Free Republic

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that Ohio Gov. John Kasich should run for President again in 2020, challenging incumbent President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Schwarzenegger made the endorsement in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “He should run in 2020, yes,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview with The Times when asked whether Kasich, whom he supported over Trump in the 2016 presidential race, should launch another presidential campaign. “Kasich is an extraordinary guy. He’s a man of substance. He’s worked in Washington, he’s worked in local government, he’s worked in statewide government. He has...

A 6-year-old girl described as a phenom by her dance teacher has already lost one leg to an unusual strep throat infection, and is now in danger of losing the other. Tessa Puma, of Akron, Ohio, was treated for strep throat in early March, but came down with the flu last week, Fox 25 reported. On Friday, her left leg began to swell and she was taken to Akron Children’s Hospital, where doctors discovered necrotizing fasciitis, Fox 8 reported.

State Rep. Christina Hagan became the first Republican to jump into the race for Ohio’s 16th District on Monday. Four-term Rep. James B. Renacci is running for governor in 2018 - It’s a safe Republican seat that President Donald Trump won by 17 points and could feature a crowded GOP primary field.  - Hagan is serving her third term in the state House, to which she was appointed in 2011 when she was a 22-year-old college student. (She first ran when she was 19, but lost). Hagan holds the same seat that her father held from 2000 to 2008.

Before the week’s headline Supreme Court debate, senators are poised to get the Delta Queen back cruising America’s waterways. The legendary riverboat has been barred from carrying overnight passengers since an exemption to the 1966 Safety of Life at Sea Act for the largely wooden vessel lapsed back in 2008. Lawmakers from Cincinnati to St. Louis have pushed for the Delta Queen to get a new lease on life since then, and the Senate has scheduled a Monday evening vote on passage of a bipartisan bill that would do just that... Sen. Rob Portman, who hails from Cincinnati, remembers the...

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker today (30 March) warned US President Donald Trump that he would support ‘Texit’, Texas breaking away from the US, if the flamboyant millionaire kept backing Brexit. He delivered the astonishing slapdown the day after the UK triggered Article 50, the legal process to take Britain out of the bloc. Trump has been a vocal and enthusiastic supporter of Brexit. During a speech at the European People’s Party (EPP) summit in Malta, Juncker issued a stinging rebuke to Trump and insisted Brexit would not spell the end of the EU. “Brexit is not the end,” said...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — While pundits breathlessly reported this week that President Trump’s Gallup approval rating has plummeted to a historic low (dipping to 37 points), not all approval ratings are created equal. Because in American politics, geography is everything. Live in an urban, minority or college setting, and Donald J. Trump is underwater in the polls in a big way; he gets a frosty 29 percent approval rating in the cities, 35 percent approval in the urban suburbs, in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey. But, live in the second ring of suburbs outside the cities, or the exurbs or...

The Ohio Republican, one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Congress, is touting his business credentials, saying the state needs a leader “who understands what it means to create a job.” In his campaign video, Renacci tells a group of voters that he wants to simplify the tax code, end "pay for play" and nix regulations that he argues are hurting Ohio.

Josh Mandel will stop at nothing to keep the people of Ohio safe from illegal immigrant crime. But that is a little unusual when you consider that immigration issues don’t really fall into his job description. Mandel is Ohio’s state treasurer and is currently locked in a political fight with liberal politicians over whether or not two of the Buckeye State’s biggest cities should help illegals skirt federal law enforcement. He is coming up against a political machine that is thoroughly bipartisan. Earlier this year, the mayors of Columbus and Cincinnati announced that they wanted their cities to become sanctuary...

By about 3 p.m. Friday, a county morgue in east Ohio was already full — and more bodies were expected. Rick Walters, an investigator for the Stark County coroner's office, had just left for two death scenes: a suicide and an overdose. From the road, he called the director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency to ask for help. He needed more space, he explained — specifically, a cold-storage trailer to act as an overflow morgue. As with much of the United States, Ohio is in the throes of a heroin and opioid epidemic that shows no signs of abating.

A Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital that touted its program focusing on 20 transgendered individuals failed in caring for the remaining 111,000 veterans on health care essentials like keeping its medical equipment clean and properly training employees, government auditors found. "We could not gain reasonable assurance that clinical managers effectively monitor the professional competency of providers ... patient equipment is clean ... [and] employees ensure a safe and healthy environment," according to the Inspect General (IG) report on the activities at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center released March 13. The hospital in question was the subject of positive...

