The Blue Wave Crashed Over Ohio and Trump Gets His Rebuke

Doug Berger: 00:05
In this episode, we talk about the blue wave that not only gave Democrats the largest majority in Congress since Watergate and was a clear rebuke of Donald Trump. It also helped Democrats in Ohio win big. Then we look at a Northwest Ohio school district that is violating Ohio law in two U.S. Supreme Court cases by hosting a lifewise Bible class on school property.

Voice Over: 00:37
This is Secular Left with Doug Berger, an independent, religion-free, progressive viewpoint on topics of the day.

Doug Berger: 01:00
Well, this was one of the fewer, few times in recent memories where I’ve woken up the day after an election and I was actually in a decent mood. There was a huge wave, Democrat wave, that won in the elections on Tuesday, November 3rd. Um, the people were, you know, the pundits and the pollsters were saying that the Democrats would have probably get an advantage. They figured that they would take over the House, the U.S. House of Representatives, simply because the Republicans only had like a five-seat majority in this Congress. And with uh Trump’s approval ratings in the toilet and all of the fascist authoritarian shit that he’s been pulling for the last two years, people are really soured on his administration and anything associated with it. And they see the Republicans in Congress not doing anything to stop him as part of the problem. Um, corruption, uh affordability, uh things like that, the war in Iran have really dragged down popularity for Republicans. Now, Democrats aren’t that popular either, poll polling-wise, but when you have an election system that is uh rigged for only two part major parties to benefit, you have to choose one or the other, or you don’t vote. And I’m sure there’s quite a few people that chose not to vote this year. But the the average, I think the average voter turnout was at least above 60%, which in recent years is unheard of, especially for a midterm election. This is uh the second year of a presidential administration, and everybody knows that the party in power does lose some seats. But in this case, the Republicans basically got wiped out in the House and in the Senate, which was unexpected, generally unexpected. Estimated seats that the Democrats have won uh starting in 2027 is 254. And so that gives them a 39 to 58 seat majority over the Republicans. Uh before the election, the Democrats had 214 seats. The Republicans had 218, and now in 2027, it will be Democrats with 254 and the Republicans with 162. So they got their butts handed to them. Uh 20 million people voted for Democrats over Republicans in the popular vote, so they gained 55.81% of the vote to Republicans 42.72 percent. That’s in the House. And as I said, the the common wisdom, election wisdom, was that the Democrats possibly could take over the Senate as well, the majority in the Senate, but it wasn’t expected. And the reason being is because in the Senate, only one-third of the senators are up were up for re-election. And so there’s less number of seats in play. Uh at the start of this congressional season, uh, the Democrats had 45 seats, and the Republicans had 53, so they had the majority. After Tuesday, the Democrats are expected to have anywhere from 52 to 54, because there’s still a couple of uh seats that are elections that are still being counted, and the democ the Republicans will have 44 to 46. So it’ll be a clear majority for the Democrats. Uh the best kind of majority would be 60 seats, but I don’t think they’re going to get 60 seats, maybe. A couple of the notable ones, the notable uh elections was that Sherrod Brown, who is the who was previously a senator in Ohio, returned. He won he won election over John Housted, who had been appointed, and it was J.D. Vance’s old Senate seat. And so John Housted had to run this year for war to keep the seat. And in, I think, two years, uh Brown will have to run again to get a full six-year term. And then we also have Abdul El Asayed in Michigan, who became becomes the first elected Muslim senator in the U.S. Senate. And he won in Michigan. And then one of the races that still has not been called is in Mississippi, where I believe his name is Brian Cologne, is uh going to it it’s trending his way. He’s probably gonna win. So he will be the first uh black elected U.S. Senator from Mississippi since the uh Reconstruction period. So that’s telling you something. And then uh Alaska is the other one, they still have to do um, they haven’t called the race there because uh none of the candidates have gotten 50%, so they’ll have to go to ranked choice voting. And of course, then there’s the controversy about the two Dan Sullivans, but once the ranked choice voting kicks in, that’s not going to be relevant, even though Republicans are still gonna cry about it. It was just uh amazing, and and one of the other amazing races was Marcy Captor in the ninth district here in Ohio. She was expected to lose. They had gerrymandered her district twice now. Uh, the second time they pretty much gave her a bunch of cornfields and rural areas, uh, which was majority, uh made up majority of Republicans, but they also still gave her parts of Lucas County and Toledo. And that is what put her over the top. Plus, it didn’t help hurt that she had uh the incumbent tag. So, you know, a lot of people voted for her because she had been in the job. Personally, I don’t want to support her any longer, and I hope