Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio called off its presidential primary just hours before polls were set to open there and in three other states, an 11th-hour decision the governor said was necessary to prevent further fueling the coronavirus pandemic that has paralyzed the nation.

Health Director Amy Acton declared a health emergency that would prevent the polls from opening out of fear of exposing voters and volunteer poll workers — many of them elderly — to the virus. Arizona, Florida and Illinois were proceeding with their presidential primaries.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Elections officials in the four states holding presidential primaries next week say they have no plans to postpone voting amid widespread disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they are taking extraordinary steps to ensure that voters can cast ballots and polling places are clean.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — President Donald Trump used his first campaign election rally of 2020 to argue that he served up “American justice” by ordering a drone strike to take out Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, while jeering Democratic leaders for questioning his decision to carry out the attack without first consulting Congress.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio doctor accused of ordering drug overdoses in the deaths of 25 hospital patients has sued his former employer for defamation, arguing that he did nothing wrong and did not deviate from hospital policy on end-of-life care.

Dr. William Husel, who is accused of murder, filed the lawsuit Thursday in Franklin County against the Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System and its parent organization, Trinity Health Corp.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Thousands of Ohio voters were held up or stymied in their efforts to get absentee ballots for last year’s general election because of missing or mismatched signatures on their ballot applications, an Associated Press review has found.

The signature requirement on such applications is a largely overlooked and spottily tracked step in Ohio’s voting process, which has shifted increasingly to mail-in ballots since early, no-fault absentee voting was instituted in 2005.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Questions about whether an Ohio mayor intervened on behalf of his grandson in the hours after a fatal shooting have prompted the victim’s mother to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the mayor and the city’s police chief.

Andrea Parra sued Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams earlier this month in state court. The lawsuit said the two suspects in the slaying of 30-year-old Antonio Parra this summer were members of a gang connected to Jackson’s 22-year-old grandson, Frank Q. Jackson.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — President Donald Trump once promised that coal and steel would be the beating heart of a revived U.S. economy — a nostalgic vision that helped carry him to victory three years ago in the industrial Midwest.

But a year away from Election Day, that promised renaissance is not materializing and both sectors are faltering in ways that are painfully familiar and politically significant.

USA (AP) -- Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is endorsing Bernie Sanders for president and will appear with him at a rally in her home district this weekend.

Sanders deputy communications director Sarah Ford confirmed the news Tuesday.

The endorsement is a major boon for the 78-year-old Vermont senator, who has faced questions over his health since suffering a heart attack two weeks ago.

WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Just a month has passed since the last presidential debate, but the state of the Democrats’ 2020 race has shifted.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Chris Gagin says he hasn’t changed much politically, even as so much around him has.

The attorney from rural Belmont County, Ohio, became a Republican in 2013 after Democrats embraced environmental policies that he believed were detrimental to the area’s coal mining and fracking industries. As an anti-abortion-rights, pro-gun conservative, he felt unwelcome.