Nearly 500 jurisdictions are now sanctuary cities, according to a group that’s tracked the issue for more than a decade, and who said there’s been a massive surge in the number of places trying to thwart federal immigration agents since President Trump’s election. The Ohio Jobs & Justice Political Action Committee (http://www.ojjpac.org/sanctuary.asp) has added more than three dozen new cities and counties to its list in 2017 alone, as jurisdictions rush to try to shield illegal immigrants from what they expect to be a new push for deportations under Mr. Trump. “More will be coming,” said Steve Salvi, founder of...

Students at Ohio State University are being offered a class this semester that promises to teach them about microaggressions, privilege, and power. “Crossing Identity Boundaries: A Journey Towards Intercultural Leadership” is a three credit course currently being promoted to Ohio State students through the school’s Multicultural Center.

Student government leaders at Ohio State University are calling for “safe spaces” spread throughout campus to host student conversations. In a unanimous vote earlier this month, the Undergraduate Student Government approved a resolution requesting various “Dialogue Spaces … meant to accommodate diverse and positive discussion within a safe space,” the resolution states.

LISBON — An East Liverpool woman was sentenced to six months in the Columbiana County Jail for engaging in voter registration fraud. Rebecca A. Hammonds, 34, of Fourth Street, was originally charged with 35 counts of falsely registering people to vote and forging signatures on voter registration forms. She pleaded guilty in January to 14 of the 35 counts as part of a plea deal reached in January. Hammonds was a paid canvasser for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), a liberal activist group that was active in registering voters in the southern part of the county ........ See link for...

CINCINNATI - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, will highlight in downtown Cincinnati this morning key infrastruture projects, such as the Brent Spence Bridge, as he outlines a framework to rebuild and repair the country’s infrastructure which will create millions of construction jobs. The northern Ohio Senator will be joined by Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority President and CEO Laura Brunner, and OKI Regional Council of Governments Deputy Executive DirectorRobert Koehler. President Donald Trump previously promised $1 trillion of investment in American infrastructure during his campaign. Brown joined Senate colleagues to release a roadmap for making...

To draw attention to female authors, a Cleveland bookstore celebrated Women’s History Month by turning every male-written book in the fiction room backward on its shelf. Eight of the all-female employees of Loganberry Books went through about 10,000 books, a process that took about two hours. They’ll leave the books turned around for the next two weeks

Wouldn’t you want to know? That’s the question I’ve been asking since well before the last election took place. The President has made the claim that millions of non-citizens, either of the legal or illegal varieties, cast ballots in the 2016 race. (Presumably for Hillary Clinton for the most part.) That total number remains in dispute for good reason, but the fact that non-citizens have voter registration cards and in some cases are actually showing up to vote has never really been in dispute, despite what you regularly hear from Democrats and cable news personalities. Further proof of this reality...

COLUMBUS -- Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced an investigation has uncovered that hundreds of non-US citizens are registered to vote in the state, and dozens of them voted illegally. According to a release from Husted, 385 people who are not citizens of the United States are registered to vote in Ohio. Out of those, 82 voted in at least one election in the last year. Husted’s office says the 82 non-citizens who are registered to vote and cast ballots will be immediately referred to law enforcement for further investigation and possible prosecution. “In light of the national discussion...

Play-Doh will soon be squeezed out of a factory in the U.S. again, as Hasbro Inc. brings manufacturing of the popular moldable clay back to America for the first time in years.  Hasbro said it is working with a manufacturing partner to make Play-Doh at a facility in East Longmeadow, Mass., starting in the second half of 2018. Although the preschool clay was invented in Cincinnati in the 1950s, it hasn't been made in the U.S. since 2004. 

An LGBT organization in Ohio has announced plans to target churches if they refuse to offer their property to be used in a homosexual wedding. In opposing the Ohio Pastors Protection Act (HB-36), the group Equality Ohio announced that they would target churches, forcing them to rent church facilities to groups which oppose that church's beliefs. This despite the fact that all the Roman Catholic bishops in Ohio support the bill, and Catholics make up approximately 20 percent of the state's population. When asked "if a church community has a church hall that they rent to couples who want to...