(Daily Signal)—As the November elections approach, a recent court case is shaking up the secretary of state race in Ohio. On Tuesday, Northern District of Ohio Judge Solomon Oliver put on hold a state law that requires proof of citizenship for those wishing to register in person at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, citing the National Voter Registration Act
Among those reacting to the decision are candidates running to oversee Ohio’s elections, including Republican Robert Sprague.
The Sprague for Secretary of State campaign manager, Dalton Throckmorton, provided a statement for the Daily Signal targeting state Rep. Allison Russo, the Democratic nominee for Ohio Secretary of State.
“In addition to this liberal activist judge telling Ohio it cannot check for citizenship, Allison Russo is fighting photo ID in elections and voted against legislation to prevent illegal aliens from voting in Ohio elections. Democrats have a plan to dismantle election security in this state, which is precisely why we need to put photo ID in Ohio’s Constitution with Issue 3,” he said, referring to an initiative on the ballot for voters this November.
Dennis Willard, communications director for Russo’s campaign, responded to the Daily Signal, while also highlighting parts of Oliver’s decision.
“Mr. Sprague once again has his facts wrong and is attempting to confuse the public. Citizenship is already checked for new voter registrations, and this decision does not change this. The issue here is about the BMV not offering voter registration to all eligible applicants, not just those who get a driver’s license and happen to show up with extra paperwork,” Willard said.
“Judge Oliver, in his opinion, emphasized this by writing: ‘To interpret this section of the NVRA otherwise would allow States to make registering to vote at the BMV more onerous, and could result in fewer voter registrations because the opportunity to apply was not proactively offered to otherwise eligible citizens.’ Mr. Sprague, do you really want to deny eligible citizens the right to register to vote?”
Sprague also shared a video message on X highlighting a 2022 ballot initiative that passed with close to 77% of the vote, ensuring that only citizens can vote. He also took issue with the “activist judge,” calling the decision “crazy” and claiming “it violates the Ohio constitution.”
“I can tell you that the far left wants to systematically dismantle all of our election security features,” Sprague continued, as he promoted his campaign.
The ruling comes just over two months before the November midterms, with an Oct. 5 deadline for voter registration, though reporting from the Statehouse News Bureau notes another ruling could come before then. Ohio voters will head to the polls in many key statewide and federal races, including a governor’s race and U.S. Senate special election, both which are rated “Toss-Up.”
Plaintiffs in the case had argued that Ohio’s requirements are “preempted by the National Voter Registration Act because it exceeds ‘the minimum amount of information necessary’ to assess an applicant’s eligibility to vote,” as highlighted by Oliver’s opinion.
Oliver’s decision, referencing voter registration rates after NVRA passed in 1993, also known as the “Motor Voter Law,” noted that “Between the 2022 and 2024 general elections, more than 103 million registration transactions were processed, with motor vehicle offices accounting for nearly one-third of those.”
Oliver’s ruling mentions House Bill 54, with the Statehouse News Bureau pointing out that the requirement was added to a state transportation budget that was signed in March 2025 and went into effect three months later.
“Why are they requiring more red tape just to register to vote than is required if you register, say, online?” Katie Paris of Red Wine and Blue, a plaintiff in the case, is quoted as saying. “This is a huge problem because one-third of Ohio voters actually do register through the BMV.” The proof of citizenship requirement is not in place for those registering online.
“This is creating a huge barrier, one that would impact women whose current names don’t match old documents due to marriage or divorce, elderly voters who might have lost or never had the right papers, students living away from home, and rural voters who may not have easy access to their records or local offices,” Paris continued, echoing an oft-used argument against voter integrity efforts, such as requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the defendant in the case, announced that same day as the court’s decision that he plans to appeal. LaRose is term-limited and now the Republican nominee for state auditor.
“Under this order, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles would be required to offer a voter registration form to a person who’s applying for a driver’s license, even if that person can’t verify that they’re a citizen,” said LaRose. “We strongly disagree with that decision, and I’ve asked our legal team to file an immediate appeal. I will vigorously defend our legal authority to safeguard our voter rolls and protect the integrity of Ohio’s elections.”
LaRose’s announcement also expressed concerns about noncitizens registering to vote in Ohio, warning of a case in Franklin County, and how it “proves the process required under the federal court’s decision does not work.”
The case involved an Ohio woman admitting to voting illegally in 2018 as a lawful permanent resident after “a BMV clerk, a government official, told her to register.” She was found not guilty by entrapment, with the woman knowing she was not a citizen when she voted, but that the BMV employee misled her.
“The Franklin County case proves it’s not enough to just have a person’s attestation,” said LaRose. “Ohio has a constitutional requirement to ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections.”
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
