With Ohio’s Haitian refugees losing their protected status Monday, Springfield’s large population has begun being terminated from their jobs, a pastor who works with the community said on Tuesday.

Without legal status, their work permits become invalid. They also face being forced to return to a nation that the International Rescue Committee says is “in the grip of an overwhelming humanitarian crisis.” 

Right now, gangs control Haiti. Kidnapping, murder, and rape are rampant. And the pastor, Carl Ruby, said one Springfield 12-year-old faces having to return to a place where he saw animals feeding on murdered corpses when he was just five.

“They’re just terrified for their physical safety,” Ruby said during a virtual press conference. “Many of them have already been traumatized… Some of them have been in prison. Some of them have been tortured. Some have been beaten. Some had been raped. Nearly all of them have seen friends or family members killed.”

And some of those families — those who have had children since coming to the United States — face an excruciating choice: whether to take their children with them into the violent chaos that is Haiti or leave them behind in a relatively peaceful, prosperous place where their children’s citizenship gives them the right to stay.

More than 330,000 Haitians have received temporary-protected status since an earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean country in 2010. Once in the United States, their status has been renewed as conditions in Haiti continued to deteriorate.

Early last year, Ohio’s then-Attorney General Dave Yost and 27 other Republican state AGs wrote a letter to the Trump administration stressing the word “temporary” in temporary protected status. 

They claimed without evidence that it was safe for some with protected status to return to those home countries and urged a review.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in November announced that she was terminating protected status for Haitians who had qualified, including about 45,000 in Ohio and roughly 15,000 in Springfield.

Lawyers for the Haitians sued, arguing that Noem had failed to follow the 1990 law creating temporary protected status. It requires that the government conduct a mandatory review of conditions in a group’s home country to certify that it’s safe to return before forcing them to go.

Lower courts blocked the termination. 

But in June, in a 6-3 ruling the U.S. Supreme Court reversed them, ruling that the TPS law itself barred most court challenges to the way its provisions were or were not applied.

The court didn’t bar constitutional challenges, however, and SCOTUS Blog on Tuesday reported that some of those are in the works.

But for Haitians in Ohio, that might seem a thin reed on which to lean. They and many others are bracing for a mass-deportation such as those conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in other regions.

Ruby, the Springfield pastor, said no such operation has happened yet. 

“It could happen as soon as this week,” he said. “What we’re hearing from other reporting is that they’re planning on deporting them directly back to Haiti. There have been cases in the community where they have been picked up one day. Sent to a detention center the next day. And on the third or the fourth day they’re back in Haiti. It’s obviously not safe for them to go there.” 

The pastor added that jobs and support services are almost nonexistent when deportees get to Haiti.

In addition to terror over what might happen in Haiti are worries about what’s next for Springfield.

Ruby said that he and his colleagues have been working for the past 18 months to build “a very large coalition of faith leaders not only here in Springfield, but across the state of Ohio and across the nation who will stand with us if we have anything like what took place in Minneapolis.”

He was referring to a mass-enforcement operation last winter in which masked ICE officers shot and killed two protestors, both of them citizens. Analysis of videos taken at the scene showed that neither protester posed the threat that Trump administration officials claimed after the shootings.

Ruby stressed that he and other faith leaders want any protests of ICE enforcement actions to be peaceful, and that protesters have to be ready for the possible consequences of civil disobedience, such as going to jail.

Gov. Mike DeWine has criticized some of his Republican colleagues for falsely demonizing Springfield’s Haitian immigrants. 

On Tuesday, his spokesman reiterated a statement DeWine issued last month when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling that effectively revoked their protected status.

“Today’s decision is a legal decision,” DeWine said. “As I have stated in the past, the policy to remove these individuals from this country is a mistake.”

DeWine later added, “The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles.”

Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, questioned whether DeWine would instruct the Ohio Highway Patrol not to assist ICE in enforcement operations. 

In the past, the Highway Patrol has worked with U.S. Border Patrol to apprehend undocumented immigrants, the American Immigration Council reports.

Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, didn’t answer directly when asked if the Highway Patrol would assist ICE with enforcement operations in Springfield.

Tramonte said DeWine could do more to help Haitians who suddenly find themselves without status.

“The governor might claim he is powerless to do anything in the face of federal agents invading our state to take our people, but here are two things he can do,” Tramonte said in a text message. 

“He can instruct the Highway Patrol not to assist ICE in the enforcement of civil immigration laws. That’s not their job and they shouldn’t have to get involved. He can also underscore the same point for local police who often seem to think they should be on the hunt for immigrants instead of focusing on crime.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Republican nominee for governor Vivek Ramaswamy in March said that consolidating Ohio’s public universities would make higher education better and more affordable.

The strong consensus of economists surveyed on the topic this month said such a move would reduce the number of graduates in Ohio and reduce economic output. They split on whether it would even save any money.

Amid a backlash, Ramaswamy is now backing away from his call. 

“I think that we have too many duplicative programs in our universities,” Ramaswamy told a Strongsville audience earlier this month, according to Cleveland’s WEWS. 

He later added, “I want every region to have the best higher education institutions available for people in (every) region. But not every university needs to offer every program.”

