Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026

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

It's a musical "on this day": in 1957, Buddy Holly's group, the Crickets, hit No. 1 with "That'll Be the Day," and in 1967, the Doors released "People Are Strange."

Top of the fold today: Ohio's candidates race to slash the gas tax as prices spike, and Dayton makes its $300 million pitch to land the nation's first Space Academy.

And Ohio leads the nation in construction hiring while its labor market strains under a data-center boom, plus our editorial take on why the Blade's closure says more about us than journalism.

COLUMBUS — Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman and Senate President Rob McColley pledged to fast-track gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's plan for a 90-day gas tax suspension, following Democratic rival Amy Acton's own tax-holiday call the same day. 

Gas averages $4.51 a gallon statewide. 

Republicans plan a news conference today detailing the proposal, which would replace lost revenue through state funds and Medicaid fraud savings.

DAYTON — Sen. Bernie Moreno unveiled Ohio's bid Monday to house the new U.S. Space Academy at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University, saying he's met with Trump twice about it. 

Ohio's $300 million proposal includes a "multiplanetary hall," a statue-lined "drive of heroes," and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. 

States have until Oct. 26 to submit bids, with groundbreaking planned for 2027 and a first class of roughly 300 students by 2028.

COLUMBUS — Hemp business owners say Ohio is being unfair. They say the state raids hemp shops but lets marijuana stores sell products with too much THC. 

A study found all 210 Ohio dispensaries sold items above the legal limit. 

State officials say a higher limit from a 2023 vote still counts until new rules start Oct. 5.

COLUMBUS — Ohio added more construction jobs than any other state over the past year, according to a new report. Builders in Ohio added 17,800 jobs between August 2025 and August 2026. That is a 6.8% jump, the fourth-highest rate in the country. Only Louisiana, Wisconsin and Wyoming grew faster.

The growth kept going into the summer. Ohio added 4,600 construction jobs from July to August 2026 alone. That was the biggest one-month gain of any state. Ohio now has 278,200 construction jobs in all.

Much of the growth is happening in central Ohio. Big companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Intel are building large data centers there. These buildings store computer information for the internet. The building boom is so big that Ohio does not have enough skilled workers to fill all the jobs. The state is short about 14,000 skilled construction workers this year.

Across the country, growth was uneven. States like California, Michigan and New York lost construction jobs over the same year. Ohio's strong growth stands out, driven largely by the ongoing data center construction boom in and around Columbus.

The Toledo Blade might close this year. So might other papers like it. This isn't really a story about bad reporters or boring news. It's a story about us.

A lot of people don't want news anymore. They want a team. They pick a tribe, and then they go find whatever tells them their tribe is right. One study even found that Americans are more likely than people in other countries to pick news that already matches what they believe.

Once you pick a team instead of the truth, everything gets stupid fast. We argue for days about what a woman is. And somehow we still find time to argue about corruption, but only in terms of the "other side."

Meanwhile, some guy on TikTok is teaching 14-year-olds how to invest in gold because banks are "in on it," and somehow that gets more views than the city council meeting where a group screaming they want more democracy just chased away half the business community, and the money that paid for schools, police, and fire went with them.

That's the actual news. Nobody's watching, and for good reason. It's impossible to cover most of that stuff with a straight face.

If you watch the Ohio governor's race, or at least the commercials, you know exactly what we mean. Instead of examining how the candidates' policies will touch our lives, a lot of the debate is whether one candidate is a con man or the other has a drinking problem.

The Pennant started because we noticed something: betting markets often told the truth faster than headlines did. Money doesn't care about your tribe or your feelings. It just follows where there's more of it.

Continue reading the article here.

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