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 had the steepest decline in homeownership affordability between 2020 to 2025, according to new reporting from the National Housing Conference.
A For Sale sign on a home. (Photo by Grace Cary/Getty Images)
By Megan Henry
The number of occupations able to afford a typically priced home with a 10% down payment fell nearly 41% across Ohio’s metropolitan areas from 2020 to 2025, according to the second annual Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn’t Enough report.
By Marty Schladen
The No Kings coalition is sponsoring a string of local rallies in Central Ohio Saturday that will culminate in a big one at the Statehouse at 4:30 p.m. The purpose is to promote early voting in the Nov. 3 midterm election, democracy and election protection.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
An Ohio appellate court has ruled the state's "EdChoice" private school voucher program is unconstitutional. The program uses public taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition. The case will go to the Republican-controlled Ohio Supreme Court on appeal.
By Nick Evans
Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy touted his plans to cut taxes without, he says, sacrificing on schools and local services, during an appearance in Columbus on Wednesday. He also said he would bring back death penalty executions.
COMMENTARY
Voting location. (States Newsroom file photo)
By Steve David
As the 2026 midterms near, it’s clear that efforts to prop up long-debunked claims about the 2020 elections and lay the groundwork to undermine the 2026 election results will only grow louder. But Ohio voters can protect themselves and our elections.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Tim Henderson
Inflation grew to a 3.7% annual rate in September, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.4% in August. Spikes in energy prices were largely responsible: Gas is now up 34% for the year, and fuel oil is up 72% as the Iran war drags on.
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris and Anna Spoerre
In Idaho and Missouri, where voters will decide the future of abortion access on Nov. 3, campaigns are trying to reach a generation of young people dealing with rising living costs and skepticism toward politics.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Sarah Ladd
Some 80,000 Kentuckians have lost access to the food benefits known as SNAP because of federal changes to the program, Gov. Andy Beshear said in a letter sent to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Kentucky’s congressional delegation Wednesday.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Shauneen Miranda, Ariana Figueroa, Ashley Murray, and Jonathan Shorman
Democrats are touting an ambitious legislative agenda including healthcare, immigration, voting rights, the war in Iran, oversight, education and beyond, if they take back the U.S. House or Senate — or both — in November.
By Ariana Figueroa
President Donald Trump Thursday announced that the execution of a man convicted of the Fort Hood shooting will not be livestreamed, a reversal after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that Nidal Hasan’s death by firing squad would be public.
By Ariana Figueroa
U.S. ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection need to improve oversight and guidance for federal immigration officers’ use of body-worn cameras, according to a Wednesday report from independent federal investigators.
By States Newsroom Staff
The Social Security Administration announced on Wednesday that recipients will receive a 3.6% increase in benefits in 2027.
By Jonathan Shorman
The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding California not count ballots from voters it says are suspected noncitizens, a move by the Trump administration to apply last-minute pressure as voting begins in the midterm elections.
By Ashley Murray
The No Kings movement that has brought millions to the streets across the United States three times since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term is staging its next event at the polls.
SCIENCE FRIDAY
Researchers say they've developed a simple mathematical formula that can predict when certain ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots will "go rogue," suddenly switching from helpful responses to potentially harmful ones.
In a new study published Oct. 8 in the journal Patterns, physics professor Neil Johnson and doctoral student Frank Yingjie Huo, both at The George Washington University, show how the order in which a chatbot is given certain prompts can drastically reshape its answers, leading to "tipping points" that can send the chatbot down a rabbit hole of bad advice. However, Johnson and Huo say their formula can easily predict these tipping points.There have been horror stories of AI encouraging users into suicide, helping build lethal weapons, and amplifying violent or harmful points of view. At the same time, researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, respectively, have repeatedly and openly stated that they don't really understand why their creations behave the way they do. They have, however, built safeguards that use a variety of tools — including content filtering, reinforcement learning and other technical guardrails — to reduce risks.
But Johnson sees those tools as insufficient. "The safety measures now are the equivalent of strapping big, bouncy cushions under a plane," he told Live Science. "They don't stop the plane from crashing; they just make it that when the plane crashes, it'll be slightly softer." Read more from Livescience
CATCHING OUR EYE
Publicly funded stadiums. Cleveland Scene’s Mark Oprea reports, “Publicly Funded Stadiums Are Bad Business. Sports Economist J.C. Bradbury Says the Browns’ Brook Park Dome Won’t Be Any Different.”
A professor at Kennesaw State University, Bradbury is one of the nation’s leading researchers on publicly financed stadium and arena projects. And he’s just released his latest book, This One Will Be Different: False Promises and Fiscal Realities of Publicly Funded Stadiums, a 440-page dive into how sports teams time and again attract taxpayers dollars to pay for new stadiums that, decades later, never turn a profit or deliver on economic impact pledges.
We recently asked Bradbury, who visited Cleveland this summer to research the city’s stadiums, his thoughts on our own controversies in the world of sports infrastructure—from repair woes in the Gateway District, to the Haslams’ $800 million state subsidy for their Brook Park dome and mixed-use development project, to how Downtown Cleveland may fare when Huntington Bank Field is a mound of rubble in 2029. His take was pretty cynical: the Browns flight to the suburbs will pad their pockets and no one else’s.Ohio congressional races. Ideastream’s Ella Abbott reports, “What effect could Ohio's midcycle redistricting have on congressional races?”
Ohio underwent a midcycle redistricting last year that reshaped several of the state’s congressional districts.
While several states used their midcycle redistricting to draw stronger lines for Republicans across their states, David Cohen, a professor of political science at the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said Ohio took a much more balanced approach.No press allowed? WOSU’s George Shillcock reports, “Amy Acton campaigns at closed-door rally while Vivek Ramaswamy criticizes her at Columbus forum.”
While Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Dr. Amy Acton campaigned Wednesday at a closed door rally near Ohio State University's campus in Columbus, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, her opponent, criticized her at a community forum across town.
Acton paid to rent WOSU Public Media's Sandy and Andy Ross Community Studio for a campaign rally with Ohio State student supporters. Despite this, the campaign didn't allow WOSU reporters or other media outlets to cover the rally or ask Acton questions after it concluded.Ohio working class voters. Reuters’ reports, “Ohio's working-class voters rethink support for Trump and the Republican Party.”
A decade after Republican Donald Trump peeled away working-class and union voters who had long been a cornerstone of Democratic support in Ohio, Democrats and labor leaders see an opening to win back some of them in the November 3 US elections.
Now midway through his second term, the president's magic appears to be losing at least some of its luster with blue-collar men and women as rising prices, the Iran war and concerns about his rhetoric prompt some voters to reconsider their support.Trump’s ballroom. The Washington Post reports, “Secret documents reveal donors behind $330 million for Trump’s ballroom.”
A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member…
The list and other documents offer a panoramic view of a fundraising campaign that is extraordinary both for its size and opacity. Ordinary political giving requires public disclosure and is subject to campaign finance rules. The ballroom donations are collected by a nonprofit and then channeled to the government and into a White House account the president directly controls.
Independent experts and scholars have expressed alarm at the potential the arrangement has for influence buying and coerced giving.
The Post’s reporting does not establish a connection between the donation commitments and favorable actions by the Trump administration. But the documents show that the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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