Ramaswamy said something quite different  in a March 27 column in The Columbus Dispatch. He cited Ohio’s aging population and declining enrollment, and referred approvingly to the fact that Georgia eliminated nine public universities between 2011 and 2018.

He wrote that as governor, he would “identify where missions overlap, where enrollment collapse has made independence untenable, and where administrative functions can be unified without harming students.”

The result, he said, would “create a more competitive, increasingly affordable and rightsized higher education system for taxpayers and students.”

A panel of Ohio economists surveyed by Scioto Analysis wasn’t sold on the argument. None believed it would help the Ohio economy in the long run.

Asked whether they agreed that, “Reducing the number of universities in Ohio would reduce long-term economic output in the state of Ohio,” 11 agreed and four were uncertain. 

None said they thought cutting the number of public universities would increase economic output.

Most of them work for public universities, so a little bias in their favor might be inherent. But Kevin Egan of the University of Toledo made a straightforward argument for why cutting public universities cuts economic output.

“On average college graduates earn more reflecting their extra value to the economy,” he wrote in the comment section of the survey. “Closing any local public university will reduce some local commuters from attending college and thus will reduce valuable workers to the economy in the long-term.”

On the other hand, Curtis Reynolds of Kent State University said the economic benefit of public colleges in Ohio might be blunted because Ohio’s leadership doesn’t do a better job of making the state attractive to young professionals.

“I am less confident about this for one simple reason: Ohio struggles to keep the college graduates that we create,” he wrote. “If the state cannot keep college graduates, then producing college graduates may matter less (from the perspective of the state).”

Reynolds didn’t mention the issue, but when CNBC earlier this month ranked Ohio its Top State for Business, it ranked it 18th for quality of life. And one thing it could have dinged Ohio on is an abortion ban passed by Republicans in the state’s gerrymandered legislature. It was later overturned by voters, but legislative Republicans continue to try to restrict abortion rights.

“And with surveys showing a sizable percentage of younger workers would not live in a state that bans abortion, we factor reproductive rights in this category as well,” CNBC said of its quality-of-life scoring.

The Ohio economists overwhelmingly agreed that getting rid of public universities would cut the portion of Ohioans who get college degrees. Twelve said it would and two were uncertain.

“It will reduce the number of bachelor’s degrees and eventually reduce the number of graduate degrees as well,” said Charles Kroncke of Mount St. Joseph University.

Ramaswamy was famously part of incoming President Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” before making an early departure.

Run by Elon Musk, another billionaire with no government experience, DOGE promised to cut waste and save taxpayers $2 trillion. 

The ramshackle effort caused widespread chaos and fired people who often had to be rehired. It saved vastly less than promised — and by some estimates, it even ended up costing taxpayers billions.

While Ramaswamy said his college-consolidation plan would save Ohioans money, the economists didn’t seem to believe the matter was so clear-cut.

Six said it would save money, six said it wouldn’t and two were uncertain.

Even some of the economists who said consolidation would save money questioned the wisdom of doing so.

“It would save money for the state in the short run but would be penny wise and pound foolish in the long run,” said Bob Gitter of Ohio Wesleyan University. “Education is one of the primary functions of government.”

Originally publishe by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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A federal judge sitting in Cincinnati, Ohio on Friday ruled that federal authorities are making illegal immigration arrests. Then she dismissed a case seeking to stop the practice. 

U.S. District Judge Sarah D. Morrison, a 2018 Trump appointee, ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had made many arrests in Ohio that “deeply trouble the Court.” They were illegal, she said, because they were made without a warrant and without making a determination that a person would flee before a warrant could be obtained.

One federal official “testified that almost all of his agency’s arrests are warrantless,” the judge’s order said.

Then she dismissed the case because she said the plaintiffs didn’t do an adequate job of showing the Trump administration is likely to keep making such arrests. She made the ruling even as ICE insists it doesn’t need warrants.

Groups defending the immigrants who brought the case were not pleased.

“The opinion from the court confirms what we already knew: ICE violated the law and arrested our clients illegally,” said Angela Plummer, executive director of Community and Refugee Immigration Services, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs. 

“Unfortunately, we are living in a world where documented human rights violations alone are insufficient to compel court action to stop them.”

The case was brought in March by four people who argued warrantless immigration arrests were so common that the case should be a class action and include all similarly situated people.

As the Trump administration tries to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day, critics say it’s run roughshod over due process, sweeping up people who are here legally and even some citizens.

In her ruling, Judge Morrison agreed with the plaintiffs that before making arrests, ICE agents need to have both probable cause to believe a person is in violation of immigration law and is likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained.

“Upon a fulsome review of the record in this case, it is clear that (ICE agents) have, in some instances, unlawfully arrested and detained non-citizens in Ohio without a warrant and without a probable cause determination of their likelihood of escape,” Morrison’s ruling said. “Some of the accounts offered by Plaintiffs and (the class) they wish to represent about how individual agents effectuated arrests deeply trouble the Court.”

One of the plaintiffs in the case was Moises Javier Aguilar Peralta, 38, who came to Ohio from Honduras in 2023, sought asylum and got a work permit, Social Security number, and a driver’s license. 

On Dec. 18, as he walked out of a Columbus Home Depot with materials he needed for work, four masked men in civilian clothes stopped him. When he told them he had an active asylum case, the agents told him it wasn’t valid and arrested him, the suit said.

