(upbeat music) - [Mike] Government buildings in Columbus will close this weekend through inauguration day and security is heavy as Ohio prepares for potential unrest this weekend by supporters of president Trump.

The former Cleveland school's employee from Willoughby, has been federally charged for her role in the Capitol mob insurgency.

And Ohio rolls out plans for the next phase of coronavirus vaccine, while acknowledging there's just not enough to quickly cover those who are eligible.

Ideas, is next.

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(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Ideas, I'm Mike McIntyre, Ideastream's, Executive Editor.

The nation's Capitol and state capitals, including Columbus, are bracing for protests possibly violent ones, this weekend in the run-up to the inauguration of president elect, Joe Biden.

This after the mob of Trump's supporters storm the Capitol last week in a deadly insurrection.

Government buildings in Columbus will be closed through Wednesday, and Governor Mike DeWine has called up the Ohio National Guard.

In Cleveland, city hall and public auditorium and other buildings, are closed through the inauguration Wednesday.

The fallout from last week's Capitol insurrection has led to federal charges for suspects across the country, including a former Cleveland school's employee from Willoughby, accused of joining the mob, and who authorities say is the woman in a well-publicized photograph inside Senate Chambers.

President Trump faced a different kind of charge after the riot, inciting insurrection.

And he was swiftly impeached by the U.S House of Representatives, Wednesday.

10 Republicans voted for the impeachment and one of them, was Northeast Ohio's Anthony Gonzalez.

On social media, he's getting praise for voting his conscience and scorn for abandoning the cause.

- [Mike] Joining me to discuss these stories and more, Ideastream health reporter Lisa Ryan, local government reporter Nick Castele, and at the Ohio public radio Sate House news Bureau in Columbus, Bureau chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

Karen part of the precaution means closing the State House and other government buildings.

That's also happening by the way, in Cleveland government buildings close today through inauguration day.

What other measures, what are you seeing in Columbus?

- Well, I took a walk yesterday while my colleague Joe Ingles was covering that press conference with Mike DeWine and Columbus Mayor Andrew Gunther and other state officials.

Just walking around the State House and I've been here 16 years, 17 years in March and I've never seen security like this.

This presence of troopers, state troopers is really obvious and it's been stepped up.

The fencing that surrounds the State House is all the way around and not only encircles the State House, but also the monuments that are on the State House grounds.

For instances, some civil war, era monuments are there as well as the Holocaust Memorial.

The fencing is attempting to keep anybody away from those.

Now it's been pointed out to me on Twitter that this is not heavy duty fencing like you would have seen during the RNC, or even during the debate in Cleveland.

This is more like bike rack fencing, which was breached pretty easily by the crowd at the insurrection with capital.

But this is the biggest attempt I've seen to try to keep people back and away from the entrances to the State House and from the State House assets.

So, it really seems to be more, they're taking it definitely more seriously than they did for instance during the protest over the summer, after the killing of George Floyd.

I've also seen some people up on the roofs and troopers up on the roof.

It's not the first time I've seen them there but it does indicate there's really some concerns, now the State House, because of security and also because of construction and the underground garage, the access is limited anyway because things have just been closed out.

So, this really further limits people's access to the State House.

And of course there would be no access on Sunday all the way through on inauguration day and then hopefully opening back up again on Thursday.

- Nick, you've been monitoring social media and checking on that.

Sometimes that's our first indication that people plan to mobilize, what are you hearing?

- Well, one thing that I'm seeing now,is people who are supportive of Donald Trump, telling their friends not to go out and protest.

There's just one example, the Cuyahoga Valley Republicans is a local Republican Club here in the Cleveland area.

They supported and even promoted the January 6th demonstrations in the weeks before and the days before, the certification of the vote, but, just yesterday, they sent out a notice to their members on their email list, with all capital letters headlines saying, "stay away from the protests."

