Free Republic

Allegations that Rep. Jim Jordan failed to stop a team doctor from sexually abusing student athletes when the Ohio Republican was a college wrestling coach is complicating his possible bid for Speaker of the House. The NBC News story dropped Tuesday just as Jordan began reaching out to GOP colleagues, urging them to ditch Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and instead back him for the top job in the House GOP conference. Jordan, 54, the powerful founding chairman of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, has not formally announced a bid for Speaker but has said he plans to be “part of...

BOWLING GREEN, OH (WTOL) - A nationwide manhunt is underway for three men who allegedly raped and kidnapped two teenagers in Bowling Green. Bowling Green Police say four men are accused of sexually assaulting and holding 13- and 14-year-old sisters against their will on June 28 at the Days Inn off Wooster Street. One man is in custody. Police say that the girls got away from their captors at the Days Inn, which is where the men also were staying. Their mother and stepfather rushed the girls to Wood County Hospital to be examined, and that's when emergency room personnel...

Full Title: Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan accused of turning blind eye to sexual abuse as Ohio State wrestling coach Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, is being accused by former wrestlers he coached more than two decades ago at Ohio State University of failing to stop the team doctor from molesting them and other students. The university announced in April that it was investigating accusations that Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, abused team members when he was the team doctor from the mid-1970s to late 1990s. Jordan, who was assistant wrestling coach at the...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. State Department employee pleaded guilty Monday to producing thousands of images of videos of child pornography over a two-year period. Skydance MacMahon, a 44-year-old Alexandria resident, used hidden cameras to produce sexually explicit images and videos of minor children in Canada, according to court documents. MacMahon worked with a woman in Canada to produce the child pornography and distributed the videos and images through cloud storage and email. Police found pornographic images of children on an Ohio man’s cellphone in November 2017, and authorities were able to link Dropbox media of child porn to an account...

CLEVELAND — Officials say a man has been arrested for an alleged plan to attack downtown Cleveland on July 4. FBI agents said Monday they began investigating the suspect, identified as Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts, back in 2017. Investigators say they received tips that Pitts, also known as Abdur Raheem Rahfeeq, had made statements in support of Al-Qaeda. Pitts, an American citizen with an extensive criminal background, also expressed a disdain for the U.S. military. Officials say Pitts spoke to undercover agents about the impact an explosion would have on Cleveland's upcoming July 4th parade. Anderson says the Pitts was arrested...

CLEVELAND - The FBI says it has made an arrest in connection with a Fourth of July terror plot that would have targeted downtown Cleveland. Here are the latest updates: Update 7:01 a.m. EDT July 2: According to news release from the FBI’s Cleveland Division, the suspect, whose name has not been released, is “being charged with attempted material support of a foreign terrorist organization.”

An NBC News/Marist Poll has mixed results for Republicans in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine leads his Democrat rival, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, by four points, 46 percent to 42 percent. But the picture is not so encouraging for Republicans in the U.S. Senate race, where incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) leads the GOP nominee, Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) by 13 points, 51 percent to 38 percent. “This survey of 946 adults was conducted June 17th through June 22nd, 2018 by The Marist Poll sponsored and funded in partnership with NBC News . . ....

MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A 12-year-old Ohio boy's summer vacation was anything but exciting until someone called police on him for doing his job. Reginald Field started a business cutting grass for his neighbors, but his service at one customer's house resulted in a 911 call. Fields said everything was going fine until his customer's neighbors called the police, claiming the teen had mowed part of their lawn. "They said I was cutting their grass," he said. "I didn't know it." The neighbor told authorities that the teen and his crew had cut a portion of their property and were...

COLUMBUS, OHIO — Under a bill pending in the Ohio House, teachers, school counselors and others who supervise children would be required to out transgender children to their parents,. The bill, sponsored by two Southwest Ohio Republicans, calls for affirming parents’ rights to determine what’s in their child’s best interest, including withholding treatment for gender dysphoria. ***Becky Higgins, president of the Ohio Education Association, said the state’s largest teachers union opposes the bill. “It is contrary to OEA’s belief that all persons, regardless of gender orientation, should be afforded equal opportunity and guaranteed a safe and inclusive environment within the...

a few days ago, as he was cutting the grass for Lucille Holt, police showed up. Holt told WEWS that her neighbors had called the police because they claimed Fields and his family had cut part of their lawn and were in their yard. Holt posted about the incident on her Facebook page, resulting in a lot of support for Fields and his business. *** "People are inboxing me like how can I get in touch with this children, where are they at? I got property I want these kids to cut their grass," said Holt. Fields says he hopes...

