Today’s Politics Have No Moral Bottom.

The chatter over Ohio’s controversial campaign ad featuring an opponent’s mother denouncing her own daughter as a liar while dragging out the story of the candidate’s sexual abuse as a child may show that politics has no moral bottom.

The reactions also mirror a voter disgust with the character of their candidates.

The ad by Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy presents the mother of his opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, who is leading in the race, as a serial liar is backfiring.

The bigger reaction is to the morality of Ramaswamy in choosing to spend $4 million to continue airing the ad when the backstory that has emerged is that Action was abused by her stepdad and abandoned by the mother at age 12. The stepdad went to prison, and the mother sided with the stepdad and has remained estranged from her children for 50 years.

When Political Ambition Overrides Human Decency

On a bipartisan basis, the political world has decided Ramaswamy is “desperate” to ignore basic human decency in the attempt to re-take advantage. Outgoing Republica Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called on Ramaswamy to withdraw the ads as “deeply troubling”; Donal Trump, who still does not acknowledge his 1,000 mentions in the Epstein Files, strongly defended Ramaswamy, called critics “weak” and said the ads should stay on the air.

Despite massive backlash about just over how reprehensible, awful, disgusting the political move,  Ramaswamy is doubling down. Obviously, a public verdict will be rendered in two weeks on the strategy as much as on whether either candidate has an appropriate answer to questions about high prices and health care.

One might wonder whether Acton surviving a family sexual abuse makes a candidate stronger, not “a liar,” But the average voter has got to wonder about Ramaswamy as the candidate who thinks that seeking to shame a sexual abuse victim will make him a better governor. Ramaswamy, like all candidates, has choice here; the 12-year-old Acton did not. How exactly does Ramaswamy expect us to respond? 

Character Questions Follow Candidates Across the 2026 Elections

Politics always presents voters with flawed candidates, of course, but this year, we are seeing more than the average number of cases in which basic morality seems tangential to Winning.

Democrat Graham Platner had to withdraw not because of his political positions, but because of sexual abuse claims he could not escape. Sen. Roger Marshall’s, R-Kan., surprisingly tight race is as much the result of disclosures that as a physician he aggressively pursued patients who had trouble paying him – even having 18 arrested – as because of his strict backing for Donald Trump and national Republican positions.

In the Texas senatorial campaign, each day brings new real disclosures about excesses in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s personal life, and made-up inventions about Democratic opponent James Talerico’s that stretch the moral imagination. In Georgia, they are arguing about whether it is moral for Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins to surround himself with Nazi sympathizers.

Opponents of Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, unsatisfied with what only the anti-Israel bias he himself offers, have resorted to talking about the political statements of the woman who walked away as his mother as a child. Trump’s Justice Department can’t stay away from investigating immigration paperwork Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s dead father filled out more than 25 years ago two weeks before the election.

The central anger in our November elections has been a nationalized through-line about tariffs and the effects of an unwanted war with Iran, about a power-crazed Trump who ignores democracy and about excesses in Trump’s mass deportations campaign. Yet, the localized versions are crashing more on the moral efficacy of the candidates from the region.

Has Winning Become More Important Than Political Integrity?

We have allowed “morality” to be defined by politics about abortion or support for tuition to church schools, for example, rather than by the code by which the candidates themselves live. When Vice President JD Vance can look into the camera and insist that Trump and his family have not benefited personally from corruptive practices in the White House despite case after case in which business deals are substituting for defense of American democracy, or billionaires are reportedly offering millions towards consideration of presidential pardons, something basic has broken.

What exactly are these candidates thinking of winning besides a chance to feather their own nests with either power or money or both on the backs of others?

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I spent most of this afternoon going through everything I could find about the rape of Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton when she was 12 years old. Nearly all of it was about the disgusting ad being run by Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.