So, I think you are starting to see some of these folks who support the president saying, "we don't want to see what happened last week happen again, just stay away from that, stay home, don't take part in whatever may be happening."

- Maybe part of that would be the threat of what might happen.

We know that the federal authorities have arrested a 100 people so far from the insurrection at the Capitol, including in Northeast Ohio.

And we'll talk about it in just a little bit, also knowing that security is beefed up.

Here's Governor DeWine, yesterday, talking about security being ready at the State Capitol.

- The Ohio State Highway Patrol will be out in force, in Columbus.

The Ohio National Guard will be out in force, in Columbus.

A guard will be there to back up local law enforcement and to back up the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

- What is the temperature there?

Are people worried that something will happen or are they feeling now that these kinds of measures are going to have some prophylactic impact?

- I don't know the answer to that question right now because I think the attitude has still been to to go forward with the plans.

And I know there is some chatter out there that's from not only the folks that Nick has been checking in on, but also counter protesters, which quite often that's where real skirmishes can happen.

When counter protestors show up everything that I've seen from groups that have been doing, the groups that were involved in protest over the summer, related to the killing of George Floyd, they've said they're gonna stay away.

So, that potentially could bring things down a little bit, but the presence of the Ohio National Guard is interesting.

Over the summer, in connection with the George Floyd protests, National Guard was here.

In fact, there were 1200 National Guard members who were deployed throughout the state to deal with protests that were happening all over Ohio including in Cleveland.

And now we have 580 that have been deployed and or are available for communities if they're concerned about protest, which is interesting that's a lot less than 1200, but then of course 700 in Ohio National Guard personnel are being sent to Washington DC.

That's 200 more than re or 500 more than were originally proposed.

And they're joining a force of about 20,000.

So, definitely there's a real desire to make sure that inauguration day is a secure event as possible.

But I think here the National Guards role most likely will be kind of as a backup and a for instance, during the George Floyd protests, you'd see the national guard but they were like a block away from the Capitol.

So, they were there, but they were standing back a little bit to give Columbus police and Ohio Highway Patrol who patrol this area and secure this area, they were the priority and the first responders.

So, there's something, there's a way to compare some of the security that's been happening here versus what happened over last summer.

But I think that the seriousness that appears to be given to this, is much greater than what was given to the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protest over the summer which did result in a little bit of vandalism and the state house was damaged slightly, but I mean there were windows broken, there were, there was damage.

But I think that now there may be more concern for safety as well.

- Nick, I mentioned what the consequences are for folks that might decide to go ahead and protest.

And we saw this insurrection last week, number of people, a 100 or so have been arrested federally so far, including a former occupational therapist for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, who was charged yesterday.

Tell me a little bit more about her.

- Right, so these charges are connected to an image I think many people have probably seen by now, it's a photograph of a woman in a red coat with Trump leggings, with a sign that says, the children cry out for justice.

And she was captured on on camera and in a photograph in the Senate, well, just steps away from the Vice-President's chair on the Senate floor.

Once that picture got out pretty quickly afterward, people on social media, alleged that this was a woman who is an occupational therapist in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

And according to the government's allegations in court, it was those social media tips that led them to Christine Prioleau.

She resigned from her job with the school the day after the demonstrations, in her resignation letter she said, among some other things, she didn't wanna take the COVID-19 vaccine and that she was leaving her job to pursue the global conspiracy of pedophilia that she believes is a muck throughout the world.

She doesn't mention the QAnon conspiracy theory explicitly but those are the types of ideas that are espoused by people who are in the throws of this online conspiracy theory movement.

Now, she has now been charged in federal court, a few charges such as unlawful entry on the Capitol grounds which seems to be a pretty common charge that folks are being hit with right now.

And she did have an initial appearance in federal court here in Cleveland, but her case is gonna be adjudicated in DC.

And so that's where the bulk of I think of her legal hearings are going be.

