Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio are being required to wear ankle monitors and turn their passports over to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Haitians in Springfield are getting letters telling them to report to the ICE office in either Blue Ash (near Cincinnati) or Westerville (near Columbus). 

“When they do, their passports are collected,” said Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church. 

“They’re fitted with ankle (monitors); I call them ankle shackles.” 

This is happening after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that President Donald Trump can end temporary protected status for the 330,000 Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.

TPS officially ended for Haitians on July 27 and a court lifted an injunction last week.

About 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.

Even though about 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio, only Haitians in Springfield are being asked to wear the ankle monitors as of now, Ruby said.

“What you’re seeing in Ohio is a Springfield focused effort,” he said.

He has gone down to ICE’s Blue Ash office with some Haitians to receive their ankle monitors, which can track where people are at any given moment and have about a 75 mile radius, Ruby said.

“The ICE officers indicated, ‘If you keep coming back every time we call you, that may help your immigration case,’ which I don’t believe,” he said. 

“I think it’s a means to round up people quickly, and that when they’re ready, they have the logistics in place to deport them. I think that’s what’s going to happen.” 

The Haitians are then told to report back to the ICE office when they are summoned, which is expected to be every three to four weeks, Ruby said. 

“It’s inciting a lot of fear,” Ruby said. “I think (ICE’s) real goal is for them to self-deport. … I think it boils down to they want to have complete control over them, so (ICE) can easily deport them as soon as they’re ready.”

Ruby is unaware of any Haitians from Springfield who have self-deported back to Haiti. 

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti“due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” according to the state department. A top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped in June. 

“It just makes me sick thinking of the sexual violence that is the norm in Haiti,” Ruby said. “There there are kids who sat next to our kids in Springfield City Schools who are going to be raped if they’re sent back, and that’s just the truth.”

More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. Springfield City Schools declined to comment for the story.

ICE detained 35 people — including four Haitians — in central Ohio between Aug. 5 through Aug. 10, said Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin. Ruby said he has not noticed an increased ICE presence in Springfield. 

“They say they would come for the Haitians on this special task force, but they take any collateral damage people,” Eldredge said in a text message. 

The ICE office in Westerville was full of Haitians coming out with ankle monitors when Eldredge was there last week.

Many of their Brazilian clients in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were asked to start wearing ankle monitors in July 2025. She said they have a 16-year-old client wearing an ankle monitor in Pittsburgh. 

“It is very embarrassing to wear them,” Eldredge said in a text message. “(The) devices cause lesions, rashes and blisters, bleeding on their ankles.” 

She said it can be hard for their clients to sleep with the ankle monitors. 

“It beeps in the middle of the night and (it’s) hard to get comfortable,” Eldredge said in a text message.

The ankle monitors will start beeping if the battery is not functioning well, Eldredge said. 

“They break all the time and batteries malfunction and get very hot, some caught on fire when charging,” she said in a text message. 

Some people are afraid of going back to the ICE office, so Eldredge knows folks who have cut off the ankle monitors and leave the state or self-deport. 

“(Officials) follow up where they leave that monitor and sometimes just take some collaterals,” she said. 

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

The post Haitians in Springfield Are Required to Report to Ohio’s ICE Offices and Wear Ankle Monitors appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

In the wake of the Downtown Heinen’s closure, many have wondered whether the city of Cleveland could have done more to prevent it from shuttering.

Ward 5 Councilman Richard Starr thinks the answer is yes.

On Thursday, roughly two weeks after Heinen’s fled his ward, Starr announced plans to introduce legislation that would have the city create a $10 to $15 million fund to help keep existing grocery stores open and offer incentives to help entice operators to open in areas that have struggled to attract options.

To put it simply: grocery stores are public goods, Starr believes, not just isolated private businesses.

“Everyone deserves to have good quality foods and also have different ways to be able to address their needs,” he told Scene in a phone call on Thursday.

“If we continue to sit aside, and not do anything, then we’re going to continue to get the short end of the stick,” he said. “And things are going to continue to get worse for our people rather than better.”

Cleveland has thrown money or tax cuts at big retail before, but not in the form Starr in proposing. Midtown’s Fairfax Market, which opened in 2024, received public assistance. And the East Side Market was leased for a $1 per year to its operator, Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, before operational issues drove Cleveland to cut ties with NEON.

But as far as what keeps stores open and affordable is a matter of debate these days, as city halls throughout the U.S. tinker with formats and initiatives to address food deserts and affordability. Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta and New York City have all rolled out funding pools to either grant grocers loans or help build stores in high-demand areas. Atlanta’s $8.1 million fund helped raise its own downtown grocer, the Azalea Fresh Market, which a recent news report said had “exceeded expectations.”

It’s possible a similar fund in Cleveland could do the same.

Starr hasn’t narrowed down where exactly that $15 million or so might come from, save for a “combination of different funding sources,” he said. Or how grocers would repay grants or incentives if they did decide to close. Both are likely to be points of contention amongst councilmembers.

This is “not to guarantee the profitability of any private grocery operator or permanently subsidize an unsustainable business model,” the draft legislation reads. But to “create conditions under which responsible grocery operators have a reasonable opportunity to succeed.”