I pulled myself up short. Amy Acton is much more than a victim of childhood sexual abuse. She overcame it and worked her way through college, went to medical school, got an advanced degree in public health, and became Ohio’s Director of Public Health in 2019. She received the “Profile in Courage” award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library for her work in Ohio during the COVID pandemic and has held several jobs running non-profits since then. She announced her candidacy for governor in 2025 and ran unopposed in the state’s Democratic Party primary.

The coverage of the ad Ramaswamy is running against her is voluminous. Her birth mother, from whom she has been estranged since she and her brother were removed from her mother’s custody when she was 12 years old, appears in person in the ad calling her a liar, saying that she “needs help,” that if people vote for her daughter, it will only make their lives worse.

Naturally, Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, a former senator from Ohio, have weighed in, endorsing the despicable ad. Trump said “Vivek should keep it up,” referring to the ad. Ramaswamy should “let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!” Trump posted on his failing social media platform, Truth Social, today.

Democrats have denounced the ad and demanded that Ramaswamy take it down. In response, Ramaswamy has committed $4 million in campaign funds to keep it on the air. Some Republicans, including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, have denounced the ad. DeWine called it “deeply troubling,” and encouraged that it be taken down. Still, he has kept alive his endorsement of Ramaswamy.

And so, the back-and-forth has gone for the last several days, with the press and the political commentariat concentrating on the politics of the moment and whether the ad will work for Ramaswamy or backfire against him.

All of which would be normal in today’s political climate, when seemingly nothing is off the table in the knock-down-drag-out battle for control of Congress that will be decided at the polls 12 days from now.

Except for one thing. What Trump and Vance and Ramaswamy are talking about is a woman who was repeatedly sexually abused and raped by her stepfather when she was nine to twelve years old, a fact that has been lost in the political heat surrounding the ad.

I looked up everything I could find about the facts of what happened in 1978. Acton’s mother divorced her husband and named Cledith Arthur, who had already been charged with abusing his daughter in a previous marriage. The charges were later dropped. When his abuse of Amy was reported to the police in July of 1978 by her biological father, Arthur was arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a minor. The local NBC affiliate in Youngstown, Ohio, where Acton was living in July of 1978, published the file of court documents from Mahoning Valley Clerk of Court. The entire file amounts to 37 pages of documents showing that Arthur was arrested and charged with “sexual conduct with, [name blacked out], not the spouse of the offender, when the other person is less than 13 years of age, whether or not the offender knows the age of such person.” Yes, the language is that dry.

Arthur was given a $2,000 personal appearance bond and released. After failing to make court appearances, he was eventually charged by a grand jury with sexual abuse of a minor under 13 years of age. Multiple arrest warrants were issued, one in October of 1978 and a second in December of 1981, accusing Arthur of rape of a minor. Arthur and Amy’s birth mother, now known as Donna Arthur, fled the state to Pennsylvania.

No attempt was made to pursue Arthur to Pennsylvania. At that time, there was no national crime database, and states did not share information about arrest warrants. Arthur died in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, near the state capital of Harrisburg, in 2004.

The greatest tragedy of this case is that the sexual abuse of Amy Acton is being used against her in the campaign for the Ohio governorship. The other tragedy, that I would argue is just as great, is that while the abuse of minor children is common, it is not talked about by victims and certainly not by the criminals who abuse them. It is of course up to Amy Acton whether to talk about what happened to her as a child, and if she decides to discuss it, how much she should say. Acton has refused to debate Ramaswamy, at least in part because of the ad he is running, and because he has attacked her in the past using false charges that were leveled against her when she was the state’s Director of the Department of Health.

The statistics regarding child abuse are astounding. A third of women report being abused as children. I have written this before, but I feel the need to say it again: I have known multiple women in my life who experienced abuse by a family member or close relative or friend of their families. When I lived in California in the early 2000’s, the state passed a law that required registered childhood sexual abusers to report their addresses to the state, and made that information available to the public. California put up a website where you could access maps that showed the addresses of sexual abusers. We lived in the Hollywood Hills, and when our first daughter was born, I logged on to the website and accessed the map of our neighborhood. It was filled with little red dots signifying the addresses of child sexual abusers. Dozens lived within walking distance of our address.