They didn’t ask him any questions to determine the legality of his presence in the country or to determine if he was a flight risk, it said.

As with the other plaintiffs, Peralta was held — and unable to support his family — for weeks and lived in a state of terror after his release, his lawyers said.

As of late March, around 670 immigrants in Ohio were in ICE detention.

“Countless of these individuals were arrested and detained without a warrant and without any pre-arrest, individualized determination of probable cause,” the plaintiffs said.

They asked Morrison to certify the case as a class action and order the government to stop making improper warrantless arrests. 

Judge Morrison rejected the request, saying the four original plaintiffs didn’t adequately show they were likely to be re-arrested. But if the class were certified, re-arrests among that much-larger group would have been much more likely.

Morrison acknowledged the pressure Trump is putting on ICE to make thousands of arrests a day. She also heard from U.S. Border Patrol Acting Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge Steven Vorholt.

“Agent Vorholt, a supervisor who oversees and evaluates the field operations of USBP agents and their supervisors, testified that almost all of his agency’s arrests are warrantless,” Judge Morrison wrote.

In addition, she acknowledged that other courts have found that federal agents are making illegal, warrantless immigration arrests. 

And ICE’s own website flatly says its agents don’t need warrants to arrest people they believe are in violation of immigration law.

“ICE does not need judicial warrants to make arrests,” it says. “Like all other law enforcement officers, ICE officers and agents can initiate consensual encounters and speak with people, briefly detain aliens when they have reasonable suspicion that the aliens are illegally present in the United States, and arrest people they believe are illegal aliens.”

Even so, Judge Morrison said the plaintiffs fell short because they didn’t show federal immigration arrests are always warrantless or that the agencies have a written policy to act illegally. She cited internal documents saying agents needed to get warrants in cases where escape wasn’t imminent.

“In this case, Plaintiffs have not shown that all of Defendants’ agents always make warrantless arrests without determining the non-citizen arrestee’s likelihood of escape,” she wrote. 

“Nor have Plaintiffs shown that either ICE or CBP adopted a written policy of unlawful conduct. Although the Court finds that Plaintiffs have shown for jurisdictional purposes that Defendants authorized their agents, through an unofficial custom or practice, to make unlawful warrantless arrests in Ohio, Plaintiffs have not convinced the Court that Defendants are sufficiently likely to subject them to another arrest under that practice.”

Freda Levinson, the chief legal officer of ACLU of Ohio, found a partial victory in the ruling.

“This ruling is deeply disappointing and frustrating, but it also recognizes that federal agents are wantonly conducting haphazard arrests in clear violation of the dictates and the Immigration and Nationality Act,” she said in a written statement.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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When CNBC last week announced it had rated Ohio this year’s “Top State for Business,” Republican leaders said it was proof that their economic policies were working for Ohioans. But that’s not what the rating was meant to assess, said a journalist who helped produce it. 

Nor was the ranking an evaluation of which state had attracted the most high-quality jobs. It was something less concrete: a measure of which states were best positioned according to the criteria on which states market themselves.

For their part, critics said the rankings don’t pay proper attention to the severe financial difficulties in which millions of now Ohioans find themselves.

Big Party

Last Thursday, Ohio Republicans were triumphal about the top ranking.

The CNBC broadcast segment started with Ohio State football legend Archie Griffin declaring, “We have a winning team in Ohio, both on and off the field.” 

It cut to a celebration at the Boathouse at Columbus’s Confluence Park, replete with drone shots of Ohio State cheerleaders and an interview with Gov. Mike DeWine.

Of the many press releases that went out, Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman issued one crediting policies enacted since the start of the GOP’s total legislative and executive rule in 2011.

“I want to congratulate the many members of the Ohio General Assembly who have supported legislation over the last 15 years that led to this accomplishment,” Huffman said in a written statement. 

He went on, “Through responsible policies and investments, including the elimination of Ohio’s estate tax, flattening the personal income tax, business income deductions, regulatory reform, free market energy creation, substantial support for vocational training, tools for state and local economic development, and much more, we have continued to make Ohio the best place to live, work, raise a family, and do business.”

However, the think tank Policy Matters Ohio has said that many of those and other changes since 2005 have favored corporations and the wealthy while cutting $17 billion in state tax revenue. 

Critics said that leaves huge numbers of moderate-income Ohioans facing an affordability crisis with less support from the state — and shouldering more of the burden to pay for services that remain.

“Ohio’s No. 1 ranking may be good news for businesses, but it doesn’t reflect the reality that many of the most common jobs in the state pay too little for even a single person to get by — and far too little to raise a family,” Policy Matters Executive Director Hannah Halbert said in a written statement. “Ohioans still struggle with unaffordable childcare, gaps in health coverage, and wages that have not kept pace with inflation.”

Method and Metrics

The stark disagreement over the benefits of GOP economic policies raises an obvious question: When CNBC rated Ohio best for business, what was it seeking to measure?

“We’re looking at this through the lens of somebody who is selecting a site, whatever it is, a plant or a data center, how they’re making their decisions,” Scott Cohn, the CNBC reporter who covered the story, said in an interview. “That’s how this all began back in 2007 — why are companies choosing this state over that state?”

But when the CNBC team did its evaluation, it didn’t attempt an entirely objective look at which states were best for business. Rather, it based its analysis on how states were promoting themselves. 

