Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Aug. 7, 2026

Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.

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Catching Our Eye

• Soaring electric bills. Signal Ohio’s Jake Zuckerman reports, “Electric bills hit new highs across Ohio, state data shows.”

Electric bills will likely hit record highs for millions of Ohioans when July bills go out this month, driven by rising rates, new systemic demand and a heat dome that lingered over much of the Midwest.

New data from the Ohio Utility Rate Survey – a state publication based on cost data from utilities – shows the electric bill for a residential electric customer using an average amount of power hit record levels in Cleveland ($189), Dayton ($188) and Akron ($184) in July.

• Red rover, red rover. Axios reports, “Reliably red Ohio suddenly a red-hot mess for GOP.”

Ohio, the red state that helped fuel President Trump’s political comeback — and launched his presumed heir, JD Vance, onto the national stage — has become one of the GOP’s biggest headaches for the midterms.

Why it matters: Republicans are struggling up and down the ballot in the Rust Belt state, which transformed from a perennial battleground into a Republican stronghold under Trump.

Ohio’s GOP is scrambling under the weight of domestic abuse allegations, sluggish campaigns and a working-class rebellion.

• Profiteering off the presidency, part infinity. The Washington Post reports, “Lawmakers call for Pentagon probe of Trump family-backed companies.”

A group of Democratic lawmakers have asked the Pentagon’s official watchdog to open an investigation after The Washington Post revealed that 15 companies with investment from President Donald Trump’s sons have garnered $3.2 billion in federal contracts, investments, and loans — most coming after Trump took office for the second time…

Excluding giants SpaceX and Anduril from the tally, companies with investment from funds associated with Trump’s sons have gained more than three times the number of government contracts and other funding than they had before the president’s second term, The Post reported.

• Deporting active-duty military spouses. The Associated Press reports, “Trump’s immigration crackdown has detained more than 50 military spouses and parents.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families to pursue its mass deportation agenda, an Associated Press investigation found.

More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Trump took office for a second term, and at least six have been deported and one self-deported, the AP found in the first accounting of such detentions, which the government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of U.S. service members remain in federal immigration custody.