To borrow the baseball truism: If we make it easy, they’ll come and build it.

“We’re not waiting on somebody else to actually decide if they want to come into our neighborhood,” Starr said. “We’re deciding for ourselves that we’re going to make sure grocery stores are there.”

Lucas Reeve, a senior advisor to Mayor Bibb, has assigned a small task force to figure out, with the help of consultants Streetsense, what sort of grocery store might work downtown. Results from a study will be shared in late October. A public feedback session is scheduled for August 18 at Cleveland Public Library’s downtown branch.

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post Councilman Starr Proposes City Grocery Fund to Attract and Back Stores appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Two years after Ohio recreational marijuana sales began, Ohio’s adult-use marijuana continues to be significantly more expensive than Michigan, according to pricing data. Meanwhile, Ohio Republican lawmakers have outlawed buying from other states.

The cheapest ounce of marijuana in Ohio is $112 while the cheapest ounce in Michigan is $6.99, according to the WeedBuddy Cannabis Price Index. 

In Arizona, it’s $49.99, and in Colorado, it’s $16.73.

The median cost of an ounce shows far closer prices though Ohio still sits as most expensive among the four states at $147.35, compared to $99 in Michigan, $120 in Arizona, and $110 in Colorado.

Ohio’s median price for an eighth of cannabis flower is $35, compared to Michigan’s $20 for the same amount as of July 31, the index shows.

“Price is going to be one of the most important aspects in terms of determining where they purchase cannabis,” said Morgan Fox, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. 

“People were already used to driving to Michigan to purchase cannabis, so as long as there’s still a massive price differential, they’re probably going to continue doing so at least for the foreseeable future.” 

Marijuana is illegal for recreational use in West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. 

Ohio recreational sales started in August 2024, about nine months after Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana.

A new law passed by Republican state lawmakers took effect earlier this year that made a wide variety of changes to the voter-passed law.

Ohio Senate Bill 56 criminalized bringing legal marijuana from another state back to Ohio. 

“If you’re caught with cannabis that cannot be verified purchased in Ohio or verified grown in Ohio, then it’s the same penalties as it was under prohibition of pre-legalization,” Fox said. 

However, he was doubtful Ohio customers knew about the changes to Ohio’s law. 

“If people had gotten used to doing that when cannabis was not legal in Ohio, they’re probably going to continue to do so,” Fox said. 

The law also bans possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original packaging and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of their car while driving. 

Furthermore, the law reduced THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracted from a maximum of 90% down to a maximum of 70%, capped THC levels in adult-use flower to 35%, and banned smoking in most public places. 

Ohio’s total recreational marijuana sales were $1.67 billion as of July 11, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control. 

The median price of a standard eighth of cannabis flower was $36.40 in Columbus, $32 in Cincinnati, and $30.80 in Cleveland at the end of July, according to the price index. 

Compared to cities in Michigan, the median price of the same amount of cannabis flower, according to the price index., cost $25 in Lansing, $20 in Detroit, and $20 in Monroe, Michigan which is about 12 miles from downtown Toledo.

There have been 32.5 million units of manufactured products that have been sold and 267,590 pounds of plant material, according to the division. 

There are 223 dual-use marijuana dispensaries in Ohio as of Thursday, meaning they can sell medical and non-medical marijuana, according to the division. 

More than 160 Ohio municipalities or townships that have moratoriums in place banning the sale of adult-use cannabis as of June 3, according to Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Michigan voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2018 and sales started in December 2019. 

“Michigan’s market is much more well established, and we’ve seen in most cannabis markets that prices tend to go down over time,” Fox said. 

Michigan has more than 800 active retail licenses as of June 2026, and Michigan marijuana stores reported about $3.17 billion in revenue in 2025, according to the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency. 

“Michigan also has a much bigger market in terms of the numbers of dispensaries and the number of licensed businesses than Ohio does, largely because Ohio artificially capped that, so that means that since there’s more competition between those businesses, they have to keep their prices a little bit lower to be competitive,” Fox said. 

Michigan is the second-largest adult-use marijuana market in the nation, behind California. 

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

The post Ohio’s Recreational Marijuana Prices Are Higher Than What Michigan Customers Pay appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Ethan Khorana has encountered a lot of questions in his six years of community organizing. Why potholes go so long unfixed. Why overfilled dumpsters go so long without cleanup. Or public park grills go filthy. Many times, the answers aren’t all that complicated. Many times, you can just do things.

Khorana, a 20-year-old college student from Shaker Heights, encountered another one this summer when he was schooled in the realm of unpaid medical bills. With the right planning, he found, millions of dollars of his neighbors’ medical debt could be relieved for the price of a used sedan. All by making a few calls.

So, Khorana did just that. In partnership with Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit based in New York City, he raised a little over $10,000 from a short list of donors and, starting Thursday, helped buy up and cancel out $1.3 million in medical debt for 1,148 Cuyahoga County residents.

It took Khorana two months of work. Half of his summer break as a sophomore public policy major at Duke University.

“What surprised me most was the fact that I had to be the person doing it,” Khorana told Scene, sitting at a table in Shaker’s Van Aken District. “You know, $10,000 for most government budgets is like a rounding error, to some extent.”