The study determined what states’ economic-development arms collectively mentioned most in materials promoting their states. Then it sought to measure which states did best in providing those things. 

Year by year, states change how they promote themselves to businesses. The CNBC study assesses the pitches of all 50 states each year to decide what weight to give to each of the 10 criteria on which it ranks individual states.

This year, the top category was infrastructure — adequate roads, bridges, electricity, and “shovel ready” sites on which to build. And, in addition to available water, a major factor in Ohio’s success wasn’t the consequence of any government policy, it was an accident of geography.

“We go through and see how the states are marketing themselves,” Cohn said. “We’re going to their websites and tallying up what they’re mentioning the most, the things that we lump into the category of infrastructure. 

“So for example — and this really helps Ohio — almost every state… says ‘We have X amount of population within a day’s drive. Well, you can measure that, and Ohio has the most. Ohio has 143 million people within a day’s drive, more than any other state. So it gets some points for that within the category of infrastructure.”

Conversely, the rankings de-emphasize other criteria not because they’re unimportant to businesses, but because state marketing materials don’t make a big deal out of them. 

For example, a top-notch public-education system is clearly important to businesses in at least two ways: It trains their future workforce and it’s a big selling point for firms trying to attract talent.

Yet when CNBC weighted its 10 criteria, education was second-to-last, receiving only 4% of the overall ranking. 

“We look at what the states are talking about,” Cohn said. “For whatever reason, some states talk about (education) a lot, and a lot of states talk about, ‘We have a great university system.’ That counts toward a state’s weight. But it’s not what the states are saying in aggregate.”

Whack-a-Mole

Cohn explained that good or bad performance on certain criteria can have the opposite effect on others.

“It’s kind of like a game of whack-a-mole, you can lower the business cost,” he said. “That’s great for businesses, but in the process you’re lowering wage costs and you’re doing all sorts of things that affect individuals. And if you have an affordability issue with individuals, well maybe you’re going to have a problem with workforce.”

As Cohn pointed out to DeWine during their interview, Ohio ranks poorly for workforce — 35th. 

“It’s a glaring weak spot,” Cohn told the governor. “Not just because the workers are not here, but because they’re not coming and many are leaving.”

In addition, because weighting depends solely on what states’ marketers think is important, many Ohioans — and maybe some businesses — could disagree with their priorities.

For example, Ohio ranked No. 1 for its low cost of doing business, which as the fifth-highest criterion, made up 11.4% of the ranking. 

Low wages helped Ohio in that regard, but Cohn explained that they hurt states in the cost-of-living category.

“Lower wage costs counts toward the cost of doing business, but maybe it comes back to bite them on cost of living,” he said.

However, because state marketers don’t emphasize it, an affordable cost of living ranked dead last, making up just 2% of the state’s overall rating.

In other words, the rankings don’t say there’s no affordability crisis in Ohio. They say that as a group, state economic marketers don’t consider that a priority when they’re selling their states.

Who Wins?

So do the rankings vindicate or repudiate the economic policies Ohio Republicans have implemented since 2011?

“Neither,” Cohn said. “We gather up the data through the lens that I told you about — looking at where is a company going to locate. And if what everybody wants in their politicians is the party that’s going to attract the most business — and that’s a perfectly valid thing to want — then this says a lot about what Ohio is doing in that regard.”

But, he added, “If they’re looking for areas where the state doesn’t do as well, it speaks for itself. It’s not the best state for education. It’s not the top state for workforce. It’s not the top state for quality of life. It’s not bad, but it’s not anywhere near the top. It’s a study of the top states for business. It’s not a study of the top states for workers. But there are areas in there that you can look to, like quality of life or whatever else.”

The November midterm elections are approaching. And Ohio Democrats said that if Republicans want to use the CNBC ranking to say the economy is good for average Ohioans, they’re ignoring reality.

U.S. Sen. “Jon Husted and Ohio Republicans are bragging about the economy while hardworking Ohioans are struggling more than ever,” Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Tony Wen said in an email. “Under their leadership, inflation is up, gas prices have skyrocketed, and more than 160,000 Ohioans have lost their healthcare — but Husted still thinks everything is great. Ohioans know better, and they’ll hold him accountable in November.”

For his part, Husted took to X to tout the CNBC ranking. 

“This did not happen by accident—it has been decades of focus,” he wrote. “We’ve cut taxes, eliminated three business taxes, and invested in infrastructure and our workforce. We also made Ohio the easiest and lowest cost state to do business.”

Asked for a response to Wen’s criticism, Husted Communications Director Amy Natoce didn’t answer — other than to attempt to attack the credibility of the Ohio Capital Journal.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Ohio is the state that saw the biggest drop in enrollment in health plans under the Affordable Care Act, according to federal data first reported by the Associated Press. 

The losses come after the Republican-controlled Congress last year allowed pandemic-era subsidies to buy insurance on ACA exchanges to expire. That caused premiums to double for most of the 25.2 million Americans who got their insurance there.

After the subsidies expired, national enrollment dropped by 2.6 million in February 2026 when compared to February 2025, the AP reported. That’s about a 10% drop.

In Ohio, the losses went much deeper. 

