The morning newsletter of the Ohio Capital Journal
Reporting for the People
Make a tax-deductible donation supporting our work.
By David DeWitt | Editor in Chief
Good morning Ohio!
Brian Poindexter is a union ironworker and the Democratic nominee for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, challenging embattled Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller. But Poindexter doesn’t want to talk about Miller. He wants to talk about working families.
In an Ohio congressional race with national scrutiny, Brian Poindexter wants to win on his own terms
Ohio 7th Congressional District Democratic candidate Brian Poindexter touring the Feeding Medina County distribution center. (Photo provided.)
By Siddarth Sivaraman
“I’m not in this to carry the flag for the Democratic Party,” Poindexter said in a recent interview. “I’m in this to flip a seat for working families.”
By Megan Henry
Central Ohio billionaire Les Wexner is stepping down as chair of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Board after continued scrutiny over his relationship with the late convicted child sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
Ohio has seen its fair share of major public corruption scandals over the past decade. The candidates seeking to become governor to lead the state are weighing in on how to increase accountability.
COMMENTARY
An aerial view shows a data center situated near single-family homes. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
By Rob Moore
Data centers looking to get their energy from behind-the-meter projects that don’t draw from the electrical grid have three options: solar, wind, and natural gas. Ohio government has put its thumb on the scale against solar and wind and in favor of natural gas.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Shalina Chatlani
Since Republicans in Congress allowed enhanced health care subsidies to expire at the end of last year, Affordable Care Act enrollment has declined in every state but New Mexico, which fully replaced the lost federal aid with state assistance.
By Tim Henderson
As more states seek ways to limit immigration enforcement, a Stateline analysis shows one tactic has had an effect: making it more difficult for local law enforcement to hand over people they are holding in city or county jails to federal immigration authorities.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Piper Hutchinson, Louisiana Illuminator
A Louisiana teacher is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his constitutional challenge to a state law that requires the Ten Commandments to be posted in K-12 and college classrooms.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Ashley Murray
With just over two months until the November midterms, the U.S. Supreme Court gave way Monday for Trump to have a hand in regulating mail-in ballots nationwide, a voting method he has falsely claimed is rife with corruption since he lost the 2020 election.
By Jennifer Shutt
Voters throughout much of the country will cast ballots for their U.S. senator this fall, but just nine states hold the power to determine control of the chamber — setting the course for which presidential nominees can secure confirmation and what bills advance.
By Ariana Figueroa
The Department of Homeland Security is planning to drastically increase the fee for hiring high-skilled foreign workers within the United States to $100,000, according to a preview of a proposed rule published Monday.
By Shauneen Miranda
President Donald Trump and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Monday touted a national private school voucher program set to launch in early 2027.
WEDNESDAY WISDOM
“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world.
“The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.
“Such an irreconcilable antagonism of course must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
CATCHING OUR EYE
Angry Ohio voters. The New York Times reports, “Angry Ohio Voters Could Turn Their State Purple Again.”
Across Ohio, a state that receded from the nation’s political battle zone as its voting patterns turned an ever deeper shade of red, signs of discontent this year are everywhere.
In packed public forums, residents rage about data center projects. In grocery store aisles, shoppers lament to cashiers how little they can get for $50. In the soybean and corn fields, farmers express anxiety and pessimism. The basics of life and business have gotten punishingly expensive, and many have come to doubt that relief is coming anytime soon.
“It’s all dumpy. Businesses are closing, the roads look like crap,” Kim Hall, 59, said as she shopped at a Dollar General in North Ridgeville, Ohio, on Wednesday. “Grocery prices are outrageous, and I can barely afford to live.”
Frustration like hers is evident in every region and demographic in the state, and it’s why Ohio may be up for grabs in the 2026 midterms. With the general election less than 75 days away, polls show dead heats for governor and a coveted Senate seat. Enough congressional seats are in play for either party to swing control of the House. Come November, the state that once bragged “So goes Ohio, so goes the nation” will find out if it is truly inching back toward purple.Vance insults Canada. Howard Koplowitz reports for Cleveland.com, “JD Vance insults Canada with ‘Freudian slip,’ compares ally to US adversary.”
Vice President JD Vance on Monday insulted Canada amid a tariff war between the United States and its northern neighbor while feigning the dig as a “Freudian slip.”
“Canada is a state,” Vance said during a visit to Maine, where he promoted the Trump administration’s economic agenda and drummed up support for Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections.
“Sorry, Freudian slip,” the vice president added with a smile during the event in Brewer, Maine. “That was actually an accident.”Trump insults Canada. ABC News reports, “Trump floats renaming Lake Ontario to 'Lake America,' denies claim he'd interfere with Canadians speaking French.”
President Donald Trump's announcement Tuesday morning that he is giving "serious consideration" to renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America" mirrors his move to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America early in his second term.
But just like the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario is a shared international waterway and multiple international, federal, and regional agencies oversee it.World’s largest data center. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Victoria Moorwood reports, “OpenAI to build world's biggest AI data center in Ohio. What we know.”
A massive data center for OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that created ChatGPT, is planned for Southern Ohio.
The San Francisco-based company announced Aug. 17 it will lease space for its hyperscale, 8-gigawatt data center at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, around 100 miles east of Cincinnati. That amount of electrical power would make it the largest AI data center in the world, Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy, said during the campus's groundbreaking in March.Columbus City Council reform? WOSU’s Katie Geniusz reports, “Columbus City Council sends two council reform amendments to November ballot.”
Columbus voters will decide two issues on the November that could reshape city council. At Monday’s meeting, city council read the Our City Our Say charter amendment into record, which will be put in front of voters to ask whether all the nine existing council seats will switch from at-large voting to true district voting.
Council submitted what it described as a “complimentary” charter amendment, which would create a hybrid model, It would expand council to 13 seats, four of would be at-large seats and the nine others district seats. The council’s charter amendment would also call for the council district map to be redrawn in 2028.Covid checks. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Ohio Supreme Court again rejects $900M COVID checks case, but attorney says it's not over yet.”
The Ohio Supreme Court has again rejected the lawsuit filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who say they’re owed $900 million in pandemic unemployment assistance checks. The court agreed with the state, which argued the case is moot because the federal program ended in 2021. But the attorney who filed the suit said the case is not over yet.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
Thanks for reading The Eye-Opener. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.