President Donald Trump has set his sights on one of Ohio’s big races — former State Rep. Christina Hagan’s bid to defeat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH-13).
Trump on Friday tweeted his support for Hagan.
Read More
Is Jane Timken the leader the Ohio State Republican Party needs to help President Donald Trump win re-election when her party seems to be engaged in a civil war? The stakes are high in the Buckeye State. Trump and Biden are locked in a dead heat, according to a…
Read More
Reddit, one of the top internet sites in the world, on Monday banned a major pro-President Donald Trump group that had about 800,000 members, citing “hate speech.”
Read More
Leslie Brown, the woman who appeared in a Project Veritas video about Facebook who made incendiary comments that debuted Thursday, has been fired.
That’s according to a text message received by Project Veritas CEO James O’Keefe. Project Veritas made the announcement here.
Read More
The attack against American history continued Monday evening as police blocked protesters attempting to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in front of the White House.
Reporter Shomari Stone tweeted, “BREAKING: Metropolitan Police and US Park Police move demonstrators back from Lafayette Square Park. Two separate protesters tell me the groups want to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue near the White House. @[email protected] @nbcwashington”.
Read More
What’s a newspaper to do when given an exclusive interview with the governor during a pandemic that has ravaged the state’s economy and rioting that has ravaged the capital city? Would you push against answers that are not true?
If you’re The Columbus Dispatch, you allow Gov. Mike DeWine to talk about the “quick” reopening of the state, his walks with his dog Dolly and how he social distances with his grandkids.
Read More
Citizens for Community Values is pushing back against a “blatantly biased” story in The Columbus Dispatch newspaper attacking them for working with the state to help people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CCV says it is “Ohio’s Family Policy Council” and “We endeavor to create an Ohio where God’s blessings of life, family, and religious freedom are treasured, respected, and protected.”
Read More
Matt Borges has been censured by the Ohio Republican Central Committee for working to defeat President Donald Trump and ensure Joe Biden wins the election.
Borges is the former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. However, he has been running the Right Side PAC to support Biden, The Plain Dealer reported. The party said they took the action as well due to an FEC violation and Borges’ continued criticism of Trump. They also stripped his “chairman emeritus” status.
Read More
The Franklin County Democratic Party has decided that the local Fraternal Order of Police does not need to endorse any of its candidates.
Party Chairman Michael Sexton informed the FOP Capital City Lodge #9 of the decision in a letter, available on the Democratic chapter’s Facebook page here from a Friday post.
Read More
A Lorain County commission candidate who lost his race is suing to have the results from Dr. Amy Acton’s delayed primary election set aside, citing about 90 violations of state election law and the Ohio Constitution.
The candidate, Gerald W. Phillips, filed the election contest complaint in the Court of Common Pleas for Lorain County.
Read More
Project Veritas on Tuesday released a third installment of the #ExposeAntifa series, in which members of the militia wing talk about abolishing everything, including the police.
The video is available here.
Read More
A lawsuit has been filed against Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton and Gov. Mike DeWine in Lake County Common Pleas Court over “constitutionally vague” restrictions on restaurants and bars, The News-Herald reported.
The case has been assigned to Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge John P. O’Donnell. The plaintiffs are eight bars and restaurants, all but one being located in Northeast Ohio.
Read More
Five Democrat senators knelt during a moment of silence for George Floyd in a caucus meeting on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon.
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) knelt, which lasted for eight minutes and 46 seconds, The Hill reported. That was the length of time fired Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck before he died. Chauvin faces a second-degree murder charge over the incident.
Read More
In Ohio, 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths have happened in long-term care facilities, far above the national average of 42 percent, data show.
Read More
WLWT captured Cincinnati Councilman Jeff Pastor, who is black, on video delivering an emotional dressing down of the violent protesters in his city’s downtown.
The riots are in protest of the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
Read More
Instagram reportedly believes a children’s book written by U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and her daughter, about the history of the 19th Amendment, may “influence the outcome of an election,” so the tech giant has banned advertising for it.
The Federalist reported on the book’s ban.
Read More
After years of warning, President Donald Trump took action Thursday in the form of an Executive Order to remove a key protection companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google enjoy that shields the tech giants from lawsuits by individuals and other entities with claiming bias, censorship, and otherwise unfair treatment.
The Order, titled “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” comes two days after Twitter added a controversial “fact-check” of two of his tweets about fraud and absentee ballots, NPR reported.
Read More
With the data breach exposing the information of unemployed Ohioans, one foundation is saying that the government’s failure to address known flaws with the benefits system means the public has lost trust in the state.
Deloitte Consulting is handling pandemic unemployment assistance claims for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. At least 130,000 independent contractors who filed 1099 forms but have not yet received benefits had their information, including addresses and social security numbers exposed on the Deloitte system, WLWT reported.
Read More
The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, working on behalf of 35 independent gyms, struck a significant win for their right to exist by persuading a court to rule against Gov. Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton’s “oppressive” shutdown of their businesses.