that Democrats or DSA or anybody else primaries her the next time. Um she threw trans people under the bus. Um in her election in 2022, she threw immigrants under the bus. So she’ll do anything, she’ll say anything to get elected. And she, some of her votes, recent votes, have been kind of questionable, uh, coming from a Democrat, because she’s trying to play both sides of the fence. She’s trying to appeal to the rural conservative voter who won’t vote for vote for her anyway. And so then she ticks off the progressive uh liberal people that will still vote for her because, again, the country’s election system is rigged for only two parties. It also, the election got gr better for Ohio. Uh, they had gerrymandered our congressional maps. And a couple of years ago, the Democrats had a lawsuit. Uh well, they originally had tried to do a uh a constitutional amendment to change how it was done. And Frank LaRose, who was Secretary of State at the time, um put his thumb on the scale and mucked up the the uh wording on the ballot measure, so people were confused and they voted against it, thinking that that was going to keep that was gonna stop gerrymandering when they needed to vote in favor of it. And so it lost. So the Democrats sued in federal court, and they made a deal with the Republicans in the State House that they would accept the map for that election, and uh and the Republicans said that they would not make it gerrymander it worse. So they still gerrymandered it to try to favor Republicans. And because of the blue wave, that blew up in the Republicans’ face. The Democrats ended up taking eight of the 15 congressional districts. Um they got uh Marcy Captor re-elected, uh, another one, another Democrat that was already, uh there was two other Democrats that are already in office, it got re-elected. And then they also won, uh, the Democrats won like the 15th district that had been had a Republican for a long time, and some other places. So they did really good. The other place that Ohio did great was they pretty much ran the table of executive offices. The Democrats won the governorship, attorney general, and uh the uh secretary of state. Uh Frank LaRose did win his election to be the auditor, so he won’t be in charge of the elections anymore, which is good. Uh Alison Russo, who was the one that that uh gave up on the map lawsuit, the gerrymandering lawsuit, uh, she becomes the Secretary of State, so she’s gonna handle elections. Um, there was one bad thing about the election, is that the Republicans, in order to jazz up their base, put in a uh constitutional amendment to enshrine photo ID for voting and to make other changes that are gonna probably come down the line, at least so they’ll try later, like messing with absentee ballots and things like that. And unfortunately that passed because all they did was they said it was just uh making it permanent that you were gonna have to have photo ID, and a majority of people support presenting photo IDs, even though it doesn’t make elections safer or uh avoid uh voter fraud. You know, and I’ve I’ve talked about that before. Uh poll workers are not experts in driver’s licenses and paperwork and things like that. So I always think that requiring a signature on a poll book has far more is far more secure for your vote than asking for a photo ID. So unfortunately, that passed. But it is good to see. And then the other thing, too, in the Ohio House of Representatives, the Democrats ended the Republicans’ supermajority. So we’re actually going to have the need for bipartisanship and give and take, and we’re actually going to have some transparency and some public hearings for some bills, because if you don’t, they’re probably not going to make it through the legislature like the Republicans have pulled in the past. And the example I give is the release time religious instruction law was originally HB 445. Um, it got stalled in the House because the chair of the education committee was a former teacher and board member, school board member, and she didn’t like the bill. So she stalled it by not scheduling any more hearings on it. So they introduced it in the Senate, where it also kind of stalled out. They couldn’t get any votes or any enthusiasm for it. So the uh Christian nationalists like uh Andrew Brenner and uh Gary Click got it shoved into a bill that had already passed the House. It was House Bill Eight, which was called the Parents Rights Act, and it was an anti-LGBT bill. And so they shoved the RTRI language into that bill, and of course it passed because most of the most of the legislature and the majority wanted the anti-LGBT stuff passed. So they passed it, and they didn’t care about the religious part. And then it went to the Senate and they conferred with the changes. Well, no, the Senate, the Senate adopted it, sent it to the House, since the bill had already passed the House, they just had to approve the changes, and they did. And so with this change in the end of the supermajority, there’ll be less likely that that’s gonna happen in the future, at least in the next legislative session. You’re not gonna have some uh bill that’s not getting any traction, that’s some culture war crap, and they’re not gonna like stuff it into another bill without any hearings or or uh against the will of the people, because they on that uh House Bill 8 that got passed, they had over 200 people send in testimony in uh in opposition to that bill, and they still passed it because