In a shocking Elite Eight upset, 11th-seeded N.C. State powered through to beat their longtime rivals, the Duke Blue Devils, 76 to 64,and paving the way to their first Final Four appearance since 1983.
An 11th-seed is the lowest seeded team to ever make the Final Four, tying the record with LSU (1986), George Mason (2006), VCU (2011), Loyola Chicago (2018) and UCLA (2021), according to the NCAA.
With just under seven minutes left in the second half, N.C. State pulled away with a double-digit lead, sealing the deal for the Wolfpack and kissing the Blue Devils’ chances at yet another Final Four appearance goodbye.
Duke didn’t have another lead for the rest of the game.
The Wolfpack will face the Purdue Boilermakers — a No. 1-seed — on Saturday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Also facing off on Saturday will be the No. 1 seed UConn Huskies and the fourth-seeded Alabama Crimson Tide.
The winners of each of those games will head to the NCAA Championship game, which is set for April 8, also at State Farm Stadium.
Duke was favored to win Sunday’s matchup by 6.5 points, according to Bet MGM, but ended up falling to N.C. State by 12points.
As for the rest of the Final Four teams, UConn showed their dominance on the court against Illinois, beating the fighting Illini 77-52 on Saturday.
Also Saturday, Alabama secured an 89-82 win over Clemson to advance to the next round.
And Purdue narrowly held on to a lead in a back-and-forth battle against Tennessee earlier on Sunday, beating them 72-66.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Rebecca Cohen
Rebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
Republican-led states file lawsuit to block Biden’s student loan repayment plan – CBS News
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Eleven Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration to block the president’s latest student loan forgiveness program. The federal lawsuit argues that the Saving on a Valuable Education program, known as SAVE, isn’t different compared to Mr. Biden’s first attempt at student loan cancellation, which the Supreme Court struck down last year. CBS News White House reporter Bo Erickson reports.
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ATLANTA — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.
Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.
The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.
A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.
Some in Congress also are proposing parental consent for minors.
State Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, argued the state should do more to limit social media use by children, saying it’s causing harm.
“Every rose has a thorn, and that’s social media in this generation,” Hilton said. “It’s great for connectivity and activism, but it has reared its ugly head on mental health.”
But opponents warned the bill would cause problems. For example, Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat, said that the ban on use of social media in schools could ban teachers from showing educationally valuable YouTube videos.
“If we do pass this, we’ll be back fixing this next year, because there are too many issues with this bill,” Wilkerson said.
The bill says social media services would have to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1, 2025.
Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social medial companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.
To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms, but children have been shown to easily evade the bans.
Up to 95% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.
The Georgia bill also aims to shut down porn sites by requiring submission of a digitized identification card or some other government-issued identification. Companies could be held liable if minors were found to access the sites, and could face fines of up to $10,000.
“It will protect our children,” said Rep. Rick Jasperse, a Jasper Republican who argues age verification will lead porn sites to cut off access to Georgians. In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law, leading Pornhub to cut off access to Texans.
The Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult film makers, says the bill would be ineffective because users could mask their location and because people would be forced to transmit sensitive information. They also argue it’s unconstitutional because there are less restrictive ways to keep children out and discriminate against certain types of speech. The coalition has sued multiple states over the laws.
The ban on school social media excludes email, news, gaming, online shopping, photograph editing and academic sites. The measure also requires a model program on the effects of social media and for students in grades 6-12, and requires existing anti-bullying programs to be updated.
The move comes after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in May that social media hasn’t been proven to be safe for young people.
Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” and asked tech companies to share data and increase transparency and for policymakers to regulate social media for safety the way they do car seats and baby formula.
Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instragram, announced in 2022 it was taking steps to verify ages. Meta says it provides “age-appropriate experiences” for teens 13-17 on Instagram, including preventing unwanted contact from unknown adults.
Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, also are suing Meta Platforms Inc., claiming the company harms young people and contributes to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.
Florida recently passed a law banning social media accounts for children under 14 regardless of parental consent and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.
NEW YORK — As abortion access and reproductive rights hang in the balance for many women in this country, we take a look at the personal impact of these hard-earned rights and the possibility some face of losing them.
