Search results for

Looking for a Politics on Point to accompany what you are learning or teaching in school?
Below is a list of Politics on Point videos available online!

Videos are available on the ideastream website with a script beneath each. While on PBS Learning Media, you will find standards associated with each video and a link to add the video to your Google Classroom. For more on using PBS Learning Media in your classroom check out this overview.

Is the topic you're looking for not listed here? Email the NewsDepth team to make a suggestion!

• Branches of the U.S. Government: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• Explaining the Electoral College: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• The Pomp and Circumstance of Presidential Inaugurations: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s Impact in Cleveland: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• The Power of the President: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What Does the Vice President Do?: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What Is the Supreme Court of the United States?: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What Does It Mean To Be a Governor?: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• Does the President Go On Vacation?: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• The First Amendment and Our Five Rights: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What Exactly Is The State of the Union?: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• The Rights & Responsibilities of a U.S. Citizen: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• The Fight for Fair Voting: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What is a Political Party?​: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• This Is What Democracy Looks Like​: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• All Hail the King! What is a Monarchy?​: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What Is the U.S. Census?​: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media
• What's a Dictatorship?​: Watch on ideastream.org | Watch on PBS Learning Media

Gov. Mike DeWine and other state officials will provide their latest update on the COVID-19 pandemic for May 17, 2021. The press conference is scheduled for 2:00 p.m.

Our priority is to provide trustworthy, up-to-date coverage that Northeast Ohioans can rely on, including stories that follow up on the daily press conference. As the pandemic continues, ideastream will share live briefings from DeWine online.

During these trying times, ideastream is dedicated to keeping you, the Northeast Ohio community, informed by providing trusted, up-to-date information that you need to know, as it happens.

From special coverage of briefings by the president and governor to information about health resources and opportunities to ask questions of local and national health experts, ideastream is committed to providing you with all the information you need to know about COVID-19, as it happens. Visit ideastream's coronavirus coverage page for the latest.

This special coverage is made possible thanks to the support of our members. We're here for you, and we're here because of you​.

While the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Ohio – and around the world – continues to climb as expected, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s daily update on the pandemic became a plea for help from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the state’s manufacturers and citizens.

Battelle Memorial Institute, a private nonprofit science and technology company based in Columbus, has developed a method for sterilizing masks so healthcare workers can continue reuse the personal protective equipment (PPE) safely. The procedure is awaiting FDA approval, DeWine said.

“I want to make a public appeal to the FDA to please, please give us the approval,” DeWine said. “We have nurses, we have doctors, we have people working in nursing homes who need the masks.”

“It really is truly a matter of life and death,” he said.

According to DeWine, Battelle expects to be able to sterilize 80,000 masks per day, per machine and is looking to have two machines running in Ohio as well as send machines to Seattle, New York City and Washington, D.C.

DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton also made a plea to the state’s manufactures and residents for PPE and other medical equipment.

“These are the items that we need. These are the items we need help with. These are in no particular order… our top 10 most wanted,” said DeWine as he and Acton held up a poster with the list, which includes:

• Surgical gowns in all sizes
• Face and surgical masks
• Gloves (nitrile, vinyl or butyl)
• N95 particulate respirators
• Isolation gowns
• Face shields
• Tyvek coveralls
• Thermometers
• Foot coverings
• Ventilator tubing

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ohio rose to 1,406 cases and the state has seen 25 deaths from the virus or related complications as of Saturday afternoon, Acton reported. Of the cases, 24 percent have been hospitalized with 9 percent in the ICU, she said.

Draft hospital plans from the state's eight regions began to come in to the governor's office Saturday. The goal is for each region's hospitals to collaborate to ensure that sick patients have a place to go to get tested and know where to go for different levels of treatments, if needed, as well as a plan for facilities to handle other patients in need of routine procedures like childbirth.

The Ohio National Guard will oversee putting each region's plans in place.

This is is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Updated: 5:45 p.m., Friday, April 3, 2020

Gov. Mike DeWine is recommending 38 Ohio prisoners for early release to minimize the potential spread of the coronavirus.

“Whenever we have a gathering of people during this coronavirus crisis, we worry about it,” DeWine said. “Prisons by their very nature are a gathering of people.”

The recommendations for release will be sent beginning Friday via letter to judges in counties where the 38 prisoners were sentenced, DeWine said Friday during his daily briefing. Judges will be left to determine whether to schedule a hearing or if the prisoners are fit to be released early.

“These are not violent offenders, people who are sex offenders, domestic abusers or murderers,” DeWine said. “These individuals seem to make sense to release early.”

