The Rooster's Greatest Hits of 2025
From Urban Meyer's latest scam to a State Senator's slave shackle, The Rooster had you covered in 2025. Here are the hardest-hitting dispatches, tweets, and short-form videos from the past 360 days.
The Rooster will celebrate its seventh(!) birthday in four days. Originally intended as a sports and culture newsletter, it’s since evolved into the largest independently owned media operation in Ohio politics.
We’ve arrived at a place where what’s bad for Ohio is good for business. And unfortunately, 2025 was another record-breaking year by any conceivable metric.
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And now, with the self-promotion out of the way, let’s get on with the show!
The Rooster’s hardest-hitting dispatches of 2025:
Righteous Buckeyes: The Life Surge scam taking America by storm.
The most-read dispatch of 2025, featuring Ohio State football legends attaching their name to a Christian-centered scam targeting the desperate and financially illiterate.
Inside Ohio Democrats’ redistricting heist.
Ohio Democrats brokered a favorable bipartisan map that seemed impossible before the state’s Congressional redistricting process kicked off. They could thank the Congressional ambitions of Senate President Rob McColley.
The Bitcoin commencement fiasco emails Ohio State didn’t want you to see.
Special Investigator Max Littman exposed Ohio State President Ted “Slapshot” Carter as the driving force behind the drug-fueled Bitcoin debacle that was the university’s 2024 commencement speech.
Embattled Buckeye beat writers face new allegations of pilfering pay from players.
Longtime Buckeye football beat writers Jeremy Birmingham and Austin Ward found themselves embroiled in a nasty legal dispute with a former employer, alleging the duo embezzled company money intended for former players.
Why is Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend still calling shots in Columbus?
The House Oversight Committee released documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein that showed Central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner wrote a bizarre and deeply perverted birthday card to the international sex trafficker for his 50th birthday.
Eden McKissick-Hawley, the former campaign manager for Jesse Vogel, sat down for an exclusive interview about the historic Columbus City Council District 7 race and what went wrong.
J.D. Vance’s little brother has a voter registration problem.
The Rooster broke the national news about Cory Bowman, the Republican mayoral nominee in Cincinnati, committing a light case of voter fraud while voting in the 2025 General Election.
Sherrod Brown shows he’s never had boss.
Sherrod Brown’s last pick to run the Ohio Democratic Party resigned under shady circumstances, and his new pick has a well-documented history of skipping work, degrading staffers, and other bizarre behavior.
The Rooster reported in September what national and local outlets confirmed in November: Central Ohio thong salesman Leslie Wexner is evading subpoena service from plaintiff lawyers in the Dr. Richard Strauss class action lawsuit against Ohio State.
This is what democracy looks like?
The psychotic nature of the Franklin County Democratic Party’s endorsement process was on display in a sweaty union hall in July.
Ohio State survivors turned up the heat on Leslie Wexner and Ohio State Board of Trustees chairman John Zeiger, who has long served as Wexner’s personal lawyer.
Ohio State caved to the woke mob, canceled planned moment of silence for Charlie Kirk.
The Rooster broke the news on the eve of Ohio State’s football game against Ohio University that the local land-grant university planned to observe a moment of silence for slain podcaster Charlie Kirk.
Special Investigator Max Littman confirmed last week that Ohio State scrapped the plan hours after The Rooster broke the news.
“There’s no answer that makes him look good.”
The Rooster broke the news about Ohio Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Vivek Ramaswamy illegally refunding roughly $175,000 in donations. Pending public records request will tell the full story, but for now, the consensus is that there is no plausible answer that will make the Ramaswamy campaign look competent.
Music Man moves on: Here’s Max Miller’s latest love interest.”
Congressman Miller’s new girlfriend is a professional bodybuilder who once confessed to being scared of living in Shaker Heights due to potential proximity to Black people.
The Rooster also broke the story about Miller enjoying the dulcet tones of Miguel, Jeremih and Usher when making love to women that, statistically speaking, will later accuse him of physical abuse.
Tiara Ross owes $3,795 in unpaid parking tickets on her suspended license.
Ross successfully defended her nascent City Council candidacy against our residency challenge, but the victory was short-lived as the hearing led to The Rooster exposing her reckless behavior behind the wheel of a 2024 Toyota Santa Fe.
The Rooster’s rules of engagement.
Critics often charge that The Rooster is left-wing activism masquerading as journalism. But the results justify the unorthodox tactics several times over.
About that Chinese spy, Fang Fang.
A chance encounter with former Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman led me to ask him if he had banged a Chinese spy named Fang Fang in a car.
“You’re an embarrassment to our party:” Everyone hated Josh Williams’ felony flag-planting bill.
State Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania) sparked nationwide, bipartisan blowback by wanting to criminalize flag-planting after college football games. His promise to pursue the legislation in the 136th General Assembly hasn’t materialized, either.
No one man should have all that power.
A public records request for every State Representatives’ communications involving the word “Rooster” showcased the power of typing deranged sentences into the internet.
What do Columbus residents gain from elected officials taking free propaganda trips to Israel?
Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce did the Zionist movement no favors when asked about his free trip to the apartheid state.
The Rooster’s most viral tweets & short-form videos of 2025
A couple of hours after this tweet, Politico attempted to pass off their story as an “exclusive.” Not so fast, my friends!
Speaking of “Exclusives,” not sure Axios did their readers any favors by taking Donald Trump’s Justice Department at face value in a report that seemed suspect in July and has only looked more laughable since.
An Ohio State fan thought putting Jeffrey Epstein in a Michigan jersey was a good idea. That, uh, ignores some unfortunate history for our local football program.
You have to hand it to Senator Kristina Roegner: She somehow made herself look worse in an interview that happened a week after The Rooster broke this news.
The photo that sent summer shockwaves through Ohio politics. And in retrospect, the moment that put Sherrod Brown on the path of choosing to run for Senate rather than governor of Ohio, which I’ll forever contend was a mistake.
When did dinosaurs go extinct?
The scientific consensus is that dinosaurs went extinct roughly 65 million years ago. Multiple Ohio State legislators, however, believe that only happened 2,000 years ago.
Meatball Ron comes to Ohio, can’t avoid the Thunderdome
I take perverse satisfaction in knowing that Speaker Matt Huffman had to brief Governor Ron DeSantis’ security team about my presence before they held a propaganda event at the Statehouse over the summer.
The hunt for Little Leslie Wexner
The Rooster got more Central Ohio politicians on the hook about Leslie Wexner in one week than has happened in this god-forsaken city in over 40 years.
Franklin County Commissioner John O’Grady will thank me in the long run for badgering him into repudiating Wexner’s past donations, a position to which I’ll hold him to account in 2026.
Say, who paid for that trip to Japan, anyway?
If Franklin County Commissioners visiting Japan was so vital to the economic success of Central Ohio, why didn’t they advertise it on social media?
The Rooster is still awaiting the expense reports from that critical economic mission.
Governor DeWine can neither confirm nor deny he’s old texting buddies with Ohio’s premier sewer blogger
I don’t think Governor DeWine appreciated my joke that he was the source that allowed The Rooster to break the details about Ohio’s newest Congressional maps.
This operation is compromised when it comes to our coverage of the old man. But hopefully, we can spin that favoritism into a sit-down interview late next year that will get Ohio’s political perverts chattering.
THOSE WMDs. Playing Santa does strange things to a man… They cashed in on young workers they were supposed to protect… NFL owner secretly relapsed before death, got ketamine from private doctor… How the phone ban saved high school… Chipwrecked: Can Nvidia avoid the crash?
Is that Britney Spears in the meme at the end?