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Your weekend is here, Buckeye State. Let’s look back at some of the stories that were in the headlines this week. But first, here’s a look at the forecast:
A weekend winter storm dropped several inches of snow on the state Saturday, with some areas reporting nearly eight inches. The snow was followed by bitterly cold temperatures. Read more >>>
Sherrone Moore, who was abruptly fired this week as the University of Michigan football coach, was charged Friday with three crimes including home invasion and stalking a person he had dated, prosecutors said. The firing comes less than two weeks after Michigan’s loss to Ohio State in “The Big Game”. Read more >>>
The sudden closure of several bars in Cleveland’s Flats East Bank has left many in shock, but some neighboring businesses say the announcements aren’t a surprise. Read more >>>
Hundreds of Ohioans came together to pay the annual statewide tribute to Rosa Parks. Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, D–District 3, held a community forum and panel discussion honoring Parks’ legacy. It’s a refusal that changed the course of history forever, and it’s celebrated 70 years later. Read more >>>
Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno is pushing to end dual citizenship in the United States, which immigration attorney Ayla Blumenthal said would override decades of Supreme Court precedent. Read more >>>
1. Police have suspect in custody in Brown University shooting that killed 2, wounded 9
2. Affordable Care Act enrollees say expiring subsidies will hit them hard
3. An inside look at how U.S. Postal Service prepares for busy holiday season
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Here’s what we’re listening to as we relax and unwind this weekend.
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An Ohio woman has a message for Northsteppe Realty: Stop entering the home she is currently leasing.
“[Northsteppe Realty] had a tour of people come to my house,” said @thegarbitchtruck, a TikTok influencer with 60,000 followers. “I was dead [expletive] asleep in my bed. Had no [expletive] clue. Had no clue that there was, they scheduled a tour for our home.”
Her video recounting the realty company’s aggressive tactics has generated 102,000 views since Dec. 10, with many viewers asking, “Isn’t this illegal?”
@garbitchtruck suddenly woke up to a leasing manager entering her apartment without her consent.
“ I literally, I’m gonna freak out. So my leasing manager decided it was a really cute, fun game to send a tour. Of the people I’ve never met who want to apparently lease this apartment after me,” she said. “Their employee opens my [expletive] door… I’m up immediately walking down my stairs and I’m upset ’cause I’m tired. I don’t know why the [expletive] someone’s walking in my house.”
She quickly confronted a man, alongside three other potential residents, who were entering her home. “ I go down to my front door and I said, um, ‘why the [expletive] are you trying to enter my house?’ It’s a, it’s a 20-year-old dude in a [expletive] Carhartt with two or three other adults standing behind him looking like kids that just got in trouble.”
The leasing agent said he was from Northsteppe Realty, which set @garbitchtruck off immediately. @thegarbitchtruck claims that Northsteppe Realty did not give her prior notice before entering her apartment for tours.
“I know in the state of Ohio, you need at the very least, a 24 hour warning before you send people to my [expletive] home,” she told her viewers.
This wasn’t the first time that Northsteppe entered her home, allegedly without consent.
@garbitchtruck called one of the company’s managers, Michael, to complain about it. “I called him today and I said, ‘Hey, this is the third [expletive] time you have sent people to my house to get into my home without a warning, without letting the residents know. This is the third time. The first time I was [expletive] naked, getting out of the shower, and I [heard] men’s voices downstairs.’”
According to her, maintenance workers also let themselves into her apartment without any prior notification.
“ We’ve had multiple times. We’ve had maintenance show up and unlock our door and walk in our house like they own the [expletive] place,” she said. “And then multiple times after that, we’ve had showings.”
Alongside that, she had other complaints. “It’s the worst [expletive] company I’ve ever lived with, and I have been on my own living in my own apartment since I was 18. I literally lived in a slum Lord apartment that had better management and better maintenance and better communication than these [expletive] right here who are a giant [expletive] realty business.”
Among her complaints were a rent increase mid-lease, alongside transfer fees to make basic payments. The apartment complex also does not, according to her, communicate regarding issues in any capacity.
@thegarbitchtruck #fyp #viral #northstepp #help #why ♬ original sound – The Garbitch Truck
Many commenters quickly picked up on Northsteppe Realty’s sketchy behavior and even claimed that many of the things @garbitchtruck described are illegal.
