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!
After Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan voted for a huge boost to ICE funding, a company that benefitted made a $250K dark-money donation to a Jordan-aligned group. Now a complaint has been filed with the FEC.
Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan speaks to members of the media as he arrives for a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.)
By Marty Schladen
A campaign-finance watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission last week after a nonprofit news organization published a report about a private prison company’s “dark money” contribution to a political committee aligned with Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan.
By Megan Henry
Three Ohio men who either previously volunteered or worked for LifeWise Academy – a Christian instruction program for public school students – were either charged or pleaded guilty recently to sex crimes against minors, including rape, voyeurism, and sexual battery.
By Megan Henry
About 230 Ohio school districts are enrolled in the OhioSEE program, which provides students in kindergarten through third grade comprehensive eye exams and glasses at schools.
COMMENTARY
The Ohio Statehouse. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.)
By The Rev. Ben Huelskamp
“My parents understood something that Ohio’s voucher advocates seem to have forgotten: a commitment to your own children’s education doesn’t require defunding someone else’s,” writes The Rev. Ben Huelskamp.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Tim Henderson
Vaccine hesitancy fed by misinformation is causing new surges of measles and whooping cough, while COVID-19 hotspots persist in some states and a new threat looms from an Ebola outbreak in central Africa.
By Robbie Sequeira
Several states have enacted or considered laws to increase reporting of child neglect and abuse after high-profile deaths. In Ohio, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill to create Kei’Mani’s Law, requiring schools to appoint child protection liaisons.
By Shalina Chatlani
In at least four states, migrants detained in ICE facilities have launched hunger strikes in recent weeks to protest the conditions in which they are being held.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Piper Hutchinson, Louisiana Illuminator
Louisiana legislators gave their final approval Friday to a congressional redistricting bill that increases the state’s Republican representation in Congress, but litigation from both sides of the aisle is likely imminent.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Jonathan Shorman
President Trump’s extraordinary $1.776 billion fund to pay off allies who say they have been wronged by past administrations has drawn widespread condemnation by opponents, including Republicans, who characterize it as an act of brazen corruption.
By Jonathan Shorman
The U.S. Postal Service on Friday took its first major step to carry out President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, proposing a rule that would require states to submit lists of voters before mailing ballots.
By Ashley Murray
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi was on Capitol Hill Friday for a closed door interview with lawmakers about her role in the release of the federal investigation files of Jeffrey Epstein.
By Jennifer Shutt
Democratic Party leaders from a dozen states traveled to Washington, D.C., at the end of May to press for their voters to cast the first ballots in the next presidential primary.
CATCHING OUR EYE
Ohio law schools. Reuters reports, “Ohio proposal would limit ABA role in lawyer admissions.”
Ohio is poised to drop its requirement that lawyers graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, joining other Republican-led states amid a backlash to the ABA's law school oversight role under the Trump administration.
The Supreme Court of Ohio on Thursday said it has directed the court’s top administrator to develop Ohio’s own law school accreditation process and requested public comments, opens new tab on admissions rule changes that eliminate specific references to the ABA.The climate. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Climate activists march from southern Ohio to Columbus.”
About two dozen hikers trekked more than 100 miles north then west the last two weeks, ending their “Great Ohio Climate March” on Thursday morning under blue skies outside the Statehouse.
Under the sun, and through bouts of floodwater left by rain, Great Ohio Climate March thru-hikers journeyed from the Athens City Pool to Salt Fork State Park in Cambridge to downtown Columbus. Around 180 hikers from Ohio and elsewhere joined them for varying legs of the march. Third Act, a national environmentalist organization of activists who are 60 and older, led the event.Skin cancer vaccine? NPR reports, “A cancer vaccine made just for you. mRNA is back and it's fighting melanoma.”
At the time, mRNA technology was in the news because of the recently developed Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. This melanoma trial, which included 157 patients in Australia and the U.S., all of whom had surgery to remove their tumors, was set up to test whether the same mRNA technology could be used to create a personalized cancer vaccine, explains Dr. Janice Mehnert. Mehnert is a melanoma specialist and researcher at NYU Langone Health and senior author of a new paper published Monday analyzing the five-year results…
The results are striking. After five years of follow-up, 68.8% of patients who received the combination therapy remained cancer-free, she says, compared with 49.1% of patients who received Keytruda alone, which amounts to a 49% reduction in risk. "That's pretty exciting," Mehnert says.
In addition, 92% of patients who received the combination therapy were alive at the five-year mark, compared with 71% of those who only used Keytruda. "I think this is strong evidence that this therapy, when used in combination with immunotherapy, can demonstrably reduce the risk of dying from this disease," she says.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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