- So, I understand she's free on a personal bond, so she's not locked up at the moment but as you said, this is now going to be a federal issue as all of those cases are in DC.

- Right, exactly, because this happened on federal grounds, these are federal charges and federal charges are pretty serious.

(dramatic music) - President Trump issued a video statement Wednesday urging his supporters to remain calm and condemning mob violence, including the attack on the Capitol.

The statement came just after the House of Representatives voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection.

The Senate hearing to determine whether he'll be convicted, won't happen until he's out of office.

Trump is the first president to be impeached twice.

And unlike last year, 10 Republican lawmakers voted with Democrats for impeachment, one of the 10 Congressman Anthony Gonzalez of Rocky River, who represents Ohio's 16th congressional district.

He was the only Ohio Republican to vote to impeach.

- Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see that when I first saw Gonzalez's statement saying that he was going to vote for impeachment, it was surprising to me.

I thought Ohio is a pretty pro-Trump state.

If you look at how the president did in both of his elections here.

And so it didn't seem likely to me that Republicans would go that route, but Gonzalez stuck his neck out here.

And what he said also in his statement was, it wasn't although he did blame the president for the chaos at the Capitol, he said that the president incited it.

He also said that his vote was influenced by the fact that during the storming of the Capitol itself, as Members of Congress were being either locked in their offices or taken to secure places, in Gonzalez's view, Trump was nowhere to be found.

He wasn't standing up to tell people to stop or to condemn them.

And I think it was that absence during the chaos itself that really seemed to swing his vote toward impeachment.

He did an interview with conservative radio host, Bob France, where essentially here you have Gonzalez having to defend his decision in front of a, not just a conservative host, but a conservative audience.

Many of them are probably supporters of the president and people who voted for Gonzalez.

And in front of that said that the fact that Trump was nowhere to be found during the chaos itself, was very influential in his decision to vote to impeach.

- Well, I think it's really interesting to note the potential political risk that Gonzalez took.

I mean, I interviewed him in 2018 before he was as he was in the primary and while he and his staff didn't want him to talk about how he was aligning himself with president Trump, but he was clearly aligning himself with president Trump.

And that's because his district is pretty conservative, I mean, he was running to replace Jim Renacci, who is now talking about running for governor to go against to do a primary against Mike DeWine.

And so in the end, Trump won Gonzalez's district by 14 points.

So, there is a potential political risk here that Anthony Gonzalez took in taking the stand and being the only Ohio Republican who did, especially when you consider that there were five Ohio Republicans who spoke out against certifying the election results.

This was a pretty big act by somebody who was arguably putting himself on at a limb, in a sense, but there's also certainly the questions that he raised in the interview with Bob France, who I used to work with back in my days back in Cleveland at WTAM and to call him conservatives is to be more than fair.

The comments that he made and also the way that things potentially could be changing in the next couple of years, in terms of suburbs getting more blue, Democrats picked up a Republican seat in West Lake as the bluing of the suburbs continues and what could potentially happen in the next couple of years.

I mean, he's up for reelection next year, but next year is a lifetime away, even two months from now is a lifetime away.

(dramatic music) - Governor DeWine is urging patients as the state begins its next phase of vaccine distribution, even as there's still plenty of confusion in many parts of the state, including Cleveland about the first phase, plenty of confusion, but DeWine said this week, not enough vaccine, the next group to be eligible for doses includes, school workers, those with certain medical conditions and the elderly.

Lisa this is a big gap between the amount we're getting, vaccine we're getting and what's needed.

You also have to count for individuals needing to receive their second dose.

So, people are gonna be, although we're saying now is the time you can get your vaccine, we're talking about people are going to have to wait.

- Absolutely and Governor Mike DeWine has said that there are not enough and that like all States, we're dealing with some scarcity here, scarcity here.

So, even though the coronavirus vaccine page is live on the state's website, I actually went to it this morning to see which vaccines are available in my zip code, which anyone can do.

