Catching Our Eye News Roundup, March 30, 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

Data centers. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Sen. Moreno: SoftBank investment in Ohio ‘very different’ than Intel.”

Business leaders and government officials flocked to southern Ohio last Friday to detail plans for a data center so large it needs a $33.3 billion, 9.2-gigawatt (GW) billion natural gas plant to power it.

The groundbreaking event for the artificial intelligence data center had the pomp and circumstance of other tech announcements, where investment and job creation figures are rattled off between glossy videos, over hors d’oeuvres.

Honoring fallen soldiers. WOSU’s Mark Ferenchik reports, “Three fallen Ohio Air National Guard members killed in Iraq return to Columbus.”

The three fallen Ohio Air National Guard airmen who died in western Iraq on March 12 returned to Columbus on Sunday.

Capt. Seth Koval, 38, of Stoutsville, Capt. Curtis Angst, 30, and Tech. Sgt. Tyler Simmons, 28, both of Columbus, died when their KC-135 refueling plane crashed.

Voting changes. The Associated Press’ Nicholas Riccardi and Julie Carr Smyth report, “Some state officials say shifting mail ballot deadline will complicate plans for November elections.”

Election officials in Nevada and 13 other states that allow regular mail ballots sent by Election Day but arrive some period of days afterward to be counted had their attention trained on Monday’s arguments, where conservative justices appeared skeptical of such grace periods. Fifteen other states have grace periods specifically for military and overseas voters.

Educators to candidates. Signal Ohio’s Andrew Tobias reports, “These educators were fed up. Democrats recruited them to run for the Statehouse.”

Democrats are betting frustration among public school officials will help them in this year’s state legislative elections. They’ve recruited several educators fed up with a decade of Statehouse decisions – expanding private school vouchers, increasing religion in schools and a bipartisan school funding plan they didn’t fully pay for – to run in Republican-leaning districts.

Ticks. The Reporting Project’s Adelyn Moore reports, “Ohio Lyme disease cases surged in 2025. Our warmer seasons could be making it worse.”

Tick-borne diseases like Lyme are on the rise across the United States. In 1995, there were about 12,000 reported cases of Lyme disease in people. In 2022, the number of reported cases in people rose to more than 63,000, according to the FDA.