It wasn’t like we let our seven- or-eight-year-old daughter walk around the neighborhood by herself. We didn’t. But the number of child sex abusers was scary. These guys had been convicted, probably on reduced charges, and imprisoned and been released early enough in their lives that they took up living as free men again, had jobs, qualified to rent apartments or buy houses. Amy Acton’s abuser lived similarly out in the open in Pennsylvania, not even having faced a court or conviction. Nobody in Mechanicsburg knew an accused child abuser lived down the street from them.

It isn’t until something like the horrid Ramaswamy ad against Amy Acton makes the news that the subject of childhood sexual abuse becomes a “thing” by the press in the political firmament. But it’s everywhere. If it is a fact that a third of women admit to being abused as children, it is a certainty that the number is much, much higher, because of the painfulness of the subject and the desire of most people to keep their lives private.

It’s no wonder. Even having heard women I have known personally describe the horrors that happened to them as children, it is impossible for me to imagine myself into their experience, impossible for anyone, I would think. How can you see in your mind’s eye the violence that happened to a small child in the dark of a bedroom or in the closet of a school or the seat of a car or in the leaves under a tree in the woods? Do you see what I mean? The pain. The shame of not telling anyone. Being so young. So vulnerable.

Writing those phrases feels dry to the point of being clinical. The reality had smells and blood and bodily fluids and stains and more agony than could ever be described, even by those who experienced it.

And this is what Vivek Ramaswamy and his enablers in the Republican Party, including the President and the Vice President of the United States, think is an appropriate “issue” to be flung at a victim of sexual violence to win a political office.

I despair not only about what this country has become, but what it has always been. It is even worse to think of what it says about how we, as human beings, can live among those who would use such deeply personal pain against another human being just to achieve power they want to exert over others.

Words fail me. We cannot fail Amy Acton.

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Get ready for a November surprise. Bibi is fighting for his political life facing elections in Israel. Trump is making a last-ditch effort to keep himself from being impeached a record third time if he loses the midterms. I can smell the White House panic here in Milford. He’s thinking about bombing Iran again.

It’s default Trump. He says he doesn’t believe the polls, but he studies them like the Talmud, and he knows Republicans are in big trouble. So much trouble, he’s flying around the red states on his Qatari pleasure palace like it’s a magic carpet. He thinks just landing the thing in Kansas or Ohio or Nebraska or Texas is going to solve all his problems.

But it isn’t. Even he can see the empty seats in the arenas that have gone from stadiums to hockey rinks to high school basketball gyms. He’s on the phone to Bibi. They’re commiserating about the press that won’t give them a break. Bibi is fear-mongering about Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain as if it’s Masada. He faces elections on October 27. Trump’s nightmare comes exactly a week later.

Trump has been screaming about Iran’s “nuclear” like they already have the bomb. Trump went on Newsmax last week and delivered this gem to his drooling masses: “Their nuclear is buried under millions of tons of mountain. Now we’re looking ​at Pickaxe Mountain. We may have to go there. ​We’ll take a shot at that one. We’ll knock it out fast,” he explained, speaking of Iran’s plans for a nuclear weapon. “Because if they had it, they would use it.”

Trump talks about bombing as if it’s another plan to cut down a thousand trees and build a “championship” golf course along the Potomac. Bombing Iran is just another of his projects. He gets to look at maps and pick targets. He loves maps. He loves planning.

Does he wonder what the Iranians think of his bombing plans as a solution to his political problems? Do you think Natalie Harp handed him a printout of the recent interview Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council gave to Drop Site News yesterday? Iran isn’t hiding its own plans. They’re ready: “If the question is whether Iran still has the ability to continue missile and drone operations, the answer is yes,” General Mohsen Rezaei told Drop Site in a written interview. “The United States has valuable assets in the region. In the event of war, cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities could also come within range. If the conflict begins again, we will have a broader plan.”