For one, it is illegal for an apartment complex’s maintenance workers or general employees to enter a residence without prior warning. If @garbitchtruck received no prior warning, they are in fact breaking the law.
There is a chance, however, that Northsteppe Realty is notifying @garbitchtruck through an electronic notice.
“So as someone who has leased from Northsteppe for years, the way they send notices is to the primary resident through email if there are multiple residents,” wrote one commenter. “If you are not the primary resident you won’t be notified. The emails also go to junk mail quite often so you gotta check that. Also it is in your lease that on a specific date if you don’t renew they will start to show your apartment.”
In Ohio, the law does not specify whether the notice needs to be written, so landlords can email their notices to residents.
Other commenters noticed additional strange things about @garbitchtruck’s description.
“Everybody’s talking about how the entry with no notice is illegal but, and correct me if I’m wrong, did you just say they increased your rent mid lease?” said one viewer.
If the lease has any terms that allow for rent increases, it is legal to increase rent costs. As tenantrights.com states, “a mid-lease increase is usually not allowed unless the lease includes a clear clause permitting it or you agree in writing.”
But if there is no clause that states Northsteppe Realty can increase rent prices, this is illegal.
The Mary Sue has reached out to Northsteppe Realty and @garbitchtruck for comment. We’ll let you know if either party responds.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
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Rachel Thomas
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Ohio’s sentiment toward online sports betting has shifted significantly since the state legalized the practice two years ago. Sports wagering arrived in 2023 with confetti, celebrity ads, and promises of new tax revenue. However, it now faces rising scrutiny by public health experts, lawmakers, and even the governor who signed the legislation, as the social cost of widespread betting settles in.
Kelley Breidigan, an assistant clinical professor at Ohio State’s College of Social Work, discussed the situation for the Ohio Capital Journal. She noted that the spread of online wagering has increased demand for treatment. Studies by UCLA confirm these observations, finding that the ease of online betting is harming consumer financial health.
Researchers found that legalized and regulated sports betting correlates with a fall in average credit scores and rising financial stress indicators across the entire population, not just among bettors. These trends become more pronounced with the introduction of online wagering. Bankruptcy filings, debt sent to collections, and auto loan delinquencies all increased in states that launched mobile wagering.
These results indicate that the ease of access to sports gambling is harming consumer financial health by increasing their level of debt.
UCLA report
Ohio’s own early statistics reinforce these findings. During the first month of legalized betting, the United Way of Greater Cleveland noted that gambling-related calls to its helpline increased by 277% compared to the previous year. According to state authorities, 255,000 Ohio residents currently meet the criteria for problem gamblers.
Recent sports scandals further turned the public opinion against gambling. When two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were swept into a high-profile Major League Baseball case last month, Governor Mike DeWine publicly expressed regret for approving sports betting at all. Such match-fixing allegations have led the MLB to ban micro and prop bets, which have proven especially problematic.
Breidigan argues that the industry’s aggressive advertising has helped normalize gambling. A barrage of celebrity-driven campaigns portrays betting as a natural part of being a fan. She notes that this carefully curated image masks the risks long enough for many people to find themselves in trouble before they recognize the signs.
It is so easy for people to just pick up their phone and make a bet. That has had a severe impact on individuals and families.
Kelley Breidigan, Ohio State’s College of Social Work assistant clinical professor
Fortunately for anti-wagering advocates, online gaming in Ohio is unlikely to materialize, as recent bills to bring iGaming to the state collapsed under heavy resistance from health and religious groups. However, one thing is becoming clear: the hype surrounding online sports wagering is cooling as the social implications become increasingly harder to ignore.
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Deyan Dimitrov
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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
FIRST ON FOX: On the heels of Minnesota’s still-unfolding massive social services fraud scandal, a whistleblower is exposing a similar scheme occurring among the Ohio Somali community, which she says dates back over a decade and totals millions in stolen taxpayer dollars.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Mehek Cooke, an Ohio attorney and conservative commentator, said that “Minnesota was just the tip of the spear.”
She said that providers within the Ohio Somali community have confided to her that they have been pressured to join in a “massive” Medicaid fraud scheme that involves doctors “rubber stamping” home health care payouts to the family members of elderly individuals for fake medical conditions.
She explained that scammers in the community have been exploiting a loophole in Ohio’s Medicaid program that allows individuals to receive Medicaid payments, totaling as much as $91,000 per year per individual, for care they are supposedly providing to a family member. Doctors who approve these payments in turn receive kickbacks themselves, according to Cooke.
