Morales fights back against allegations.

Braun ponders property tax solutions and a freedom of speech win for a Ball State professor.

From the television studios at WFYI Public Media.

It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending May 29th, 2026.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey.

Secretary of State Diego Morales is pushing back on allegations of wrongdoing within his office, as the Republican race for Secretary of State heats up.

Ben Thorp reports Morales responds to the claims as he continues to lose support from within the party.

Indiana State Treasurer last week called for Morales to resign, citing a constant stream of controversy and alleging Morales former chief of staff was a, quote, non-citizen and illegally registered to vote.

He said Morales actions had weakened Indiana's Republican Party.

Morales responded Tuesday with a long statement about his former chief of staff situation, saying she was legally authorized to work in his office and had been approved by the Indiana State Personnel Department.

In a statement, Morales called any suggestion his chief of staff was not legally authorized to work, quote, uninformed and irresponsible.

Morales has also repeatedly been reaching out to delegates defending his reputation.

There are currently three other Republicans vying for the party nomination for Secretary of State.

The convention is June 20th.

Has Morales done enough to defend himself?

It's the first question for our Indiana Week in Review panel.

Democrat Ann Delaney.

Republican Mike O'Brien.

Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief at Indiana Capital Chronicle.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

So, Mike, well, enough Republicans still back Morales in this race?

I don't think so.

But that convention hall is screwy.

thinking it can go you can get goofy on.

You're pretty quick, especially with four candidates in the race.

And then you're, you know, people are falling off and they're pushing.

They're trying to push their delegates to other candidates.

And there's that kind of trade between votes that that's happening kind of in real time on the floor.

You try to like game that out as much as you can.

But but it's impossible because no one's honest with you about who they're actually supporting.

So.

then you know that that's bipartisan.

So so we're going to see I do think I need to say a couple things.

One, I think Jim Banks is is beginning to kind of position himself as almost like the party leader in the absence of a visible party leader that's really been out front trying to manage some of these moving parts.

so that's positive.

And, and I've said this before.

One of my biggest frustrations inside of party right now is this assumption that when you come out of the primary, that it's just an annoyance to to elected office.

You don't you you don't even need to think really about the general election.

And that's not true.

And and that's a that is a dangerous mentality.

But so that I liken this is that they're looking at Diego and they're looking at this like ever growing list of things that Anns going to put in a commercial in the fall, and saying, hey, we need we need a better candidate.

Not only is not only size up against what is going to be a very well-funded, very well organized, big name Democrat, but to administer the office and to not have to wake up every day and go, you hired who you spent money out of what fund?

For what purpose?

You know, So I do I appreciate that very much that we're that as a party.

We're starting to think, hey, we can't just, like, nominate whatever yahoo out of the primary we think is, is is not only because they might lose in the fall, but they're incapable of governing.

And it's and it's a complete sideshow all the time.

And that's why I've, I've never seen I've never seen two endorsements drop the entire congressional delegation line up behind them all.

Then Elliot, the other statewide elected official, come out and yeah, are you against and you've got you've got other quality candidates.

Max Englling is a good is a great guy.

and a great staffer for Banks.

but David Shelton's like to his credit, has also I think the convention crowd very much puts a premium and a value on.

He's been out there for months and months.

He's sitting in their living rooms asking for their vote, explaining what he's going to do as secretary of state.

He's a county clerk, so you literally can administer the office, understands what the duties are.

there's a real value on that, I think, for, for convention goers.

And so I think Diego's got a got a pretty steep hill to climb.

Got some work to do.

Well.

And there are sort of a laundry list of, incidents that Morales has been involved in over the last couple of years.

You know, the latest one that he's responding now to was with involving his chief of staff.

Is this just another mark that maybe broke the camel's back?

They knew when they nominated him that he was a liability and they didn't care.

And they've known for the last three years that is incapable of administering the office.

And they didn't care.

The only thing that's changed here is.

That we care.

Now, is that Jim Banks wants to control the Republican Party in Indiana.

So he's running his staff people for various offices against incumbent Republicans Liz Brown, Victoria Spartz in that.

You know, he's doing that.

And now he's doing it to Diego because he wants to control.

And I assume since he's now in cahoots with, with Todd Rokita, who doesn't do anything with an altruistic motive, that they've already decided that Rokita will challenge Braun in the primary and he'll have Banks, backing and and, Todd Young, who obviously sees himself in the crosshairs because he's on advertising in two years in advance of his his race.

So I don't know what they're going to do.

They didn't know what they were going to do, all the faults or the major faults that they ignored when they nominated him were blatantly apparent 14 months ago when my husband cross-examined him.

That didn't cause any outrage.

All of them endorsed him.

All of them endorsed him.

They were 100% behind him as of two weeks ago, and now all of a sudden, everything's changed.

I, you know, I, I don't think they can control what happens in that convention.

And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's that was absurd, because you wouldn't you wouldn't have had him and you wouldn't have had Beckwith, who's every bit as bad literally overnight.

but we, you know, did reads from your outlet this week about, some of those, improper use of funds.

I mean, this has been ongoing for a while.

