Over the past several years, we have learned that politicians and campaigns heavily rely on so-called "dark money," which are funds raised by nonprofit organizations that support various candidates and causes.
Corporations and wealthy donors can contribute unlimited amounts of money to these organizations, and most of these donations remain secret. This money is then funneled to candidates and causes.
It's all legal as long as the candidates and campaigns do not directly coordinate with the nonprofits that collect the money.
However, thanks to the nuclear bailout scandal, the criminal prosecutions of former House Speaker Larry Householder and others, as well as civil lawsuits and records released by the Public Utilities Commission, we are getting clearer glimpses of how those secret donations flowed.
This past week, we learned that FirstEnergy gave $2.5 million to a group that helped Mike DeWine get elected as governor in 2018.
FirstEnergy also gave $1 million to another organization that was supporting John Husted's brief campaign for governor before he teamed up with DeWine.
The documents revealed a total of about $4 million in support of the DeWine campaign.
Protests
Much of the national news coverage, not focused on the Trump trial, has focused on campus protests over the War in Gaza. Students have camped at Columbia, Harvard Yard closed off at Harvard, arrests at Yale University, New York University and UC Berkeley.
But here in Ohio, it's been relatively quiet.
There have been protests at Ohio State, attracting around 100 protesters at a time. The protestors got a little louder this week. OSU President Ted Carter wrote a letter to the campus after pro-Palestinian protesters chanted slogans that many consider anti-Semitic. He told students, staff and faculty that he fully supports free speech, but the university will enforce policies regarding hate speech and demonstrations that cross a line.
On Tuesday, OSU police arrested a couple of protestors for trespassing. A university spokesperson said they were too loud and disrupting an event happening inside a campus building.
Early Thursday, about 20 protesters had set up an encampment on the South Oval, just across from the student union.
As graduation season approaches, school administrators are trying to balance the right to protest with preventing disruptions to events. It will likely be an eventful couple of weeks, before students go home for summer.
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