EXPERT REVEALS KEY FACTOR THAT LED TO MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCHEME
Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke is blowing the whistle on what she is calling rampant fraud and abuse in the Ohio Medicaid program on the heels of the massive fraud scheme in Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of Mehek Cooke)
“They’re just rubberstamping a lot of these. And then that same individual, a week later, that’s supposed to be bedridden, is all over social media, whether they’re out dancing at a party or something like that. So, the symptoms aren’t really adding up at the end of the day.”
Cooke noted that she believes that “the problem today is not the community; it’s actually the criminals within the Somalian community that have exploited Ohio’s Medicaid program because we have a system right now that’s one of the easiest in the Midwest to game.”
“Say I want to take care of my elderly aging parents at some point. I can become a home health provider, and this is where the Somali community has been really clever. They’ve been able to find loopholes in Ohio law to provide for care for family members, even when they don’t need it,” Cooke explained.
NUTRITION PROGRAM’S LAWSUIT TRIGGERS MN EDUCATION DEPT TO EASE OVERSIGHT, OPENING DOOR TO MORE FRAUD
The Ohio Statehouse (Getty Images)
She said that the providers who came to her divulged this information at great personal risk, telling her that if they were exposed, they would be “stoned to death.”
“We have entrusted states to look at the funding and to allocate it to build programs, to build rules and regulations. But unfortunately, in states like Ohio, it is being infiltrated and broken down because you don’t actually have independent assessments with not only doctors but somebody at the Department of Medicaid coming in. There’s not random visits that are happening all the time,” she said. “So, a lot of times what’s happening is an individual is coached to lie to a doctor.”
Cooke said that, according to providers within the community, 99 percent of the time individuals receiving the home health care Medicaid benefit have been coached and do not actually qualify for the benefit.
“What we’re seeing in Minneapolis is just a snippet of what’s happening in Ohio,” she said.
MINNESOTA FRAUD SCHEME UNEARTHS MILLIONS IN LUXURY PROPERTY, CARS: DOJ
Columbus, Ohio, skyline at night. (Matt Kazmierski via Getty Images)
“I know that everybody wants to make this a Somali issue or a race issue. It’s not. Our waiver system in Ohio was built with compassion. It was built to really help individuals that are struggling and in need, but it’s being looted today,” Cooke went on.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“I think every state, in addition to Ohio, should be asking for audits of their Medicaid system and their programs,” she said, adding, “At the end of the day, Ohio taxpayers are hurting, the American people are hurting, and we don’t have enough tax dollars.”
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CLEVELAND — Leah Hudnall’s grandparents moved to Cleveland, along with hundreds of thousands of other Black families from southern states during The Great Migration. She said many incoming residents were forced into redlined neighborhoods with overcrowded schools that were segregated under the city’s historic “Relay” policy.
The Cleveland Relay Policy split the school day into morning and afternoon sessions with Black students only attending for half of the day, rather than sending them to white schools with space in their classrooms during the 1950s and 60s. The NAACP sued the State of Ohio and Cleveland Schools in the 1973 Reed. v. Rhodes court case. The policy didn’t come to an end until 1976, when U.S. Federal Judge Frank Battisti declared that Cleveland schools had been operating a segregated system, Hudnall said.
As part of subsequent reintegration efforts, Batiste also mandated crosstown busing, transporting students from predominantly Black schools on the city’s east side to whiter suburban schools on the west side.
(Spectrum News 1/Tanya Velazquez)
“Now what you have are Clevelanders, elders in our community who are 70 and 75 years old, who may have only gotten three hours of the third grade or they may not have started kindergarten until they were seven years old,” Hudnall said.
The exhibit also highlights the Cleveland’s larger role in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Hudnall said.
“You have parents, like Mrs. Daisy Craggett and Mrs. Clara Smith, who created a committee called Relay Parents March to fill empty classrooms,” she said. “… parent groups like that all banded together with historic organizations like the NAACP and Core Congress on Racial Equality, and they came together under a banner, calling it the Unite Freedom Movement.”
While the exhibit celebrates nearly half a century of progress in education, Hudnall said, it is only a piece of an ongoing journey toward educational equity.
Public data from the Ohio School Report Card shows many schools rated under 4 stars in 2024.
