Book bans, censorship, and funding fears challenge Ohio public school librarians

A politician answering reporters’ questions, imagine that. Cleveland.com’s Jeremy Pelzer reports, “This Ohio governor candidate answers the questions Ramaswamy and Acton won’t.”

While major-party nominees for Ohio governor aren’t responding to questions from readers about major policy issues, there’s another gubernatorial candidate who’s happy to offer his thoughts: Libertarian Don Kissick.

Kissick, a 56-year-old TV station control-room operator from Ottawa, was more than willing to address what he would do as governor regarding 12 topics, including hot-button topics such as abortion, marijuana, data centers and school vouchers…

In an interview, Kissick largely embraced traditional Libertarian positions of limited government and individual liberty, backing legalized recreational marijuana, gun rights, lower taxes, opposition to business subsidies, and deference to voter-approved ballot initiatives.

Resignation. NBC News reports, “Ohio man who was jailed following accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor resigns from GOP Senate campaign.”

A man who had once served jail time following accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor resigned this week from his volunteer position as a surrogate for Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s re-election campaign.

700,000 people estimated to be dead because of USAID cuts. The New Yorker reports, “The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on U.S.A.I.D. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the “public man-made death” that they’ve caused.”

Atul Gawande, who was a leading administrator at U.S.A.I.D. until the Trump Administration’s DOGE initiative, led by Elon Musk, set about defunding and destroying the agency, is a surgeon and a longtime New Yorker contributor. In our latest conversation for The New Yorker Radio Hour, Gawande uses Rhodes’s concept to help describe the colossal human cost that Musk and DOGE have exacted on the world. Gawande, backed up by recent academic studies, says that the decimation of U.S.A.I.D. around the globe has been responsible for some seven hundred thousand deaths, and that number will likely ascend into the seven figures. The policy is not only immeasurably cruel, Gawande argues; it is also stupid, badly undermining what remains of American soft power and prestige, from Africa to Latin America. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Atul, Elon Musk claims there’s no evidence at all that DOGE cuts to U.S.A.I.D. led to even a single death. He tweeted—and I’m quoting here—that “no validated medical funding was stopped,” and that “legitimate life saving funding continued.” You’ve replied saying that the reduction in life-saving aid has already led to no fewer than seven hundred thousand deaths. How did you come to that number?

A: The seven-hundred-plus thousand that have been estimated to have died at the end of a year since the U.S.A.I.D. closure comes from a couple of different sources. One is a Boston University estimate. A separate one comes from an international study published in The Lancet, looking at the impact U.S.A.I.D. had over the past twenty years—saving ninety-two million lives—and projecting, based on the cuts that have occurred, how many deaths have occurred, and they came up with a very similar number. This is what pissed off Elon Musk. Representative Ro Khanna cited the estimate that 4.5 million children, just children, could die by the end of 2030. The precision of the numbers is a question, but it’s clear that it’s, at minimum, tens of thousands in 2025, and very likely hundreds of thousands.

Politicizing intelligence work. The Atlantic reports, “CIA Officers Can Sense the Threat Within: A survey reveals concern among the rank and file that Trump-administration meddling is undermining intelligence work.”

Since Donald Trump returned to office, the number of CIA employees who said they are concerned that the objectivity of analysis is being undermined by political influence has gone up significantly, according to the survey, which is conducted annually by the agency’s ombudsman for analytic integrity. The results haven’t been made public, but they were described to me by several people familiar with them.

It’s not clear how many of the thousands of career employees involved in producing reports, briefings, and other materials for the president and his advisers responded. But their comments show how acutely some of them feel pressured to reach preferred outcomes instead of following the facts wherever they lead, the people familiar with the voluntary survey told me. They requested not to be identified by name so that they could speak candidly.