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 lawmakers kicked off hearings for a new data center committee Wednesday. Stakeholders from the industry, utility regulation, and state agencies shared their views on data centers’ impact on the cost of power, the environment, and the economy.
An aerial view shows a data center situated near single-family homes. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
By Nick Evans
Taken together, the speakers sought to downplay and displace concerns about the expansion of data centers around Ohio. Ohio is now home to more than 200 data centers, with another 77 planned by the year 2030.
By Reilly Ackermann
As election season kicks into full swing, a new poll of Ohio lawmakers shows an insider look at their predictions for the outcomes of the November midterm elections in Ohio.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers wants to know how private schools are using taxpayer dollars, but Republican leadership likely won't require the EdChoice program to have more transparency.
COMMENTARY
A voter shows identification to an election judge. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
By Marilou Johanek
Since when did the Ohio General Assembly become an arm of the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign for governor? Just asking, after the obviously coordinated spectacle last week between the billionaire and Republican lawmakers on a newly drafted resolution.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Kevin Hardy
Southern states are bracing for a potential invasion of the New World screwworm that could disrupt livestock markets and raise already high meat prices.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector
Alabama officials Wednesday filed an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to block a lower court’s order requiring the state to use a court-ordered congressional map in the 2026 midterm elections.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Jonathan Shorman
A federal judge on Thursday declined to block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding that it was too early to challenge the directive.
By Jennifer Shutt
A group of U.S. Senate Democrats has sent a letter to the head of the Congressional Budget Office, asking him to include outside projections for the cost of the Iran war in the agency’s official cost estimate.
By Ariana Figueroa
Following a dismissal of criminal charges the Trump administration lodged against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Maryland resident Thursday pressed a federal judge to prevent his removal to any country that is not Costa Rica.
SCIENCE FRIDAY
The million-dollar math problem hardly anyone is trying to solve
Ever since it was first published, in 1859, Bernhard Riemann’s conjecture about prime numbers has made every list of the most important unsolved mysteries in mathematics. In 1900 mathematician David Hilbert drafted a list of problems to be solved as a blueprint for 20th-century math, and one of them was Riemann’s hypothesis. But at the end of that century the still-open question warranted another wanted poster. In 2000 the Clay Mathematics Institute promised a million-dollar bounty to anyone who solved the Riemann hypothesis, making it one of its seven “Millennium Problems”—the 21st century’s own aspirational to-do list.
The Riemann hypothesis is a claim about a mathematical function so gnarly that for most numbers fed as its inputs, no one knows its exact output. Mathematicians are particularly interested in which numbers will lead to the value of this function being zero. Knowing these inputs would essentially give number theorists superpowers. In an instant they’d gain an unprecedented command of their rawest material, the prime numbers. They would be able to say precisely where all the prime numbers lie along the infinite number line. Turning the hypothesis into a theorem would have sweeping consequences across mathematics, including the math behind cryptography and even nuclear physics.
Read more about the intimidating legacy of the scariest problem in mathematics from Scientific American
CATCHING OUR EYE
Medicaid changes. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Karen Kasler reports, “Alleged fraud prompts long list of potential changes to Ohio Medicaid.”
Reports of a billion dollars in Medicaid fraud allegedly committed by home health care providers in Ohio have yet to be fully detailed and verified. But state lawmakers are already moving toward cracking down on holes they say scammers can use to exploit the system.
The Ohio House Medicaid Committee began a three-hour session by accepting changes to a Medicaid bill they were already considering.Short-term rentals. The Ohio Newsroom’s Kendall Crawford reports, “As short-term rentals expand, Ohio cities add new regulations.”
Short-term rental companies, like Airbnb and VRBO, have become mainstream for travellers.
And as the industry expands, some Ohio cities are weighing new regulations. The municipalities cite concerns over noisy parties, neighborhood disruptions and, in some cases, violent incidents. Shootings at rental properties have increased scrutiny on the industry in cities like Toledo and Liberty Township in southwest Ohio.Data centers. Ideastream’s Abbey Marshall reports, “Cleveland officials take harder stance on hyperscale data centers.”
Cleveland officials are taking a harder stance on hyperscale data centers after the city rejected a proposal for a 150 megawatt facility in Slavic Village earlier this month.
In an interview Wednesday at the City Club of Cleveland, Mayor Justin Bibb said hyperscale data centers "have no future" in dense city neighborhoods.Solar. Cincinnati Enquirer’s Anna Lynn Winfrey reports, “Ohio Supreme Court orders review of solar farm on Bill Gates' land.”
The Ohio Supreme Court has partially sided with local governments in Madison County in a legal dispute about a planned solar project on part of land owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
The majority of justices reversed a March 2024 decision from the Ohio Power Siting Board approving the 6,050-acre Oak Run Solar Project, saying that the board needs to more thoroughly consider the visual plan of the application.Weaponization of government? Cleveland.com’s Cliff Pinckard reports, “Justice Department investigating woman who won lawsuit accusing Trump of sexual assault.”
E. Jean Carroll, the woman who won a civil judgment in 2023 against President Trump accusing him of sexual assault, is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice over whether she committed perjury.
Carroll, 82, also won a defamation lawsuit against Trump. CNN reports the perjury investigation is focusing on her testimony in both lawsuits.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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