Trump is so bloody insanely stupid, it hasn’t crossed his mind that Iran started rebuilding its arsenal of drones and missiles the instant the bombs stopped falling in July. He’s been issuing threats since April. You know what Iranians think of his threats? More time to crank out more drones and missiles. They’ve been rebuilding their air defenses, too, probably with up-to-date anti-aircraft batteries from Russia and China, both of which still trade with Iran and have about a zillion ways to smuggle their hardware into the country.

Iran isn’t going to be firing the same old drones and missiles at U.S. and Gulf nation targets like they did earlier in the year. They’ve got new missiles with fins that can change direction as they approach a target, making them much harder to hit with the Patriots we don’t have enough of. Same with their drones. Iran can now program targeting information into drones so they fly flat for miles and miles and then go vertical and come down on targets from straight above them.

What has Hegseth been doing since the last time Trump gave him the order to fire? Have we got a new generation of defenses to use against Iran’s salvo of attack drones and ballistic missiles? Hegseth has been doing pushups and checking his testosterone results and canceling battalions that were devoted to drone warfare and returning them to “warfighting” on the ground. Meanwhile, his Pentagon is springing leaks about increases to U.S. Naval presence near the Persian Gulf and sending more Marines over there, too. Why? Is Trump going to land the Marines on Kharg Island? It’s certainly not out of the question, because with Trump in the White House and his Mini-me at the Pentagon, anything is possible.

It’s hard to put into words how unprepared Trump is for what will happen if he decides to start bombing Iran again. He’s threatening to use the “mother of all bombs,” of course. That was real smart. Now the Iranians know to look for the propeller-driven C-130’s that will be flying over their country to deliver them.

Is there even one smidgen of a teeny rationale about any of it that makes sense? Have you had a look at the Reflecting Pool lately? They’re still working on getting it repaired and filled months after it was supposed to delight the world with its “American blue” paint and glorious reflection of the Lincoln Memorial.

Do you think if Donald Trump can’t even put bottom paint on a pool that he’s going to scare Iran into submission? They’ve got CNN International. They’re watching him desperately seeking redneck votes in every safe district that voted for him last time. They can see Hegseth sweating to the oldies in the Pentagon parking lot instead of working to get manufacturers to crank out more Patriots.

It’s too bad Drop Site had to do its interview with Iran’s national security guy by email. If they had it on tape, we could hear the Iranian general chortling as he answered questions about what they expect from President Golf Course the next time he takes time out from Doral or Bedminster to sit down in another makeshift “SCIF” and order bombs to fall. Iran is ready. And Trump? He’s flying Air Gold Leaf to another red state rally.

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That was one of the first questions I confronted when I reached my assignment at Fort Carson, Colorado, in 1969. I was a brand-new second lieutenant in the infantry. I was given command of a platoon, and I had other jobs. I was the company pay officer. The first month I paid the troops, I discovered that about 75 percent were not getting their proper amount of pay, and the amounts they were supposed to receive were a pittance to begin with. A sergeant with a wife and two kids earned $135 a month basic pay, with another $36 in “subsistence” meant for food, and about $50 housing allowance for rent. A buck private who lived in the barracks was paid a flat $90 a month.

Another job I had was mess officer. That’s how I discovered that every night, soldiers with families who could not afford to feed their wives and children were getting leftover food from the mess hall off the loading dock. The mess sergeant was selling cans of beans and potatoes and even raw whole chickens after the evening meal. He charged only a dime for a chicken and a few cents for potatoes or a can of beans. The sergeant was committing a crime by enriching himself from the sale of government property, even in nickels and dimes, but at least the troops were getting surplus food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

What was I supposed to do? I talked to some of the guys in my platoon who were getting surplus food from the mess hall. If I put a stop to it, they couldn’t feed their families.

It was absurd. We were the wealthiest country in the world. We were drafting many, if not most, of the soldiers into the military and then not paying them enough to feed their families.