Annie Trombatore Peltzer snuggles her eldest child Rhodes and her newborn daughter Lila, who was born 6 months ago with the help of invitro fertilization, or IVF.
“Life-changing for sure. And life-changing for her. She wouldn’t be here,” Peltzer said.
In 2016, at 26 years old, Peltzer knew she wanted children, but not right then — so she underwent the grueling process of hormone injections and egg retrieval to freeze embryos with the man who would become her husband.
“Fast forward to getting pregnant with Rhodes, and it happened naturally. We didn’t need to use it. Then just this last year, when trying to conceive with her, we tried for about a year, no success, so we were really happy that we had made those choices,” Peltzer said.
But Peltzer’s story is one that has only been possible for around 40 years, and one that might no longer be possible for women in places like Alabama, where IVF is in limbo after that state’s Supreme Court ruled embryos are human beings.
From abortion restrictions to bans on IVF, reproductive rights for women in the United States have never been more uncertain.
“This idea of choice — who even has a choice, right? People who want to parent might not have really the choice to be able to parent,” said Dr. Wendy Schor-Haim, with Barnard College.
Schor-Haim and Dr. Cecelia Lie-Spahn, also with Barnard, are experts in the history of reproductive rights in the U.S. and say this country has a long history of controlling women by controlling their bodies.
“One of the biggest, most important acts of resistance for enslaved women was being able to keep the children that they had because they were so often sold to other slave holders. So I think about this kind of broader historical context in Alabama and how once again, we have this situation where people are told who can have a family, who cannot,” Lie-Spahn said.
Schor-Haim says the tipping point in the way abortion was perceived came with the formation of the American Medical Association, initially run solely by men.
“What’s interesting is that first came the male control, and then came the stigmatization of abortion. So it’s not like there was a national American, you know, popular tide turning against abortion at the time that abortion began to be really restricted. The restrictions caused the stigmatization,” she said.
After years of tireless protests and lobbying, in 1973, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, protecting a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1970, the workforce was comprised of 43% women. By 2019, that number had jumped to 57.4%. Scholars say one of the biggest factors credited for that spike in female employment was a woman’s right to control her fertility.
In 2022, the court overturned Roe, giving states the right to choose. In the year since, 21 states have banned or restricted abortions.
“It’s like a runaway train, and people think that they’re controlling it … Women are going to pay the price. Women are like the football in the football game, and it’s really scary to think about,” Schor-Haim said.
“I think we want this world in which people can thrive, and if you don’t have the ability to make choices, can you really [thrive]? Not at all. I think beyond that, then there’s like the real visceral horror of people who, it’s their only way to get pregnant and have that dream taken away from them. That’s a really scary feeling,” Peltzer said.
Providers in Alabama have resumed some IVF services after the state’s Republican governor signed a bill into law earlier this month protecting patients and providers from legal liability.
Jessica Moore
Jessica Moore is an Emmy Award-winning anchor for the weekend evening newscasts on CBS 2 and WLNY 10/55. Moore joined the stations in July, 2016.
Earlier this week, Rev. Greg Lewis, an assistant pastor at St. Gabriel’s Church of God In Christ in Milwaukee, physically carried one of his parishioners to the polls inside the city’s Midtown early voting center to cast a ballot in Wisconsin’s upcoming Democratic primary. Supported by crutches and the pastor himself, the disabled man was one of many residents Lewis has helped vote this cycle.
Through his nonprofit, Souls to the Polls, Lewis has been coordinating multi-church early voting campaign drives after services on Sundays, encouraging more Black residents to vote.
“They are the difference makers,” Lewis said on Monday.
President Biden’s winning coalition in 2020 was led by Black voters, particularly in major cities in battleground states. But this time around, there are signs that his support among this bloc of voters has softened. A CBS News poll in late February showed 76% of likely Black voters said they backed his reelection bid, down from 87% who voted for him in 2020.
The more than a dozen Black voters and organizers interviewed by CBS News in battleground states have shared a sense of disappointment about the impending rematch of the 2020 presidential election, with worries it will translate to voters staying home in November.