“But that’s fundamentally changing people’s lives and the way they’re able to move forward from a bill,” he said.

About 10 percent of Cuyahoga County’s 1.2 million residents had some sort of medical debt in 2022, a dashboard published by the Urban Institute showed, with a median amount of $440. But that’s just debt run by collections agencies, not on one’s credit card or managed by the hospital or clinic.

Hospital systems often sell debt in bulk, typically at a discount, on secondary markets. Companies like Undue, the liaison for Khorana’s campaign in Shaker, buy these debt packages with tremendous purchasing power. On average, every $1 raised equals $100 in medical debt cancelled, Undue said.

Which means Khorana scored a bit of a deal.

“This shows what’s possible when a community decides to come together and do something,” Marisa Clemente, Undue’s vice president of philanthropy, wrote Scene in an email. “We’re honored to have been part of it.”

Last spring, Cleveland City Council allocated $2 million of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to help erase $165 million of combined medical debt for 161,000 Clevelanders. Ward 4 Councilman Kris Harsh spearheaded the campaign after he, like Khorana, discovered erasing medical bills with Undue as buyer was easier done than thought.

But Khorana is no salaried politician. And his main project, a Better Future for Cuyahoga, is no council body.

That’s sort of Khorana’s point. After attending his first rally, a Black Lives Matter protest at 14, he aligned himself with a bevy of traditionally leftist issues—getting Shaker Heights police paired up with mental health co-responders (for which Khorana helped raised $20,000), or pushing Shaker Heights Mayor David Weiss to cancel the city’s controversial contract with Flock Safety. He helped Mayor Bibb transition to office in 2023.

If Khorana has a modus operandi, it is to show how everyday neighbors can latch onto good public policy without trudging through the long, laborious process of bureaucracy. 

“We all want potholes filled, want to be able to get to work, to put food on the table for one’s family,” Khorana said. 

“And I think that’s what I’ve been trying to preach as I went around the county,” he said, “is that we really all rise and fall together.”

After Khorana finishes his degree at Duke, he said he plans to return to Cleveland in 2028 to hit the ground running with his data-driven policy ideas.

And maybe cancel other types of debt. Credit card? Student loans? Mortgages?

“I’d love to,” Khorana said, laughing. “It’s actually a good idea. Maybe I’ll look into it.”

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post He Helped Erase $1.2 Million in Medical Debt for Cuyahoga County Residents. It Took Him Just Two Months appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Ohio’s two candidates for governor have conflicting ideas of what they would like to see happen to future data centers, which have become a political lightning rod in this year’s November election. 

Ohio’s next governor will appoint the five members of the Public Utilities Commission, which sets utility rates and set the parameters for data centers opening in cities across the state. 

Ohio Democratic candidate for governor Dr. Amy Acton announced on July 27 she supports a conditional moratorium on data centers “if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met,” she said in a statement.

Innovation Ohio, a progressive policy advocacy organization, said Acton has a strong data center proposal. 

“Requiring data centers to really pay their own money in terms of electricity, electricity in terms of really protecting the environment, protecting water, making sure workers are getting a fair shake out of these fields, that to us is really leveling the playing field and ensuring that going forward,” said Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern. 

Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy announced his three-fold data center plan on Aug. 6.

“If a data center is built in your community, then (1) you will no longer have to pay for your home’s electricity, (2) you will pay lower property taxes, and (3) the data center will be required to abide by all air and water quality standards without exception, and we will take the necessary steps to protect Ohio’s fertile farmland,” he said in a post on X.

“If any one of these three conditions is not met, the data center won’t be built. Period,” Ramaswamy said in his statement.

McGovern called Ramaswamy’s idea for data centers to pay for citizen’s electric bills “utter nonsense.”

“We see Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan that’s just like absolute nonsense in coming up with these wild ideas that don’t make any sense and aren’t based in any actual policy research, and instead are sort of just these silly promises,” McGovern said.

Ramaswamy’s plan does not specify how many miles away from a data center someone must be living to get their electricity for free. 

“There’s no detail, there’s no substance,” McGovern said. 

Ramaswamy said last year it’s a “good thing” AI data centers moving to Ohio. 

“I want the sectors of the future to come here, but that will make a level of demand on our electric grid of a kind that we have not seen in the history of our state … right at a time when we’ve also cut off and reduced the supply of base load power generation, shutting down coal plants that, on my watch, would have remained open,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted to X in March 2025. 

Ramaswamy has a financial stake in data centers by having financial positions in the chips that power AI to the companies that run the data centers, according to a report released earlier this year from Innovation Ohio. 

“He has rolled out a plan that is unserious and does not really tackle this vital issue for Ohioans, and he is personally getting richer off of data centers,” McGovern said. 

“He’s making money here, and all of a sudden that’s a political problem, so he’s walking that back.”

Ohio has more than 200 data centers, the sixth-highest state in the country, according to Pew Research Center. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 22, according to the Data Center Map. 

Ohioans are seeing increased electric bills. The average Ohio residential utility bills are projected to be about $800 for the summer — a 17% increase compared to last summer, according to a report by Third Way. 

Lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse have yet to pass any data center legislation. 

Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind a proposed constitutional amendment to ban new data centers, is collecting signatures to make the 2027 ballot.

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

The post Candidates Highlight Data Center Plans. Next Ohio Governor Will Select Regulators appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

Steel giant Cleveland-Cliffs was supposed to use up to $500 million from a Biden administration grant to usher in cleaner steelmaking in southwestern Ohio. Now, the company plans to instead put those funds toward a project that locks in old coal-based tech for decades and amps up local air pollution.

In a July 23 earnings call, Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves confirmed that the company aims to redirect the 2024 grant — which Congress originally earmarked for work that accelerates industrial decarbonization — to align with the pro-fossil-fuel Trump administration’s priorities.

“We have made major progress on the re-scoping of the Middletown project in compliance with the Trump administration’s energy dominance goals,” Goncalves said.

The money from the Department of Energy’s now-dismantled Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations was meant to build a new facility to replace a coke-powered blast furnace at Cliffs’ Middletown Works. Blast furnaces use the dirty, coal-based fuel to purify iron ore into iron, which is then made into steel.

The new ​“direct reduced iron” facility would have purified iron ore without coal or coke by employing ions from natural gas or hydrogen to strip away unwanted oxygen ions. Then, two electric melting furnaces would then have readied the resulting iron for the final steps of steelmaking in the plant’s basic oxygen furnace.

Cliffs had indicated it hoped to eventually use hydrogen at Middletown Works, and the DOE estimated the facility upgrades could have slashed greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1 million tons annually.

But last summer, amid the Trump administration’s clawbacks of Biden-era clean energy funding, Cliffs began reevaluating the plan. A February air-permit application submitted to the state revealed the firm’s new idea: Simply refurbish Middletown Works’ blast furnace so it can run for another few decades, and add a cogeneration plant that uses the furnace’s waste heat to generate electricity and steam for the facility.

It wasn’t clear back in February that this work would be funded by the DOE grant, given that Congress originally allocated the funds for ​“advanced industrial technology,” which is defined as something ​“designed to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reduction progress to net-zero at an eligible facility.”

Goncalves’ comments in last month’s earnings call confirm that Cliffs does still plan to use the money for the Middletown Works, but to install run-of-the-mill technologies with questionable climate benefits.

“The Middletown blast furnace is due for a reline by 2030,” he said. ​“And this DOE grant will allow us to go further in optimizing the furnace and maximizing energy efficiency by capturing and using blast furnace gas to generate electricity on-site.”

Making electricity from the blast furnace’s gas is better than simply spewing it into the air, and would presumably offset some emissions from producing that power elsewhere. However, the project would still result in many more tons of greenhouse gases than the initial plan.

Goncalves noted that Cliffs would have another public announcement about the project within a month or so. Company representatives did not answer Canary Media’s follow-up questions about the work, its costs, emissions, or other issues.

Climate advocates are lamenting Cliffs’ walkback.

“The original proposal would have cut climate pollution, it would have cut health-harming pollution, and it would have created jobs,” said Hilary Lewis, steel director at Industrious Labs, which advocates for decarbonizing heavy industry.

The cleaner-steel project would also have positioned the facility to compete favorably in markets where buyers still aim to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

“This is a horrible trade,” Lewis said.

How much more polluting is Cliffs’ new initiative?

Along with its climate impacts, Cliffs’ U-turn will result in its neighbors breathing in more dangerous chemicals.

Already, Middletown Works ranks in the top 10 polluters statewide for several health-harming contaminants, according to a 2024 report from Industrious Labs.

With the cogeneration plant and related upgrades, the plant is expected to annually emit 534 more tons of sulfur dioxide, 334 more tons of carbon monoxide, 179 more tons of nitrogen oxides, and 12 more tons of chemicals that increase smog, according to a draft permit issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in June. There would also be nearly 100 additional tons of different sizes of particle pollution.

Yet while projected emissions would be higher than those for almost all times during the past five years, the draft permit concludes net reductions will occur for all those health-harming chemicals except carbon monoxide.

That’s because instead of comparing the projected emissions with those in recent years, the Ohio EPA uses data from 2013 to 2015 as a baseline. Back then, Middletown Works still ran a hyper-polluting facility to make coke on-site. That group of ovens shut down in October 2021.

Comments filed by Industrious Labs and other environmental advocates challenge the Ohio EPA’s use of old data to calculate those offsets. They argue that if the agency had used emissions numbers from the past decade as the baseline, it might have found that the plan surpassed thresholds that would trigger further regulation or pollution limits.

Meanwhile, the Ohio EPA’s offset calculation offer little comfort for some area residents who have long felt plagued by the plant’s pollution.

“The cogen plant will reduce Cliffs’ energy use, saving them money, while they continue to harm [my] family and my neighbors’ health, and [with] even more pollution,” said Donna Ballinger, who lives approximately 1,000 feet from the Middletown Works and spoke at a July 9 public hearing.

Another local, Amy Wray, wrote to the Ohio EPA, ​“If it’s going to increase pollutants then we don’t want it. This town is already a toxic chemical soup.”

Still, Cliffs has substantial support from locals who see the plan as an environmentally sound way to keep the Middletown Works going.