The prisoners recommended for release fall into two groups, DeWine said. Twenty-three are women who are either pregnant or who had a child in prison. The other 15 are men and women age 60 or over within 60 days of their planned release. None have records of major infractions while incarcerated nor warrants for their arrest in another state, the governor said.

“The normal notification to victims and prosecutors will apply to those hearings that the judges will conduct,” DeWine said.

Ohio currently has a total prison population of 48,991.

“No one is saying that [releasing 38 people] is going to open up a lot of space in our prisons,” DeWine said.

But he said that pregnant women in particular were being recommended for release because they require care that brings them into contact with others – leading them to become potential carriers and spreaders of the virus among their fellow inmates.

Additional prisoners may be recommended for release in coming weeks, DeWine said.

DeWine also announced that the Ohio Department of Health and The Ohio State University are partnering to manufacture testing liquid, tubes and swabs in-state, and then send them “in the next several days” to hospitals across Ohio, in an effort to improve COVID-19 detection rates.

“For hospitals around the state lacking these and not able to do tests, help is on the way,” DeWine said.

The governor also said he wants more of the state’s hospitals to join the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, MetroHealth and The Ohio State University Hospital in accepting and analyzing test kits from other places, in order to speed detection of those who are infected.

Ohio had a total of 3,312 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Friday afternoon – up about 14 percent from Thursday – and 91 deaths, according to Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. Among confirmed cases, 895 people were hospitalized and 288 people were in intensive care.

Acton encouraged Ohioans to continue diligently following the state’s stay-at-home order, which now extends to May 1.

“Every day that we’re doing this social distancing, it’s another day to find more [personal protective equipment] for the frontlines, it’s another day that we don’t overwhelm our hospital systems,” Acton said.

At the same time, she asked people to avoid stigmatizing others who do fall ill as the state reaches peak infection rates, anticipated between April 15 and May 15.

“If someone is sick on your street, in your neighborhood, we needn’t fear each other,” Acton said. “The first question should be, ‘How can we help?’”

Ohio National Guard Adjutant General Maj. Gen. John Harris provided an update on efforts to build out non-hospital space in existing buildings to care for the expected onslaught of patients.

“The facilities we’re looking at building out are for the less sick patients,” Harris said, with the intent that rooms in hospitals can be reserved for those who are sickest or are members of high-risk groups.

“You may not see trucks full of construction equipment and builders building things,” Harris said. “We’re going to go into a larger facility… maybe assembling partitions, the transportation of beds.”

Amid reports of rising unemployment and layoffs, Lt. Governor Jon Husted said he's heard positive news from business owners regarding federal loans. He encouraged others to contact their lenders to learn more.

As bars, social clubs, and events were shutting down under coronavirus mitigation mandates, Alexis Moten, the woman behind Culture Jock, had an idea.

When she founded the social commentary and pop culture website Culture Jock two years ago in New York City, Moten intended to use authenticity and honesty to counter misogyny and racism in the world of pop culture trends. Since moving operations to Cleveland, the site has organized events large and small.

So while organizing happenings is not new to Moten, creating an online music festival was. In response to the impending crisis posed to artists by COVID-19, she quickly began to put together a virtual music festival to support artists whose income relies on social gatherings.. 

Over three days in March, 17 artists performed for a total of 648 minutes of music on Instagram Live. Culture Jock’s Instagram feed featured a virtual flyer with all performers' Instagram handles, genres and places to send donations or buy merch, but each artist performed from their own page, in an effort to grow their regular audiences and followers. And each encouraged viewers to go to the next performance, on the next artist’s feed – just like encouraging patrons to stick around for the next performer at a neighborhood bar’s live music night.

People continued to comment throughout the performances, tune into multiple artists and donate to the performers, Moten said. Joey, a hip-hop artist in Columbus, had 86 people from around the country listening to his performance.

Social distancing made Moten’s goal of booking 45 artists to fill a long weekend of entertainment uniquely challenging. She originally put up a flyer to see who was interested in performing before reaching out to artists she admired on Instagram, pulling in 36 interested musicians from as far away as Paris and Seattle.

Social distancing whittled that number down, Moten said, with some artists unable to get their entire band together to perform or finding their instruments suddenly locked in a studio they could not access. Problematic internet connections also knocked a few people out of the show.

Ohio musicians featured prominently among the final 17 artists, with Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus represented along with performances from Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Alexis Moten, Creator of Culture Jock [Michael Thornburg / Thornburg Creative]

Pandemic-related restrictions aren’t easing up any time soon – but neither are Moten and Culture Jock.

