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!
A panel of Ohio judges questioned the state's attorneys Tuesday about why taxpayers are footing the bill for private school tuition.
Photo from press pool video of the hearing.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
More than 300 public school districts are suing over the state’s private school voucher program, named EdChoice by lawmakers. It allows any family, regardless of income level, to get taxpayer dollars to attend nonpublic schools.
By Marty Schladen
A deadline for President Trump to get approval for his war from Congress has passed. Ohio's Republican U.S. senators blocked such votes but won't say why.
By Megan Henry
Petitioners who tried to get a hemp and marijuana referendum on Ohio’s November ballot are saying they either never got paid or only got partially paid for the signatures they collected.
COMMENTARY
Alabama state Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, brought a drawing of the first Black senators and representatives elected to the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States to the Senate County and Municipal Government Committee on May 7, 2026, in the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Photo by Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector.)
By Brian Lyman
The U.S. Supreme Court has boiled everything down in politics to a single question: Who stands for democracy, and who stands against it?
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Shalina Chatlani
An increasing number of Republican states are mandating that state and local social service providers verify and report the immigration status of the people they serve — in some cases threatening stiff penalties for public employees who fail to comply.
By Amanda Watford
A growing number of incarcerated people across the country now have access to free phone calls and other communication, a shift some advocates say is strengthening family connections, improving prison conditions, and easing reentry after release.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout
The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking to block the state’s new congressional district map, citing intentional racial discrimination and First Amendment retaliation against Black voters.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Ashley Murray
Both Ohio Republican U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted voted against limiting President Trump's war powers on Iran.
By Ashley Murray
The cost of the Iran war has increased to $29 billion to date, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in both chambers Tuesday.
By Jonathan Shorman
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s late April decision gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and sharply curtailing the use of race in redistricting, much of the legal fight over gerrymandering is moving to state courts.
By Ashley Murray
Kevin Warsh will officially take the lead at the Federal Reserve after U.S. senators voted Wednesday to confirm the economist and former central bank governor to replace Chair Jerome Powell.
By Jennifer Shutt
U.S. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is the latest member of Trump’s administration to leave this year. Anti-abortion organizations and some Republicans in Congress called for Trump to fire him over his record on access to medication abortion.
By Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa
Several Republican U.S. senators left a closed-door lunch with Secret Service Director Sean Curran on Tuesday saying they still have questions about how the agency would spend an additional $1 billion.
HISTORY THURSDAY"
“On this day (May 14) in 1932, nearly 100,000 people paraded down Fifth Avenue in New York City chanting “We want beer!” The demonstration, led by the city's mayor, was intended to show lawmakers just how strongly public sentiment had turned against Prohibition, which had made the manufacture, sale, import, or transport of alcohol illegal in the United States. Within a year, Americans could, legally, buy beer again.”
CATCHING OUR EYE
Data centers, wind, and solar. The Dayton Daily News’ Bryn Dippold reports, “Could wind and solar projects have fueled Ohio’s data center growth? Advocacy group says ‘yes’.”
There are 1,000 megawatts in 1 gigawatt 1 gigawatt can power approximately 800,000 homes, roughly the population of Seattle 1.2 gigawatts is roughly the output of a nuclear power plant A hyperscale data center, like the ones planned for communities in Ohio and drawing public opposition, can use more than 100 megawatts of energy Roughly 100 MW of electric power can support 80,000 U.S. households (for comparison, the city of Hamilton’s population is about 63,000)
A new report from the advocacy group Save Ohio Parks argues that wind and solar projects canceled in Ohio could have generated nearly enough electricity to meet the growing demand from data centers.Voter privacy. Cleveland.com’s Sabrina Eaton reports, “Ohio voter records sent to DOJ spark Democratic lawmakers’ concerns.”
Ohio’s Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Tuesday that demanded he explain what sensitive voter information he turned over to the federal government, what legal authority he relied on and what safeguards — if any — are in place to protect it from misuse.
The letter accuses LaRose of exposing nearly eight million Ohioans to “unnecessary risks, including misuse, unauthorized access, leaks, and identity theft, without any clear safeguards or accountability.”Radiation. WVXU’s Nick Swartsell reports, “Decades after UC radiation experiments, students and families call for better memorial.”
A UC radiologist named Eugene Saenger headed up a Department of Defense-funded project between 1960 and 1972, studying the effects of radiation on the human body.
It's unknown exactly how many people Saenger experimented on over the course of more than a decade. Records show it's at least 90.
Many participants thought they were undergoing treatment for their late-stage cancers when Saenger put them in a machine and exposed their bodies to high levels of radiation.Gun storage. NPR reports, “About 7 million kids live in a home with a loaded and unlocked gun, a study finds.”
An estimated 32 million children in the United States live in homes with firearms, nearly 7 million of whom have at least one firearm in the household that's unlocked and loaded. That's according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open.Cleveland cops. The Cleveland Scene’s Mark Oprea reports, “As Cleveland Seeks to End the Consent Decree, Do Residents Trust the Police?”
The city’s Police Accountability Team, as well as the federal monitor team and the Cleveland Community Police Commission, will soon each be surveying Clevelanders on that very question.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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