“The proposed improvements to Cleveland-Cliffs will significantly reduce the facility’s carbon footprint while securing high-quality manufacturer and construction jobs for generations to come,” said Brian Kuhbander, who spoke for the Construction and General Laborers’ Local 534 union at the July 9 hearing.

It’s worth noting that the original green steel plan would have had big employment benefits, too. Besides protecting more than 2,000 existing jobs at the Middletown Works, the new facilities would have created 170 new permanent positions in addition to 1,200 construction jobs.

The public comment period on the draft permit is over, and the Ohio EPA expects to make a decision on a final permit by the end of this year, according to Dina Pierce, a public information officer for the agency. Cliffs has 18 months to begin construction once a permit is issued.

How long it may take to finish the project remains unclear. As power demand from data centers skyrockets, waiting lists for turbines needed for the cogeneration plant have grown to five years or more.

Lewis of Industrious Labs said it’s ​“not too late” to switch back to the earlier approach, particularly since the company did a lot of work to develop the cleaner-steel plan. A 2024 press release from Cliffs said it was prepared to invest more than $1 billion in addition to the government funding for that project, which would also have curbed its future production costs.

“They can — and they should — bring back that original plan,” Lewis said.

The post Ohio Steel Giant Aims to Use Biden Climate Funds for Polluting Project appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Amid lawsuits, allegations of domestic violence, and calls to step aside from both of Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senators, Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller is still running for reelection in November and his constituents say they are looking for consequences and accountability.

Heather Tuck-Macalla lives with her family in Bay Village, a town just west of Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie.

She’s a librarian who has worked for years in the Cleveland area, and she loves Bay Village, the town she shares with Miller. But she says that’s a fact she wouldn’t know just from living in the area.

“He’s almost not human to me because I’ve never seen him around and he lives two blocks away from me,” Tuck-Macalla said last week.

Miller represents Ohio’s 7th U.S. House district in Congress. The Northeast Ohio district goes from the west side of Cuyahoga County south down past the city of Wooster. It includes southern and western Cuyahoga County, all of Medina and Wayne Counties, and the northernmost part of Holmes County.

John Blockinger, a retired Parma resident, said he’s trying to stay positive, but has been discouraged by the actions of Congress, including Miller, even before he became front-page news for allegations of domestic violence.

“I can’t believe that they haven’t just kicked his butt out of there,” Blockinger said. “And the (fellow congressional) Republicans should be doing more to get him out, because he’s going to be a drag on them in November.”

Multiple allegations of domestic violence have been leveled against Miller including by his ex-wife, the daughter of Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Moreno denounced Miller, saying that Miller doesn’t meet “the basic criteria of serving in Congress,” but has received criticism for the time it took for him to release a public statement.

Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted has also called on Miller to resign and drop out of his race for reelection, as have several Democratic members of Ohio’s congressional delegation, U.S. Reps. Shontel Brown and Emilia Sykes.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico he won’t ask Miller to step down.

Miller has made no indication that he will drop out of the race, and has requested an ethics probe on himself, something he believes will clear his name. The Democratic candidate in the race is Brian Poindexter, and independent write-in candidates have also filed.

Congressional ethics investigation 

Ethics investigations aren’t an uncommon thing for the U.S. House to deal with, though they are more commonly focused on campaign conduct or finance questions. But the discretion of a House ethics panel is broad, said Case Western Reserve University School of Law Professor Cassandra Burke Robertson.

“There’s really no limit, the committee can investigate pretty much anything that would be relevant to either somebody’s serving in the House, or there’s a very broad view of anything that could bring disrepute onto Congress, onto the House,” said Robertson, the director of the Center for Professional Ethics at the Case Western School of Law.

While many ethics investigations delve into the weeds of congressional procedure, something the public may or may not be interested in, the situation with Miller is bringing a lot of eyes to the proceedings, according to Robertson.

“I think what makes the allegations in this case so publicly interesting is that so many people have had experience with difficult divorces, with allegations of domestic abuse, either they’ve experienced it or they certainly know people who have,” Robertson said. “There’s just a lot more public attention, given the allegations.”

A resolution from the investigation will involve a lot of patience, as ethics probes tend to take time, she said.

The House panel will consider documents, gather data, possibly hold hearings, and then decide on the appropriate level of punishment, from no punishment at all, to censure or the worst-case scenario of full House expulsion.

Robertson said she wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation stretches past November.

“An investigation that serious would take some time, and if the investigation found serious consequences (were needed) and moved toward expulsion, I would be surprised if that could happen quickly, likely not before the election,” she said.

The political pressure surrounding the investigation could have a quicker timeline, with Republican members of Congress in particular seeing pushes for action.

“It’s got to be in the back of the minds of the other Congressmembers,” Robertson said. “I have no doubt that members are worried about disrepute, and about the political consequences of that.”

’Out of sync’ 

Constituents in Miller’s congressional district say they don’t feel like he’s representative of the needs of the region.

“I’d really like to get normal people, people who reflect our community better than a lot of these yes men for Trump,” Tuck-Macalla said.

With a Japanese American uncle who lived in internment camps during World War II, the Bay Village resident said she’s worried that patterns are repeating in Congress that lead to negative impacts on large groups of people, such as the immigration crackdown, and the lack of support for public education.

