Mayor from Ohio. (Getty image file photo.)
Each morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio, the country and the world that catches our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye and have published it here.
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Catching our eyes
Ohio treasurer race. “Polityka” reports: “A low-key race in Ohio is becoming a test of the strength of Trump’s allies“
Two of President Donald Trump’s closest allies have endorsed dueling candidates for Ohio state treasurer. The winner can signal whose word carries more weight in America’s heart.
The race pits state Sen. Kristina Roegner — a state legislator with the backing of 2024 presidential candidate and current gubernatorial frontrunner Vivek Ramaswamy — against former state Republican Jay Edwards, who is backed by Vice President J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance’s fundraising tour. The San Antonio Express News reports: “What to know about J.D. Vance’s Texas fundraising trip“
The White House declined to comment on Vance’s trip, but ahead of his expected 2028 presidential term, he is expected to attend Republican National Convention fundraisers in Austin and Dallas hosted by Texas’ wealthiest Republican donors.
Austin billionaire and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale is hosting Vance’s stop in the city, said Travis County GOP spokesman Andy Hogue.
The fundraising trip was also led by Dallas investor Tommy Hicks Jr., former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Ray Washburne, a Dallas businessman who owns real estate there and multiple restaurant chains, according to the Financial Times. Also hosting will be Chris Buskirk, who co-founded the venture firm that employed Donald Trump Jr., and Damon Hininger, former CEO of the prison company CoreCivic, which runs immigration detention centers in Texas.
No agreement. NBC News reports: “Trump rejects DHS funding rally amid worsening airport delays“
Under their proposal to Trump, Republicans would propose reopening all DHS except ICE and funding the controversial law enforcement agency in a separate, partisan budget bill…
“I don’t think we should make any deals with crazy, country-destroying, radical left Democrats unless and until they vote with Republicans to pass the ‘SAVE AMERICA ACT,’” Trump wrote (on Truth Social), urging Republicans to “kill the Filibuster and, if necessary, stay in Washington for Easter.”
Throwing away votes. Vox’s Ian Millhiser writes: “The Supreme Court seems disturbingly inclined to throw out thousands of ballots“
If the United States had an impartial judiciary, Watson v. Republican National Committee would have been laughed off months ago. The premise of the GOP’s Watson lawsuit is that, starting in 1845, Congress banned states from counting many mail-in ballots — and somehow no one noticed for the better part of two centuries.
To understand Watson, it is essential to understand how President Donald Trump has transformed previously technocratic issues of election administration into a partisan battleground. Until Trump came to power, neither party really questioned that states could accept absentee ballots or other ballots cast by mail, and even many red states were allowing more and more voters to cast absentee ballots. What is indeed noteworthy is that in the Watson case, the GOP is challenging voting laws in the blood-red state of Mississippi.
However, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Trump began attacking mail-in voting. As a result, Democrats are much more likely to mail their ballots than Republicans, so any modern policy that voids mailed ballots is likely to tilt the election toward Trump’s GOP.
Which brings us to Watson’s specific theory of law. The GOP (along with the Mississippi Libertarian Party) argues that the three federal statutes that set the date of federal elections (one governing presidential elections, one governing House elections, and one governing Senate elections) prevent any state from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they were mailed before that date.
Mixed-status families. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Trump’s deportation push is taking an economic toll on mixed-status families“
According to a 2024 report by the Center for Migration Studies, an immigrant rights organization that analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data, nearly four million U.S. households have mixed legal status, with at least one resident living in the U.S. illegally and at least one other U.S. resident, such as a U.S. citizen. The report found that approximately 726,000 immigrants without enduring legal status are married to U.S. citizens.
Report shows that average household income for mixed-status families falls by 48% due to the expulsion of members living in the U.S. illegally… So far, the (Trump) administration’s mass deportation campaign to remove immigrants who illegally entered or remained in the U.S. has implicated American spouses and children, pushing some families into financial ruin.
Parents taken away. ProPublica reports: “Trump detained parents of over 11,000 US citizen children“
In the first seven months of his second term, authorities have arrested and detained the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children – a number that, if the pace continues, will roughly double by now. That’s an average of more than 50 U.S. citizen children a day whose parent is detained.
The data underlying this analysis was obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights as part of an ongoing public records lawsuit. Covers the last three years of the Joe Biden administration and the Trump administration through mid-August 2025.
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