Just last week, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose defended the accuracy of voting machines in an interview with Signal Ohio, calling them faster and more accurate than hand-counted paper ballots.
So we had that in mind after President Donald Trump made a series of social media posts on Monday calling for voting machines, as well as mail-in voting, to be banned.
Trump said he’d work on some kind of executive order regarding the issue ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections.
We wondered what LaRose thought about the statement. Here’s what spokesman Ben Kindel had to say: “We look forward to reviewing the details of what the president is proposing. Changes to Ohio’s voting process require a vote of the General Assembly, so I’m sure we’ll be talking with them as well.”
Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Elections Officials Association, which represents county election boards, said he couldn’t comment on Trump’s posts since he wasn’t sure exactly what the president is proposing.
But, he said he’s been following industry news on the subject.
“The prevailing thought is it’s up to the states and up to Congress,” Ockerman said. “There’s no mention of the president playing any role whatsoever.”
Paper dreams
U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno made a bold and lofty prediction in April while he addressed an emotional crowd in Chillicothe.
“I am confident that this mill will not only survive next year, but for the next 200 years,” Moreno said of the community’s historic paper mill while speaking at a rally organized by his office.
The plant officially closed this month, taking 750 permanent jobs with it.
In an interview this week, we asked Moreno if he still thinks his prediction will come true.
“It’s still possible,” he said.
He also offered updates on where the effort stands today, including the prospects of redevelopment at the site. Click here to read more.
Inside Intel
Moreno, for now, is playing nice with the corporate owner of the Chillicothe mill as officials work to help the company line up a buyer.
But he took a much different tack last week with computer chip maker Intel, when he publicly called for Intel’s CEO to be fired and for the state to investigate the company for fraud over its repeatedly delaying its massive new plant outside Columbus.
The approach also contrasts sharply with state officials, who have generally said little about the project other than to predict that it will eventually get built.
Moreno, a critic of the original bipartisan federal subsidies for chip makers, described his approach as keeping pressure on the company. He said the state now owns the project, figuratively speaking, given all the state subsidies that have gone into it.
Sending in the troops
On Aug. 11, President Donald Trump announced an unprecedented plan to deploy National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. Four days later, Gov. Mike DeWine sent 150 men and women with the Ohio National Guard to “carry out presence patrols and serve as added security.” The governor told cleveland.com he didn’t want to “second guess” Trump.
Republican governors in West Virginia, Missouri, Louisiana and South Carolina have also sent Guard troops to the nation’s capital.
The troops are purportedly there to fight crime, which official statistics peg at a 30-year low, although polling suggests residents see it as a major problem. Whatever the goals or tactics, social media is rife with pictures of troops taking pictures with tourists or patrolling safer areas of the city near monuments and the National Mall.
DeWine has deployed the Guard in the past for natural disasters or chaotic protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. But this isn’t the first time DeWine has deployed armed forces to buttress Trump’s political messaging, including deployments to Texas in 2021 and 2023 from both the Ohio State Highway Patrol and National Guard to assist at the Southern Border.
Democrats have sharply criticized the move. Adam Miller, a former Statehouse Democrat and a nearly 30-year veteran of the Judge Advocate General Corps, repeatedly blasted DeWine at a press conference Wednesday for sending troops, untrained for urban law enforcement, to respond to Trump’s “fake emergency.” And if troops are in D.C. for political and theatrical purposes today, asked Gary Daniels, an ACLU lobbyist, who says Trump won’t send them into Cincinnati tomorrow?
We asked both the Guard and highway patrol what these shows of force cost. We’re waiting on answers for the border deployments – stay tuned. As for D.C., no cost estimate is available, according to Guard spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer.
“It will be paid for by the federal government, which is how it works for all federal deployments,” she said.
Ohio mixed bag on solar
The Ohio Power Siting Board will decide today whether to grant a permit for Cottontail Solar in Fairfield County, a 1,600-acre solar project in Fairfield County that could produce enough power for tens of thousands of homes.
Staff have recommended the commissioners approve the project. If they do so, it’ll be in contrast to six utility-scale solar farm planned in Ohio since 2021 that the state government has stopped cold. Collectively, the projects would have produced enough electricity for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans’ homes.
Jake Zuckerman drove out to the farmland of Fairfield County to take a close look at another solar project that could get rejected. At the core of the issue: state laws that heavily disfavor solar, organized grassroots opposition to solar projects, and local politicians suddenly thrust into the epicenter of often unpopular energy siting decisions.
When the online right comes for you
Rep. Ismail Mohamed posted a 90-second video about the temporary and ceremonial renaming of a street in Columbus around 2023. The Somali-American representing a district with tens of thousands of fellow immigrants from Somalia cut the video in both English and Somali.
The Somali version landed him in the crosshairs of the online MAGA right, which last week bounced the video around the internet along with a suggestion that Mohamed is a Manchurian agent loyal to his home country.
Jake interviewed Mohamed, who said the whole episode captures the racism beneath the growing anti-immigrant fervor on the right. If he, the first Somali-American to practice law in Ohio and one of the first to win a Statehouse seat, is not a “good” immigrant, he said, then who is?