And you can call and if you're in this one B group, 80 and up, you can technically sign up right now but there might not be a vaccine available to go into your arm, especially as people are trying to get second dose shots as well.

- A great point, yeah, so there is that issue, there's still a lot of issue regarding the supply of vaccines.

But also as I understand it, people have been very confused about which group, when, how can we get it?

If you live in the city of Cleveland, it has a health department.

They have been saying, well, you've got to go through us but then the County has its own and you also live in that County.

It seems to me and I know you guys have been the ones fielding this on our health team, that people still have a lot of questions and there's ton of confusion out there.

- Oh, absolutely, we hear from people almost every day really just asking where they can get it, how they can sign up, where they go.

There are a lot of questions and even though these answers are out there, for the average person, they're not easy to find.

And especially, there are barriers, If you don't have internet access, if you don't have a computer, a lot of these things will help people sign up.

But if you don't have those tools then you might not know how.

And there are specific dates where the vaccine will open up to other age groups, other groups of people.

So, for example, we're seeing 80 and up, 80 years and older, they can get vaccinated starting this weekend, but January 25th, it'll open up to 75 years of age and older and February 1st, 70 years of age and older.

But how are people going to keep track of those States?

I mean, they're not selling a calendar to be able to keep track of that.

So, it's hard for people to figure out when they're able to get these vaccines.

- And also you don't know, do we get every 80 year old before we start the 75 year olds?

Obviously not, so it's not like t's a clean cohort where you're okay, we're done with that, we're moving onto the next one.

And mayor Jackson in Cleveland said, "what are we supposed to do if somebody shows up and they're 79 and they want a vaccine we're gonna turn them away?"

So, there's still a ton of questions about that.

- A lot these decisions are being made by the local municipalities.

So, even though people might be able to look up and see, "oh I can potentially get a vaccine starting at this time," while we're seeing the Cuyahoga County Board of Health announced that they aren't actually going to start with group one B because they haven't finished up group one A, they have about 10,000 more people left that they still want to vaccinate.

So, we're seeing that some places are maybe not moving forward and that can be complicated.

Also, we're seeing that Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, those are separate places.

We're seeing different jurisdictions, we always knew that they each had their own health department, but that's confusing for the average person.

I mean, how are they going to know where they should call up and ask, because people in Cleveland and are still technically Cuyahoga County, it's all very confusing - School employees are part of this next distribution group, but Karen, that comes with a requirement for the district to pledge to return to in-person learning in some form.

I think by March 1st?

- Yes, that's right, superintendents are asked to sign a form that says that they will pledge to return to in-person or hybrid learning, by March 1st.

DeWine made a specific effort to move school employees up in front of other groups and enter the concern of some of those other groups, to try to make sure that kids were back in school as soon as possible, that's been a goal that he's had here.

And so I've been told by the association that represents school, school superintendents that all school superintendents liked this idea, they like the idea that their employees have been moved up on this list.

And they're okay with signing this form but that there is some flexibility in here.

For instance, if the vaccine rollout is not going very smoothly or going slowly, then that March 1st date is not a drop dead date that everybody has to meet, that's a goal date.

And so they're trying to reach that along with everyone else, but there are 380,000 school employees in Ohio.

So, that really adds a whole other group in there as we're trying to vaccinate the one B group, which has 2.2 million people in there, all the people over age 65.

And of course it goes a little bit against what the CDC has been saying about making the vaccine available to anybody over 65.

Well, school employees have been moved up on that list and you also have police officers who were saying, "Hey we haven't been moved up on the list, we're first responders and yet we aren't part of that first responders group of EMTs and others."

So, this jockeying for position I guess, during this whole situation, as the vaccine is, it's there are shortages.

I mean, the city of Columbus has said that they're running low Hamilton County, down in Cincinnati is saying, they're running low.

My colleague, Joe Ingles worked on a package for our TV show the state of Ohio about this exact issue for this weekend.