So, I went down to the federal building in Colorado Springs and learned that every enlisted soldier in the army who had a family was eligible for food stamps. In groups of three and four, I drove them downtown and signed them up until every guy with a family in my platoon was in the program. In some cases, they were getting more in food stamps than their basic pay. I told the other lieutenants in the company, and they started doing the same thing with their platoons.

Somehow, the brigade commander got wind of what we were doing and called me in and ordered me to stop putting soldiers on food stamps. He said what I was doing was bringing discredit on the Army. So, consulting with one of the corporals in my platoon who had a wife and a child, I figured out a basic budget, showing his rent, car payment, car insurance, what he paid for food, to get his fatigues starched at a local laundry, gas and oil for the car and a few dollars for baby formula and diapers and clothes for the baby. Nothing extra for the sergeant and his wife – no money for McDonalds or clothes or recreation – even though we were in Colorado, it was winter, and there was skiing an hour away. Nothing for skiing. He was in the red every month. Food stamps gave him enough money not only for food, but for a few extras. I showed the figures to the colonel a few days later.

The colonel gave in. I told other lieutenants in the brigade how to get troops on food stamps. It spread. By the time LIFE magazine published a story on the division commander and the new volunteer army a year or so later, he was bragging that his division was the first one in the army to have organized getting soldiers on food stamps.

I didn’t tell the colonel that I had organized distribution of excess food at the mess hall. The mess sergeant no longer charged for the canned food and potatoes and chickens. I made sure the cooks divided the food fairly between the soldiers who needed it. One of the cooks complimented me for having “organized theft.” He was correct.

Here we are nearly 60 years later, and hunger among families of low-ranking troops is still a problem. About 40 percent of all members of the military report problems with food insecurity. An astonishing 57 percent of soldiers in the lowest ranks who have wives or husbands and children are having problems feeding their families, according to a story published today by The Guardian. Even 14 percent of lower-ranking officers report at least some food insecurity.

It’s not a new problem. Members of the House and the Senate and presidents of both parties have known about the problem of food insecurity among the soldiers and sailors and Marines and members of the Air Force and Coast Guard for all these years.

There is a solution that is known by all: more pay and benefits to members of the military, both active duty and reserve. About 25 percent of the defense budget goes to paying uniformed members of the military. If Congress devoted more money to pay for cost-of-living related expenses, such as food, rent, and childcare, there wouldn’t be food insecurity in our military.

Congress has taken a couple of stabs over the years at military food insecurity. They established a program called Family Assistance Supplemental Allowance, or FSSA, that was intended to raise military family income to 130 percent of the poverty level. But the application process was so cumbersome and restrictive that the FSSA program denied 97 percent of applicants. It was discontinued in 2016. Today there is a similar program called the “basic need allowance” intended to help members of the military with families whose total pay and allowances is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. According to the Guardian, once again the application process is complicated by the fact that soldiers must apply through their chain of commands. Many soldiers are reluctant to apply because they fear being listed as financially irresponsible, which can affect efficiency ratings and promotions. The Guardian reports that in 2023, the first year the program was available, only 77 military families received assistance.

Members of the military earning low pay are still eligible for the food stamp program, now called SNAP. But again, eligibility for members of the military is complicated by how the income maximums are determined. Soldiers receive untaxed pay in the form of Basic Allowance for Housing and Basic Allowance for Subsistence on top of their taxed basic cash pay. SNAP benefits are calculated taking those extra benefits into account as income, making many soldiers, especially those living in high-priced housing markets, ineligible.

Stars and Stripes reported early this year that a study done by Blue Star Families that polled 6,000 members of the military found that “more than a quarter of military families…said they struggled to put food on the table.” The study found that 22 percent of those polled said they have used food pantries, and 30 percent said they “often or sometimes could not afford to eat balanced meals.”

Costs are up for everyone in this country, from rents to electricity to food to gas to…well, the entire Democratic Party is running on cost of living as an issue, because people are strapped, especially at the bottom of the income distribution.