Culture Jock is hosting CJTV weekly: Culture Jock Television events to break up people’s day and continue to support their community. The first topic CJTV is taking on? Health, said Moten, with a specific focus on mental, physical and spiritual health during social distancing. The virtual summit, which kicks of next week, will feature three programs a day, including cooking demos, questions answered by medical professionals and live music.

Do you know people who are innovating, supporting their community and bringing a little more kindness into the world (from at least 6 ft. away) through COVID-19? Tag us and them with #coronakind on social media!

By Adora Namigadde, WOSU

Updated: 12:15 a.m., Sunday, April 5, 2020

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed an executive order to expand telehealth in the state on Saturday to help fight the spread of coronavirus.

The order will allow Ohioans to more easily access services with mental health workers including social workers, counselors and marriage counselors. Patients will be able to see such professionals without first having had an in-person consultation. He also waived telehealth training for these providers.

DeWine said during his daily press conference that he spent part of the day working on building capacity at hospitals. The state is increasing the number of hospital beds by cutting down on elective surgeries, having the Ohio National Guard add hospital space, and hospitals creating more rooms on their campuses. DeWine said he'll elaborate on making more hospital beds available next week. 

As of Saturday, April 4 at 2 p.m., there are 3,739 cases and 102 deaths of or due to COVID-19.  

The CDC issued guidance Friday regarding face masks in public. It endorsed cloth face masks as a measure to prevent contracting and spreading the coronavirus.

DeWine said he intends to wear a homemade cloth mask, made by his wife Fran, in public from now on, and he encouraged others to allow masks to become socially acceptable. The state added instructions to its coronavirus website on how to make cloth maks. But Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton warned the masks have their limitations.

“It isn’t going to make you bulletproof," said Acton. "A virus can get through any homemade mask." 

Both DeWine and Acton said the masks are not a substitute for social distancing or the stay-at-home order.

Acton cautioned against using the N95 medical-grade masks that are already in short supply. She said those masks should be donated to local emergency management agencies, who will give them to medical professionals.

Battelle is sterilizing N95 masks for Ohio's hospitals free for a couple of weeks, so DeWine encouraged hospitals to bring their masks to be cleaned. That technology will allow masks to be reused up to 20 times.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said there is a link on the state’s COVID-19 website to help people gain access to hot spots for better internet access.

Statehouse News Bureau correspondent Jo Ingles contributed to this report.

During these trying times, ideastream is dedicated to keeping you, the Northeast Ohio community, informed by providing trusted, up-to-date information that you need to know, as it happens.

From special coverage of briefings by the president and governor to information about health resources and opportunities to ask questions of local and national health experts, ideastream is committed to providing you with all the information you need to know about COVID-19, as it happens. Visit ideastream's Coronavirus coverage page for the latest.

This special coverage is made possible thanks to the support of our members. We're here for you, and we're here because of you​.

Governor Mike DeWine and other state officials will provide their latest update on the COVID-19 pandemic for April  6, 2020. The press conference is scheduled for 2 p.m., but the actual start has often been later due to fast-changing circumstances.

Our priority is to provide trustworthy, up-to-date coverage that Northeast Ohioans can rely on, including stories that follow up on the daily press conference. As the pandemic continues, ideastream will share live briefings from DeWine online and on our broadcast channels, WVIZ/PBS, 90.3 WCPN and The Ohio Channel.

During these trying times, ideastream is dedicated to keeping you, the Northeast Ohio community, informed by providing trusted, up-to-date information that you need to know, as it happens.

From special coverage of briefings by the president and governor to information about health resources and opportunities to ask questions of local and national health experts, ideastream is committed to providing you with all the information you need to know about COVID-19, as it happens. Visit www.ideastream.org/coronavirus for the latest.

This special coverage is made possible thanks to the support of our members. We're here for you, and we're here because of you​.

Gov. Mike DeWine and other state officials will provide their latest update on the COVID-19 pandemic for April  6, 2020. The press conference is scheduled for 2 p.m., but the actual start has often been later due to fast-changing circumstances.

Our priority is to provide trustworthy, up-to-date coverage that Northeast Ohioans can rely on, including stories that follow up on the daily press conference. As the pandemic continues, ideastream will share live briefings from DeWine online and on our broadcast channels, WVIZ/PBS, 90.3 WCPN and The Ohio Channel.

During these trying times, ideastream is dedicated to keeping you, the Northeast Ohio community, informed by providing trusted, up-to-date information that you need to know, as it happens.

From special coverage of briefings by the president and governor to information about health resources and opportunities to ask questions of local and national health experts, ideastream is committed to providing you with all the information you need to know about COVID-19, as it happens. Visit www.ideastream.org/coronavirus for the latest.

This special coverage is made possible thanks to the support of our members. We're here for you, and we're here because of you​.