Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Sept. 21, 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. Cleveland.com’s Sabrina Eaton reports, “Data centers become Senate flashpoint as Husted’s ratepayer bill stalls amid election battle.”

A day after the Ratepayer Protection Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a 417 to 3 vote, Husted asked the Senate for unanimous consent to skip debate and pass his bill, which would direct state utility regulators to consider standards requiring data centers that draw more than 100 megawatts of power to pay the full incremental cost of the electricity infrastructure they need…

Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico blocked Husted’s effort.

Heinrich, who is the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s top Democrat, said Husted’s bill asks state regulators to consider making data centers pay their own infrastructure costs instead of requiring it.

“The Ratepayer Protection Act falls short of what we need to do to respond,” said Heinrich. Instead, he urged Senate approval of his own alternative proposal, called the Grid Savings Act, which would mandate the protections.

• Deforming drug. The Ohio Newsroom/WVXU’s Tana Weingartner reports, “An Ohio company distributed a deformity-causing drug. Survivors want recognition, support.”

From 1959 to 1962, a pharmaceutical company in Ohio distributed thalidomide without approval from the FDA. Some children whose mothers were given the drug during pregnancy were born with severely deformed limbs.

Now those survivors want the federal government to formally acknowledge their existence.