Rotunda Rumblings
Clarification on stalking: According to Ohio’s Supreme Court, you can be found guilty of menacing by stalking even if you never explicitly threaten someone or are instructed to stop. In a case involving a man who persistently messaged a woman on Instagram, showed up at her residence without permission, and kept in touch with her despite police warnings, the unanimous decision was made on Tuesday.According to Anna Staver, even though the texts weren’t inherently dangerous, the justices determined that his behavior constituted a pattern that upset her.
Get into gear:On Wednesday, Cleveland State University declared its intention to rejoin the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s student transit pass program. The school attributed its decision to withdraw from the U-Pass program on the newly passed budget. The press secretary for Governor Mike DeWine, however, referred to the school’s interpretation as a “ridiculous reading of the law.” The Ohio Board of Regents, the Department of Higher Education’s predecessor organization, granted CSU an exemption from state law in 2005 to operate the U-Pass program, according to the Ohio Department of Higher Education, Laura Hancock writes.
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Drones, fusion centers, license plate readers: Extraordinary lengths to keep a fair safe
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This just breaks my brain: Rather than fix property taxes they wrecked, lawmakers say end them
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Parenting in the spotlight: JD Vance on raising kids as vice president
City Club visit: According to Mary Frances McGowan, Sen. Bernie Moreno will take part in a public forum at The City Club of Cleveland the following week. Henry Gomez of NBC News will speak with the Westlake Republican at the event, which is set for August 20. As is customary at The City Club, Moreno will also field audience questions.
In the spotlight: When three-year-olds throw tantrums in public, it’s usually just another day of parenting. “However, those same toddler tantrums can turn into viral moments that follow your family forever when you’re the vice president of the United States,” says Sabrina Eaton. JD Vance has an own method for dealing with these circumstances, and it is very different from his wife’s method. The Cincinnati Republican discussed how he and second lady Usha Vance deal with the particular difficulties of raising young children in the spotlight in a podcast interview this week.
Fishy trip: According to the BBC, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy acknowledged that he lacked a license to go fishing this week with Vice President JD Vance and attributed the oversight to an administrative mistake. Since then, he has bought a license and wrote to the country’s Environmental Agency to acknowledge his error. When he went fishing with the US vice president last week at his official estate, Chevening House in Kent, the foreign secretary did not catch any fish, but Vance’s kids did. Every fish that was captured was put back into the exclusive lake. Vance’s staff was questioned by the BBC about whether the Cincinnati Republican had purchased a license.
Ohio has halted the machine ban. Seneca and Monroe County attempts to outlaw the use of voting machines have been thwarted by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who claims that state law only permits voters to approve voting machines, not to do away with them.Signal According to Ohio, the decision is a blow to an activist group with a GOP affiliation that wants to switch back to hand-counted paper ballots in all Ohio counties.
The same tea? According to the New York Times, Vance met with Nigel Farage, the head of the rebellious, anti-immigrant party Reform U.K., in England on Wednesday morning. The vice president’s office and Farage did not disclose the topics of their conversation, but they agree on things like free speech rights, which both have said are in danger in Britain.
Change of the game?Ohio House Democrats have introduced new legislation that would forbid state legislators from taking any free or heavily discounted tickets to professional sporting events that aren’t also accessible to the general public.State Representative Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma who is co-sponsoring House Bill 409, says that accepting such tickets, as some lawmakers from both parties have done in recent years, is a blatant conflict of interest because the legislature is funding a new stadium for the Cleveland Browns with $600 million, according to Haley BeMiller of the Columbus Dispatch. Because lawmakers may speak with school administrators and there isn’t a sense that team owners are compensating them, Brennan said the plan wouldn’t apply to college athletic events.
Complete court press:The U.S. Supreme Court is being persuaded to consider a complaint against identical regulations in California by the Democratic former state officials who are behind a lawsuit contesting the legitimacy of raiding Ohio’s unclaimed funds account to finance $600 million for a new Browns stadium. Attorneys Marc Dann and Jeff Crossman contended in an amicus brief submitted earlier this week that a California statute permitting the state to collect inactive assets, like Ohio’s new law, has a valid public purpose and infringes upon core constitutional protections for private property rights.
Full Disclosure
We discovered the following five facts regarding Powell Republican state senator Andrew Brenner’s 2024 finances in his ethics disclosure form filed on May 9, 2025:
1. Brenner earned between $1,000 and $9,999 per month from his business as an insurance agent for Brenner Insurance Group LLC and from his $82,198.92 Senate pay last year.
2. Brenner and/or his wife, Sara Marie Brenner, operate under a number of different names in addition to his insurance organization. Among them are Brenner Beach Bungalow, LLC, Crane & Pearl Realty LLC, Engage Strategies, Empowerment Family Financial Group, The Right Idea LLC, Cedar Grove Properties LLC, and Brenner Homes LLC.
3. Brenner received $1,281.80 in mileage reimbursements from the Ohio Senate last year.
4. Select Portfolio Servicing, Specialized Loan Servicing, Fay Servicing LLC, BFI Loan Servicing LLC, and First Community Mortgage were among the eleven organizations to which Brenner owed at least $1,000 at some point in 2024. A Best Buy credit card, Capital One, Huntington National Bank, Verizon Wireless, and NelNet, a student loan servicer, were among the other creditors.
5. In addition to his residence, Brenner reported owning a single-family home in Delaware and an agricultural property northeast of the city.
Birthdays
State Representative Gayle Manning’s legislative assistant, Grace Flajnik
Thomas Hall, a state representative
Kaitlyn May, policy advisor for Democrats in the Ohio Senate
Straight From The Source
A US Senate and Governor ticket with @SenSherrodBrown and @TimRyan would be formidable, in my opinion. I hope it materializes!
Jamie Harrison, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, posted on X about the candidates he wants his party to nominate for Ohio governor and the U.S. Senate the following year. Harrison’s remark came after reports on Tuesday that Brown had made the choice to try to return to the Senate. A Ryan spokesperson also said that Brown’s decision had rekindled and intensified the former congressman’s interest in running for governor.
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