Friday, August 21st, 2026

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Pennant. To listen to this newsletter, click the “Listen Online” link in the top right corner of this email.

On this day in 1954, two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin was born in Columbus. 

Troopers flagged nearly 4% of area school buses, and the consumer advocate wants AES Ohio's refund raised to $82 million, both at the top of the fold.

And in today's Peach Section: Britain gets its royals back. Ohio keeps Mike and Fran DeWine, a pond, no moat, and 50 years of ice cream.

CLEVELAND — State troopers checked 4,393 school buses across 141 districts between January and August, flagging 170, just under 4%, with out-of-service violations, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol data. 

Seventy-seven districts had none. Fifteen had a fifth or more of their fleet flagged, though most run fewer than 15 buses. 

Inspectors review 120 areas per bus, and mechanics usually make repairs before troopers leave for the day.

CLEVELAND — State troopers checked 4,393 school buses across 141 districts between January and August, flagging 170, just under 4%, with out-of-service violations, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol data. 

Seventy-seven districts had none. Fifteen had a fifth or more of their fleet flagged, though most run fewer than 15 buses. 

Inspectors review 120 areas per bus, and mechanics usually make repairs before troopers leave for the day.

DAYTON — The Ohio Consumers' Counsel says AES Ohio owes customers just over $82 million, more than seven times the $11 million refund state regulators ordered earlier. 

The current refund works out to less than $20 per customer. 

The state consumer advocate wants the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to raise it as households absorb rising electric bills.

COLUMBUS — A National Republican Senatorial Committee memo sent to AI companies warns that opposition to data centers has left Sen. Jon Husted vulnerable, calling the issue "the anchor hanging around Husted's neck." 

Internal polling shows a dead heat, but a Fox News survey of 1,008 Ohio voters taken Aug. 6–10 has Democrat Sherrod Brown ahead 53–45. 

Unless perceptions shift, the memo warns, the fight will spread beyond Ohio.

HASKINS — About 30 residents pressed representatives of Williams Companies Inc. at a Middleton Township trustees meeting over a natural gas pipeline and a 350-megawatt gas-fired power plant. The plant's turbines will run on the new pipeline and generate electricity for Meta's $800 million Wood County data center.

Six company representatives and four township officials attended the session at the township administration building. Questions centered on safety, air and water quality, and noise and light pollution, including effects on farm animals. Williams, a Tulsa-based Fortune 500 energy infrastructure firm, cited newer equipment, established suppliers, and emissions kept well under legal limits. 

The meeting followed a summer of friction. In July, trustees voted 2-1 to rezone 32 acres of demolished homes to industrial for construction parking, and opponents circulated petitions seeking 971 signatures to put that decision before voters in November.

Middleton Township is one node in a statewide buildout, from SB Energy's $33.3 billion Piketon project pairing a 9.2-gigawatt gas plant with an AI campus to fuel cells approved in Hilliard for an Amazon site.

The news out of Montecito: after six years, Harry and Meghan are packing it in. Reports this week say they'll move back to Britain this month, into a private house outside London, with Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, starting British school in September. The $14.7 million California place they bought in 2020 was, apparently, not the fresh start it was billed as. Certainly, no one saw that coming.

So the exile is over.

Ohio, meanwhile, has been quietly running a better royal family this whole time.

Mike and Fran DeWine are winding down their governance of the Buckeye State; the term ends in January, and they are going back exactly where they have always been. Cedarville, population 4,257, where the landmarks are a Baptist college, an opera house from the 1880s, and the Little Town of Lights, which is exactly what it sounds like: candles set inside plastic milk jugs that never melt.

Mike spent twelve years in Washington as a U.S. senator and never actually left home. He grew up working in the family seed business. He and Fran raised eight children in that farmhouse. No moat. There is a pond.

Every June they throw an ice cream social in the yard, and the 50th one was this summer. It free. You show up, you get ice cream, you go home. 

Try that at Balmoral.

Meanwhile, the Sussexes had a Netflix deal, a podcast, a memoir, and a lifestyle brand moving $14 chocolate bars and an $18 leather bookmark that sold out in an hour. Out of how many, nobody says. A sellout with no denominator is a press release that screams LOOK AT ME. 

When the As Ever website glitched and accidentally published its own stock counts, they showed 220,000 jars of spread sitting in a warehouse. Spin it however you want. It's still a duchess selling jam.

From what we hear, the DeWines have never run out of ice cream. Not once.

They have Fran's cookbook and a program that mails free books to Ohio children. Fran reads to kindergartners and, we're told, makes outstanding potholders with her grandchildren on a loop loom. No drop, no waitlist, no docuseries about the potholder journey.

The British treat their royals like a reality show they can't cancel. We treat ours like the neighbors who show up with a casserole when somebody dies.

Britain can have the drama back. We'll take the ice cream.

Which Ohio gubernatorial candidate’s ad campaign do you like more?
- Ramaswamy's barbershop - 35%
- Dr. Acton's tent - 5%
- Neither - 60%

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