Enrollment dropped from just under half a million in February 2025 to 336,000 four months ago. That’s a loss of nearly a third of enrollees, 32.4% or 161,385 people.

Oklahoma, the state with the next-highest losses, saw a decrease of 32.3%.

Among neighboring states, Michigan and Indiana also saw big losses of more than 25%. Meanwhile, Kentucky and West Virginia lost 14.3% and 13.1%, respectively. 

Pennsylvania lost just 1.2% of its enrollees. 

Congressional Republicans — including Ohio’s senators — allowed the subsidies to expire months after voting in favor of President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

The legislation kept Trump’s 2017 tax cuts from expiring. That provision is estimated to have created a $1 trillion windfall over 10 years for the richest 1% of Americans while the law cut a similar amount from Medicaid and nutrition assistance.

During his first term, Trump tried repeatedly to repeal the ACA — or Obamacare — but he was unsuccessful. However, the provisions in Trump’s 2025 spending bill have diminished former President Barack Obama’s signature program.

Simply dropping coverage purchased on Obamacare exchanges doesn’t mean people didn’t get it elsewhere, but some are likely to become uninsured. 

The subsidies helped bring down the share of uninsured Americans to its lowest level ever. With them expiring Dec. 31 and with the Trump bill’s Medicaid cuts, it’s reasonable to assume that the portion of Ohioans who lack health insurance is going to go up substantially this year, said Natasha Murphy, health policy director at the Center for American Progress.

“While it’s still too early to quantify the full increase in the uninsured population for 2026, the direction is becoming increasingly clear,” Murphy said in an email. “Early marketplace enrollment data already show coverage declines, and the combination of the loss of enhanced premium tax credits and other recent federal policy changes is making health insurance harder to afford, leaving many families without a realistic alternative.”

The cuts to Medicaid are also leading some insurers to exit states that expanded eligibility to include Americans making 138% or less of federal poverty guidelines. For example, the Arkansas Advocate on Monday reported that Centene — the largest provider of Medicaid managed care in the United States — was exiting that state’s Medicaid program.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission

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Average Ohio residential utility bills are now projected to be about $800 for the summer, a new report says. That’s a 17% increase over the $682 Ohioans paid last summer, said the report, by Washington, D.C.-based Third Way.

The estimates are of total average electricity costs from June to September. They were done using data from Heatmap News, which collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the Electricity Price Hub.

“The United States is currently experiencing record energy demand driven by data center growth, domestic manufacturing, and electrification,” the report said. “And we simply aren’t bringing on new energy quickly enough or in large enough quantities to affordably meet rising demand.” 

The estimated increase in Ohioans’ electricity bills comes after a big jump last year. Between May and July 2025, they saw a 108% spike, the report said.

There are other estimates saying that this summer’s increases will be lower — about 7.5% over last year. However, the Third Way report said that Heatmap data show the average Ohioan’s May 2026 bills were 14% higher than in 2025.

“If costs increase at a similar rate as last year, July bills will be around $238,” the report said. “And total electricity bills for summer 2026 could exceed $780.”

That puts Ohioans and other Americans in a financial bind.

“The affordability challenge is growing,” said the National Energy Assistance Directors Association and the Center for Poverty, Energy and Climate. “One in six American households is behind on its utility bills, utilities disconnected electric service approximately 13.5 million times in 2024, and nearly 40 percent of households earning less than $50,000 report difficulty paying energy bills.”  

In Ohio, electricity increases can be particularly galling, given that consumers were forced to pay hundreds of millions in subsidies over the last several years as a result of what was likely the biggest bribery and money-laundering conspiracy in state history.

In addition, Ohio utilities have been allowed to keep more than $1 billion in rate increasesthe state regulator allowed, but the state Supreme Court later declared to be illegal.

And Ohioans last month learned that former Gov. John Kasich gave corporate giants like Google, Amazon, and Meta 40-year tax breaks worth billions to build electricity-sucking data centers. 

Third Way said more generation is needed. It faulted the Trump administration for blocking obvious solutions to the problem.

“To grow domestic energy generation and mitigate the impact of rising electricity demand, increasing clean energy deployment is a natural next step,” the report said. 

“Clean energy sources like wind, solar, and batteries take less time to build and aren’t subject to the same kind of supply chain shortages and price fluctuations that plague natural gas. But the Trump Administration has stymied clean energy deployment by undermining financing for clean energy, imposing administrative roadblocks that delay project reviews, and formally deprioritizing low-cost resources like solar and wind in federal directives.”

At the same time, the Trump administration is putting up federal funds to prop up aging coal-fired plants in Ohio — including one that just lost subsidies that were created by the corrupt 2019 utility bailout.

Francesca Hsie, Deputy Director of Electricity for Third Way, said Trump’s approach is only increasing Ohioans’ electric bills.

“Ohioans are staring down electricity bills that could cost more than $800 this summer,” she said in an email. 

“Instead of working to lower those costs, the Trump administration is attacking the very clean energy generation that could help meet the state’s record electricity demand and forcing aging coal plants to stay open long after their scheduled closure.”

She added, “That’s the opposite of an affordability strategy — it will make Ohioan’s energy bills higher long into the future. At a time when families across Ohio and the U.S. are struggling with rising costs, federal, state, and local governments must work together to lower electricity prices by expanding clean energy and modernizing our grid.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Both candidates for Ohio attorney general are calling for more transparency from a controversial economic-development agency. The comments come after one of them filed an ethics complaint against the lobbyist who also chairs the board of the agency, JobsOhio.

