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 Legislative Black Caucus lawmakers railed against a potential constitutional amendment on voter photo ID and defended an Ohio voting-rights group whose offices were searched by the FBI, in a news conference this week commemorating Juneteenth.
Juneteenth flag. (Getty images)
By Siddarth Sivaraman
Juneteenth recognizes the final emancipation of enslaved African Americans on June 19, 1865, at the end of the Civil War. Former President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021.
By Megan Henry
Ohio voters will not have a chance to vote to ban data centers in the November election. Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind the proposed constitutional amendment, said they are now hoping to make the 2027 ballot.
By Susan Tebben
A new national study of childcare policies gave Ohio positive marks for efforts being made to increase payments and assistance, but still urged more work on the part of states and federal agencies.
COMMENTARY
Students and teachers pose outside a National Freedmen’s Bureau school in Beaufort, S.C., in 1865. (Corbis/Getty Images.)
By Rodney Coates
Today, Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. But the story for formerly enslaved people continued to unfold in complex ways well after Juneteenth, including when it came to their educational journeys.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Sofia Resnick
President Trump has taken aim at a federal poverty-fighting program focused on reducing unintended pregnancies. Instead of that, the focus of Title X will be “to strengthen family formation and assist clients in achieving healthy pregnancies.”
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
A survey of more than 3,800 people who gave birth in 2023 and 2024 found those using Medicaid described worse outcomes than those on private insurance, that access to care remains limited for some, and that women often feel unheard and disregarded.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Maya Homan and Alander Rocha, Georgia Recorder
Georgia Republicans abruptly changed course on redistricting Wednesday, retreating from their plans to redraw congressional and state district lines for the 2028 election less than an hour before lawmakers gaveled in for the special session.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Ashley Murray
The White House on Wednesday read to reporters a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran to stop the ongoing war and allow for further negotiations, but did not release the exact text.
By Jennifer Shutt
Senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee questioned President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency about staffing reductions and why the Trump administration seems to favor Republican states.
By Amelia Twyman
U.S. House and Senate Democrats, mostly from Western states, are demanding transparency from the Interior Department after media reports revealed the Trump administration redirected roughly $90 million in national parks fees to help fund renovations and upcoming celebratory displays in Washington, D.C.
By Sam Gauntt
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against a transgender healthcare nonprofit Wednesday, accusing it of misleading and coercing parents over gender-affirming treatment for their children.
SCIENCE FRIDAY
“Physicists recently wondered what would happen if you tried to split a photon — and they found some unexpected behavior that may transform the way we think about particles.
“The experiment, in which researchers simulated a photon being sliced by a shutter under various conditions, showed that a severed photon can lead to a complex mixture of zero to infinitely-many photons — raising some big questions about the nature of particle interactions.” Read more from Livescience
CATCHING OUR EYE
Equal rights amendment. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Jo Ingles reports, “Ohio group backing equal rights, same sex marriage amendments won't try for fall ballot.”
Backers of two amendments that would have allowed Ohioans to vote on repealing the ban on same-sex marriage and extending legal protections to women, LGBTQ+ and disabled people won’t be submitting petition signatures to get on the ballot this November.
Ohio Equal Rights co-chair Lis Regula wouldn't say how many petition signatures the group has gathered, but he said that’s not why the group decided to put off its ballot measures. “This was a strategy decision, not a numbers decision," Regula said.Shameless open public corruption. ProPublica reports, “The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.”
When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.
The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.
But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.
Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly.Defeat. The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire writes, “Trump in Defeat: The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened.”
President Trump lost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally.
The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite that, the president was so desperate for the war to end that he repeatedly backed off his threats—allowing Iran to call his bluff—and upbraided his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding to attacks in the region in a manner that jeopardized the negotiations.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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