“As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.” The old adage used to apply to the state when Ohio was regarded as a perfect microcosm of America (with its regional, socioeconomic, and political diversity) and thus an influential bellwether in presidential elections.
But that was before extreme gerrymandering carved up state voting districts to engineer failsafe Republican supermajorities in the legislature — which cemented the statewide GOP trifecta of executive and judicial overlords who rule Ohio as a partisan fiefdom that passes for representative government.
The phrase that once signified Ohio’s status as a major swing state, whose character and composition mirrored the country’s, has been turned on its head. Today it would read, “As the nation goes, under Trump-genuflecting lemmings on Capitol Hill, so goes Ohio.” It is a reliably red state in lockstep with MAGA extremism writ large. In 2025, it is a perfect microcosm of the right-wing autocracies that have overtaken other bygone battleground states.
Statehouse Republicans spin the same culture war nonsense as their MAGA counterparts do in over half of the state legislatures they control nationwide. They advance the same Big Money interests of the same Big Campaign Donors, codify the same heartless indifference to the suffering of the powerless, and worship the same convicted felon, convicted sexual abuser, convicted fraudster, and attempted coup-plotter who got away with fomenting an insurrection against the U.S. government to disrupt constitutional business and try to overthrow the results of a free and fair election.
Both GOP lawmakers in Columbus and in Congress just passed objectively regressive, and oppressive budgets that will both take food from the hungry, cut health care insurance for tens of millions of working-class poor, and force Medicaid-dependent nursing homes and already struggling rural hospitals to close or contract.
Why? To partially offset huge transfers of wealth to the ultra-rich from the poorest Americans on the state and federal level. The hungriest and neediest among us are throwaway line items in GOP state and federal budgets crafted for the rich and powerful. U.S. President Donald Trump and Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.)
JD Vance, the former Ohio senator and unrecognizable author of Hillbilly Elegy, even suggested the suffering of many (from devastating federal cuts to Medicaid and food stamps) was worth it to give Immigration and Enforcement its single largest funding increase in history.
Tell that to the estimated 17 million people being kicked off Medicaid nationwide or seniors being pushed out of nursing homes without medical coverage or children going hungry with the deepest cuts ever to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, (SNAP).
The veep, who cast the tie-breaking vote for Trump’s Billionaire First Budget in the Senate, essentially said their pain was beside the point.
What Vance values is super-charging ICE’s nationwide terrorism campaign against illegal and legal immigrants (many without any criminal record) with a fortified police state of masked thugs in unmarked vehicles who disappear human beings off the streets.
He was euphoric about the federal budget’s giant infusion of cash (around $170 billion) for the agency.
“Everything else — the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae (italics, mine) of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
To Vance apparently, the unforced hardships on Ohioans and citizens across America are irrelevant compared to boosting ICE’s capacity to detain and deport racially profiled day laborers in Home Depot parking lots or those doing backbreaking work in farm fields, restaurants, hotels, landscaping, etc.
The massive influx in ICE funding allows Trump’s secretive army, without IDs, warrants, or due process, to become what a prominent immigration attorney called “the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history.”
Vance is on a futile odyssey to stop non-white demographic change in America at any cost.
His message to Ohioans who will lose health insurance for medical care and life-saving treatment, or the 1 in 9 low-income, elderly, and disabled residents in the state who will lose federal food assistance — is suck it up because detention camps are expensive.
Tell that to the 62% of Ohio households that participate in SNAP in families with children.
Every Ohio Republican on Capitol Hill voted for the fiscally irresponsible, debt-exploding, Medicaid-slashing Trump bill so billionaires and corporate conglomerates could get a $3.4 trillion tax cut on the backs of poor and working-class Americans.
Likewise, nearly every Ohio Republican in the Statehouse voted for the Big Jimmy and Dee Haslam Private Welfare Bill, blessed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, that rewards the wealthy with tax cuts, gives lavish handouts to NFL billionaires and allocates nearly $2.5 billion for private school vouchers to affluent families.
Yet the same GOP budget forces public schools, public libraries, state-funded child care, food banks, pediatric cancer research, and more to make do with less.
At least the Haslams can walk away with a cool $600 million to take the Browns out of Cleveland and Trump’s Mar a Lago pals can pocket another windfall in tax cuts they don’t need.
As Ohio’s MAGA conformists in Congress go, transferring resources from the poor and middle class to the rich, so goes Ohio’s Republican supermajority in Columbus.
But the rest of us still have agency to demand better than gutted safety net programs, cancelled health insurance and defunded public education to subsidize opulent lifestyles and domed stadiums. As Ohio goes is ultimately up to Ohioans who give a damn.
