Rooster in Review: Republican-on-Republican violence!!!

Plus, a second Ohio man has been accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Former State Rep. Derek Merrin, a man who would ban abortion tomorrow in Ohio if it were up to him.

I had lunch with a political friend in Washington D.C. in March, and he commented that it’s “great for [me]” that Republican operatives use The Rooster as a clearinghouse to air the opposition research.

I’m not sure why legacy media refused to touch body camera footage of State Rep. Josh Williams getting charged with DUI on a golf cart on Put-in-Bay in 2022, when he was a first-time political candidate.

Just because it was being shopped by former State Rep. Derek Merrin, who will announce his candidacy for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District on Monday morning, doesn’t change the facts of the case. Nor does Williams’ successfully lawyering his way to a lesser charge alter anything that happened in the video, which shows him inebriated on something, whether it’s alcohol as the police alleged or “blood thinners” as Williams laughably claimed.

Oh well! Not my problem. I’ll publish something like that every time because Republican-on-Republican violence is one of my favorite genres of pornography.

I asked Williams how he might retaliate against Merrin. For example, what did he think of the longstanding rumors that Merrin, an anti-LGBTQ warrior during his legislative career, is actually a closeted gay man in reality?

Williams acknowledged the rumors “have always been there,” but that he wouldn’t push the issue, except, apparently, while talking to me:

The gloves are off in the Ninth District before either candidate has officially declared! And we love that, don’t we, folks?

As always… I encourage representatives of Williams and Merrin to contact me with anything the public deserves to know about either of these men, who apparently won’t be satisfied until they’re a backbencher in the United States Congress.

Meanwhile, in the Ohio House 96th District, State Rep. Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville) has finally come to terms with what The Rooster originally reported in December: That he would face a primary challenge from former state senator Frank Hoagland (R-Adena).

Hoagland is officially launching his campaign next month:

I pride myself on being an intense guy at the Statehouse. But Hoagland is perhaps the only person that I’ve ever met on Capitol Square that can match that intensity, which makes sense, because while he didn’t cut his teeth in EverQuest forums during his formative years like I did, he served decades as a NAVY Seal fighting America’s failed Drug War in South American jungles.

He’ll pose quite the threat to Rep. Ferguson, who, thankfully for him, will have an unaccountable, multi-million-dollar web of dark money at his back.

I asked Ferguson about the challenge on Wednesday, and he noted that Hoagland, while in the State Senate, co-sponsored red flag gun legislation and voted to raise Ohio’s gas tax as well as the corrupt HB-6 scheme:

Ferguson can also say what he wants. Multiple House sources informed The Rooster that Hoagland is only running because he got the blessing of Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who, in my opinion, has a lot of questions to answer about his whereabouts on April 19, 1995.

Ferguson has boasted about his efforts to unseat several former colleagues from the 135th General Assembly, and it would appear the chickens have come home to roost, with Speaker Huffman signing what could be the death warrant of Ferguson’s political career.

It’s early in the game, but this might be the most brutal Republican primary of the 2026 election cycle.

This week on Ohio Man…

Vincent Nzigiyimfura

I am about as pro-immigration as possible. Open-border immigration policies almost quite literally built this country.

But I am sensible enough to realize that the inevitable bad apple will wash onto our shores. And, while I’m always willing to grant a second or third or fourth chance to those who have earned it, I will make an exception if that alleged crime is participating in a genocide.

From Richard Pollina of the New York Post:

An Ohio man who is suspected of orchestrating mass killings during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has been arrested for allegedly lying on his US immigration papers to conceal his heinous crimes.

Vincent Nzigiyimfura, 65, was nabbed in Dayton on June 12 after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of visa fraud and two counts of attempted naturalization fraud, according to the US Department of Justice.

“As alleged, Vincent Nzigiyimfura directed and encouraged murders during the genocide in Rwanda and then lied to US authorities to start a new life in this country,” The head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, Matthew Galeotti, said.

What’s crazy is that this is the second alleged participant in the Rwandan genocide who got pinched in Ohio.

Back in 2024, Homeland security arrested Eric Tabaro Nshimiye, an Ohio resident whom authorities said “raped and murdered” during the genocide.

Apologies to these men… but they’re going to have to do time for that crime.

This week in The Rooster…

Photo by Frames For Your Heart on Unsplash

It should have only been a three-dispatch week at Rooster Worldwide LLC in honor of Juneteenth, but we got an emergency dispatch through the wire on Wednesday evening to complete a full schedule.

• The best we got. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer schlepped to Columbus to fête Sherrod Brown on running for Senate instead of governor. It’s an indictment of the Ohio Democratic Party that a 72-year-old who lost to a Bitcoin aficionado is seen as the only prize candidate in the state.

• “Surviving Ohio State” should end Jim Jordan’s political career. The George Clooney-produced documentary lays bare the human devastation that Ohio State did nothing about during Dr. Richard Strauss’ 30-year reign of terror. It should end Jordan’s career. Will it? I’m skeptical!

• The Josh Williams DUI golf cart footage is here. Josh Williams is announcing his run for Congress on Monday, but that might not have been possible if he hadn’t managed to keep a 2022 DUI golf cart arrest on Put-in-Bay out of the press as a first-time candidate.

• Republicans go for the throat. Congresswomen Emilia Sykes and Marcy Kaptur should probably be updating their résumés, because the Ohio Republican junta is planning to kick them to the curb in the next round of redistricting set to kick off later this summer.

We’ll do it again at the same time and place next week.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. The rise of end times fascism… Dead of AIDs and forgotten in a potter’s field… The quest to defend against tech in intimate partner violence… How Mark Zuckerberg unleashed his inner brawler… The encyclopedia of the missing… Have you seen this crocodile? A cold-blooded serial killer is on the loose.