“I don’t feel like the policies Max Miller is supporting are doing what Americans want,” Tuck Macalla said. “Everything that I feel like is a baseline for a good quality of life is being taken away.”

Blockinger has reached out to Miller and the rest of his congressional representatives and senators, pushing back against immigration policies, cuts to Medicaid, and other government spending cuts to public services.

“It’s so out of sync with what we should be doing as a government,” Blockinger said. “I don’t feel represented at all by anyone.”

Hoping for a Democratic wave in the Nov. 3 general election, the Parma grandfather wants to see reversals of Trump executive orders and the Big Beautiful Bill as soon as possible, along with other policies that he saw Miller working “in lock-step” with the Trump administration to implement.

“I think we’ve got to stop basically just being nice guys, and keep pointing out the number of people who are hurt, and the money that’s being lost here,” Blockinger said.

Tuck-Macalla is hopeful the district can move on from Miller and the negative public attention.

“Max Miller does not represent who we are, and with him, I don’t feel very patriotic,” she said.

The Libertarian Party of Ohio released a statement on Aug. 3 “unequivocally” demanding the resignation of Miller, saying his continued presence in Congress “dishonors the district he was elected to serve and sends a dangerous message that powerful politicians are immune to basic standards of conduct.”

“The allegations surrounding Representative Miller reflect a disturbing pattern that goes far beyond partisan politics,” the statement read. “Ohioans in the 7th District deserve an elected official who respects the individual rights both in the halls of Congress and within their own home.”

The Capital Journal reached out for an interview with the Wayne County Republican Party, and the Republican Party of Medina County, both in Miller’s district, but did not receive a response.

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

The post Ohioans in Max Miller’s District Want Action, Consequences as House Ethics Probe Continues appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Pure Green, a superfood juice bar founded in New York City, will be opening up a location on Public Square in the next few months.

The opening, in the former Joe Maxx Coffee space in Hotel Cleveland, is a big win for the square, which has struggled to attract and maintain retail in the past decade, even after its nationally-renowned makeover in 2016.

A chic-designed seller of juices and shots, Pure Green’s Public Square spot is the company’s third in Ohio. Two locations are operating currently in and around Columbus. The company calls itself “one of the fastest growing cold-pressed juice and smoothie companies in the United States.”

Austin Love, a broker for Cushman & Wakefield | CRESCO who helped facilitate the deal, said Pure Green felt immediately like the right fit for Downtown’s present atmosphere and its near future, minding the array of apartments and growing entertainment districts.

“We had high standards for what we wanted to be there,” he told Scene. “We think it fit Public Square, fit the branding for Hotel Cleveland and it fit Downtown overall.”

Hotel Cleveland underwent a $80 million renovation in 2024, with a total refresh of its banquet rooms and dazzling cocktail bar, Maker. But the renovation has since struggled to fill its retail spaces, which have sat dusty and vacant. Only Boost Mobile occupies one of four street-level spots.

According to its site, Pure Green sells 13 juices and six shots, from those with beets, watermelon, to grape, coconut and charcoal. Smoothies, toasts, açai bowls and steel-cut oatmeal are on the menu, too.

Pure Green has not announced an opening date.

Subscribe to CLE Bites, Doug Trattner’s weekly food newsletter.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

The post Pure Green to Open Off Public Square appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Unionized Cleveland Public Library employees are poised to strike August 24.

That is, if a re-negotiated bargaining contract isn’t agreed upon between the workers’ union, Service Employees International Union District 119, and the library by noon that day.

Roughly 400 employees are involved in the current contract negotiations, though it’s hard to say exactly how many will strike if negotiations go south, CPL spokesperson Andrianna Sheriff wrote Scene in an email.

Seven bargaining meetings have happened, including one Friday afternoon, since Scene broke the news of the strike authorization vote on July 14. Pay increases, staff shortages, outsourcing and workplace safety are all issues on the table.

“Because negotiations are ongoing, the library cannot discuss specific proposals or areas of disagreement,” Sheriff told Scene. 

“Our focus is on reaching an agreement that supports our employees,” she said, “while ensuring the library can continue providing sustainable, high-quality programs and services to the community.”

If those 400 do strike, CPL’s Main Building and its two dozen other branches will attempt to stay open in some capacity, as they did during the pandemic, an employee not authorized to comment to media told Scene in July. Meanwhile, CPL said in a statement it has plans in place to keep libraries open.

“I don’t know if we could keep all of our 27 branches open though,” an employee said.

Another said the August 24 date is a worst-case scenario.

“We’ve been working under an expired contract for seven months and the people are getting angry,” they said. “We’re hoping our administration and the union can come to a fair agreement before we go on strike.”

An SEIU representative was not available for comment.

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post Cleveland Public Library Employees Set Strike Date of August 24 as Negotiations Continue appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

As data centers continue to grow both in numbers and unpopularity, the candidates in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race are calling for more oversight. While they offer contrasting visions for data centers, neither has embraced a full halt in construction desired by advocates.

Incumbent Republican Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted played a pivotal role in bringing several billion-dollar data center projects to Ohio as lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025. He backed tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for past projects and consistently defends new data center development, arguing that they create construction jobs and broaden the tax base for rural communities.

