.”

Bisignano added that “web transactions” have risen by 37% and that there has been a 21% rise in account creations.

California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu said she found the statistics Bisignano shared “extremely misleading,” in part, because the administration classifies anyone who requests a call back instead of waiting on hold as a zero minute hold time. 

“The American people deserve accurate information on how long they can expect to wait when trying to get help for their benefits,” she said.

Chu then shared the story of a woman who tried to schedule an in-person appointment to apply for survivor benefits after her husband died in July but was unable to get one until October. 

“Once she finally got an appointment, she then had to wait at least four months,” she said. 

Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford pressed Bisignano about wait times at the Las Vegas field office for disability hearings, which he said take nearly a year. 

“My office continues to hear from seniors, people with disabilities and working families who cannot get answers and cannot access benefits that they deserve,” Horsford said. “Last year, you promised improvements. Today, Las Vegas disability applicants are waiting nearly 11 months.”

Horsford then asked if Bisignano would “designate a senior SSA point person to work directly with me and my office on unresolved constituent cases.” 

Bisignano said he would send the head of disability to come see Horsford in his office. 

Social Security solvency

While the subcommittees and Bisignano barely scratched the surface of Social Security’s financial problems during the hearing, a separate event hosted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget delved into those struggles. 

Karen Glenn, chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, said during her presentation on the trustees report that addressing the program’s budget woes is “a simple math problem” but “a difficult political problem.”

“We can either raise scheduled revenue by about one-third, reduce scheduled benefits by about one-fourth or some combination of the two,” she said. “So it sounds simple, but not so easy in practice.”

Glenn said one of the purposes of the annual report to Congress is to “provide information to assess solvency and the changes needed to eliminate those shortfalls.”

“The trustees have consistently advised that Congress should act sooner rather than later,” she said. “We are just about out of time for that sooner. We are basically at the later.”

Mark Sarney, director of Social Security policy at CRFB, said he doesn’t believe Congress will be able to add to the annual deficit in order to avoid a drop-off in benefits since “we’ll probably have debt problems way before 2032.”

That leaves lawmakers in the House and Senate with complex choices to make during the next few years.

“Hopefully there will be a growing call within Congress to actually get serious and do something,” Sarney said. “Because if you let the cut happen, that’s like 1% of the national economy that suddenly doesn’t go out in checks, which may matter less in some parts of the country, but in others, where most of the population is depending on Social Security, that’s going to be a hammer blow to both people’s lives and the economy. And nobody wants that.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on June 3 published one if its eight annual installments of the Beige Book. It seeks to assess economic conditions through online surveys and interviews with businesses, community leaders, economists and others.

The Cleveland Fed is one of 12 regional federal reserve banks. Its region comprises all of Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

The most recent edition of the Beige Book said that there has been an uptick in manufacturing and overall business activity, but much of that is due to data center construction, it said.

“Demand for manufactured goods rose at a robust pace, largely driven by data center development,” it said. 

However, it cited increasing costs — many of them a consequence of the war with Iran — and said that employers are hiring cautiously.

“The primary drivers of increases cited by contacts were rising fuel costs related to the Middle East conflict and spillover effects on material and service costs through increased fuel surcharges,” it said.

“Manufacturing and agriculture contacts reported cost spikes for fertilizer and petroleum-based products, such as resin, due to the Middle East conflict.”

And as consumers deal with higher energy costs, they’re pulling back on other spending. 

“Consumer spending declined slightly in recent weeks,” the Beige Book said.

“Many retailers reported that higher fuel costs and related inflation had further dampened consumer spending, leading to decreased sales across various retail sectors including convenience and grocery stores, auto dealerships, and restaurants. 

Retailers also reported increased credit card usage — possibly a sign that consumers are going into debt to make needed purchases.

As measured by the University of Michigan, consumer sentiment in May was at its lowest point at least since the 1970s. Consumer spending makes up nearly 70% of the overall economy.