It’s especially bad for members of the military, who are compelled to live wherever the Army or Navy or Marines or Air Force sends them. The military attempts to compensate for assignments to areas with higher prices by supplementing the basic housing and subsistence allowance. But businesses around military bases, whether they are Naval installations or Army posts or Air Force bases, have a captive audience. Rents around military bases are steadily higher than the basic housing allowance. Many military bases are surrounded by businesses offering car insurance at excessive rates, payday loans that charge exorbitant interest, and even supermarkets that manage to have prices that are greater than those 50 or 100 miles away.

Members of the military can sometimes be reassigned every year, although three and four year assignments are more common. This makes it very difficult for husbands and wives of soldiers to get jobs. According to Stars and Stripes, 23 percent of military spouses were unemployed in 2025, a year with a civilian unemployment rate of 4.4 percent. Among military spouses who were working, 70 percent reported that they were underemployed. Constant reassignments thus lead to reduced total family income, which causes less money for rent and electricity and food and everything else families need, whether they’re in the military or not.

To its credit, Congress has tried to fill in some of the money gaps for the military. In 2025, Congress passed a 14.5 percent pay increase for enlisted soldiers in the lower ranks. The same year, a 4.5 increase was passed for all troops.

But Congress won’t, or can’t, keep throwing money at a problem that doesn’t go away. Every time the troops get a raise, rents go up around military bases. Used car prices go up. You could call it gouging the troops, and you would be right.

The problem with money is that it’s fungible. If you simply pay a soldier more money, he or she might decide to spend the extra funds on a higher priced car or clothes that cost more. Soldiers, especially those in the lower ranks, are young – sometimes very young – 20 or 21 or 22 years old. You can buy a pair of sneakers for $30 at Walmart. You can also blow $250 on a glorious pair of sneakers that’ll get you noticed walking down the street. Thinking about how much money is left for diapers or food or to pay that traffic ticket you just got isn’t your strong suit at that age. I was 22 when I was a second lieutenant. I was better at figuring out the budget of married corporals than I was at handling my own. I remember a new pair of expensive ski boots that would make that case.

Some sixty years have passed, and we’re still dealing with privates and sergeants who can’t afford rent and eggs and bread and an occasional donut. What does that tell us? Countries like ours will always need armies. There will be young, impressionable, occasionally stupid people who serve in those armies. Congresses that once had great senior Senators and Speakers of the House after whom buildings were named handled difficult problems about as well as the current crop serving in the Capitol.

We haven’t even mentioned that this country suffers the same problems with food insecurity among farmers and low-wage workers and people who don’t even have a job. And then there is the problem of one of our two political parties simply not giving a red white and blue shit whether or not Americans have enough to eat or a place to lay their heads.

Intractable is the word that comes to mind when thinking about eternal problems that seemingly have no solutions, good or bad, easy or hard. There is some hope that the problem of feeding families is being dealt with, at least partially, by food banks and charities that pitch in to help. The reporter for The Guardian visited the Food Care Center in Killeen, Texas, that serves active-duty families of soldiers at nearby Fort Hood. He even talked to a soldier who was there picking up a bag containing about $100 worth of food, including sweet potatoes, carrots, eggs, and frozen chicken breasts.

It’s not a mess hall loading dock, but a food bank is doing the same thing: feeding hungry soldiers and their families. Good on them.

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Ohio's EdChoice voucher program is a classic example of how these programs are planted and then grow. But a recent court decision suggests that EdChoice will suffer because of that growth.

EdChoice was launched in 2006 after the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth about poor students trapped in underperforming public schools. But for voucher fans, this is always only the beginning. In 2013, legislators came up with EdChoice Expansion, which upped the voucher ante to 200% of the federal poverty level and removed any "trapped in a bad school" requirement. They were encouraged by Simmons-Harris v. Goff, a 1999 case in which the state supreme court found the Cleveland pilot voucher program did not violate the state constitution because it was narrow, focused and cheap (but still lost because it was birthed by legislative shenanigans-- another voucher classic).