(Spectrum News 1/Tanya Velazquez)
“Cleveland saw a growth in many areas, graduation rates and academic success,” she said, “All of that led to what we all experienced together as a global community. The pandemic, which kind of shattered all of that hard work.
Greg Deegan is the executive director of Teaching Cleveland, which joined other local groups, researchers, educators and leaders on the Relay Campaign Committee team. Deegan, who worked as a high school teacher for over 20 years, said many challenges still remain in Cleveland’s school system.
The Cleveland School District approved a plan Tuesday to close and consolidate dozens of schools in the city after facing a decades-long enrollment decline and budget deficit.
“The more we talk about it, the more we sort of have a community conversation about this, the more we can be more well equipped for the challenges and opportunities today and what we see in schools,” Deegan said.
Now, Hudnall said, the’re calling on other community members to “carry the baton.”
“Our children in Cleveland need us,” Hudnall said. “They need us as neighbors, and they need us to actually get back in the game, on to fight for fair education.”
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Tanya Velazquez
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The Geminid meteor shower peaks heading into this weekend.
Every year in December, the night sky treats us to one of the best and brightest displays known as the Geminid meteor shower.
The Geminids can be viewed in the night sky as early as 9 p.m. The best time to view the Geminid meteor shower will be in the pre-dawn hours between 1 and 3 a.m.
To see up to 150 meteors in one hour, you will need to be far away from city lights and tall buildings. Ideally, there will be clear skies for viewing on the night of the 13th.
After you arrive, avoid bright lights, such as phone screens, for 15–20 minutes so your eyes can adapt to the darkness.
A waning crescent moon will make viewing conditions even better because there will not be much moonlight to wash out the meteors, which are often bright and vivid.
Here is the cloud forecast through the weekend across the country.
Even though the peak is this weekend, you can still view the Geminid meteor shower through December 21st.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Meteorologist Ramel Carpenter
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While Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame aren’t celebrating in 2025 after being snubbed from the College Football Playoff, there is excitement to be had looking into the Fight Irish’s future.
After a lengthy recruitment process that saw schools like Auburn and Arkansas court him, the top defensive back in Ohio, Ace Alston, chose Notre Dame for where he will play college football come the new year.
During his announcement, Alston went viral on social media when he snubbed hats from Lane Kiffin’s LSU, Ryan Day’s Ohio State, and Lincoln Riley’s USC to pour himself a bowl of Lucky Charms before putting on the Fighting Irish hat to a chorus of cheers from the crowd.
Alston, a 5-foot-11 cornerback out of Cincinnati, Ohio, decided not stay home and play for one of the colleges in the state where he has become a blue-chip prospect.
More news: Lane Kiffin, LSU Linked to 4,000-Yard QB in Massive Transfer Portal Move
More news: Matt Rhule’s Nebraska Program In Chaos After Third Coach Fired
A multi-sport athlete, Alston brings a quickness and intensity that override his slender frame and should allow him to be a future standout on a strong Notre Dame roster.
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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
Staff article
CLEVELAND, Ohio- As Cleveland families continue to face financial strain following the end of the federal government shutdown alongside increased holiday season expenses, Mayor Justin M. Bibb and the Department of Public Utilities today announced a 30-day extension of the moratorium on utility disconnections for nonpayment.
“We hear and understand what many Cleveland families are going through right now,” said Mayor Bibb. “Even though the federal shutdown has ended, the financial fallout is far from over. Families are still catching up on bills, juggling holiday expenses, and trying to stay afloat. This extension is intended to alleviate some of that pressure.”
Effective Fri., Nov. 7, 2025, and now extended through Jan. 6, 2026, customers of Cleveland Water and Cleveland Public Power will not face service interruptions due to unpaid bills during this period. Account balances will continue to accrue, but the city is taking this step to ensure residents maintain access to essential services.
Cleveland is a largely Black major American city where more than a third of its residents live below the poverty line, and the city’s poverty rate is double the national average.
The extension comes as the Christmas holiday nears and at a time when many households are still recovering from weeks without federal paychecks and the lingering financial hardship created by delayed SNAP benefits during the shutdown under President Donald Trump.
Mayor Bibb emphasized that “the city remains committed to supporting Clevelanders with empathy and common-sense action.”
Residents are strongly encouraged to contact the Department of Public Utilities to enroll in a payment arrangement or take advantage of available assistance programs. For more information, please call or visit:
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editor@clevelandurbannews.com (Kathy)
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