They credit Mr. Biden’s policies and legislative record, but say there have been difficulties in effectively communicating his successes to voters.
And while the president has just wrapped a post-State of the Union tour of every battleground state, they want him to appear in bigger, more accessible venues. They also want him to meet more frequently with Black groups and organizations in Black communities.
“He’s getting there. He just needs to be in Georgia more and let the people see him get out,” said Tina Metcalf, a former educator who saw Mr. Biden speak in Atlanta recently.
Concerns about voter apathy, messaging and representation
A voter casts a ballot at an early voting center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Sunday, March 24, 2024.
CBS News
In January, Karen Weaver, the former mayor of Flint, Michigan, attended a virtual meeting between Black women leaders and Biden campaign leadership. The women shared concerns about the Biden campaign’s representation of Black women in leadership and surrogate roles, and the effectiveness of communicating the administration’s record.
Weaver and Holli Holliday, who is the president of the group Sisters Lead Sisters Vote and organized the meeting, said those concerns remain.
“People are saying, ‘OK, well, now, what have they done again?’ That shouldn’t be a question that people are asking. That message ought to be loud and clear,” Weaver said.
“We need to have messengers and people affiliated with the campaign that can speak to these different audiences. And it’s going to be more than the president and vice president,” Holliday said. “Mis[information] and disinformation has continually made the electorate less trustful of elected officials.”
In response to calls for more Black women in campaign leadership, a Biden spokesperson said they have hired Black women “to lead vital programs at both the national and state level – this includes leading our national voter protection and access efforts, as well as serving as leaders in key states.”
In a focus group of voters organized by BlackPAC, a left-leaning political action committee dedicated to mobilizing Black voters, initial sentiments toward Mr. Biden were largely negative. After learning about policy changes spearheaded by the Biden administration, specifically student loan forgiveness and a cap on insulin prices, many shifted their perspective.
“We’re hearing while [Black voters] are excited about some of the policy initiatives, they haven’t felt them. That’s one of the challenges of making big, long-term policy, is it doesn’t have that immediate effect,” said Quentin James, the founder of the Collective PAC, the largest political action committee supporting Black candidates.
Battleground state party officials and organizers say highlighting the binary choice between Mr. Biden and former President Donald Trump, in addition to the White House’s record, is key to energizing voters.
“It’s still relatively early in the campaign,” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “I think that at the end of day Black voters, Georgia voters, will see that this is a binary choice. And the more Donald Trump talks, the better our fortunes will be.”
The Biden campaign’s outreach
Following his State of the Union speech, Mr. Biden’s campaign ramped up its battleground state travel, infrastructure and outreach to key voting blocs. As part of a $30 million ad buy in March, the campaign launched multiple ads targeting Black voters in the battleground states.
“As bad as Trump was, his economy was worse. And Black America felt it the most,” Mr. Biden says to the camera in one ad.
In August 2023, the Biden campaign announced a $25 million advertising campaign that included targeting voters through Black-owned media, such as “The Shade Room” media company.
“It’s not one of those campaigns which we feel is parachuting in at the last minute. They are coming here repeatedly and they are focused on talking to Black voters,” said Angela Lang, the founder of Black Leaders Organizing Communities in Milwaukee.
Deputy Biden campaign manager Quentin Fulks told CBS News that the campaign has made “historic investments to engage Black voters directly and reach folks where they are, earn every vote, and ensure voters are aware of how President Biden and Vice President Harris have delivered for them.”
He said the campaign saw Black communities turn out in high numbers during the primaries “because they understand the stakes of this election.”
Republicans see an opening
While Mr. Biden still captures the majority of Black voters in polling, Trump has slightly increased his support with the voting bloc.
Republicans have looked to capitalize on that opening by casting a wide net of messaging. In March, Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc. launched radio ads targeted toward Black voters in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The ads were focused on transgender policies and immigration. In speeches, Trump often argues the economy was better and touts Black unemployment numbers during his term.
Mikail Stewart-Saadiq, a director for the Michigan Muslim Community Council in Detroit, said he’s seen “a lot” of young Black men “drinking the MAGA juice.”