The chairman, Josh Rubin, is also CEO of CJR Group, which counts American Electric Power among its clients. In his role with JobsOhio, the complaint says, he could be in a position to steer millions in what used to be public dollars to the massive utility.

“This calls into question whether Mr. Rubin has used his position as the board director of JobsOhio to create a fund for the benefit of his firm’s lobbying client, AEP,” the complaint filed last week by Democratic Ohio attorney general candidate John Kulewicz says. “This is a serious apparent conflict of interest.”

He was referring to a $100 million fund that would aid the creation of small-modular nuclear reactors. AEP is already exploring construction of such plants in Indiana and Virginia.

JobsOhio spokesman Matt Englehart said that his agency had not yet signed any agreements to disburse the funds. 

Rubin didn’t respond to a call requesting comment.

A spokeswoman for AEP said that its regulated business is prohibited by state law from owning generation assets, but a bill in the legislature would change that, allowing it to build nuclear generation and charge customers for for the cost.

JobsOhio has stirred controversy since former Ohio Gov. John Kasich helped lead its creation in 2011. AEP has stirred it more recently.

JobsOhio describes itself as a “a private nonprofit corporation wholly funded by an independent private source.”

However, it was created by the legislature and was given the sole opportunity to lease the state liquor franchise for much less than it was worth. It has since provided more than $1 billion in what at least used to be public money as incentives to businesses, but it has struggled to show that it’s produced significant results.

Even so, Gov. Mike DeWine last year extended JobsOhio’s lease of the liquor franchise to 2053, without making it return any more money to taxpayers.

And almost since its beginning, the agency has been accused of conflicts of interest and other cozy arrangements.

In 2014, the Ohio Ethics Commission notified two Marathon Petroleum Corp. executives who also sat on the JobsOhio board that they had potential conflicts because Marathon was receiving benefits from JobsOhio.

Other board members’ ties to corporations enjoying JobsOhio largesse have included Sherwin-Williams, Bob Evans, Procter & Gamble, and Manta Media.

Then in 2024 came news that JobsOhio granted more than $2 million in economic incentives to a company run by a man who also heads up a regional entity created by JobsOhio. 

Most recently, the public learned in March that JobsOhio gave $60,000 to a woman with whom then-Ohio State President Ted Carter had an “inappropriate relationship.”

She was paid to produce four podcasts, but only one was made.

Exempt from open-records law, JobsOhio refused to say whether it had underwritten any podcasts other than one by a special friend of the president of Ohio’s flagship university. Carter resigned over the relationship.

Kulewicz, the Democratic AG candidate, told Ohio Inspector General Randall Meyer that Rubin’s dual status as chairman of the JobsOhio board and lobbyist for AEP might raise the appearance of a conflict.

“In effect, JobsOhio, using Ohio liquor profits, is paying AEP to develop mini-nuclear reactors that will have little to no local oversight and be owned by the utility company itself,” Kulewicz said in a written statement. “And the CEO of the firm that lobbies for AEP is the chairman of the state agency that is granting the $100 million to develop the technology.”

Englehart, the JobsOhio press secretary, said no money for reactors has been released. He added that his agency has rules to avoid ethical conflicts.

“JobsOhio and its board of directors conduct themselves to the highest ethical standards,” Englehart said in an email. “We don’t discuss the companies we are in conversations with. Any board member with an actual or possible conflict of interest on specific grant or loan proposals for a company must disclose it and it and will recuse themselves from discussions and voting on such proposal.”

Ohio Auditor Keith Faber, the Republican candidate for attorney general, said that JobsOhio should be more transparent. 

“I’ve been a consistent proponent of sunshine in government throughout my career,” Faber said in an email. “I’ve called for more transparency at JobsOhio specifically, but that must be tempered by its structure and purpose. The General Assembly created JobsOhio as a public/private partnership, and that comes with limitations.”

And while AEP said that state law doesn’t allow its regulated business from owning generating capacity, President and CEO Bill Fehrman in May told shareholders it was interested in doing so in some capacity.

“… we continue to evaluate nuclear solutions, aiming to position AEP at the forefront of next generation baseload technologies,” he said. “As we have previously mentioned, we are actively reviewing several potential sites and interconnection locations as we assess how nuclear can play a meaningful role in the future to support load growth.”

With a bill in the legislature to change ownership rules and with JobsOhio creating a $100 million fund to subsidize the business, AEP might be interested in getting some of that money.

Asked if Rubin has a conflict in his roles as chairman of the JobsOhio board and CEO of a lobbying firm that works for American Electric Power, AEP spokeswoman Tammy Ridout said Rubin didn’t work directly on her company’s account.

“Two members of CJR Group, not Josh Rubin, work with that regulated side of the business,” Ridout said in an email.

As CEO and founder of CJR Group, Rubin is likely to share in any profits the firm receives from its business with AEP.

The utility has stirred controversy of its own.

It paid more than $900,000 through a 501(c)(4) dark-money group to support a ratepayer-financed bailout that has been called one of the the biggest bribery scandals in Ohio history. AEP wasn’t accused of criminality, but it received well over $200 million from the bailout.