they didn’t need Democratic votes to pass it. They had a supermajority. So we won’t have to worry about that too much. So, all in all, with the election, I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Um, we’re now going to have to deal with the Democrats actually governing in Washington, D.C. and in Columbus. Uh, Columbus, I’m not too worried about. Uh, there’s still a lot of good experience. Uh I had a friend of mine that complained about the uh governor-elect Amy Acton reaching out to uh members of Ted Strickland’s administration. Ted Strickland was the last Democratic governor uh back in the early 2000s. Um, he was the last Democrat governor. He served one term. And so my friend was concerned that she was going to take the advice of people that failed. They didn’t get a second term. And the thing is, what you got to know is the Democrats haven’t been in power in Columbus at least 20 years. It’s been at least since 2011 that they have not had any of the top top offices or control of the legislature. So I think that there’s going to be, there was missing some experience. And so you go to the people that have some experience. You know, I hope, I’m I’m hoping for the best. Um, I’ve already sent information to um my Congresspeople about trans rights, and and I’m sure that I’ll be sending some messages to Dr. Acton about church and state separation and about trans rights as well when she finally gets into office. And so the thing that I like is that Democrats tend to be amenable to persuasion. You know, if you make a good argument and you talk to them about it and you and you explain why you have to do it this way or do that way, then they’ll sometimes they’ll change their mind. Now, in the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., there’s going to be some issues. And the reason why there’s going to be some issues is because Hakeem Jeffries, who’s the current minority leader, is set to become the Speaker of the House in January. Uh, he’s already indicated that he wants the job. And so because he is a black person, uh, there’s a lot of people that are creating this thing where you can’t oppose him because if you do, you’re you could be considered racist. And the problem is that Hakeem Jeffries has been an ineffective leader for the past two years of his caucus. Um he how how how did they say that? Oh, there was some political commentator that was talking about, and I forget who it was, it might have even been Abdul El Syed, is that people in the Democratic Party leadership think that they’re in an episode of the West Wing, where everybody’s collegial and only what’s best for the country, and once and they want to work together. And the Republicans have not been like that at all for 10 years since Trump took over the party. They’ve been not, they do not want to work with the Democrats, no matter how much they say. And so if Jeffries just gives up right now and just says, well, we’re just going to work on stuff that we can work on together, and then it’s what’s the point? Why did people vote the Democratic majority in the House? They want to see things done. They want to see affordability addressed. They want to see an end to the Iran War. They want to see corruption dealt with. And you can do all those things. You can’t, you just don’t have to do one thing at a time. Uh Jamie Raskin, representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland, who’s a member of the Free Thought Caucus, is set to become the chair of the Judiciary Committee. And he also said, you can do both. And by addressing the corruption in the administration, you’re also dealing with the Affordability Act uh issues because a lot of the money that they pulled out and like cutting people’s uh uh health care and the tariffs and things like that, the authoritarian stuff, is related to the corruption. And so you can fix all that. And I personally don’t think Hakeem Jeffries is the person for the job. Now, pretty much the way people have been talking about it that are have uh skin in the game to say it to make it simple, have said that he’s probably gonna get elected speaker, and that’s fine. Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, does need to go home. He does he need to go back to just being a regular senator. They do need new leadership in the Senate. He has been ineffectual. Um, he refused to support Abdul El El Sayed. Uh he recruited a uh 80-year-old former governor of Maine to run for the Senate seat in Maine, who got beat in the primary by Graham Platner. He didn’t support Graham Plattner. He didn’t support uh the guy that won, James. I can’t think of his name right offhand. And when he was he’s given speeches, he uh it’s just he’s just awful. He’s just an awful leader. He’s not good at all. You know, he he let he let Joe Manchin and Kristen Semena uh muck everything up when they had the control over whether or not Democratic issues got uh voted on or not. You know, a uh majority leader should not allow that to happen. You have to have control of your caucus and you have to put your foot down. And that is one thing he does not do. He does send uh strongly worded letters a lot, and he just doesn’t give very good speeches. So if any of these leaders Jeffries or Schumer get replaced. I would much like to see Schumer replaced. I’d like to see them both replaced, but I’m willing to give Jeffries a chance, at least to start out. In Ohio, with Alison Russo as the Secretary of State, I see that she’s hopefully