Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Aug. 27, 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

• Angry Ohio voters. The New York Times reports, “Angry Ohio Voters Could Turn Their State Purple Again.”

Across Ohio, a state that receded from the nation’s political battle zone as its voting patterns turned an ever deeper shade of red, signs of discontent this year are everywhere.

In packed public forums, residents rage about data center projects. In grocery store aisles, shoppers lament to cashiers how little they can get for $50. In the soybean and corn fields, farmers express anxiety and pessimism. The basics of life and business have gotten punishingly expensive, and many have come to doubt that relief is coming anytime soon.

“It’s all dumpy. Businesses are closing, the roads look like crap,” Kim Hall, 59, said as she shopped at a Dollar General in North Ridgeville, Ohio, on Wednesday. “Grocery prices are outrageous, and I can barely afford to live.”

Frustration like hers is evident in every region and demographic in the state, and it’s why Ohio may be up for grabs in the 2026 midterms. With the general election less than 75 days away, polls show dead heats for governor and a coveted Senate seat. Enough congressional seats are in play for either party to swing control of the House. Come November, the state that once bragged “So goes Ohio, so goes the nation” will find out if it is truly inching back toward purple.

• Vance insults Canada. Howard Koplowitz reports for Cleveland.com, “JD Vance insults Canada with ‘Freudian slip,’ compares ally to US adversary.”

Vice President JD Vance on Monday insulted Canada amid a tariff war between the United States and its northern neighbor while feigning the dig as a “Freudian slip.”

“Canada is a state,” Vance said during a visit to Maine, where he promoted the Trump administration’s economic agenda and drummed up support for Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections.

“Sorry, Freudian slip,” the vice president added with a smile during the event in Brewer, Maine. “That was actually an accident.”

• Trump insults Canada. ABC News reports, “Trump floats renaming Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America,’ denies claim he’d interfere with Canadians speaking French.”

President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday morning that he is giving “serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” mirrors his move to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America early in his second term.

But just like the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario is a shared international waterway and multiple international, federal, and regional agencies oversee it.

• World’s largest data center. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Victoria Moorwood reports, “OpenAI to build world’s biggest AI data center in Ohio. What we know.”

A massive data center for OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that created ChatGPT, is planned for Southern Ohio.

The San Francisco-based company announced Aug. 17 it will lease space for its hyperscale, 8-gigawatt data center at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, around 100 miles east of Cincinnati. That amount of electrical power would make it the largest AI data center in the world, Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy, said during the campus’s groundbreaking in March.

• Columbus City Council reform? WOSU’s Katie Geniusz reports, “Columbus City Council sends two council reform amendments to November ballot.”

Columbus voters will decide two issues on the November that could reshape city council. At Monday’s meeting, city council read the Our City Our Say charter amendment into record, which will be put in front of voters to ask whether all the nine existing council seats will switch from at-large voting to true district voting.

Council submitted what it described as a “complimentary” charter amendment, which would create a hybrid model, It would expand council to 13 seats, four of would be at-large seats and the nine others district seats. The council’s charter amendment would also call for the council district map to be redrawn in 2028.

• Covid checks. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Ohio Supreme Court again rejects $900M COVID checks case, but attorney says it’s not over yet.”

The Ohio Supreme Court has again rejected the lawsuit filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who say they’re owed $900 million in pandemic unemployment assistance checks. The court agreed with the state, which argued the case is moot because the federal program ended in 2021. But the attorney who filed the suit said the case is not over yet.