“Consumer sentiment fell for the third straight month as supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz continue to boost gasoline prices,” Joanne Hsu, who directs the University of Michigan’s consumer surveys, said in a written statement. “Sentiment is now just below the previous historical trough seen in June 2022.”

She added, “The cost of living continues to be a first-order concern, with 57% of consumers spontaneously mentioning that high prices were eroding their personal finances, up from 50% last month. Lower-income consumers and those without college degrees posted particularly strong sentiment declines; these groups are more sensitive to increases in the cost of gas and other essentials.”

Eric Pachman, a Dayton-based data analyst who used to work for Exxon, last week published a newsletter saying that petroleum reserves are “frankly, terrifying.”

_Oil inventories are low and declining quickly.

(Visualization courtesy of Eric Pachman.)_

“Look at crude,” he wrote. “After climbing through the spring, inventories have turned and are falling fast – the steepest decline of any year on the chart. If that slope holds, we’re heading for territory we haven’t seen since the early 1980s, when those bottom grey lines were set.

Exxon executives warned late last month that as inventories go down, oil prices will skyrocket in the coming weeks — from about $100 a barrel now to $150 or even $160. Chevron issued a similar warning.

Pachman produced another visualization of diesel inventories that he said was even more bleak. 

Its price affects you even if your car or truck lacks a diesel engine, he said, because 90% of freight tonnage in the United States is carried by diesel engines powering trucks, trains, and cargo ships.

_Diesel inventories are far down compared to earlier years, represented by the gray lines.

(Visualization courtesy of Eric Pachman.)_

“… distillate (i.e., diesel) is the one that should stop you cold: stocks are now lower than they’ve been more than 90% of the time in over 40 years of record,” Pachman wrote.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The justices heard arguments Tuesday morning in the lawsuit and will issue a ruling at a later date. 

At the heart of the lawsuit is municipal home rule, which gives cities and villages in Ohio the constitutional right to certain powers, including establishing laws in accordance with the self-government clause.

Cities have the right to make their own policies, as long as they don’t get in the way of laws in the Ohio Revised Code.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a bill in January 2023 that would have prevented any city or municipality from regulating smoking, vaping, and other e-cigarette usage and sales, saying it would be bad for Ohio’s children. 

Columbus City Council voted to stop the sale of flavored tobacco products in December 2022 and the ban took effect in January 2024.

Ohio lawmakers voted to override DeWine’s veto in 2024 and the law was set to take effect in April 2024. 

Several cities — including Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo — sued the state and the law was blocked from taking effect.

The cities argued the Ohio Home Rule Amendment of 1912 lets cities set rules, including a ban on flavored tobacco. There are now 21 cities involved in the lawsuit. 

A Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge and the Tenth District Court of Appeals agreed with the cities and the ban on flavored tobacco products currently stands.

The state appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

“We already have a comprehensive system of state tobacco regulations, and we do not want municipalities having a local patchwork on top of that,” said Zachery Keller, a deputy solicitor general for the Ohio Attorney General. 

“Home rule amendment was never supposed to be this weapon that cities used to overturn state law.”

A four-prong test was created through a 2002 Ohio Supreme Court decision to decide if local rules outweigh state law.

The 21 cities say the flavored tobacco ban restrictions fails the four-pronged test. 

“How in the world are we dealing with a situation where the General Assembly can simply say municipalities can’t pass laws,” said Columbus City Solicitor General Richard Coglianese. 

“The home rule amendment says that municipalities have the right to go ahead and address problems that they themselves face.” 

About 1.63 million middle and high school students nationwide used vapes in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Nearly 19% of Ohio high school students vape, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. 

“They are highly addictive,” Coglianese said. “They are marketed with cereal flavors to kids.” 

How the justices rule in the case could have further implications as the Republican-controlled state legislature takes issue with laws Democratic city leaders pass. 

The Ohio Mayors Alliance argues home rule is vital because it allows local governments to create policies suited to their residents since “what works for Cleveland or Columbus may not fit a Cadiz or Coshocton.”

Opponents of home rule say local ordinances create a patchwork of laws that can infringe on a statewide jurisdiction.

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.