“They don’t see themselves as being full-fledged, card-carrying members of American society. Things push us to the fringes. The Republican Party, some of the MAGA rhetoric, is capitalizing on that sentiment,” said Stewart-Saadiq, who organized in 2020 for Biden’s campaign.
Mr. Biden, his campaign and White House officials have denounced as “racist” some of Trump’s recent remarks, such as when he suggested in a February speech that Black voters can relate to his mugshot.
Organizers said they believe the choice between the two candidates will become clearer as the campaign ramps up.
“The Trump situation is just headed downhill fast,” said Holliday, of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote. “This is a case of, we’re doing OK, and they’re doing so damn awful.”
Aaron Navarro
Aaron Navarro is a CBS News digital reporter covering Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign and the 2024 election. He was previously an associate producer for the CBS News political unit in the 2021 and 2022 election cycles.
Increase in migrants trying to cross U.S.-Mexico border in states farther West – CBS News
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There’s been a dramatic shift in routes of migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, with a big drop in Texas and an increase in states farther West like Arizona and California.
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EU member states Tuesday agreed to unpick more eco-friendly requirements under the bloc’s common agricultural policy (CAP) in a new bid to pacify months-long protests by farmers — who faced off with riot police in Brussels for the third time in two months.
Police said they used tear gas and water cannon against farmers who targeted them with eggs and Molotov cocktails, with two officers injured in the standoff and one arrest.
The CAP review was approved by a special committee as agriculture ministers met under tight security in the city’s European quarter, which farmers thronged with 250 tractors, setting fire to tyres and bales of hay.
“We have listened to our farmers and we have taken swift action to address their concerns at a time when they are confronted with numerous challenges,” said David Clarinval, deputy prime minister of Belgium, which holds the rotating EU presidency.
He said the revision sought to slash red tape and give farmers more flexibility in complying with green regulations while “maintaining a high level of environmental ambition” — a claim rejected by environmental groups who see it as a big step backwards.
Farmers have been mounting rolling protests in countries across the EU, from Belgium to France, Spain, Italy and Poland, over a long list of burdens they say are depressing revenue.
The latest in a string of concessions on agriculture come less than three months before bloc-wide elections for the European Parliament. Surveys predict the vote will result in a surge of support for far-right parties that are using farmers’ discontent as part of their campaigning.
The proposal now goes before EU lawmakers for approval.
– ‘Old recipes’ –
The CAP review, first proposed by the European Commission in mid-March, changes a set of environmental and climate standards that determine whether farmers can receive subsidies under the policy.
A key change involves granting leeway to farmers who fail to meet CAP requirements because of extreme weather.
The revision does away entirely with the obligation to leave a share of arable land fallow — a measure aimed at protecting soils and promoting biodiversity but a major gripe for farmers. But they would still be incentivised to do so.
Member states would have more flexibility to decide which soils to protect and in which season, and would be allowed to diversify crops as well as rotate them.
And the revision exempts small farms under 10 hectares (25 acres) from inspections and penalties related to CAP compliance.
France’s Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau welcomed it as a step “in the right direction.”
And the powerful European farmers association Copa-Cogeca said its adoption by member states sent a “positive signal”, calling on EU lawmakers to follow suit.
But a coalition of 16 environmental groups including WWF and Greenpeace declared themselves “extremely concerned”, saying the proposal was made without proper impact assessment and urging the Commission to reverse course.
The review was approved with backing from a qualified majority of EU states — overriding opposition from Germany in particular.
Though a frequent critic of red tape under existing CAP rules, Germany’s Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir said the changes signalled a step backwards — to the time before the EU made defending the environment a priority.
“We won’t obtain better results by using old recipes,” Ozdemir warned. “This was a policy that considerably harmed the little guys, and that just made the big guys bigger.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a law last week that includes a mandate for the state’s public schools to teach LGBTQ history, as red and blue states continue to diverge on whether schools should expose kids to gay and transgender identities.
The new law, Senate Bill 5462, mandates that the state’s school districts adopt curricula that is as “culturally and experientially diverse as possible,” including the histories of LGBTQ people, people of color and people with disabilities. Schools will be required to institute the inclusive curricula by the 2025-26 school year.