In 2022 some public schools and students sued the state for violating Ohio's constitution and its requirement to maintain "a thorough and efficient system of common schools." Legislators were unimpressed; in 2023 they went ahead and expanded the expansion of vouchers, offering vouchers to any family, regardless of income (if you were more than 450% of the poverty line, you only got part of a voucher). However, the program commenced to suck up $1.4 billion-with-a-b in taxpayer dollars.

Last year a Franklin County judge declared the voucher program unconstitutional. The state appealed to the Tenth Appellate District Court of Appeals, and last week that court agreed that, yes, the program violates the state constitution.

The court found a couple of problems. Bottom line:

EdChoice, as presently structured and funded, secures with taxpayer funds a competing system of uncommon schools that is not subject to the same obligations imposed on Ohio’s system of common schools. This system of uncommon schools violates the mandate of Ohio Const. art. VI, § 2 to secure “a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.”

The court finds that EdChoice schools are not common schools for three reasons.

First, the schools--not the parents--choose which students to admit, without "any meaningful constraints on the schools' selection process. They "actually end up depriving families of choice." Second, EdChoice schools are available only in urban areas; rural students don't get that choice. Third, EdChoice schools are not "subject to any meaningful state oversight. " No fiscal oversight, no requirement for teacher licensure. And as noted in the first point, no meaningful anti-discrimination regulations.

 The court also finds that EdChoice "undermines the financial integrity" of the state's public schools. Again, three reasons.

First, taxpayer funds are diverted to private schools instead of public ones. This is a particularly bitter pill in Ohio, where the courts thirty (thirty!!) years ago told the legislature that the school funding formula was unconstitutional and they needed to shape it up. The legislature dithered and ten years ago came up with a Fair School Funding Plan, which they have since failed to actually fund, or even act like they want to. 

Second, EdChoice increases the per-pupil cost of educating the students remaining in public school, because voucher schools select the cheapest-to-serve students.

The third point is a more subtle one, and I'm a little impressed that the court got it. In Ohio, taxpayers get to vote directly on education tax increases (levies). The court correctly concludes that EdChoice makes local taxpayers less likely to vote for local tax levies. We've actually seen this movie before-- after Brown white parents pulled their children out of public schools and sent them to segregation academies, but then they also chopped taxpayer support for the schools their children no longer attended. Says the court-

We recognize that many factors influence whether levies pass or fail. However, the record supports the conclusion that EdChoice’s impact on public schools— through the extraction of resources and the erosion of the public’s incentive to remain invested in local schools—is among those factors that may affect levy support. 

So EdChoice is, in fact, unconstitutional.

Is this the end? Of course not. Recognizing that this case will continue to climb the judicial ladder all the way to the state supreme court, the appellate court has allowed that the program can continue while the legal wrangling goes on. The law shops lined up to help the state include some Catholic school heavy hitters, including the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic, which has gotten involved in some tax dollars for religious school business before. 

Meanwhile, a House version of "Take The Dough, We Gotta Know" bill wants to add some transparency to the Ohio voucher landscape. The Ohio GOP really aspires to make Ohio the Florida of the North, and people just keep getting in their way. May their hard times continue.

It took almost a year for Sen. Lindsey O. Graham Jr. to persuade Donald Trump to agree to the Russian sanctions package, notes the Associated Press.

It took a relative moment to destroy it, ignoring an overwhelming vote in Congress to ignore a newly passed law as it was about to take effect on Sunday.

The measure, designed to impose steep tariffs on countries that import large amounts of Russian oil and energy products, and was promoted to help halt the flow of funds fueling Vladimir’s Putin’s four-year war against Ukraine – and to support U.S. diplomatic efforts in seeking an end to the war with Iran, amid reports that Russia has been helping Iran to target U.S. service members.

By Monday, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Trump is hearing a proposal to settle the Russia-Ukraine War at a summit with Russia and China, ignoring Ukraine altogether.