“If you’re connected to a wire, you’re using the data center,” Husted said in a July 22 appearance on a conservative podcast. “So, understand that when we look in the mirror, we are the problem.”

Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown slammed Husted’s record of supporting tax breaks for data center developers in two July ads. In a third ad, he promised to make data centers pay the full cost of their electricity use.

He has also said companies should safely process water used to run data systems and that local communities deserve more transparency when making decisions about new projects. Brown has strong support from construction unions, including many that support data center projects because of the jobs they provide. Brown has called to end the data center tax breaks and says that local communities should have a say on whether to allow data center construction.

“Ohioans shouldn’t be forced to subsidize these costs and Ohioans — not Jon Husted and his billionaire friends — should get to decide if data centers are built in their community,” Brown said in a statement for this story.

Husted did not respond when asked to comment for this story.

One day after Brown’s ad was released, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, a U.S. Senate bill that would ask states to consider measures to make data centers pay for their electricity usage. Husted has otherwise said the federal government should not get involved, calling data centers a “local issue.”

Husted and Brown are part of a laundry list of politicians — including President Donald Trump, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and both parties’ nominees to replace him — who have expressed support for “ratepayer protection” policies. The proposals are also backed by a major data center lobbying group and tech companies like Microsoft that own data centers.

Multiple experts said most of the power to lower utility bills lies with regional brokers and state commissions, and federal legislation would do little to move the needle. Even so, Case Western Reserve University energy policy professor Joshua Basseches said the symbolic unity on the issue is encouraging.

“There’s so much partisanship in this country right now that if this could be a bipartisan issue, I think that would be great,” he said.

A full 71% of Ohioans are in favor of a temporary ban, also known as a moratorium, on new data center construction, according to a Bowling Green State University poll.

The Libertarian candidate for governor, Don Kissick, has called for a moratorium. Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said this week that if elected he wants to halt new projects until lawmakers require data centers to offer free electricity to nearby residents. Last month, Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton announced her support for a conditional moratorium on data centers if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met.

Austin Baurichter is a lawyer and volunteer for anti-data center advocacy group Conserve Ohio, which is gathering signatures to put a moratorium on data centers on the 2027 ballot. He compared Brown and Husted’s promises to regulate data centers to a politician handing an umbrella to someone drowning in a flood.

“Anything less than a full, 12-month moratorium on any advancement of any kind of a data center development falls short of what the people of this state are asking for,” he said.

Husted’s record on data centers

One month into Husted’s tenure as lieutenant governor, Google announced its first major data center in Ohio: a $600 million project in New Albany.

“Google investing in Ohio to open a new data center is great news for our state,” Husted said in a press release at the time. “Ohio is establishing itself as a premier destination for technology investment, and it further strengthens our case that Ohio is becoming the tech capital of the Midwest.”

The deal came with a reported 15-year, $43.5 million sales tax break from the state. Amazon got $81 million in state tax incentives for a data center in Hilliard in 2014, and Meta’s first data center in New Albany came with a 40-year, $37 million tax break in 2017.

The exemption on new equipment for large data centers flew under the radar when it was passed by the Ohio legislature in 2011.

Hyperscale data centers, or facilities that use more than 40 to 50 megawatts of power, were a small percentage of total data center electricity use at that time, according to an environmental advocacy group. Total electricity consumption across the U.S. grew at a slow 0.1% per year from 2005 to 2020.

A June 2023 press release by Husted touting a $7.8 billion investment by Amazon in the state cited a new use for data centers’ computing power: artificial intelligence.

The number of hyperscale data centers doubled worldwide between 2019 and 2024. Data centers could rise from accounting for 4% of total U.S. electricity consumption right now to 9% by 2030, according to projections by the Electric Power Research Institute.

Tech companies poured tens of billions of dollars into Ohio to build new data centers and expand existing campuses. That $600 million Google data center in 2019 has since ballooned into a project spanning sites in New Albany, Columbus, and Lancaster.

“Data centers are essential to our digital lives, and Google’s additional multibillion-dollar investment further establishes central Ohio as an important tech hub in America,” Husted said in June 2024 as Google announced another $2.3 billion investment in central Ohio.

His time as lieutenant governor ended when he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January 2025, reducing his public appearances at data center groundbreakings and his say in Ohio’s tax code.

“If Ohio wants to be a leader, a leading edge tech state in the Midwest, having those kinds of investments in the state is important,” he said in an interview with Signal Ohio in 2025.

Signal Ohio later reported that the state lost out on $1.6 billion in taxes from data centers in 2025, more than 11 times what they expected. Gov. Mike DeWine has since paused applications for new tax exemptions for data centers.

Meanwhile, U.S. electricity consumption rose 1.7% per year from 2020 to 2026. The average Ohio electricity bill grew by more than 53% from June 2021 to June 2026, far more than the national average, according to the Electricity Price Hub from Heatmap and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brown’s record on data centers

Brown’s record on data centers started before Ohio had a sales tax exemption for them. As a first-term U.S. senator in 2010, Brown secured $2.8 million in funding for a Dayton-area research center to develop water cooling technology for large data centers.

