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!
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is telling Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy to pull down his controversial ad featuring Democrat Dr. Amy Acton's estranged mother. He is not pulling his endorsement though.
Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. (Photo by Morgan Trau/WEWS)
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
"It's deeply, deeply, deeply troubling," DeWine. "It needs to come down; it's just wrong to continue to run it." Acton hasn’t had contact with her mother since leaving the courthouse when she was 12-years-old once her stepfather was charged with raping her, she's said.
By Susan Tebben
The Ohio Secretary of State oversees elections and sits on the Ohio Redistricting Commission and Ohio Ballot Board. It is up open election in November, with Democratic lawmaker Allison Russo and Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague vying for the powerful role.
By Nick Evans
With tens of millions of dollars staked on political and sporting contests, prediction markets are fueling anxiety among policymakers in Ohio and around the country.
COMMENTARY
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a campaign rally at the Sharonville Convention Center on October 21, 2026 in Sharonville, Ohio. Vance traveled to Ohio to campaign for local Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)
By Stephen T. Terrell
JD Vance built a national career as the Ohio hillbilly who could explain what it felt like to be looked down on. Now, as vice president, he is inviting Americans to look and punch down on others.
EDITOR COMMENTARY
By David DeWitt
The contrast in reaction between Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Vice President JD Vance over the now-notorious Vivek Ramaswamy Amy Acton attack ad illustrates a split amid the mass corrosion of basic decency in American politics.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Tim Henderson
The current Trump administration claims its mass deportation efforts have expelled nearly a million people through July, but those include both voluntary returns and people turned around at the border, a new analysis shows.
By Kevin Hardy
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats.
By Kevin Hardy
State and local government employees report high levels of job satisfaction across the country, but face significant rates of burnout and on-the-job harassment.
By Anna Claire Vollers
A string of high-profile deaths and injuries involving electric scooters and bikes is spurring states and cities across the country to crack down on them.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Liam Niemeyer, Kentucky Lantern
A Lexington-based nuclear energy startup is proposing to build a massive nuclear power plant complex along the Ohio River in Lewis County, which would be the largest nuclear power plant site in the country and the first nuclear power plant in Kentucky.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Jennifer Shutt
The price health insurance companies charge for employer-sponsored plans increased again this year, as did the deductible people must pay before those plans begin covering most healthcare costs, nonpartisan health organization KFF said in a new survey.
By Shauneen Miranda
President Donald Trump’s midterm travel blitz will continue in the coming days, including with a trip to Chillicothe, Ohio, next week, also headlining rallies in several other states hosting hard-fought U.S. Senate contests seen as toss-ups.
By Jonathan Shorman
A federal judge on Wednesday night blocked the Department of Homeland Security from conducting election-related field operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens in nine states.
By Jonathan Shorman
National Democrats are suing President Donald Trump, accusing his administration of intimidating election officials and asking a federal court to block him from interfering in the midterm elections.
By Ariana Figueroa
The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s emergency request to implement a rule that would terminate gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons.
SCIENCE FRIDAY
The Nazis were far from completing a working reactor for their atomic bomb program, despite claims by the project's leader that it was almost ready, a new study finds.
The German physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote in 1947 that the reactor for the "Nazi bomb" project — which culminated in Germany's B8 nuclear reactor — was almost finished at the end of World War II.
Heisenberg, who led the reactor's development, claimed the reactor was "just insufficient" to create a self-sustaining fission reaction and that it lacked only a "relatively small amount of uranium" to work.
CATCHING OUR EYE
Domestic violence. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Ohio saw the second-highest domestic violence fatalities in a decade.”
Domestic violence fatalities in Ohio fell about 15% since last year, according to the annual fatality count released Wednesday morning by the Ohio Domestic Violence Network.
But the decrease followed a 37% surge last year, and the number of deaths was still the second-highest recorded in the last decade.Vance’s Trump politics. Axios reports, “"Stop whining": What Vance's take on Ohio ad controversy means for 2028.”
Vice President Vance's call for fellow Republicans to "stop whining" about Vivek Ramaswamy's controversial attack ad in Ohio's race for governor showed a key part of his political mindset ahead of his expected run for president in 2028: Never back down.
Why it matters: Channeling President Trump, Vance has shown contempt for what he sees as the old-guard GOP's reflex to cave under pressure from Democrats and the media.Breaking Eisenhower’s globe. The Washington Post reports, “Hegseth wanted Eisenhower’s globe for his office. His staff broke it.”
Ordinarily, moving historical items within the building is a deliberate process overseen by trained curators. Instead, Hegseth’s staff dispatched its own team to relocate an Eisenhower globe. They lost control of the artifact and dropped it, sending the globe crashing onto its base and impaling the fragile shell near Antarctica, according to those familiar with the incident. The resulting gash appears to be several inches wide.
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.