Politics

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel joined local Republicans Tuesday in opposing Mayor John Cranley's announcement that Cincinnati would be a sanctuary city.

It's rather a challenge to choose the most egregious and patently false "alternative fact" to come out of the Trump administration since its inception, but the one the president laid on Congressional leaders in a meeting last week may take the cake.

But it's early.

President Trump – who lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes but won the Electoral College – repeated his apparently long-held belief that three to five million "illegal votes" cost him the popular vote.

Sometime before long, the Cincinnati Democratic Committee (CDC), made up of the city's elected precinct executives, will gather to endorse a slate of city council candidates.

They may endorse a candidate for mayor before that.

That, after all, is the principal job of the body which represents the city's 272 precincts.

While hundreds of thousands are marching Saturday in the Women's March on Washington, thousands are expected to gather in Cincinnati for a "sister march."

The event's Facebook page shows that well over 4,000 people have signed up to say they will be there for the noon rally in Washington Park and the march to City Hall that will follow.

No one knows if all of those people will actually show up, but local organizer Billie Mays said the committee putting on the event is assuming that they will and preparing for a huge crowd in the Over-the-Rhine park.

Some from the Cincinnati area will be on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., because they are genuinely pleased that their candidate, Donald J. Trump, will take the oath of office and become the nation's 45th president.

Red, blue or purple.

Those are the three choices on the political spectrum for a city, a county, or a state.

Ohio voters will pick their favorite color in 2018, the next round of statewide elections, in every office from governor and U.S. senator on down.

And how they choose might determine whether the pendulum swings back from red to blue, or at least, purple, in a state where all the statewide constitutional officeholders are Republican and where Donald Trump stunned Ohio Democrats in November by winning Ohio's 18 electoral votes by a sizeable margin.

Long-time bank executive Steve Wilson of Maineville has been recommended by a Republican screening committee to fill a vacant Ohio Senate seat.  Wilson would take the place of Shannon Jones, who left the 7th Senate District seat after winning a race for Warren County Commissioner in November.

The NPR Politics team and reporters across the newsroom will be live-annotating a news conference with President-elect Donald Trump, expected at 11 am ET/8am PT on Wednesday. We will be fact-checking and providing background to his remarks in real-time. We will be paying special attention to any comments about conflicts of interest, health care and national security.

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The NPR Politics team and reporters across the newsroom will be live-annotating President Obama's farewell address in Chicago on Tuesday night, scheduled to begin at 9 pm ET/6pm ET. The team will be adding fact-checks and background to Obama's comments as he gives them. We'll be watching in particular for remarks on his legacy, national security, health care and foreign policy, among other topics.

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