Today, water cooling systems make large data centers more energy efficient, but they created another problem: A large data center can use up to five million gallons of water per day, according to a 2025 report by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

That water must be cooled before it is put back in the environment, Case Western Reserve University environmental law professor Victor Flatt explained, or it can affect local wildlife.

Brown acknowledged this in a June interview with Spectrum News, saying, “They’ve got to make sure that they process the water right and recirculate it.”

Brown did not specify any stance on environmental regulations for data centers in a statement for this story. As a congressman from 1993 to 2025, his only public statement on data centers was a press release welcoming Amazon Web Services to New Albany in 2015.

On the campaign trail 11 years later, Brown has repeatedly criticized the “out-of-control” tax breaks under Husted’s watch and labeled him “the face of data centers” in ads.

Would the Ratepayer Protection Act protect ratepayers?

Both candidates promise to make data centers pay the full cost of their electricity usage.

The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which asks data center developers to pay for their utility usage, received commitments from about 200 entities and endorsements from several sitting governors, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

A companion bill to Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act passed out of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce by a unanimous vote in July.

Even so, experts say relief from the federal government in the near future is unlikely.

Public utilities are generally regulated by state commissions like the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, consultant David M. Klaus said. Klaus worked in the U.S. Department of Energy under three Democratic administrations and wrote a report about the limits of federal action to regulate data centers’ utility bills.

Case Western energy policy professor Basseches said that this is why Congressional legislation like Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act is narrow in scope.

“The federal government has never been involved in this way, certainly not in a legislative capacity,” Basseches said. “If this thing were to ever cross the finish line and become law, I expect there would be a lot of legal challenges and a lot of fights over authority between different states and the feds.”

PUCO allowed major utility provider AEP Ohio to treat data centers differently in 2025, but a June bill in the state legislature that would have extended the practice across the state didn’t reach the finish line before the legislature’s summer recess.

Other concerns about data centers: the environment and transparency

More power demand from data centers means more power plants, Flatt said. PJM Interconnection, a regional broker that makes sure there is enough power supply to meet demand in Ohio and 12 other states, came up 6.8 gigawatts short in its most recent auction. It warned that data centers may face involuntary outages as a result.

Flatt said new plants in Ohio are likely to be powered by fossil fuels. A 10-gigawatt data center project in Piketon — expected to be the largest data center in the world — will be powered by a new $33.3 billion natural gas plant.

Husted has expressed support for fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power data centers since 2023. He has also criticized wind and solar energy, saying they are “inadequate” to meet increased demand.

In most places, Flatt said solar energy with battery power backup is the cheapest, easiest, fastest form of energy production to build and permit.

“But some states like Ohio and the federal government have put some roadblocks in front of developing solar and certainly in front of developing wind, which would be the second-cheapest,” he added. “That’s going to lead to increased air pollution.”

Chevron donated $200,000 to a super PAC supporting Husted’s election bid in June, and a super PAC that backs nuclear energy spent almost $75,000 on ads supporting him in the second quarter. He also has deep ties to Ohio’s utility lobby.

While Brown has not directly addressed the intersection of data centers and energy production, he consistently supported clean energy initiatives while in the Senate.

Both candidates have otherwise said they see data centers as a local issue. At a July 11 stop in Ironton, Brown said the approval process should be “a local decision with everyone knowing what is at stake.”

The failed June bill included a provision stating that public records requests can supersede nondisclosure agreements, a common tactic used by data center developers to keep plans secret.

While Husted backs data centers, Brown is silent on the prospect of a moratorium

Hyperscale data centers bring jobs to local communities, leading many prominent Ohio labor unions to support them.

Dorsey Hager, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus-Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, estimated in May that data centers make up at least 40%of work hours by union members.

The Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council endorsed Brown in March. The president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, another large union backing Brown’s election campaign, also defended data centers because of the jobs they create.

Democratic nominee for Ohio governor Amy Acton said she would not allow data centers into the state if they do not meet several requirements, including stipulations on union labor, environmental standards, and more. Brown did not respond to a question for this story asking for his reaction to the policy.

Andrew Gula, a volunteer who gathers signatures for Conserve Ohio’s proposed data center moratorium, said he hears a variety of opinions from people who work on building and powering AI data centers. Some have told him they feel like they’re helping automate others’ jobs, and for others, “it is what it is,” he said.

Baurichter, another volunteer for Conserve Ohio, lives in Higginsport, a small village on the Ohio River. He said support for data centers because of the jobs they create in rural Ohio reflects a “corporate-centric” mindset that puts people second.

The lack of support among top Ohio politicians for a moratorium has made him increasingly disillusioned with the political system, he said, adding that Conserve Ohio aims to “take things into our own hands” by collecting signatures for its 2027 ballot initiative.

Baurichter estimated that around 65% of Conserve Ohio’s members are conservative or voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. In Ohio’s U.S. Senate election this November, he said “any reasonable person” opposed to data centers would vote for the “lesser of two evils.”

“But that misses altogether that this is nothing but a perpetuation of the same dysfunction that this government has exhibited for decades, that people are waking up to,” he said.

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

The post Sherrod Brown, Jon Husted Offer Contrasting Visions for Data Centers appeared first on Cleveland Scene.