The Ohio Court of Common Pleas in Lake County on Wednesday handed down a decision that castigated DeWine and the health department director and granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the gym owners from being prosecuted for opening while awaiting a court trial. The ruling is available in its entirety here.
Read More
Between Health Director Dr. Amy Acton sneaking in an extension of her dining orders until July 1 and Governor Mike DeWine assembling a restaurant police force, one may wonder if Ohio is really reopening.
Late last Thursday, following the final press conference of the week, Acton issued the “Director’s Dine Safe Ohio Order,” which is available here. The order allowed outside restaurant dining as of last Friday.
Read More
Gov. Mike DeWine said he is prepared to “pull back” on Ohio’s reopening.
The governor made the remark Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
”Candidly, we’ve worked with the attorney general … and we’re going to do what we have to do if these things in fact occur across Ohio.”
Read More
Facebook is working to set up an AI meme police.
The social media behemoth said it is creating a contest with a $100,000 prize to encourage developers to create artificial intelligence that can “identify multimodal hate speech.”
Read More
Dr. Amy Acton claims the Ohio Health Department found five cases in five counties where COVID-19 symptoms were experienced in January.
Acton mentioned serological antibody testing and hinted that contact tracers were involved in investigating the patients’ cases during a press conference Monday, WLWT reported.
Read More
The Buckeye Institute submitted written testimony Wednesday to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee on the policies of Senate Bill 308, which would provide businesses and workers with immunity from COVID-19 related lawsuits.
Read More
Conservatives are using words like “betrayal” to describe Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof’s late-night move to kill a vote on a bill to curb Dr. Amy Acton’s unrestrained powers in shutting the state down, and suggests he had an ulterior motive.
The Senate will not act this week on Senate Bill One pulling back the Health Department director’s powers, meaning it will likely fail, Fox 19 Now reported. The Senate is only having committee meetings this week and will hold a session next week.
Read More
Thinking local is racist, according to The Columbus Dispatch, which built a convoluted case to accuse Ohio Rep. Nino Vitale (R-OH-85) of being anti-semitic for using the dirty word “globalist.”
On May 1, the Urban-area Republican posted on Facebook:
While you were sleeping, UNELECTED Acton declared Ohio closed until May 29th.
Read More
Facebook last week announced that more than 200 news organizations will receive nearly $16 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news. These grants come from $25 million in relief funding announced in March from Facebook’s $100 million global investment in news. It includes:
$10.3 million being awarded to 144 US local newsrooms as part of the COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program. The fund is supporting many publishers who are hardest hit by this crisis: nearly 80 percent of recipients are family- or independently owned and more than half are published by or for communities of color.
$5.4 million being awarded to 59 North American newsrooms that participated in Facebook Local News Accelerator programs focused on subscriptions and memberships.
Read More
State Rep. Diane Grendell (R- Geauga County) wants Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton to be more forthcoming about COVID-19 statistics.
Grendell drafted the “Truth in COVID-19 Statistics” bill, the Record-Courier reported. She said the bill will be introduced in the House later this week, and she expects it to gain bipartisan support.
Read More
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who once pled for an influx of healthcare workers to treat COVID-19, now says they have to pay up for the privilege of having worked there to treat the coronavirus.
Cuomo said out-of-state medical professionals who volunteered to help his state owe income taxes, Fox News said. That applies even if they stayed on the payroll in their home states. However, only workers who stayed in New York for more than 14 days are on the hook.
Read More
Ohio State House Republicans on Wednesday approved a move to limit the Health Department’s emergency declaration powers.
Read More
Up until now, you mostly had to be connected to big business — and to Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov Jon Husted — to have a say in how businesses of all sizes are considered in Ohio’s snails-pace reopening.
On Friday, DeWine said the state would begin a phased reopening from the Chinese coronavirus shutdown, The Ohio Star reported. The governor said he is forming a pair of advisory groups tasked with developing best practices for reopening dine-in restaurants, barbershops and salons.
Read More
Hundreds gathered outside and inside Michigan’s Capitol building Thursday to protest government overreach in the prolonged COVID-19 lockdown.
There were no reports of arrests, though some media outlets styled the event with armed protestors as “storming” the Capitol
Read More
Nearly 1 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since Gov. Mike DeWine shut the state down, and the governor has responded by calling for a “Spirit Week” to have “#SpiritWeekOhio fun” which includes wearing pajamas.
Six of the state’s most influential business organizations last week sent a letter to Gov. Mike DeWine last week urging him to reopen the economy as nearly one million Ohioans have now filed unemployment claims since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as The Ohio Star reported Monday. The letter was signed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, the Ohio Council on Retail Merchants, Ohio Farm Bureau, and NFIB-Ohio.
Read More
State Rep. Nino Vitale (R-Urbana) says reports of his Facebook campaign page’s demise are greatly exaggerated — it was down temporarily, but the social media giant was very cooperative in restoring it.