Democratic Senate candidates are leading in three key battleground states as the party looks to defend a difficult map ahead of the November midterm elections, according to new polls. Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) are both leading their GOP challengers by double digits, while Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) is up by just 4 points, about the margin of error in the new NBC News/Marist polls released Tuesday evening. The results show how some of the major Senate races this cycle are shaping up with less than five months until Election Day. In Arizona,...

Trump tariffs drive $500M investment in a new Ohio steel plant JSW Steel USA CEO John Hritz says the company is investing $500M to build a steel plant in Ohio instead of India during a First on FOX Business interview with Edward Lawrence. A major investment is kickstarting America’s steel industry. JSW Steel USA plans to invest $500 million to build a new factory in the U.S. Combined with a previous announcement that JSW will modernize an existing plant, the Indian-owned company is making a total investment of $1 billion after President Trump’s tax reform and tariffs on imported steel.

The Ohio Attorney General's office said that enough fentanyl to kill more than 4 million people was seized in a Clark County bust Monday night. The Miami Valley Bulk Smuggling Task Force seized about 20 pounds of fentanyl as part of an ongoing investigation, and four people were arrested. A large amount of marijuana and more than $100,000 in cash were also seized. Aguilar Reyes-Espinosa of New Carlisle, Omar Cantu-Garcia of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, David Cantu-Garcia of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and Pedro Medina of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, are currently being held in the Montgomery County Jail on drug trafficking charges....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is allowing Ohio to clean up its voting rolls by targeting people who haven’t cast ballots in a while. The justices rejected, by a 5-4 vote Monday, arguments that the practice violates a federal law intended to increase the ranks of registered voters. A handful of other states also use voters’ inactivity to trigger a process that could lead to their removal from the voting rolls. Justice Samuel Alito said for the court that Ohio is complying with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. He was joined by his four conservative colleagues. The four...

Ohio’s process for deleting people it deems inactive from its voting rolls is legal, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, in a decision that could boost the movement to clean up voting rolls across the country. The court, in the 5-4 ruling, also seemed to side with those who say the potential for voting fraud exists, with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. citing statistics that 2.75 million people are registered to vote in more than one state, and some 24 million names on voting lists are inaccurate.

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s "use it or lose it" practice of cleaning up its voter rolls. In a 5-4 decision, the court’s majority said the practice, known as the “supplemental process,” does not violate the National Voter Registration Act, which bar states from removing the names of people from the voter rolls for failing to vote. The court's five conservative justices voted in the majority, with the court's four liberals dissenting. Under the supplemental process, voters who have not voted in two years are flagged and sent a confirmation notice. Voters who then fail to respond to...

The majority of the 99 seats in the House of Representatives identified by the Cook Political Report as “competitive” in 2018 are in eight states: California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan. Of the 435 seats in the lower chamber of Congress, 336 are not competitive–180 held by Democrats, 156 held by Republicans, according to the Cook Political Report’s ratings. Only 15 of the 99 competitive seats are currently held by Democrats, while 84 are held by Republicans. The simple math–24 more non competitive seats are held by Democrats than are held by Republicans–and the Republicans...

In 2018, black voters are finding out just what the hell they had to lose. Nazis and Klansmen march openly and proudly, and hate crimes appear to be on the rise. Police killings of people—especially black people—remain largely the same year to year, and this iteration of the Justice Department has largely abdicated any federal responsibility in reducing brutality. An infant-mortality crisis is tightening its grip on the most marginalized communities, and across many economic metrics—from evictions, to generational wealth, to segregation—disparities are either stagnating or trending in the wrong direction. Fifty years after the Kerner Commission’s report said the...

A vocal bloc of House conservatives are fuming at Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) behind the scenes, after the lame-duck speaker publicly sided with Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) in the debate over the FBI’s tactics in its investigation into the Trump campaign. Gowdy shot down allegations last week that the FBI improperly used a confidential informant to “spy” on the campaign, saying that the bureau “did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do.” Ryan on Wednesday called Gowdy’s assessment “accurate,” dealing another blow to the claims dubbed “Spygate” by President Trump. But Trump allies on Capitol Hill say that...

OHIO (WTOL) - The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) scandal has grown thanks to new data that shows that $591 million of taxpayer money went to ECOT over local school districts. Innovation Ohio (IO) released new data on Wednesday that showed how much money each Ohio school district lost to the online charter school since 2012...