Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Trendsetter? Ohio city makes Election Day a holiday

While the provision making Election Day a federal holiday is quickly becoming one of the more polarizing parts of the House Democrats' political process overhaul bill, dubbed HR 1, one small city in Ohio has quietly and easily decided to make the move on its own.

Sandusky, a summertime destination on Lake Erie halfway between Toledo and Cleveland (population 26,000), will make the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November a holiday starting this fall – replacing Columbus Day. City commissioners made the move with minimal debate last week, just as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was deriding such an idea as a Democratic "power grab" on the Senate floor.

"What better way to celebrate the value of our employees and citizens than by removing barriers for them to participate in the greatest of American innovations, our democracy," the city government postedon Facebook.


"We are swapping them to prioritize Voting Day as a day off so that our employees can vote," city manager Eric Wobser told the Sandusky Register. "It's also because Columbus Day has become controversial, and many cities have eliminated it as a holiday."

Several other cities have stopped observing Columbus Day or renamed it "Indigenous Peoples' Day," noting the poor treatment of Native Americans by Christopher Columbus and other European explorers. But the House Democratic legislation would retain Columbus Day as a federal holiday and add Election Day.

Election Day is a paid day off for state employees in 13 states. And a survey by the Pew Research Center last fall found 71 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans in favor of nationalizing the holiday.

Sandusky proper falls in the congressional district held by Democrat Marcy Kaptur, a cosponsor of HR 1, but some of its neighboring towns are represented by Jim Jordan, a Republican who has been one of the most vocal critics of the legislation.

Read More

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies spent almost two decades at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studying how parents’ exposure to chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. This spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated her entire division.

Nate Smallwood for ProPublica

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery.

Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.

And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.

Keep ReadingShow less