(Intro music plays) - Aisha's law, law seeking to increase protections for domestic violence victims has passed the Ohio house, but it still faces opposition.

The Ohio redistricting commission will miss another deadline this time for the congressional district map.

And the Cleveland clinic begins trials on a vaccine for the most lethal form of breast cancer.

Ideas is next.

Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Aisha's law, inspired by Shaker Heights teacher Ayesha Frazier, who was murdered by her ex-husband in 2018, was passed by the Ohio house this week.

It would create more protections in domestic violence cases and increase penalties for intimate partner murder, but its passage in the Senate is no sure thing.

The legislature has much more on its plate, including the task of drawing new congressional district maps to reflect one fewer seat in the U S Congress.

Why?

Because the Ohio redistricting commission once again has no intention of hitting its next deadline, transferring the job back to lawmakers.

The Cleveland Guardian's major league baseball franchise has its first opponent.

It's the Cleveland guardians roller derby team based in Parma.

The old Cleveland Guardians sued the new Cleveland Guardians for pilfering their name.

We'll talk about those stories and much more on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week, Ideastream public media health reporter, Anna Huntsman, WKSU reporter Kabir Bhatia, and Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

The law is named after Shaker Heights sixth grade school teacher, Aisha Frazier, who was murdered by her ex-husband in 2018.

The ex-husband, former Cuyahoga county common police court judge and Ohio representative, Lance Mason, is serving a life sentence.

He had served nine months of a two year sentence in 2014 for beating his wife so badly, She needed facial reconstruction surgery.

She filed for divorce days later, and he resigned from the county pleas bench after pleading guilty.

Karen, this is a comprehensive bill that seeks to change how domestic violence cases are handled from a moment a call for police help is made through to sentencing.

- Yeah, and it's, it's not a done deal.

I mean, it's important to know that this is a big step forward, but this proposal has been out there since 2019.

And so for it to pass this far is good, but there's still the hurdle of getting through the Ohio Senate.

And I've just been communicating with the Ohio public defender's office.

They were opposed to it last time and they remain opposed, saying the law has changed significantly, but they are opposed to strangulation being a felony.

That's one element of this law and they just say that they want the penalty to fit the crime.

So if you've got a, an influential group like the Ohio public defenders office potentially coming out against this, that could certainly change the course of this bill.

But you have a report that came out earlier this month saying more than 130 people died in cases connected to domestic violence in Ohio over the last year, it's a 62% increase in deaths over the last two years.

These are pretty big numbers and there's a lot of agreement, bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done, but whether this is going to be the exact vehicle or whether it's going to change is really what we have to look at.

- Did you say that strangulation it's, there's an argument about whether strangulation is a felony.

- Yeah.

I mean, that's one element of this law.

I mean, the, the, the thing that's gotten a lot of attention is the lethality assessment.

Which is kind of when police are on a domestic violence call, they have to kind of look at the whole situation and, and kind of test whether there is potential for something very serious to happen here.

That's a big part of this law, but there are some other things, other elements of it strangulation being a part of that, because certainly that act can lead to other things that can lead to even more escalated violence.

And so there are some other elements of this law that have people concerned, but obviously the idea of trying to find some way to stop something before it becomes a case of murder.

That's what these domestic violence laws are trying to do.

And that's certainly what I Aisha's law was intended to do to really increase police protections and toughen penalties, when there is a murder involving a domestic partner.

- I wasn't aware that there was pushback of this nature on this, given that it passed the Ohio house.

So it was, it's interesting to hear that.

- Yeah I mean, and, and well, and again, this law was initially proposed in 2019 and it was that pushback because, you know, certainly the idea of strengthening domestic violence laws is something that a lot of people can support, but there were some concerns about in the previous version about exceptions for out of court statements or hearsay as evidence.

I mean, all of these things are part of this, because when you're dealing with domestic violence situations, you, you're dealing with some very intimate.

And he said, she said things, but you need to protect the potential victim.

And, and, and while still respecting the rights of the accused while the system is, is doing its work.

- Anna, one of the things Karen said was that the police officer has to assess the lethality of a situation, could it lead to someone losing their life?

Is there evidence that backs up that certain violent behaviors lead to greater risk for that outcome?

- Yes.

The evidence is all around strangulation, which is why I was also, my ears kind of perked up, whenever Karen mentioned that there's debate about this because the law would expand the definition of domestic violence to include strangulation, which Ohio was one of the last states in the country to not have strangulation included in that.

So I thought that was interesting number one.