going to be a fair person. She’s going to be neutral. She’s not going to try to put her thumb on the scale by mucking up ballot languages and complaining all the time and filing lawsuits and actually following the law. And I know Cole Witch, who got the attorney general, hopefully he’s going to be looking into corruption, especially Jobs Ohio, which really needs somebody to do an audit of and oversee, since we supposedly it’s their money is secret. We’re not allowed to know it. And so I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. Like I said, you know, it’s been a long time since I woke up the day after election and I was in a decent mood. And I feel hopeful for 2027. You know, I’m not going to sit back and just let it happen. I’m going to continue to be active and be an advocate for the issues that are important to me. I’m still in the groups and the groups that I work with, they’re still raring to go. And so we’ll we’ll go ahead and do that.

Voice Over: 23:40
For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us.

Doug Berger: 24:00
I’m sure you’re aware, if you follow this podcast intensely as everybody should be, right? I have a Substack called Secular Left Nuggets. And basically what I do with that Substack is I do some posts from time to time, not very often, of things that are grinding my gears at that particular time that may or may not become a segment in a podcast, either because the time frame is different, you know, like my next episode would be after this certain thing that I write about, and so won’t be relevant to talk about later. And so, you know, check it out. It is secularleft.substack.com. And one of the articles I have currently up is about the um uh conservative uh MAGA um gaslighting that was attempted when the Vivek Ramaswamy ad using Amy Acton’s mother came out, and and you remember all the backlash about that. Well, some of the Magas decided to try to gaslight people that it was not about sexual assault, that it was about uh Amy Acton being a terrible person, candidate, and a liar. And so they tried to they tried to um disassociate it from Amy Acton’s uh childhood trauma, which didn’t work, but this is what they tried to do. And one of the articles I have up, the title is Don’t Believe Your Lying Ears. MAG is gaslighting defense of the Acton ad. It with the subtitle, Sometimes a Mother Doesn’t Know Their Children Best. After the righteous backlash against the recent Vivek Ramaswamy ad using the estranged mother of Amy Acton to call her a liar, many people in the MAGA world are doubling down on using the ad by trying to gaslight all of us about what it was saying. And so then I have an example of one of those gaslight uh attempts by failed wedding venue owner Jack Windsor who says decides that he’s a citizen journalist now. And he put up a note on his Facebook. He says the press incorrectly stated that the ad was about SA. It was not. It was Acton’s mom calling her a liar. The Acton press release spoke about SA, and the press took that bait and largely ignored the only claim the I the ad contested living in a tent. And today, one of your acolyte claims, court documents say otherwise, her subhead, but writes one sentence about police finding the stepfather living in a tent when Acton was a child. No evidence actin was there, no leak to the record. I see the reporting you’re praising, it misses the mark. So basically, what Jack Windsor is trying to do is say that the only claim made in the ad was that Amy was lying about her childhood living in a tent. Totally ignoring the fact that the reason why this woman in the ad was her estranged mother is because they hadn’t spoken since 1978. So wanting to use her to uh judge the credibility of Amy Acton today, it just doesn’t work. It’s not logical. You can’t you can’t do that because she doesn’t know Amy after 1978. So when she’s on on the camera saying that Amy lied about her childhood, she’s saying that she lied about her childhood, which included the sexual assault. And so that’s what I say. I said the problem for Windsor and Ramswamy is that Donald Arthur Donna Author has not seen or talked to Amy Acton since 1978, when Author picked her then husband over her children when he was indicted for raping Acton when she was 12 years old at the time. Acton and her brother were removed from the home, and Arthur and her husband fled Ohio to avoid trial. Author’s claim that Acton lies about her past can only mean her past before 1978. And the inference by Arthur mentioning building two sex abuse programs is that Amy is lying about her rape too. Why would she mention the sex abuse programs in the ad at all unless she was connecting it to the lies? And even if we limit the ad to the tenth story, Arthur has no credibility about what acting is like in 2026. And uh, and so that is one of the articles that I have. It it’s not enough, it really wasn’t enough information at the time to do a podcast segment. I probably would have if I had the time. And now with the time has moved on and it’s post-election, there really isn’t any reason to go over it. But I just wanted to point out one of the things that I do with the Substack. And so if you’re interested, if you don’t want to listen to the podcast all the time, but you’re interested in what I have to say about politics, you know, subscribe to the Substack. Right now, it’s currently free. I don’t intend on charging a subscription for it anytime soon because you know, my main focus is my podcast.

