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Happy Pride Month, Ohio. Creepy, bully Republican lawmakers are fixated on assaulting our community
Happy Pride Month, Ohio, where LGBTQ+ people are under constant assault by bully Republican lawmakers who are weirdly obsessed with our community, especially the transgender members of it. Transgender people — especially transgender people of color — have been leading the activist charge toward LGBTQ+ human rights and equality since the beginning, literally throwing the first […]
Ohio Republican education assaults are a travesty, wrapped in unthinking, immature, petty grievance
Ohio boasts cherished, prestigious academic institutions that we rightly take enormous pride in, but now Ohio Republican lawmakers have their culture war sights set on destroying all of it, out of unthinking, immature, petty personal grievance and power politics. For many years, right-wingers have seethed resentfully at the whole bulk of American academia — many […]
Gerrymandered Ohio Statehouse gives voters no recourse through initiated statute, only constitution
In order to understand the bad faith of the Republican arguments for attacking Ohio voters and asking us to enshrine 41% minority rule over our Ohio Constitution, voters need to understand the power dynamics at play when it comes to initiated statutes versus amendments to the Ohio Constitution. In Ohio, citizens have two options for […]
Gerrymandered Ohio GOP lawmakers launch tyrannical assault on 170 years of majority voter authority
The unconstitutionally gerrymandered extremist Republican supermajority in the Ohio House on Wednesday voted to be the first legislature in Ohio history to try to roll back the constitutional power of Ohio voters. Dripping with deceit and condescension, they say they want to hurt voters’ ability to pass constitutional amendments in order to protect the Ohio […]
Ohio citizens and organizers dismantle extremist special interest arguments for attacking voters
The attempt by more than 80 Ohio Statehouse Republicans and Secretary of State Frank LaRose to get voters to enshrine 41% minority rule over our state constitution in a special August election was passed out of an Ohio House Constitutional Amendments Committee Tuesday in a 7-6 vote, with all five Democrats on the committee voting […]
Bipartisan opposition makes Ohio Republican August election, minority-rule power grab look absurd
More than 200 bipartisan groups, four bipartisan former Ohio governors, and Ohio’s entire system of bipartisan elections officials are all against a special August election proposed by Ohio Republican politicians to attack the power of voters and enshrine 41% minority rule over the state constitution. This week, current Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he […]
The shame of Ohio: Corrupt, gerrymandered Statehouse Republicans assault voters, again
Just moments after I watched Ohio Senate Republicans pass a resolution for 41% minority rule over the Ohio Constitution on Wednesday, I walked past a field trip of Ohio children touring the Statehouse. Seeing those kids’ faces as their eyes explored the beautiful Ohio Statehouse Rotunda, a sharp, stabbing pain of shame for our once-great […]
Feed Ohio school children. Please. At the very least, feed the children.
A strain of anti-public education ideology has been running rampant among a number of lawmakers in the Ohio Statehouse for many years now. The consequences can been seen across Ohio as districts have been robbed of previous state funding, such as the many millions lost with the phase-out of Tangible Personal Properties reimbursements. As Ohio […]
America’s most noble achievements have come from expanding democracy, not ripping it away
Deploying profoundly simplistic and misleading arguments for attacking Ohio voters’ ability to amend our own state constitution, various Ohio Republican politicians have pointed to the U.S. Constitution’s requirements for passage of amendments. This, they argue, justifies rolling back more than 110 years of popular democracy in Ohio to enshrine 41% minority rule over the reasonable […]
The political strategy against Ohio abortion rights: Manufacture hysteria and stack the deck
The political strategy to try to defeat Ohio’s proposed abortion rights amendment is wildly obvious: Manufacture hysteria over a slippery slope legal fallacy about parents rights, and use all levers of power at every level to stack the deck against Ohio voters and in favor of right-wing extremists. The first tool in stacking the deck against […]
How favoritism has now infected our state’s last branch of government, the Ohio Supreme Court
Ohioans concerned about corruption in Ohio’s legislature and executive offices won’t find much comfort looking to the Ohio Supreme Court, which has now also been infected by favoritism for DeWine family friends and anti-abortion special interests. At the end of last year, Ohio Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor was forced to retire due […]
Householder and Borges felony convictions just a start in stopping Ohio pay-to-play corruption
The fact that former Ohio Republican House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Chair Matt Borges are now convicted felons in a $61 million political bribery, $1.3 billion utility bailout scandal is just a beginning. Ohio still has a long way to go in cleaning up a rampant culture of pay-to-play corruption that has […]