In addition, the politician at the center of the scandal, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for his involvement.

Just after the bailout passed in 2019, AEP funneled another $500,000 through the same dark-money group to fund a plan that could have kept Householder in the speaker’s chair well into the 2030s, witnesses testified at his trial.

Earlier this year, with Ohioans’ electricity bills spiking, AEP generated more controversy when the Energy and Policy Institute reported that CEO Fehrman will receive $37 million this year — making him by far the highest-paid utility executive in the United States.

Ridout said her company objects to the notion that AEP might put the interests of its executives and shareholders ahead of those of its customers.

“Any suggestion that we would pursue actions contrary to the best interests of our customers is categorically false,” she said. “Putting our customers first and operating with integrity are our top priorities, and we take issue with any implication to the contrary.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post Ohio Attorney General Candidates Call for More Transparency From JobsOhio After Ethics Complaint appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

An Ohio voting-rights group is insisting it did nothing to justify the “swarms” of FBI agents who fanned out across the state on June 12, searching offices and visiting the homes of employees and volunteers with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

Meanwhile, the FBI hasn’t given any public hint of its reasons for the action or shown that they were justified.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Rev. Michael Harrison Sr., chairman of the collaborative’s board, said in an interview on MS Now. “In the midst of having done nothing wrong, there’s nothing to find, and there are no charges to be filed.”

The collaborative says it has registered more than 600,000 Ohioans to vote. It focuses particularly on traditionally disempowered groups. Its leader said the FBI effort didn’t come as a complete surprise.

“Whenever you’re doing the right thing, there will always be pushback,” he said during the MS Now interview. “Whenever you’re providing opportunity for the marginalized or left out, there will always be some level of pushback.” 

He added, “We were actually kind of prepared for it because we understood clearly that whenever you decide you’re going to register people that others don’t want to be registered and you’re getting people involved in the process of equality… Yeah, something had to happen.”

During the interview, host Jacob Soboroff repeatedly said more than 100 agents were involved in the statewide sweep. And in a public statement, the organizing collaborative said “swarms” of agents acted that day.

Since it took place, the FBI hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment.

Numerous outside groups have decried the action as an attempt by a politicized FBI to intimidate marginalized communities and organizations that are helping them register in an election year.

In its first public statement about the matter, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative said much the same thing.

“The targeting of (the collaborative) is the latest effort from those in power to silence individuals and organizations they disagree with,” it said. “Even for groups that have done nothing wrong, the intrusive investigative process is the punishment. They want to scare people from volunteering, donating, and participating in our democracy. We won’t let them win.”

It added that the federal action was, in essence, a continuation of efforts in Ohio in recent years that have made it progressively harder to vote. 

The state’s Republican leadership has justified the new rules by saying they fight widespread voter fraud. But data show that such fraud is vanishingly rare in Ohio. 

“For years, certain politicians in Ohio have tried to make it harder for people to vote,” the statement by the collaborative said. “As part of that effort, they targeted voter registration programs, including (the organizing collaborative) and its partners. Time and again, our programs stood up to scrutiny. Now, in a broader campaign to undermine our democracy, the federal government is attempting to interfere with Ohio’s elections by manufacturing conspiracy theories.”

In his MS Now interview, Harrison said that far from intimidating the organizing collaborative, the FBI’s actions have motivated it to work even harder.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post Ohio Voter Rights Group Denies Any Wrongdoing While FBI Stays Silent on ‘Swarms’ Across State appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

FBI agents last week conducted a statewide sweep targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group that promotes voting rights — particularly those of historically disenfranchised groups. 

Condemnations by other rights groups of the searches and seizures continue to flood in. They accuse the Trump administration of trying to suppress voter-registration efforts.

Federal law-enforcement hasn’t given any on-the-record explanation of its actions or produced any legal documents justifying them. 

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative has mostly been mum as well. And federal search warrants often remain under seal while any investigation is ongoing, meaning court documents explaining the suspicions behind the searches are not right now publicly available.

Last Thursday, agents searched a Cleveland office used by the collaborative and fanned out to question people associated with the group. In some cases they seized laptops and cell phones, multiple news organizations reported.

The actions raised suspicion among voter rights advocates because it’s election season and the group that was searched helps people to register to vote. The organizing collaborative focuses its efforts on communities of color and people with low incomes.

The organizing collaborative also joined the Brennan Center for Justice in a 2021 lawsuit against the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission in an attempt to end the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. 

While voter rights groups have alleged the searches were politically motivated, law enforcement officials have not made any public statement justifying the searches and seizures. 

The FBI field office in Cleveland and headquarters in Washington, D.C., haven’t responded to requests for comment. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Ohio responded, but it didn’t say much.

“Thank you for reaching out, but the USAO is unable to provide more information,” a spokeswoman, Jessica Salas Novak, said in an email Tuesday.

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine was asked about the FBI search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative during an unrelated press conference on Tuesday.  

“Don’t know enough about it,” DeWine said, declining to comment further.

Rob Weiner, voting rights director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the second Trump administration has repeatedly used the Justice Department to go after Trump’s perceived enemies.

“The FBI and Justice Department are unfortunately establishing a track record of using law enforcement power against political opponents,” Weiner said. 

