News
Dozens of activists for the rights of nature who traveled to the United Nations to participate in a high-level meeting were unexpectedly barred from speaking on April 22nd, Earth Day, due to a supposed “security breach.”
The attendees, each of whom was personally invited by the Bolivian Foreign Minister, had previously been cleared by UN security personnel and issued access passes. Many had traveled thousands of miles — coming from Brazil, Poland, Canada, the UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Colombia — to attend the meeting.
Exactly why has the City of Columbus and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) removed large areas of tree canopy and brush from Columbus over the past several years? According to some homeowners and activists in Franklinton, ODOT accidentally let the cat out of the bag. Telling them during a meeting it was because “homeless live there.”
Other Franklinton homeowners refute ODOT’s slip-of-the-tongue explanation, saying there is no conspiracy against the unhoused, instead they contend ODOT lied during the meeting to conceal the truth. Which is that ODOT and its private contractors failed to follow their protocols due to incompetence and laziness.
Nevertheless, in April of 2024, ODOT with help from local contractors, removed roughly six acres of trees and brush off the slopes of SR-315 and I-70 within Franklinton. Incidentally, ODOT’s contractors also at that time cut down $30,000 worth of City of Columbus trees planted on a city easement between city and ODOT property. Rosalie Hendon, Columbus’s City Forester, has requested ODOT pay to have them replaced.
On April 26, 2025 WOSU Public Media reported, “Columbus campaign reports show donations from councilmembers, out-of-state residents.”
When questioned about the majority of his campaign contributors coming from of out-of-state, Columbus City Council candidate Jesse Vogel stated:
"What we're doing is trying to garner support of individuals who are excited about the potential of our campaign collective to make collective change rather than from a handful of politicians who are working to maintain the status quo.”
Although WOSU “estimated about half of his contributors came from out of state,” after a thorough review of his Annual and Pre-Primary finance reports, 56 percent of his contributors were from out of state and if you include contributors from outside of Central Ohio, but in Ohio, that number jumps to 60 percent.
The WOSU article also includes some “prominent names” as contributors to Mr. Vogel’s campaign. Two prominent newsworthy names not mentioned are those of Dan McCarthy and Laurel Dawson who donated $250 each to Vogel’s campaign.
After over a month of withholding information surrounding public investments in Israeli Bonds, the Franklin County Treasurer’s Office finally released the county investment reports for February and March of 2025. These reports, alongside discussion at the meeting of the Investment Advisory Committee (IAC) on April 17, 2025, confirmed that Treasurer Cheryl Brooks Sullivan has decided not to reinvest holdings from Israeli Bonds that matured on February 1, 2025 into additional Israeli Bonds.
When the basement flooded again, the Taylors didn’t panic. They filmed it. They emailed Beacon Property Management—again. The water damage wasn’t new. Neither was the silence.
For months, Zakee Taylor and his family had been trying to work with their landlord to resolve outstanding issues at their rental in Northeast Columbus: mold from a previous flood, broken fixtures, a faulty bathroom fan, and rising late fees due to the income cycle of the life of a small business owner entrepreneur. The Taylors are not “problem tenants.” They are deeply embedded in the city they’re being pushed out of. Their company, Taylor Branding Co., has operated in Columbus for more than two decades.
What they asked for wasn’t extreme—access to their online tenant portal, a structured payment plan, and time to vacate the property after their son’s high school graduation. They even had the rent money saved.
But their account was locked. Because Beacon filed for eviction. It wasn’t a miscommunication. It was the model.
This isn’t about one family. This is about what happens when profit meets poverty, meets policy, meets silence. Eviction is not a symptom. It’s a strategy.
Trump Tariffs
It's becoming increasingly clear that the new Trump tariffs will significantly impact the solar industry, adding additional tariffs on top of the already 50 percent level that are assessed against many of the leading solar panel exporting countries.
Preliminary calculations by solar.com anticipate a net 10 cents per watt average increase to the cost of solar hardware. There's currently a significant inventory of solar panels that have been warehoused in anticipation of these tariffs, so the impact on the industry may not be immediately felt.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, there's currently about 50 gigawatts of solar panel manufacturing capacity here in the US, which is theoretically enough to meet domestic demand for solar panels.
However, the subcomponents of those panels, such as the silicon and the metal for the framing, will be subject to the Trump tariffs.
A huge crowd braved the rain Saturday to go to the Ohio Statehouse and protest President Donald Trump and his administration. It was one of more than 50 such events scheduled for Ohio on Saturday and Sunday and more than 1,400 nationwide.
In an attempt to rehash failed legislation from the 135th General Assembly, Ohio legislators – who are more focused on conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism – are attempting to pass a pair of bills that could severely limit the ability of Ohioans to criticize the actions of the Israeli government. S.B. 87, or its House version, H.B. 90, and S.B. 53 are bills that, when applied separately or in tandem, could prove devastating to free speech criticizing the state of Israel.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Ohio State University (OSU) was truly a “State” school. If a young person from Ohio could get their high school diploma with a C+ average, had the financial means through help or loans, and the will to balance school and fun, they would have a good chance to earn a degree from Thee, and do so at the main campus.
The days of OSU students scraping by together in aging but cozy off-campus homes or rowhouses – drinking beer from $10 shared buckets at Mustards or Papa Johns to make sure everyone could pay rent, for instance – is slowly becoming a distant memory.
A halcyon era heartlessly tossed into the dustbin by (rich white) elitists. The good struggle for Ohioans of modest means dashed. Just ask any of the thousands of young people who were recently rejected by OSU. Some were made to choose Miami University as their second choice ironically, which used to be the first choice of many Ohioans. History reveals it was Gordon Gee who eliminated open enrollment for in-state students, and since then, OSU’s average GPA went from 2.5 to 3.6 while tuition has doubled.
The last step in changing a democracy to an autocracy is to rewrite the national constitution to remove the last traces of democratic rule and officially place all power in the hands of the dictator. On March 11, the Ohio Senate General Government Committee held its second hearing on SJR 3, Senate Joint Resolution 3, which could do just that.
SJR 3 calls for the creation of a federal Constitutional Convention. The purpose of the convention would be to rewrite the US constitution. Article V of the constitution allows for the creation of such a convention, but it gives no parameters or limitations on its powers. Every aspect of the US Constitution would be on the chopping block, from the separation of powers, to the freedoms of speech and assembly, to the requirement that the president be a natural born citizen. Hello president Musk.