Number two is the fact that evidence continuously is showing that if someone is strangled by their partner, they are more likely to, down the line, unfortunately, there's a murder that could happen, unfortunately.

So it's about 40 to 50% of people who've previously been strangled will down the line.

It's, it's unfortunate to talk about, It's hard to talk about.

So, but yeah, there's this conversation happening about, because the thought here is if someone will strangle, you know, what's stopping them from doing it again, and it could potentially be lethal the next time around.

- To strangle, to the point of someone losing their life.

Kabir, what, what would've have happened had Aisha's law been passed and in place when Lance Mason was convicted of domestic violence charges in 2014.

- Well, when he was convicted in 2014, as you said, the strangulation was absolutely a factor in that attack.

And so there would have been protections put in place.

He might've actually gone away it seems for a while.

So the events that led up to the murder never would have taken place cause he probably wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near her by the time of the actual murder years later.

So had this law been in place, she might still be with us now.

- Hm.

Well, her legacy would be, would be this law.

Interesting to see what happens then in the Ohio Senate and whether it gets a signature from the governor.

(Transition music plays) - The Ohio redistricting commission will miss Sunday's deadline to approve a new congressional district map.

The work moves back now to the Ohio general assembly.

Not exactly what voters had in mind when they enacted redistricting reform.

Though it won't hit the deadline, the commission met yesterday to look over map proposals, one submitted by Democrats, one by citizens.

Republicans did not offer a map proposal, but some would say they don't have to because the legislature is dominated by Republicans and they're going to drop the maps anyway.

Karen, this, it sounds familiar.

- Yeah, it's a lot of what we saw with the Ohio house and Senate maps as kind of a preview.

And again, this redistricting commission was something that was set up with these constitutional amendments that were passed in 2015 and 2018, where people voted overwhelmingly to change the process by which those district maps are drawn because they really felt like they were being drawn unfairly.

I mean the congressional map in particular, that's the one that's gotten most of the national attention because of the snake on the lake and, and the one that the district that goes all the way from Toledo to Cleveland, there's the duck shaped one that includes Jim Jordan's district, or that is Jim Jordan's district.

That goes all the way from Southwest Ohio to Oberlin.

You know, it was those kinds of things that led voters to approve these two constitutional amendments.

And yet there are deadlines in these amendments that this redistricting commission is missing.

And the, the one last time we saw these two maps that were passed, the House and Senate maps, they are now the subject of three different lawsuits before the Ohio Supreme court.

The first one, the arguments start in beginning of December, and now we've got this congressional map.

And the real challenge for that one is to shrink Ohio's 16 districts to 15, and who, which member of Congress loses their job.

That that's always been the big question here.

And yet the Ohio redistricting commission said just this week that they weren't going to make this deadline.

The deadline is Sunday, October 31st.

So that kicks it back to the state legislature, all of this.

- But Karen, that's their, that's their job.

- Yeah it is, but all of this kicks this back to the legislature to have to do this.

And, and that's really the question, who is doing the job, and why isn't the job getting done on time?

I mean, there are certainly some folks who are suspecting that they're kind of running out the clock, that, that if these maps come forward and they're not good, but there isn't time to sue, well we got to get some people in office.

What are we going to do here?

And so as we get closer and closer to those filing deadlines next year, and all these court challenges still remain, it's going to be really difficult to, not only for the existing people who are running, to make sure that they're in the right districts, but also for people who want to challenge them, what are they going to do?

It's, it's, we're really running out of time, even though it feels like there's a long time between now and February, there really isn't when you start talking about the way government works and the court system.

- On this reduction in commission, does that, does that include the Governor?

The Secretary of State?

- [Karen] Yeah.

- Okay so, so what are they doing - Well, that's a good question.

They met yesterday and they said that that'll be their last meeting because they don't have a map that they can vote on for Ohio's congressional districts.

You know, you could certainly point to that they've had plenty of time to get a map together, but they have not gotten one together.

And obviously they have to get minority party buy-in for these maps to last more than four years, haven't been able to do that.

And you know, one of the lawsuits that's out there specifically looks at the transparency involved in this, and you know, what's happening behind the scenes that we aren't seeing as these meetings are not going on.

What's happening behind the scenes?

There also needs to be public input, public hearings on this, which is really frustrating to some of the folks who have been demonstrating at the state house every single day, this last week, because they want to see the maps and weigh in.

- Kabir, in defending the maps, the leadership in the legislature, the Republican leadership said they hired experts, arguing that it's impossible to draw maps that give Democrats a more even split of seats, which is the whole point of this, that to not have gerrymandered seats and to have something that more represents the total population of Ohio.