“The governor was happy to sign legislation that aims to ensure students of all races and identities feel safe and welcome at school,” Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for Inslee, said in an email Monday.
Faulk also referred NBC News to research published in the journal Sex Education that suggests LGBTQ-inclusive curricula can reduce rates of bullying and make children feel safer in school.
Kristie Bennett is a high school teacher in Sammamish, Washington, who is bisexual and leads her school’s gender-sexuality alliance organization. In an interview last week with NBC affiliate KGW of Portland, Oregon, Bennett echoed Faulk’s sentiment.
“I’ve seen firsthand how important an inclusive curriculum can be and how life-changing it can be to help a student see themselves in the curriculum instead of some old dead white guys from the 1700s,” Bennett said.
Washington is the seventh state to enact legislation mandating that public schools incorporate LGBTQ-inclusive curricula in some capacity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. The other six are: California, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and Illinois, states that have been won by Democrats in the last four presidential elections.
The law also comes as conservative lawmakers introduce record numbers of anti-LGBTQ measures, including legislation to regulate how LGBTQ issues are taught in public schools.
Over the last several years, Republican officials have sought to limit how sexual orientation and gender identity are taught in school through measures critics have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” laws; bans on books with queer storylines or characters; and disbandments of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities.
Seven states — all but one of them led by Republicans — have laws in place that restrict the instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity in some public schools, according to MAP.
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and director of the school’s LGBTQ+ Politics Research Initiative, called the enactment of the measures to mandate LGBTQ history be taught at public schools a “reaction” to anti-LGBTQ measures introduced in red states.
“It’s similar to the analogy we’ve seen with abortion. On the one hand, you’ve seen states banning abortion or making it much more unrealistic,” Magni said. “And then, on the other hand, you’ve seen states like California or New York ramping up their protections and also offering a more welcoming environment for people who may come from out of state.”
LGBTQ advocates in Washington similarly suggested that their state’s new law was necessary to counter the idea from conservatives that queer identities are inappropriate for children.
“It’s considered too controversial to mention to kids that Thoreau was gay or Walt Whitman was gay,” Ken Shulman, the executive director of Seattle-based LGBTQ advocacy group Lambert House, told KGW. “Alan Turing — who invented the first computer, helped serve the Enigma code and win World War II — was gay.”
Biden campaigning in swing states but still trailing Trump in some – CBS News
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President Biden visited five cities last week while former President Donald Trump has held only one public campaign event since mid-March. Despite that, in some swing states like Georgia, Biden is still trailing Trump in the polls. CBS News campaign reporter Nidia Cavazos has more.
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Ohio voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday, Aug. 8, to vote on Issue 1. The following story was first published on June 21.
For more than a century, Ohio voters could amend the state constitution with a simple majority of more than 50% of the vote.
That could change in August, when Ohio voters head to the polls in a special election to decide whether future amendments will instead need the approval of 60% of the electorate.
The change, known as Issue 1, would almost certainly determine the fate of abortion access in the state if approved.
For months, Ohio Republicans have been pushing to make it more difficult for voters to approve constitutional amendments — the next front in the state-led battle over abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The August election comes at a pivotal moment — ahead of a separate November vote on a measure that would write abortion protections into the state’s constitution.
A CBS News investigation found the GOP effort in Ohio is one flank in a coordinated nationwide campaign, heavily funded by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, to raise the threshold to pass any citizen-initiated constitutional amendment.
The move by Ohio Republicans — who already control both chambers of the legislature — has sparked controversy throughout the state. In May, protesters flooded the statehouse in Columbus when the measure setting up the August election passed.
Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who retired in December, criticized Republican lawmakers for what she said is a “strategic” effort to thwart the will of the people.
“It’s misleading, it’s deceptive, and if it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable,” O’Connor said in an interview that the process Ohio uses to allow citizens to amend its constitution has been in place since 1912. “When you keep changing the rules and moving the goalposts, you are intentionally silencing the vote of the people.”
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who first proposed raising the threshold to 60% last year, said changing the state constitution should be rare and require a broader consensus.