Voice Over: 29:38
You are listening to the Secular Left Podcast.

Doug Berger: 29:44
One of the

Doug Berger: 29:45
issues that I’ve been dealing with for a couple of years now is fighting the Christian nationalist group, Lifewise Academy. And in case you don’t know, this is the group that is injecting itself into public schools around Ohio and the rest of the country to provide big Bible classes for kids. And it’s uh constitutional, relatively constitutional, as long as it’s voluntary, that it happens off campus, that it’s not in the school, and that no tax dollars are spent on it, and the school doesn’t promote it. And so basically what it is is uh the parents sign a form and they give it to the school, and then the kid is released to somebody from LifeWise. And in most cases, they either get on a bus or van and they travel to a local church where they do their Bible class. Uh, some districts, like Elida near Lima, they actually have a place next door to the church, uh to the school. So the kids walk to their lifewise class. And typically it’s 45 minutes to an hour, then they go back to school. And and this is uh called release time religious instruction. It was cut it was uh allowed after a couple of court decisions in 1948 McCollum v. Uh Board of Education, I believe was the name of it. Yeah, it was uh McCollum v. Board of Education in 1948 and Zorach v. Clausen in 1952. And those cases say that RTRI, release time religious instruction, has to be voluntary off campus, not promoted or supported by the school district, and no tax money is spent on it. There is a school district in Ohio where we know they are egregiously violating those court decisions. It’s the Elmwood Local Schools. It’s in Wood County, it’s about 35 miles south of where we are at in Toledo. And I think about 10 or 15 years ago, I’m not sure, I haven’t dug into it, they worked with the state to build a new combined K through 12 school building next door to their current, their old school. A lot of schools, rural, especially particularly rural schools in Ohio have done this, is where the state pays money, they pay part of it, and then the local districts, they pay part of it, and they get a brand new school. And a lot of these rural schools needed new schools because they were either built in the 50s or 60s and and a lot of maintenance issues. So they have this new building, this new combined building, and most of the old building, the previous building, was demolished. Uh, the state allows them to keep a couple of parts of the building uh for other uses. Um, I know there was a school district in Hancock County, Arlington, where they kept the old gym, but they tore the rest of it, not old gym, but there was like an addition that had been put on in 1995, and they kept that addition and tore everything else down. That is part of the deal with the state, is you just can’t keep the old building complete. And so they had this building and they called it a community center. And there’s a theater, a weight room, uh, some classroom space for meetings, and they rent out the center to local groups. The school district still owns the building, the land, and they control who rents that building. So if you’re a local group in in Wood County and you want to use that community center, you have to contact the school district. And there’s like a form you have to fill out. Uh Elmwood has had a Lifewise program since I think about 2022. Don’t hold hold me to that date. Um, in fact, that was that program was what got me on the road to uh opposing LifeWise. That’s when I heard about LifeWise for the first time. Was somebody in the Elmwood district had contacted my group, contacted uh secular humanists of Western Lake Erie and wanted to know what to do about it. And so I looked into it and and kind of, you know, and the rest they say is history, where we’re at now. But instead of being taken off campus, like all the other program, Lifewise Pro, most other, there’s some other ones too. Uh instead of being taken off cha campus to a local church or to private property, LifeWise rents a room at the community center during the school day. Uh there’s a gentleman, Keith Comer, who we’ve interviewed previously. Uh he inquired about this because he lives in that area. And he he mentioned that it doesn’t seem legal. And the school responded back to him that they rent out the space to the community, and due to previous Supreme Court cases, they can’t discriminate just because life-wise is religious. Which is technically true. If they offered space in their clas in their school buildings to uh other community groups like Boy Scouts or uh the Shriners or maybe a church service every once in a while, who knows? If they do that, then they cannot discriminate based on content. Uh it’s uh uh public uh what do they call it? Access. It’s an access law. So so if you uh they call it a limited