This news organization endorsed Dr. Amy Acton for Governor of Ohio. Four days before the polls close, we have one more observation about her opponent: by the plain language of the national-security memo signed by the president whose name he prints on every mailer, Vivek Ramaswamy may meet the definition of the people that memo tells federal agents to investigate.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a Hindu. He has said so proudly and often. That is his right. It is also relevant. On September 25, 2025, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” Written in the weeks after the murder of Charlie Kirk, it orders the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the Attorney General, Treasury, and IRS to investigate, prosecute, and financially dismantle networks it blames for political violence.
The memo lists the “common threads” that animate the violence it targets: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; “extremism on migration, race, and gender”; and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” It does not define how an agent is to distinguish a bomb-thrower from someone whose religious views simply do not match the president’s. Critics at the Brennan Center, the ACLU, and elsewhere immediately warned that the language could sweep in “those who criticize Christianity” and anyone the administration decides is “anti-American.”
Ramaswamy is not a Christian. By the memo’s own terms, non-Christianity sits on the list of common threads. A man who wants to command every state trooper in Ohio, appoint the superintendent of the State Highway Patrol, and oversee Ohio Homeland Security and the state’s fusion center has accepted and campaigned on the “Complete and Total Endorsement” of the president who wrote that list. He has said nothing about what the language means for people of minority faiths—including himself, his parents, or his neighbors. For a candidate who once called the FBI “toxic” and demanded it be shut down over reports of informants inside Catholic churches, the silence is telling. The difference is who signed this memo.
By the very definition the president put on paper, Ramaswamy’s recent conduct supplies another marker. He spent $4 million to air an ad that weaponized Dr. Acton’s estranged mother—Donna Arthur—to call her daughter a lifelong liar and urge voters to reject her. Acton has long described being removed from her mother’s custody at age 12 after her stepfather was indicted for sexually abusing her; she has not seen her mother since. Court records and her brother’s statements corroborate the basic facts of the childhood she has discussed for years. The ad treats that history as a political weapon and uses the mother who sided against her as the messenger. That is the use of personal trauma and contested claims to influence an election. Under a memo that treats hostility to traditional American views on family, religion, and morality—and organized efforts to change political outcomes through intimidation and dehumanization—as indicators worth investigating, the tactic fits the description the president himself supplied. Ramaswamy is therefore not qualified for the office under the standard his own endorser wrote.
President Trump has made Christianity central to his public identity. He walks on stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” as a matter of routine. He has promoted a God Bless the USA Bible. He issued an executive order aimed at eradicating anti-Christian bias in government. He has treated Christian identity and traditional religious views as core to the American project. A Hindu candidate who accepts that president’s endorsement while the same president’s national-security memo lists anti-Christianity among the common threads of domestic terrorism has chosen the political benefit over the principle.
Don’t blame us. We voted for the Christian. Dr. Acton has faced armed protesters at her home and has not asked the government to treat political opponents as terrorists. She has drawn the line at conduct, not creed. Ramaswamy has had more than a year to address a memo that, on its face, places a question mark over his own faith and over the tactics he has used. He has not. Our endorsement of Dr. Amy Acton stands. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
Editorials represent the institutional opinion of Scioto Valley Guardian and Clermont Guardian, NewsPatrol, Inc. news organizations.
