I had to go down to Danish immigration to register as the spouse of an EU citizen in order to remain in Copenhagen longer than 90 days. Photo is of the board in the immigration office. EU citizen issues are designated with an A and the A’s move quickly - I was in and out of there with the paper I need in less than an hour. My husband had to certify that he can and will support me financially for my time in Denmark. The application and supporting evidence are all submitted electronically so all I had to do was appear, attest that the application was true and submit biometrics.
When you experience the benefits of EU citizenship and what is a very nice quality of life in western Europe you no longer wonder why Ukraine seeks to disengage from Russia and turn towards western Europe, or why Hungarians rejected JD Vance’s backward- looking nationalist pitch. On both a cultural and practical level, it just makes much more sense to align with the EU and western Europe. The US Right wing may want to reject western Europe’s values (and robust social safety net), but for freedom of movement, opportunity and quality of life there’s just no contest.
Leaving aside my ruminations on world cultural events while sitting in the Copenhagen immigration office and turning to the Ohio Senate race and corruption, we have to start with the First Energy scandal. It’s a huge sprawling scandal that now has encompassed two trials, one incarcerated pol and a lobbyist suicide. It now threatens to devour Republican incumbent Jon Husted’s Senate seat. So that’s good news for Sherrod Brown and the good people of Ohio, because Sherrod Brown is not just an actual liberal, he’s clean as a whistle - never a hint of scandal.
U.S. Sen. Jon Husted says he had no meaningful role in the legislation at the center of Ohio’s $60 million bribery scandal. The public record keeps disagreeing.
New reporting from The Associated Press adds previously unreported text messages and fresh dark money documentation to a growing evidentiary pile that undercuts Husted’s long-standing denials. The new disclosures land as the criminal case against two former FirstEnergy executives heads to a fall retrial in Akron — and as national Senate Republicans move to shield Husted’s seat with the largest single-state PAC commitment of the 2026 cycle.
Husted was appointed to the seat on Jan. 17, 2025, by Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the vacancy created by JD Vance’s resignation ahead of his inauguration as vice president. He faces no Republican primary challenger on May 5.
The First Energy scandal involved the Ohio GOP making a secret and unlawful deal with First Energy to shift operating costs from First Energy to Ohio ratepayers. In return for stealing from their constituents, Ohio Republicans received hundreds of millions in campaign donations. Both Husted and DeWine have been lying about their role in the scandal since 2018, but more dirt keeps coming out, despite the best efforts of the corrupt Ohio AG to block investigations and throw criminal trials.
One can really track the decline of Ohio (and also the national media) by comparing the First Energy scandal to two other, smaller GOP scandals - Coingate and the ECOT charter school scandal. Coingate was in 2005 - a GOP operative robbed 13 million from Workers Comp. It was national news and the operative served a long prison sentence.
ECOT was a huge for profit charter school empire run by a GOP crook who was pilfering money that was supposed to be spent on students and distributing it to his worthless family members- citizens of Ohio lost 117 million in that scandal. There was almost no national news coverage and no one was held accountable in any way.
So Republicans pocketed 13 million in 2005 and by 2018 they were much more brazen, stealing 117 million. By 2020 and First Energy, Ohio Republicans not only robbed Ohio citizens of 60 million, they added a charge to their monthly electric bills to keep the grift going.
Cook political has now designated the Ohio Senate race as a toss up (from ‘leans Republican”). An anti corruption national campaign by Democrats could push Sherrod past the finish line.