But they claim that because of the way Ohio is populated, it just can't be done.

- Yeah.

The claim is, by the way, these guys got $400 an hour to do this and they're from out of state, but that's why he made.

- [Mike] That's what you get for the show.

Isn't it?

- Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, just for the first half.

So the, these experts one's from Brigham Young, one's from Georgia, and they were saying that the way Ohio's population is clustered, the, the more democratic leaning voters tend to cluster in big cities, whereas the areas that are not as widely populated that are much more sparse, those teams tend to lean to the right.

And the other issue being that there are still heavily right-leaning areas in some of those cities, so they say, well, it just can't be done.

The thinking and the, you know, even though Ohio is it's, I think a 54-46 split in the last few elections, 54 Republican, 46 leaning Democrat.

So the fact that the entire state, if it leans kind of one way or the other, depending on the, the election, maybe a little bit more to the right, the, the population could be clustered, but there's still a way to do this because a lot of the country, the heavily populated, densely populated cities, are the ones leading to the left, and of the more sparsely populated areas are the ones, less dense areas are the ones leaning to the right.

But they claim that no, there's absolutely no way that it can be done.

We're going to have to draw, it's going to give Democrats an unfair advantage because they're going to get all the swing districts, all of those are going to have to lean Democrats.

I'm not an expert on this by any means, but a lot of folks who have more expertise than I have seem to have come up with different maps, community groups, citizens groups, fair districts that do seem fairly balanced.

So I'm not sure why this one person from Brigham Young or from Georgia, isn't able to do that.

When these other groups have been.

(Transition music plays) - Cleveland will host the 2021 rock and roll hall of fame induction ceremony tomorrow night.

The star studded event will be held for the first time at Rocket Mortgage field house.

This year, its class is the most diverse in history.

According to the rock hall.

Kabir, you'll be covering the induction ceremony.

So lucky you, you and Gabe Cramer are both be there.

And it'll be nice.

I think to be there, it's not something I can just watch live on television, they put a big, big production later.

So either people will be downtown looking to spot folks or get autographs or those types of things, but you're going to be in the room where it happens.

What do you expect and what are you looking forward to the most?

- Well, I'm just looking forward to being able to do it again.

It's been so long since we had it here, and in person.

I'm excited, Gabe is going to be a free, free plug.

He's going to be doing a lot of social media, some little videos, so people can follow him and check that out.

But I'm just excited for all these performers.

It is a very diverse class.

It's a lot of folks, some of them have waited a long time.

There's a lot of star power, both amongst the inductees and the people who are going to be showing up to induct them.

We've got Lionel Richie, Taylor swift.

We've got this fellow right here.

We've got a lot of... - [Mike] What fella right where?

I'm on the radio.

What fella?

- Oh, that's right, you can't see it.

This is, this is sir Paul McCartney.

He was in, he was in the band Wings.

So he's going to be, he's going to be there.

And he's going to be inducting Foo Fighters, who he's has, he's done a lot with.

His former cohort, Billy Preston is going to be inducted as well, who's no longer with us.

So it's going to be an exciting night I think and a very diverse class.

- And I mentioned earlier, Paul must be listening, you can call.

Do you have his call right now?

- I was just going to ask if we have an update, is he on the line?

- Is he on the line?

Drew Lee is, has Paul called?

2 1 2 1 6 5 7 8 0 9 0 3.

Please give us a call.

Paul McCartney, or really anybody who, you know, Tina Turner.

She's not coming I heard, she's not going to be in town, but she can call.

I heard Trina and Todd Rundgren, who I thought basically lived in Cleveland, the number of concerts that I've seen here with him is also not going to be in town.

- He's actually in a Canton tonight at the palace theater.

And then during the induction ceremony, he's going to be in Cincinnati, because he has said, you know, he's waited 20 depends on your definition, 25, 26 years.

And he just feels, I think, he wants this to be over with, he's happy for his fans.

He just wants this to be over with so he stops hearing about the fact that he's not in the rock hall.

- You're so close.

Canton, Cleveland, I mean, Canton, Cincinnati, right?

- [Anna] And what's he doing at the palace.

- The concert?

Well, he's, he's his album, A Wizard, A True Star, He's going to be, That's this one, he's going to be putting that show together, he's doing the whole show, basically the whole album in a show.

And then tomorrow night, Cincinnati, he's got Halloween off.

He could have bumped Cincinnati to Halloween and been here.

