Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Aug. 3, 2026

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Catching Our Eye

• Ohio teacher unions and the GOP. Cleveland.com’s Laura Hancock reports, “Ohio teacher unions back Republican candidates at twice the national rate.”Ohio’s teacher unions endorse Republican candidates for public office twice as often as counterparts in other states, a recent study found.

  The study commissioned by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which examined teacher union strength in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., found that 7.8% of endorsements nationally go to Republicans. In Ohio, 16% of the endorsements the unions made were to Republicans.

• Ohio toxic wastewater. The New York Times reports, “In Ohio, Toxic Wastewater Is Bubbling Up Out of the Ground.”The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back…

  Residents and local officials were for years “completely unaware” of their place at the heart of an interstate marketplace for toxic waste, Ms. Vessels said. They’ve come to realize, she said, that their corner of Ohio has become a major destination for fracking brine.

  Ohio has permitted more than 240 injection wells for the disposal of oil and gas waste. By comparison, there are 19 such injection wells in Pennsylvania, and a few dozen in West Virginia, both of which border Ohio.

• Pike County. WCMH’s Katie Millard and Isabel Cleary report, “‘We’re dying:’ Pike County residents balance new nuclear jobs with past radiation.”Pike County has one of Ohio’s highest rates of unemployment and of cancer. Some residents can’t justify the 2,000 incoming nuclear jobs.

  “They want to bring in the data center, they want to bring in the reactors, and they want to bring in the largest power gas facility,” lifelong Pike County resident Vina Colley said. “We don’t want any of it.”

• Data centers. Cleveland.com’s Anna Staver reports, “Ohio Supreme Court case to decide if residents get any say on data center in their back yards.”(T)he Ohio Supreme Court must decide whether a data center development and the public investment it might bring constitute an emergency “for the preservation of the public peace, health, and safety” under Ohio law.

  It’s a decision that could determine who gets the final say when data centers come to Ohio communities: elected officials or residents.

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