Read More
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is denouncing an anti-Semitic sign at a recent protest as well as remarks by a state senator and his wife about Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, who is Jewish.
Read More
Ohio’s prolonged lockdown is literally a life-and-death matter for an Akron barber battling a rare form of cancer as she cannot reach world-renowned Johns Hopkins Medicine for treatment.
Peggy Reed is a barber with Stage 4 Squamous Cell cancer of the nasal cavity. Much of her medical story is told on her GoFundMe page here.
Reed missed her appointment at Johns Hopkins on March 26 to see a specialist. Ohio’s stay at home order means no out of state travel is allowed. Maryland also has a stay at home order.
Read More
The mayor and police of Warren, Ohio, have decided it is illegal to hold vigils to mourn for murder victims, and they have been encouraging citizens to become informants to help them punish the participants.
Last week, the Warren Police Department posted pictures of mourners on its Facebook page and asking people to identify them.
We are asking for your assistance in identifying the following individuals that were involved in a gathering in the 1000 block of Kenmore SE on Saturday-April 11th, 2020. If anyone has any additional information and/or video that may be of assistance, please forward it to the Warren Police Department
Read More
A New Jersey woman was cited by police for organizing a protest against the state’s stay at home order.
Read More
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton on Friday discussed how the state will develop its plan to reopen the economy.
DeWine said, “Ohioans have done a great job, a phenomenal job, fighting back, staying home, ensuring physical distancing. We’ve been doing all the things that needed to be done. I’ve never been prouder to be an Ohioan and I’m very grateful for what you have done. You have flattened the curve.”
Beginning May 1, the state will begin a phased-in reopening of the state economy. The plan will be fact-driven over a long period of time to minimize the health risk to business owners, employees, and customers.
Read More
With approximately 157,218 unemployment claims filed last week, Ohio has lost more jobs in four weeks than it has in two years.
Read More
Some Ohio Republican lawmakers are calling for Gov. Mike DeWine to reopen the state.
The governor said Friday he would create a plan to gradually reopen the state, The Plain-Dealer said.
House Speaker Larry Householder convened a task force that will study how to reopen the economy. State Rep. Paul Zeltwanger (R-OH-54) said Ohio needs to plan for controlling the disease for when segments of the economy reopen. He pointed out that some question whether 253 deaths as of Sunday justify the closures.
Read More
Approximately 150 people gathered outside the State Capitol in Columbus Monday to tell Gov. Mike DeWIne and Health Department Director Amy Action that it’s past time to reopen the state.
Tom Zawistowski, president of Ohio Tea Party group We the People Convention, estimated the attendance, in an interview with The Ohio Star. This was the second such protest since last Thursday.
Many of the protestors called out, “You’re getting a paycheck, we’re not,” Zawistowski said.
Read More
Ohio is 44th out of 50 states in terms of the number of tests performed per capita for the Chinese coronavirus, data show.
Worldometers tracks COVID-19 test results and related data. The information, which was updated Sunday afternoon, is available here.
Looking at tests performed by 1 million, or per capita, is a method to adjust for population differences.
Based on that strategy, Ohio is 44th out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., with 5,432 tests done for every person out of 1 million people.
The national figure is 8,371 tests per million.
Read More
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told police to take down tag numbers of people attending churches and other gatherings on Easter so the government could go to their homes and impose a 14-day quarantine over COVID-19 concerns.
Read More
State Sen. Matt Huffman (R-OH-12) is calling for the reopening of business activity in West Central Ohio, telling Gov. Mike DeWine that it makes sense from “population density.”
Read More
Jobless claims in Ohio through the first week of April have nearly doubled what was filed during all of 2019, WKRC reported.
Read More
The Buckeye Institute says Ohio should end the collaborative supervision requirements that prevent advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) from offering the medical care they have been trained and licensed to provide.
Read More
A health institute that has been making national and state COVID-19 forecasts revised its model for Ohio, suggesting that the peak will be hit Wednesday, leaving far fewer cases and deaths than the gruesome numbers painted by Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration.
The Sandusky Register reported on the model update Monday.
The forecaster is the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHMC), and it is a model that has been cited by many state and federal officials, including President Donald Trump.
Read More
An Ohio state representative says she wants to subject America’s sitting president to an international tribunal at The Hague over President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus.
State Rep. Tavia Galonski (D-OH-35) from Akron tweeted, “I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been to The Hague. I’m making a referral for crimes against humanity tomorrow. Today’s press conference was the last straw. I know the need for a prosecution referral when I see one.”
Read More
The rate of increases for new Chinese coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Ohio declined on Sunday, although the number of deaths climbed by 17.
The data is provided by The COVID Tracking Project, and is available here. The project has taken multiple screenshots every day of the Ohio Department of Health’s COVID-19 portal, which is here, to provide and document the numbers.
Read More