But I guess he's just, he's, he's not interested in.

- We'll have to make due with, we'll have to make, do with Jay Z and the Foo Fighters and the Go-Go's.

I mean, Carol King, I mean, how, how, what a burden.

This is going to be for Cleveland, (Transition music plays) - A co-ed roller Derby team.

The Cleveland Guardians has sued the city's major league baseball franchise, the Cleveland Guardians, because the roller Derby team says the baseball team stole its name.

In filing the suit, the roller Derby team suggested a simple Google search would have turned up the fact that the name was already taken before the baseball team went through with its decision to change its name to the Guardians.

And I have the feeling that the folks at the Cleveland Guardian's baseball team knew full well, there was such a thing as a Cleveland guardians, roller birdie, roller Derby team.

I think they Googled it.

- I do believe that they Googled it.

I think they had a little bit of knowledge, but based on their two sentence statement back to the roller Derby team I'm not sure that they are really considering this to be a huge concern at the moment.

They basically wrote back and said, we don't think that there's a conflict here, and we are confident that we will be able to move forward with the Guardian's name for the team.

What's kind of interesting is the suit is going to go in front of a judge who recently ruled on a copyright case that also involved Cleveland.

It was with the Metro park zoo and the Pittsburgh zoo and the Cleveland zoo sued over their, their, they both have something called the Asian lantern festival.

And the judge in that case ruled that they weren't a conflict because people aren't going to get confused about whether they're going to the Pittsburgh one or the Cleveland one.

The Guardian's roller Derby team is hoping that in this case it will be different because they're in the same city.

But I don't know, Mike, I, I have to say again, I, I don't know how this is going to roll out, ah rollout.

I mean for that.

- That's your, your trademark, - But I don't.

think basically that the Cleveland guardians, I don't think the baseball club is too concerned about this at this point.

- Yeah.

I don't think you're going to end up at a roller rink and say, wait a minute, I thought this was going to be a baseball game.

- I mean, maybe you would.

But I will say to the, the roller Derby team has said that this has affected their social media presence, that this has kind of like blown up.

So, I mean, maybe you would, but I don't know.

- Interesting, Kabir.

The team says it offered to actually sell its naming rights to the club, but didn't get a whole lot of an offer in return.

- I think, four figures is what the attorney for the roller Derby team is citing that they were offered by the baseball club, which I, the, the roller Derby team said, I think you can do a little better than that.

And they passed on the offer.

So these discussions were taking place before the big public announcements.

And according to the attorney, again, for the roller Derby team, the baseball club had said we it's one of the names that we're considering.

So they were definitely aware, they were definitely looking at it.

And we talk about social media, Who's going to get the Clevelandguardians.com or guardians.com website?

- I think it already exists.

I think the... - Yeah.

I mean, it.

already exists for the roller Derby, right?

Well, the Indians, the current Indians, try and get it.

It's really difficult to say.

And this thing, as, as Anna mentioned, going before a judge, usually if it's in different cities, like the Giants, the Cardinals, and across different sports, hasn't been a problem.

This is only across different sports, not across different cities so I think it's going to be interesting to find out since they've had it, the name since what '14, what actually ends up happening with this.

- Karen, What about the chances that the name will be changed again and go to your favorite, The spiders?

- No, no.

I refuse to accept that.

No spiders, no spiders at all, but I did notice there was some criticism online over the last couple of days.

Obviously the Atlanta Braves are in the world series, along with the Astros.

And there were some questions about the, the MLB commissioner being okay with the Braves and the chop and all that.

And, and that, that seems to be okay, but the Indians name has been a concern.

So there were some folks who really wanted to see the Indians named stay, who have been pointing that out.

But I I've told you, I love the Guardians.

I think it's great, but anything but the spiders, ugh.

- Do we think this is like a new Coke thing and they're going, they did this on purpose.

And either they're going to say, look at all the love for the name Indians.

We're bringing it back, or this is subterfuge and they've got some other completely different name that's unrelated to any of the ones we've heard.

They're going to pull out of the hat, you know, on a, at spring training, like the Cleveland Ideastreams or something.

And then you've got problems.

- [Anna] That would be wonderful.

- [Kabir] Just a thought.

- [Karen] Is that a conspiracy theory or anything?

- This sounds really, Kabir, settle down a little bit will you.

- [Kabir] Well, yeah, I'm just saying.

(Transition music plays) - The president of the Ohio state board of education says she'll resign her position.

Laura Kohler, a Republican, helped write the anti-racism and equity resolution passed by the board in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.

