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!
Medical debt hit 1 in 4 Americans and 1 in 5 Ohioans last year, a new study shows, including those who have health insurance.
Getty Images.
By Susan Tebben
A recent study by the Urban Institute, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, showed that more than a quarter of American adults reported medical debt for them or someone in their family in 2025, and more than half of those who reported medical debt owed at least $1,000. Of those who reported debt, 26% were adults with current health insurance.
By Author Name
Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger has received a $3 million Make America Healthy Again federal grant. Critics say it appears to be a taxpayer gift to market the company and do more customer surveillance.
By Alan Johnson
The West African nation Mali, with 26 million people, has been embroiled non-stop in coups and armed conflicts for more than a decade. Helping Malians has been the focus of an Ohio-based non-profit group, The Tandana Foundation, for all its 20-year history.
COMMENTARY
A voter casts a ballot. (Photo by Jim Neuger/States Newsroom)
By Gary Houser
When the stakes could not be higher, it’s essential for Ohio voters to know exactly what the law states about the threats that are appearing in regard to the federal government interfering in elections which are administered at the state and local level.
By Ashley C. Brown
While it is not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton have different views on energy policy for Ohio, what is confusing are the diametrically opposed views that Ramaswamy and his running mate Robert McColley seem to have on the subject.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Kevin Hardy
Americans’ growing frustration over high prices has defined many political campaigns ahead of November’s midterm elections.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Sam Stockard
A Tennessee Democratic lawmaker is calling for election officials to resolve complaints that voting machines are defaulting to candidates they didn’t want to select but stopped short of saying ballots are rigged.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Ashley Murray
Both Democratic and Republican candidates during the heated midterm election cycle have had to navigate deep voter resentment over data center developments powering artificial intelligence.
By Jonathan Shorman
President Donald Trump’s 11th-hour campaign to intervene in California’s vote counting encountered the first signs of resistance in federal court over the weekend, with appellate judges expressing deep skepticism over the legality of the effort.
CATCHING OUR EYE
Data centers. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Jo Ingles reports, “Candidates for Ohio governor focus on data centers in last week of campaign.”
As campaigns for governor are headed into the last week before the election, Democratic candidate for governor Amy Acton is on the offensive, launching a new ad about where her opponent stands on data centers. But a political action committee (PAC) supporting Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is also putting a new ad out on his behalf that goes after Acton on data centers.Tax cuts for weapons manufacturer take away from schools. Taylor Barnes of Inkstick Media reports, “An Ohio school needs funds. It voted to cut Anduril’s tax bill, anyway.”
On the afternoon of Jan. 16, 2025, just hours after Ohio’s governor announced that the autonomous weapons manufacturer Anduril was setting up a mega-factory near Columbus, the treasurer of a rural school district sent an urgent email to school board members.
He asked them to convene at 8 a.m. the following day and vote on whether to grant Anduril more than 30 years of property tax breaks. In Ohio, school boards are allowed to review and veto such deals when the tax abatement is more than 75% of what the company would have otherwise paid to public schools, which rely heavily on property taxes for their funding.
Records obtained from the school district indicate that the local government agreed to cut Anduril’s property taxes by at least $60 million. However, a calculation by Inkstick using figures in separate county records suggests the value is far higher.Oil and gas incidents. The Athens County Independent’s Dani Kington and Eric Boll report, “Report finds increase in Ohio oil and gas incidents.”
A new report from regional environmental groups claims that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources failed to properly investigate, enforce regulations and record data on oil and gas wells.
The report, authored by the FracTracker Alliance and the Buckeye Environmental Network, looked at ODNR incident reports over a 10-year period, 2015–2025.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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