public forum. So, you know, you’re not letting everybody in, but if you let some people in, you have to let the people that want to come in come in. And so that’s technically true, what the school told you. The problem is lifewise takes place during the school day. And I’ll have a graphic up and I’ll have it on in the show notes. But if you’re watching the video of this episode, if you look over my shoulder, you’ll see a graphic of the website, the Elmwood Local Schools website about their community center. If you look at the hours that it’s open, it’s prior to 9 a.m. And then they have hours after 3 p.m. that it’s open. So between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., they do not rent out that community center. And the fact is the school rents only to LifeWise during the school day. Um the same commute concerned community member that I talked about earlier tried to rent a meeting space during the school day and was denied. And he was told that the students still use some of that space and it was a safety issue. So basically, they have a religious Bible class on school property during the school day, and that violates the Supreme Court case, McCollum v. Board of Education, in 1948, because that was the exact same thing. And the court said even if you rent a room to a religious group, it does not absolve you of the violation because you have control of the school building, and the children have to go to school, they’re required to go to school the compulsory attendance laws. And that lifewise program is also violating the Zorach V. Clausen case because it’s not off campus and it’s supported by the school district because we also have information that they set them up with the school com with the school computers and some phones. And they even have a permanent room, I’m told, a permanent room in that community center that they can use all year. So it’s not like that, you know, they have their materials in a tote and they bring it out for class and have to put it away before they leave. That’s their room. That is totally illegal. And Elmwood Local Schools is violating Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022, release time courses in religion instruction, which is a codified version of the Zorach court decision. And that was created in 20, part of it was created in 2014 when the initial law was passed, and it was amended to require schools to work with LifeWise. Uh, and that was House Bill 445, and that was the the law that was stuck into the attack on the uh LBGT community, House Bill 8, the Parents’ Rights Act, um, at the end of the Laden Duck session 2023, I want to say, something like that. So Elmwood Local Schools in Wood County is violating the law. Now, I also told was heard from the person, the concerned citizen in that area that that Elmwood recently got a new superintendent. So maybe we can change it. I do know that this was extensively reported in the Ohio Capitol Journal. Uh FFRF, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, sent a strongly worded letter to the school district earlier this year, and it’s gotten some coverage, local news coverage, but they are still violating the law. Now, I don’t care so much that kids attend life-wise if that’s what parents want their kids to do. I care that they’re allowed to flaunt laws and and be privileged that way. You know, if the community center is not open during the school day, lifewise should not be on school property. They shouldn’t be on school property anyway. They should bust those kids to a local church or somebody’s private property. So our group, the uh we’re what we’re doing is we’re working with some people uh to look at the legal options, including maybe having a taxpayer uh lawsuit brought against the Elmwood School District. Um, so if you are concerned about this and you live in the Elmwood local school districts, and you want to take the chance of suing the school district and lifewise for violating Ohio law, uh let reach out, let us know. And we’ll keep your information confidential, you know, until we go through the process. Uh it’s probably what we’re probably going to do is start really looking close at it at the beginning of 2027 when the legislature changes. So maybe we’ll have a better way of taking care of it uh through normal channels rather than having to file a lawsuit. And it could be with the new superintendent, maybe we can get some kind of legal advice to him to let him know that they are violating two Supreme Court decisions and Ohio law by having lifewise on school property. That’s the issue. And so I will keep everybody updated on that because that is going to be a major issue going forward.

Voice Over: 43:03
Thank you for listening. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us. If you want to support the show, share it with your friends or visit our merch store at secularleft.us slash shop.