Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Sept. 1, 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

• Beef. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Karen Kasler is reporting, “Ohio farmers push back on Trump’s 90-day tariff free imported beef plan.”

  Ohio’s farmers could be hit hard by President Trump’s new round of 50% tariffs on most goods from Canada that started Aug 22, and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs starting Sept. 8. But they’re also very concerned about another big tariff action that starts on Tuesday.

  Farmers support the goal of leveling the playing field with other countries, which tariffs seek to do, said Jack Irvin with the Ohio Farm Bureau. But they’ve been mostly critical of tariffs, including the 90-day expansion of lower-tariff imports for up to 300,000 metric tons of beef, which Trump said will lower record prices consumers have been paying.

• Vaccines. The Ohio Newsroom’s Erin Gottsacker is reporting, “More Ohio kindergartners are getting vaccine exemptions, amid measles outbreak.”

  A growing share of Ohio parents are opting not to vaccinate their kids for diseases like measles and polio.

  Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows nearly 6% of the state’s kindergartners got vaccine exemptions last school year. That’s more than double the percentage of Ohio kids who got vaccine exemptions prior to the COVID pandemic — and it’s higher than the national exemption rate of about 4%.

  “Unfortunately, when parents do not vaccinate their children, diseases that aren’t normally seen can pop back up,” said Valerie Wallace, a communicable disease nurse with the Tuscarawas County Health Department. “We in Tuscarawas County are having a measles outbreak right now that’s happening in the unvaccinated community.”

• ICE. WYSO’s Adriana Martinez-Smiley is reporting, “As ICE agents descend on Ohio towns, many local agencies are silent on whether they’re assisting.”

  On July 27, the Department of Homeland Security ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, Syria and Yemen.

  Temporary Protected Status allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Syrians and Yemeni people to live and work legally in the U.S. while their home countries experienced political violence and turmoil.

  With the change in legal status, locals in Springfield have noticed a heightened Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence and arrests in the community in recent weeks. Local law enforcement agencies are deciding what level of cooperation they want to have with them.