“They’ve done this with indictments” including those of former FBI Director James Comey, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted the Trump Organization for civil fraud. 

Weiner said other actions by the Trump Justice Department also make the Ohio searches and seizures suspicious.

It seized “voting records in Fulton County, Ga., based on ridiculous theories about the 2020 election,” he said.

“So when the FBI goes into a voting-rights organization that registers to vote people of color or who are low-income it looks like an effort to suppress the organization’s activities. It makes people know they are susceptible to retaliation for the kinds of activities that all the rest of us regard as good citizenship.”

Founded in 2007, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and an affiliated political group, the Ohio Organizing Campaign, took in more than $50 million between 2020 and 2024, the most recent year for which tax records were available. 

It works on voter-registration drives and ballot issues, and gives to other social service organizations. 

An analysis by Signal Statewide found that it had received large donations from the Gund Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and two groups with ties to progressive philanthropist George Soros.

While the Trump administration stays quiet about its reasons for targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, other groups are offering explanations of their own. 

After years of Republican rule, Ohio this year seems headed for close elections for U.S. Senate and governor. Trump is running scared, said Katie Paris, executive director of Red Wine & Blue, a national women’s organization opposed to extremism.

“Ohio is going to play a critical role in the 2026 midterm elections,” Paris said in a written statement. “With these races so close, it’s no surprise that this administration is choosing now to use political intimidation — afraid of what Ohioans might do at the ballot box.”

She added, “No matter your political affiliation, an attack like this — trying to create fear about the simple act of voting — matters to ALL of us because it concerns ALL of us. Black or white or Brown, urban or suburban or rural, we stand together, and that’s exactly what scares them. They’re trying this state by state, and state by state, we’re going to stand up to them.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post A Week After the FBI Searched an Ohio Voting-Rights Group, Questions Remain appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Two Ohio congresswomen are slamming the FBI over reports that agents on Thursday searched the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, an organization that advocates for voting and labor rights and against outsized corporate power.

Agents also reportedly fanned out across the state to interview people who have worked with the collaborative and in some cases seized their electronic devices such as phones and laptops.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Prentiss Haney, a board member of the organizing collaborative, confirmed to multiple news outlets that FBI actions happened on Thursday. He and others with the organization couldn’t immediately be reached.

Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, who represents Cleveland, said her inquiries haven’t been answered, either.

“My office has contacted the FBI demanding information, and I am deeply concerned that this is an effort to use federal law enforcement to intimidate and halt voter registration and organizing efforts,” she said in a written statement. “This is an unprecedented attack on democracy: these raids must end immediately.”

President Donald Trump has often made false claims of fraud in elections that didn’t go his way. They include the 2020 presidential election, and more recently the California primary election.

With his popularity plummeting, Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud could be used to try to tilt the midterm elections. Michael Waldman, president and CEO of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said the FBI activities in Cleveland could be a case in point.

“This appears to be an outrageous fishing expedition, an attempt to intimidate people working for democracy in our communities and country,” he said in a written statement. “It is an egregious abuse of law enforcement for political ends, and it fits a pattern of federal inquiries targeting voting infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative are our friends, our allies, and our clients, their contributions to democracy so exemplary that we honored them with the Brennan Legacy Award. An attack on the Ohio Organizing Collaborative is an attack on every organization working to protect the right to vote.”

The collaborative was formed in 2007.

“Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a grassroots people-centered power organization,” its website says. “We unite base-building community organizing groups, student associations and faith organizations, with labor unions, and policy institutes throughout Ohio. It is our mission to organize everyday Ohioans, building transformative power organizations for racial, social, and economic justice. Our vision is to build a democratic multi-racial populist governing coalition in Ohio.”

Brown said the searches, seizures and interrogations appeared to an effort to harass voting-rights groups ahead of November’s midterm elections. 

“Unfortunately, this appears to be part of a systematic effort by (President Donald) Trump and (Director) Kash Patel’s FBI to attack our elections and perpetuate more myths of voter fraud — all to undermine and challenge any election result that Trump does not agree with. It’s an attack on the People.” 

In a written statement, Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes said the FBI action was “an apparent effort to use federal law enforcement to intimidate community organizers and halt voter registration. Voter registration and lawful voting by American citizens is not fraud.” 

Sykes added, “This egregious federal overreach is another example of coordinated efforts to suppress voting rights and voter registration, and it amounts to an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”

Former Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against incumbent Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted in November, also said the FBI’s actions were highly disturbing — especially since the agency hasn’t explained what the organizing collaborative is supposed to have done wrong.

“Reports of the FBI raiding a voting rights organization in Ohio are deeply disturbing and are a transparent attempt at silencing Ohioans and their ability to vote in free and fair elections,” Sherrod Brown said in a written statement. “Federal law enforcement should never try to intimidate eligible voters from exercising their right to participate in democracy.

He said that the FBI should immediately make public any and all activities around these raids in Ohio.

“For years, Ohio has had safe and secure elections that have been administered in a bipartisan fashion. Any attempt to intimidate Ohio voters is wrong, and will not work. Millions of Ohioans are ready to hold Washington politicians accountable for voting time and again to raise the cost of gas, groceries, and utility bills,” he said.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post FBI Searches Cleveland Offices of Ohio Voting-Rights Group appeared first on Cleveland Scene.