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!
Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor has racked up more than half a million dollars in credit card bills without disclosing what it’s purchasing. And the campaign’s credit card spending has jumped dramatically in recent months.
Ohio Republican nominee for governor Vivek Ramaswamy addressing supporters at his election night victory party in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)
By Nick Evans
Ohio campaign finance reports require campaigns to disclose each individual transaction — not just how much they spent but who they paid and what they purchased with the money. Ramaswamy’s campaign is only reporting its monthly credit card bill.
The loss of local news isn’t just making voters less informed, it makes taxpayers poorer, study says
By Marty Schladen
When local newspapers shut their doors and no reporters are there to watch school boards, city councils, and county commissioners, taxes go up, according to a new study.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
As Gov. Mike DeWine is being asked by voting rights groups to veto a new bill requiring a photo ID to cast an absentee ballot, Ohio’s secretary of state candidates differ on what they think he should do.
By Doug Livingston, The Marshall Project
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called on lawmakers to abolish the state's death penalty last week. Three weeks earlier, DeWine quietly granted clemency from the death penalty for Gregory Lott, a man with intellectual disabilities.
COMMENTARY
(Bill Chizek/iStock Images)
By Janice Ellis
As we pause to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we should take the time to evaluate her well-being. All is not well in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Robbie Sequeira
Four states enacted laws this year that weaken child labor protections, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. In all, 13 states had bills seeking to weaken those protections; some are still under consideration.
By Sofia Resnick
All 13 states that currently have abortion bans allow the procedure to protect the life of the pregnant woman. But patients and providers have argued in lawsuits that such exceptions are too ill defined to give doctors enough confidence to provide timely care.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Antoinette Grajeda, Arkansas Advocate
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review Arkansas’ limits on assistance for voters at the polls, a decision that advocates say further erodes the landmark 1965 law preventing discrimination against racial minorities at the ballot box.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Medill News Service
Of the 350,000 Haitian TPS holders in the U.S., about 200,000 are already in the workforce. Many send money home to support relatives in Haiti because ongoing violence and economic instability have left many families struggling.
By Ariana Figueroa
An appeals court Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to use fast-track deportations within the interior of the country and not just at the Southern border, a key pillar in the president’s mass deportation campaign.
WEDNESDAY WISDOM
“I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.”
-Leo Rosten
CATCHING OUR EYE
Americans losing healthcare. NBC News reports, “Medicaid and ACA enrollment falls by more than 5 million, new report finds.”
The number of people enrolled in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans fell by more than 5 million in the last 12 months, according to a new report from the advocacy group Protect Our Care.
The decline stems in part from President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill — which was signed into law last July — and the expiration of the enhanced ACA subsidies, the group says. The law includes nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years; the subsidies expired in December after Republicans declined to extend them, leading to double- to triple-digit premium increases for millions of people.Moral failure. NPR and WOSU’s Allie Vugrincic report, “Ohio's Catholic bishops call Trump administration's attempt to end TPS for Haitians a 'moral failure.’”
In a statement titled "America at 250: Freedom and the Common Good," The Catholic Conference of Ohio characterizes the Trump administration's termination of TPS as a "moral failure."
"We find no moral justification for terminating their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) without an alternative way to adjust their immigration status. The current conditions in Haiti, noted across a wide array of sources and first-hand accounts, including the U.S. State Department’s travel advisory, demonstrate that it is neither safe to return, nor reasonable to expect families not to desperately search for another option," the statement reads.Reflecting pool Ohio connection. Cleveland.com’s Sabrina Eaton reports, “The reflecting pool debacle has an Ohio connection, and it goes deeper than green water.”
A company tied to Youngstown-area businessman John J. Cafaro is under scrutiny after winning a no-bid federal contract to fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has since turned green with algae and shed patches of new blue paint.
The National Park Service gave a $1.7 million contract to Greenwater Services of Brookfield to install a water-purification system in the pool, bypassing the competitive bidding process normally required for federal work, The New York Times reports. The firm’s ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by Cafaro, who is a longtime Republican donor and a Mar-a-Lago neighbor of President Donald Trump’s in Florida.Drone on. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Jo Ingles reports, “Will DeWine let the 'drone bill' fly into law or will he ground it?”
One of the bills recently passed overwhelmingly by the Ohio Legislature is now awaiting Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature, but some people are urging him to veto it. The legislation (HB 251) establishes rules for how and when police agencies can use drones.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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