“I’ve been consistent all along, this is about good government,” he said.
Ohio’s abortion politics
Access to abortion remains legal in Ohio up to about 22 weeks. In 2019, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill banning abortions in the state after a fetal heartbeat is detected, at approximately six weeks. The bill took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but has been put on hold by a state court since last September.
Abortion rights groups in Ohio are raising funds nationally and working to get an amendment on the November ballot that would circumvent this legislation and enshrine protections in the state’s constitution.
In a poll last year conducted by the Associated Press, 59% of Ohio voters said they believed abortion should generally be legal. Last year, voters in Kansas and Michigan chose to preserve abortion access in their state constitution with just under 60% approval.
O’Connor said she believes those numbers caught the eye of Republicans in Ohio when they decided to push their measure requiring amendments to pass with 60% approval.
“That’s why they chose the 60%,” O’Connor said.
In a memo last December to his Republican colleagues, state Rep. Brian Stewart, who first introduced the measure in the Ohio House, did not hide the role the abortion issue was playing in motivating his efforts.
“After decades of Republicans’ work to make Ohio a pro-life state, the Left intends to write abortion on demand into Ohio’s Constitution,” Stewart wrote. “If they succeed, all the work accomplished by multiple Republican majorities will be undone, and we will return to 19,000+ babies being aborted each and every year.”
LaRose has also cited abortion as one of his motivating factors.
“I know that for fellow pro-life Ohioans like myself, of course, we don’t want to see a really radical abortion amendment put in our state constitution,” he told CBS News.
Out-of-state interests
LaRose denied Ohio Republicans were “stacking the deck” in their favor, and said a potential change to the constitutional amendment process was part of “an ongoing public conversation about public policy.”
He cited the need to protect Ohio’s constitution from “out-of-state special interests.”
A CBS News investigation discovered out-of-state interests promoting LaRose’s proposal.
In a 2021 memo, a Florida-based nonprofit called the Foundation for Government Accountability, touted the “sixty percent supermajority requirement” as a legally sound approach to mitigate attempts to “bypass … state legislatures” by bringing issues “directly to the people for a vote.”
A lobbyist for the organization was the only person to testify on behalf of the 60% measure when it was first introduced in the Ohio House. The group’s lobbying arm, the Opportunities Solutions Project, also testified this year in support of a similar measure in Missouri.
“The playbook being executed in Ohio, was also executed in South Dakota and Arkansas,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert with Documented, which describes itself as a political finance watchdog.
In a separate pamphlet obtained by CBS News, the Foundation for Government Accountability says it gives state lawmakers “a menu featuring more than 150 reforms,” including those targeting “election and ballot initiative integrity.”
“We continue to expand our impact and increase the return on our donors’ investment,” the organization’s literature states.
The Foundation for Government Accountability declined to comment, but wrote in the pamphlet, “our policy victories are creating many different types of opportunities for Americans, but they all work toward one goal: improving lives.”
Fischer traced much of the organization’s support to Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, a shipping supplies magnate and major supporter of Republican causes, including millions in donations to anti-abortion groups. Financial disclosures show a foundation controlled by Uihlein has given nearly $18 million to the Foundation for Government Accountability since 2014.
In April, when the 60% measure appeared to falter in the Ohio House, Uihlein gave $1.1 million to a political committee that had launched a pressure campaign targeting Republican lawmakers on the fence. The donation was first reported by the Columbus Dispatch, and confirmed to CBS News by the committee.
Uihlein did not respond to requests for comment, but his campaign was successful. The measure passed the Ohio House on May 10.
When asked about the role of out-of-state interest groups, LaRose pointed to “massive amounts of money being spent on both sides,” adding the donations amount to “free speech” and “are done transparently.”
On Aug. 8, Ohio voters will get the final say on whether to raise the threshold to amend the state’s constitution to 60%. O’Connor said she hopes Ohioans stick with the majority rules process that’s been in place since 1912.
“It’s worked well, so it’s not broken and there’s no need to fix it,” she said.
Caitlin Huey-Burns
Caitlin Huey-Burns is a political correspondent for CBS News based in Washington, D.C.