And kind of tried to look at some of these differences here as we're trying to vaccinate as many people as possible with certain goals, but also limited vaccine.

- Got a comment here from Carol and it's actually a question.

And as you said, Lisa you're getting these essentially every day.

This one is, "has anyone addressed how anyone who needs the second shot is able to get one in time and that'll be the same vaccine, so, if you get a Moderna vaccine the first time, you get a Moderna vaccine the second time?"

So what about that?

When people are setting up first shots, is there a mechanism whereby they say, "okay you come back to this location three weeks from now?"

- You know, that is an excellent question because I think it's left up to each place to be able to reach out to these people who need to sign up.

Now, some of the places might schedule the next dose because they obviously know around the time that you should be getting that second dose.

But what I heard from some hospitals in some places, is that they might schedule that but they don't necessarily know that they will even have enough vaccine to be able to give that shot.

I mean, they're hoping that they are and I haven't heard that there have been any issues.

They have been receiving shipments, but that's just like a general question that makes this so much more difficult and makes the system and process a lot slower.

- And let's talk about the mix and match.

So, if you have a Moderna vaccine dose the first time, you're going to get that the next time, they don't mix Moderna and then Pfizer, for example.

- Absolutely yes, you have to get the same brand.

So, that's important and what I've seen in terms of the person gets the vaccine card, that you get a card at least that I've seen so far and it does have what brand of vaccine that you've received.

- Okay, Karen, last thing on that, that there's a new strain of COVID-19, we heard about this in the UK.

Now we've got word that there's this strain in Columbus.

- Right, and this is unique, Ohio State University was talking about that on a call earlier this week, this new variant of COVID-19, the problem is it's hard to detect it.

Isn't detected by the typical testing there, it was detected by sequencing, the genome of the particular virus in patients with COVID-19 since March.

And so the findings are still under review and everything but it really does show that the virus is mutating as this pandemic goes on.

There've been variants in other countries, we've heard a lot about the one in London, so, this thing is still changing.

However, the question of course is will the vaccine take care of it?

And so far, I think the general consensus is that these mutated strains will still be affected negatively and therefore the vaccine will be good for these and take care of it.

But we're still learning a lot about this thing as it continues to go on.

(dramatic music) - One of the biggest political races in 2021, will be for Cleveland Mayor.

This week, Justin Bibb, a Cleveland nonprofit leader, was the first to declare his candidacy, though City Council President Kevin Kelly, surely is running, as are others.

Will they face a record breaking incumbent?

- Well, who knows?

We're still waiting for Mayor Frank Jackson to say whether he will seek a fifth term in office or whether he we'll hang up his spurs and head toward retirement after what is it?

12, it's 16 years as mayor, when the mayor was asked about this last year, he said that he did not want to publicly say what he would do because if he said he was running, everything would become political.

And about the mayor's race, if he said he wasn't running, he said he wouldn't even be able to get a phone call returned anymore because he'd be old news.

So, we're still waiting to hear that but like you said, Justin Bibb as 33 year old nonprofit leader, he's been involved in sort of the civic sector of Cleveland, for some time, he used to work for keyBank.

This is his first time running for elected office though, so, he is new to this part of public life.

Kevin Kelly, the President of Cleveland city council, he is not officially said whether he's going to run for mayor or not but he has reoriented his campaign committee saying that it's now seeking the mayor's office.

And he is raising money, he said, I believe it was just last week that he had a half a million dollars on hand, which is a pretty good chunk of money if you're talking about a municipal race in Cleveland, so, he'll certainly be somebody to watch as well.

- That's going to wrap up our show, coming up Monday on The Sound of Ideas in honor of Martin Luther King Jr day, The Sound of Ideas team has the day off, in our place a special in which we'll hear from a witness to the, "I have a dream" speech, a discussion about minority representation in media and an exploration of what it means to be anti-racist.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for watching and stay safe.

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