The morning newsletter of the Ohio Capital Journal
Reporting for the People
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By David DeWitt | Editor in Chief
Good morning Ohio!
Huge numbers of Ohio seniors will likely be driven into poverty if Congress doesn't do something to fix Social Security and Medicare, advocates are saying.
Social Security card and a Medicare health insurance card. (Getty Images.)
By Marty Schladen
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.
By Susan Tebben
Despite federal cuts by Congress to a program to help Appalachian states clean up damage from coal mines, some money will be flowing to states including Ohio in the form of federal grants.
By Kathiann M. Kowalski, Canary Media
The Ohio Supreme Court recently blocked a permit for what would be the state’s largest solar installation. State lawmakers and other officials have now blocked more than 5.3 gigawatts of solar and wind projects in Ohio over the last dozen years.
Ohio Capital Journal wins eight Society of Professional Journalists awards, including Best News Site
By David DeWitt
The Ohio Capital Journal has won eight awards in “Ohio’s Best Journalism Contest” from the Society of Professional Journalists, including First Place for Best General News Site, three other first place finishes, and four in second place.
COMMENTARY
High school students in a hallway. (File photo from Getty Images.)
By Mackenzie Morgan
As teachers, we are in the front line of the aggression against public schooling. We can involve ourselves in the world of education advocacy to save our students, jobs, and communities, writes new Ohio teacher Mackenzie Morgan.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Nada Hassnein
Republican attorneys general from 14 states and 19 GOP members of Congress are asking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to classify and regulate the abortion medication mifepristone as a water contaminant.
By Nada Hassnein
The United States has a shortage of the only first-line medication recommended for pregnant women with syphilis to prevent passing it to their baby, even as congenital syphilis rates have been skyrocketing.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
Georgia lawmakers plan to redraw district lines, even as dispute over current maps remains unsettled
By Maya Homan, Georgia Recorder
Unlike the last round of Georgia redistricting, in which state lawmakers were tasked with creating districts to protect the voting power of Black Georgians, the Republican legislature may now choose to strip electoral power away from minority voters.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Jennifer Shutt
President Donald Trump announced Monday that oil barges were moving through the Strait of Hormuz, less than a day after he said the United States and Iran had brokered an end to the war.
By Ashley Murray
President Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday cageside at a multimillion-dollar bloody mixed martial arts event staged on the White House South Lawn, punctuated by fighter jet flyovers, a live military band and fireworks to mark the country’s 250th anniversary.
By Amelia Twyman
Indiana U.S. House Rep. Rudy Yakym is pursuing changes to the nation’s Amber Alert notification system after a 17-year-old girl from his home state of Indiana went missing and was later found dead in Ohio.
By Jennifer Shutt
For the first time in nearly two decades, Congress missed a deadline for reauthorization of a key surveillance authority, raising questions about whether the U.S. government can continue to monitor certain communications.
CATCHING OUR EYE
After Pretti killing, JD Vance reportedly advocated for suspending constitutional rights in Minnesota. The New York Times reports, “Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right.”
In the case of the Insurrection Act, Vice President JD Vance pushed to invoke it just days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minnesota critical care nurse who was protesting the administration’s immigration policies.
The details of internal debates over how aggressive Mr. Trump should be in seeking to deport millions of immigrants and crack down on those protesting his policies are drawn from reporting for a forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” …
Mr. Vance got to the point. They needed to invoke the Insurrection Act, swiftly, to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send — that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations — would make sure no one tried it again. (There was no evidence that either Mr. Pretti or Ms. Good had been paid activists.)Cheating. The Columbus Dispatch’s Nora Igelnik reports, “Ohio moves to penalize companies selling homework and exams.”
Selling homework answers to Ohio students may soon carry a financial penalty.
A wide‑ranging Senate bill addressing truancy and school zoning also targets academic cheating and outlines consequences for businesses that help students cheat on anything from exams to theses for profit.
The bill also seeks to clarify school districts’ authority to maintain, sell or demolish vacant buildings.Data centers. In an opinion column, Thomas Suddes writes in Cleveland.com, “A data-centers tax break that ballooned from millions to billions.”
Ohioans are figuring out that huge, tax-subsidized data centers popping up in pastures like toadstools after a summer shower benefit Silicon Valley and Wall Street, not working Ohioans.
That, at a time when Ohio median household income ($80,520 in 2024) lags the national median ($83,720), according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, while gasoline and grocery prices skyrocket.
Ohio’s data-center tax break appears to have originated as a 2011 Senate amendment to Ohio’s 2011-13 state budget, passed in mid-2011 by a party-line vote – Republicans “yes,” Democrats, “no” – and signed by Republican then-Gov. John R. Kasich.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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