Tuesday, July 28th, 2026

Welcome to Tuesday’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 1868: The 14th Amendment was ratified, granting citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in the United States, including formerly enslaved people.

A summer health warning grows louder as Lyme-carrying ticks spread into all 88 Ohio counties, while corn and soybeans run ahead of schedule. Find all of this at the Top of the Fold. 

And we've expanded the editorial section today to dig into the money behind Ohio's most expensive Senate race, in "The Scorched Earth Season Is Coming."

COLUMBUS — The alarm health officials raised earlier this summer has only grown louder, with new county warnings this month as blacklegged ticks now infest all 88 counties and an Ohio State study finds the state's Lyme risk matches Connecticut's. 

Cases went from 40 in 2010 to more than 2,800 last year, and the ticks have pushed out of the deep woods into the parks and yards where families actually spend their summer. 

For more, continue here.

COLUMBUS — Ohio's corn and soybean crops are outpacing their normal development on favorable summer weather, with a USDA crop progress report earlier this month rating corn 62% good to excellent and showing soybeans ahead of average on blooming and pod-setting. 

The strong start is ahead of last year's pace, though farmers are watching for a late-summer rise in spider mites and other pests, and some say a wet spring and a late-May frost could keep yields short of their full potential.

WASHINGTON — Ohio State University accounting professor Brian Mittendorf says a charity can house a fundraising project, take in millions, and never disclose how the money was raised or spent; an arrangement called fiscal sponsorship that he told CBS News has long strained transparency.

A Republican bill in the U.S. House would require charities to report the deals on their tax returns, though nonprofit groups warn it could sweep in small charities alongside the political vehicles it targets; The Pennant explores this in an expanded editorial.

The two men running for U.S. Senate in Ohio might be the exception. Sherrod Brown's net worth sits under $1 million. Jon Husted disclosed assets between $1.3 and $3 million. Neither is getting rich off the job. Nobody's writing songs about Sherrod Brown's investment portfolio. But understand the world around them — who's funding it, who's profiting from it, and who's pretending they're not — and you start to see who is fueling what is sure to be one of the most expensive Senate races in Ohio history.

Here's the political-financial ocean those two are swimming in.

Take Ro Khanna. He's the California congressman who built a career going after billionaires. Khanna co-sponsored a wealth tax with Bernie Sanders, called out Elon Musk by name, and talks about the "Epstein class." His net worth is estimated somewhere between $27 million and well north of $100 million, most of it from his father-in-law's auto parts fortune.

His kids hold stakes in private golf clubs and a $65 billion wealth management firm. His congressional salary is $174,000. The rest is old money, sitting in the exact kind of trusts and anonymous corporations he lectures about on left-leaning cable. His salary doesn't explain the 8,000-square-foot DC mansion with the four-story elevator, or the move to an even bigger place in McLean. His wife's family does.

Elizabeth Warren made nearly a million dollars last year — Senate salary, Harvard paycheck, book royalties ("A Fighting Chance" — read it?). Worth knowing before her next speech about corporate greed. Bernie Sanders is worth roughly $3 million, mostly from book sales ("Our Revolution" — read it?). Honest money for an honest socialist. But the movement he inspired is a different story.

A Democratic fundraiser who works political races and movements put it bluntly: "There is real organization. There's real money behind them." He named the Soros family. George Soros funneled roughly $60 million through Democratic-aligned outside spending groups in the 2024 cycle alone. The people's revolution has a very wealthy board of directors.

It isn't only the left.

Continue reading the editorial here.

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