What Trump has wrought just a couple of weeks before the November election is a chaotic sprint for logic and a boatload of anger from Ukraine, European allies, bipartisan blocs of legislators and voters.

Together with a deal with Russia to export diesel oil globally in hopes of lowering pre-election domestic pump costs (that is not happening) and pressure on Ukraine to stop bombing Russian oil facilities, Trump put the U.S. on the side of invader Russia in that war, and he weirdly is aligning U.S. interests with greater business hopes with Russia over the apparent safety of U.S. troops in the Middle East.

Trump called it a move in the “national interest” – which apparently, he alone determines – ignoring the ineffective effect for any extra diesel distribution and denying U.S. intelligence that points to Russian involvement in targeting U.S. and Gulf bases.

It is this Trump-alone declaration “national interest,” another in a set of deals that appear to benefit himself and family, another in a series of moves in which Trump thumbs his nose at Congress and the law, that should be our focus.

Given the clear case for sanctions, there is no reason to believe that Trump will not use the same power to declare “national interests” to justify interference with state-run elections, the seating of election winners, adherence to court decisions, approval for his gilded personal glorification projects or continued excess in his mass deportation campaign.

Trump’s Shift to Russia

As Axios notes, whether it was the diesel deal or a fight over Ukraine’s ability to use Starshield technology to defend itself against Russian munitions, or the public denial of Russian involvement in the Iran war, Trump has spent the last few days shifting America’s position on an old foe.

For sure, House and Senate Republicans are suddenly ornery about getting set aside, and threatening to block additional Pentagon funding in the lame-duck congressional session that will follow elections unless the administration recants, and get tougher on Russia. War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking at least $350 billion in new military spending as part of a partisan reconciliation bill.

Rolling Stone Magazine is going further, raising the question of  “treason” by Trump because of the suspension of sanctions. The legal definition of “treason” as a crime may not fit because

the United States is not formally at war with Russia, and the president has broad constitutional authority to manage foreign affairs and sanctions.

But the sense shared internationally that there is a deep betrayal of national interest here by Trump is hard to avoid.

“Treason” as a charged crime is a reason cited in the Constitution for impeachment of the president. Betrayal is merely political.

For sure, Trump, who also insisted that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to a non-existent, immediate energy ceasefire, has risked more civilian Ukrainian lives to Russian missile attacks on non-military electricity plants, and made resistance much more difficult just before onset of winter. As well, Trump has done nothing to advance the resolution of the more immediate causes of oil interruptions with Iran.

The Politics Make No Sense

Moving deliberately closer to Russia and Putin raises a host of legal, moral, diplomatic and strategic questions, of course. Doing so just before an election in which Republican candidates are fighting to retain a majority in Congress while trying to defend these moves is a head-scratcher. It makes no sense politically either.

The sheer number of normally silent Republican senators who are finding fault with Trump over the Russia shuffle is noteworthy – including Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the senator whose name and reputation are all over the sanctions bill.

Clearly Democrats are seizing on the moment to point out Trump’s historic lean over time to find reason to support Russia, even as Trump fights relentlessly against perceptions that a “weaponized” Justice Department had investigated longtime ties between his family and business with Russian operatives and oligarchs.

Trump made public statements about national security to justify a change in sanctions policies, then backed off a bit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Trump would take 60 days to review global and U.S. economic impacts from imposing sanctions on Russia and other countries, considering tariffs already in place.

New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who had led opposition to the Graham bill — warned that Trump would flout the law. He has  introduced legislation to block Trump’s diesel deal with Putin.

The sanctions were scheduled to kick in Sunday designed to squeeze Russia’s economy and deprive it of cash to fund its war against Ukraine. The legislation also targets the world’s top five buyers of Russian oil and gas and extends sanctions against Iran. Some pre-2026 sanctions by the U.S. and Europe remain in place to restrict Russian energy export, shadow fleets and other trade goods.

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