She opposed the board's decision to rescind that resolution.

Another board member who opposed rescinding the resolution, Eric Poklar also resigned.

- What's happening here is that there are eight appointed members of the board of education who were selected by Governor Mike DeWine, in this case, some were reappointed who had been appointed by Governor John Kasich previously, and then they joined the 11 other board members who are elected statewide.

And there's been some real struggle back and forth over several years about the appointees and whether the governor should have more appointees, should have fewer appointees, whether the board should be all elected, what should actually happen here?

And so Senate president, Matt Huffman, who again, is a Republican, all the people involved here are Republicans.

He said in a conversation with some reporters on Wednesday, including the Statehouse News Bureau, Andy chow, that he was concerned about what he called this diversity thing.

And that, that was an issue that was brought to him by a variety of people, including other state school board members, and he also said he was concerned about geographic diversity among the appointees.

Three of the eight appointees are from the Columbus area.

But when you look at the other appointees, two of them are from Northwest Ohio, which also is where Senate president, Matt Hoffman is from.

So I don't know about the question about geographic diversity, but it's certainly something he said he was looking at.

He's also saying that a school choice is an issue, some of these other issues that made him want to ask the Governor to reconsider these appointments and these two school board members now, Poklar and Kohler have taken that out of there and they've just resigned, so that opens up two more seats for the Governor to appoint people that I guess Senate president Matt Hoffman wants to have a little bit more input or at least have some sort of, you know, he wants to weigh in a little bit on that.

(Transition music plays) - Cleveland clinic researchers have launched a clinical trial for a breast cancer vaccine that could prevent the most lethal form, known as triple negative breast cancer.

- The vaccine has been in development for decades.

This is actually many, many years in the making.

It's a, this kind of new technology, the researcher doctor, Vincent Tuhoy, He was looking into this lactation protein that shows up in women who are of childbearing age, but then it doesn't anymore once they hit menopause, but in triple negative breast cancer it also shows up.

So the thought is that if you can target that lactation protein, you can perhaps prevent or go ahead and combat the triple negative breast cancer that's forming.

So that's how the vaccine works.

- And that's the lethal kind that.

- It is.

It's extremely aggressive.

So it grows quickly, spreads quickly.

There's not that many good treatments for it.

And it also is really likely to come back.

So that's why it's so lethal.

So the vaccine has been in development, it was tested on mice, it was pretty safe and effective at preventing and also again, stopping the tumor growth in mice.

So now it's moving on, it's been cleared for human trials.

So of course this is going to take many, many more years because it's just a small group that they're testing it on right now.

They're just figuring out how much of a dose is needed and how many doses are effective.

And then it's going to move on to general population.

And then years and years more of testing.

- If this was a vaccine, is it something that, that healthy people would then take or is you mentioned that in the mice study, it also stopped tumors, so would it be people who are already diagnosed, who it would be involved?

- Obviously they'll figure that out through all the testing and trials, I know that the researcher told me before that he hopes that it could be a preventative care.

So maybe women, once they turn 40, if they're at maybe high risk for this type of cancer, they have genetic predisposition, they could go ahead and get that vaccine.

Or maybe it's something that is given to people who have these tumors already.

So they're still figuring that out, but the thought is that they will test it eventually on the general population, so this could absolutely be a game changer for women's health.

- And what would it do in terms of paving the way for other cancer vaccines?

I know there are many in development, many for breast cancer, as you mentioned, but I'm sure there's all kinds of other research that's going on.

What kind of trail could this blaze.

- The researchers hope that this vaccine technology, like I said, it's new or newer, it's innovative I should say.

They hope that it could be used for other cancers and other types of tumors.

So right now they're focusing on breast cancer, but the researcher, Vincent Tuhoy, he has trials going for other types of cancers as well.

- And you mentioned the triple negative breast cancer and how it's so lethal.

It's also one that impacts black women more frequently.

Are there efforts that are being made to make sure that you include black patients in this clinic clinical trial?

- Yeah, So we asked the researchers about that and the principal investigator, Dr. Budd said that he's actually recruiting African-American patients at the clinics locations that have a high African-American population, but he's also in touch with the federally qualified health centers in the area.

Just kind of making them aware, Hey, if you have a patient who fits this bill, we would love to have them in the trial.

- Coming up Monday on the sound of ideas on 90.3 WCPN, we'll discuss issue 24, a charter amendment that would increase citizen oversight of Cleveland police, voters have their say on Tuesday.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.

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