Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.
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Catching Our Eye
• Seeking a Trump pardon for the biggest bribery scandal in Ohio history. The Columbus Dispatch’s Jessie Balmert reports, “Larry Householder to seek Trump pardon after loss in Supreme Court.”
The U.S. Supreme Court won’t overturn the bribery conviction of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, ending a six-year legal saga that sent the former top Republican leader to prison for 20 years…
After the legal loss, Householder’s attorney Scott Pullins said Householder would seek a pardon from President Donald Trump.
• Trump Homeland Security department targets Ohio voters. Reuters reports, “How Trump is moving to control U.S. elections, one state at a time.”
Reuters uncovered a broader‑than‑previously known Trump administration effort to gain federal control over elections, historically run locally, in at least eight states – using investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID…
In Ohio, federal investigators have collected voter records in at least six counties, two of them solidly Democratic and the others politically competitive, citing unspecified investigations. The scope of those probes hasn’t been previously reported.
• Property taxes. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Karen Kasler reports, “Group pushing amendment to abolish property tax in Ohio likely won’t make ballot.”
The group that wants Ohio voters to abolish property taxes almost certainly won’t make the fall ballot, even though the deadline to submit signatures is more than two months away.
Members of the Committee to Abolish Property Taxes released their signature total in a livestreamed event, after months of refusing requests to do so from journalists and group volunteers. The group, also called Ax Ohio Tax, needs a minimum of 413,487 valid signatures from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1 to make the November ballot. That’s 10% of the total ballots cast for governor in the last election for that office, in 2022.
• Ohio Sec. of State race. Cleveland.com’s Laura Hancock reports, “Ohio secretary of state candidates divided over hand-marked ballots, redistricting.”
In the race for Ohio secretary of state are Republicans who believe it’s too easy to cheat in voting and Democrats who believe recent state laws making it harder to vote have crossed into suppression.
Details about what they’d do, however, vary.
• Haitians. The Dayton Daily News’ Cornelius Frolik reports, “Haiti TPS: Supreme Court to hear in-person argument this week in high stakes cases.”
Legal protections for more than 330,000 Haitian nationals and other foreign-born people living in the United States hang in the balance as the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments this week in litigation about the federal government’s attempts to cancel temporary protected status for Haiti and Syria.
Justices with the highest court in the land are expected to spend an hour or longer on Wednesday, April 29, listening to and asking questions of lawyers for the Trump administration and TPS holders, who dispute whether the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security followed the law and the correct procedures when she tried to terminate protected status for the foreign countries.