Yeah.

I mean, he's had a number of questionable bowl issues happened.

The latest that we reported on were, you know, large raises for everyone in his office, which, of course, give me a raise is not a bad thing.

But, you know, six, 7% raises when state employees aren't getting any raises is is a question.

we had another no big contract with, you know, to a donor, and we're using restitution fund money to pay for that.

And so, you know, there's there's plenty to look at in the terms of how he's administratively running that office.

And, Jon, when we do, you know, head up to Fort Wayne for the Republican convention in June, Mike makes a good point.

I mean, there a there's a lot of candidates that may have already, you know, knocked on a lot of doors, made a lot of phone calls.

This race could be a little messy.

Oh, I think it will be.

And you don't have the kind of credible polling that you would in a general election, a non convention, race where at least you have some sense and you can apply weighting factors and get a little bit of a sense.

This isn't that.

But I do think you look at what's unprecedented here, and that is just how many.

Yes.

You've you've had races where a lot of people are going at each other and a lot of turmoil, in it leading up to a, a convention, but I don't recall ever so many statewide elected officials, prominent statewide elected.

Officials, a governor.

With the exception of the governor.

If he endorses someone, he'll.

Lose, coming out and saying, you know, not only do I want in the case of Dan Elliott, the state treasurer, not only do I want you not to get the nomination, but I want you to leave office now, that to me, is a little different from what we've seen in the past.

So even though I've, stipulated I'm willing to throw every bit of precedent and what we used to, how things operated in the world of normal out the window.

I'm going to hold on to this thread of normalcy, perhaps, and think that he does.

In fact, as Mike suggests, have a steep hill to climb.

Well, my understanding is that, he was, asked to step down, but did we really think that he would do that?

And was that a surprise that he did not know?

I don't know anyone beyond Dan Elliott that have seen to step down.

And there was somebody else.

I missed it.

He ended it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, she was more.

Than that here in Nashville as to that.

Convention and on the ballot in November is what that means, right?

no, I'm not surprised he didn't he didn't step down.

We'll see where it's held in two weeks.

It's going to be fun to watch.

Well, Indiana homeowners could see more property tax changes in the future.

Mike Murrell reports.

Governor Mike Braun says the state's latest tax relief law may only be the beginning.

Governor Mike Braun says he wants Indiana lawmakers to continue pursuing property tax relief next year, especially for seniors and homeowners living on fixed incomes.

During a state House event Wednesday, Braun signed legislation aimed at lowering property taxes while also calling for additional reforms to Indiana's property assessment system.

The governor says rising home values have pushed tax bills higher across the state, even for residents who have already paid off their homes.

Braun says he wants lawmakers to explore new ways to protect longtime homeowners from sharp increases in assessed values.

The newly signed law also expands property tax relief for disabled veterans and some surviving spouses.

So Ann should lawmakers consider more permanent tax relief solutions, especially for saying.

We have cut all the taxes with the exception of the sales tax?

Now, those of us who have been around a while remember that the sales tax was raised to the highest in the country, the most regressive of all the taxes.

Okay, in order to fund property tax relief.

And here we are again.

So I you know, I think the impact of this last thing is minimal.

And it's not going to be felt next year.

But the proposal that the governor put forward to have no new have no property tax on senior citizens is so poorly thought through that I can't begin to think that he's serious about it, because the repercussions that's going to cause are tremendous.

I mean, people turn over their houses and sell their houses as they get older for a variety of reasons.

Property tax may be one of them, but it's also that the house is too big.

They want something on one floor.

They want to go in assisted living.

Lots of different reasons.

And what we're doing here is freeze framing them so young people won't have the opportunity to buy those houses.

What this is going to do to schools and streets is beyond me, because he's not, of course, proposed anything that's going to make up the difference in this.

And it has no regard.

I mean, his estate down in southern Indiana would pay no property taxes.

I'd love to know what his property tax bill is now that he's forgiving himself as he puts the road to nowhere in front of it, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So it's really very poorly thought through.

I don't think it goes anywhere in the legislature, because the when you start to look at what it does to communities, communities encourage senior development because they don't put up a problem for schools, they don't create a problem for schools, and they have a property tax base.

Now you're going to take that away and all of a sudden the zoning is going to change.

It's it's absolutely so poorly thought through that I wonder if he ever took an economics course in his life.

What is something that seemed like he was just kind of throwing some ideas at the wall there and maybe, maybe, This is this.

Isn't a real fix for the property tax issue.

No, and I don't I don't think there's any certainly there's demand for this.

I'm sure people over the age of 65 would love to not pay any property taxes.

But we thought of this.

This isn't a new idea either.

When you were doing property tax reform 18, 19 years ago, the far right, especially, Advanced America member Eric Mellon, those guys they wanted if you paid wasn't just seniors.

If you paid your house off, they argued you should have to pay property taxes ever again.

ignoring that you'd still like the ambulance to show up.

Know, you know, at the street be was greater than the fire truck.

Put the house fire out.

so it ignores that.

And like, there's always this push and pull on this conversation between, like, people over the age of 65.

And so my kids aren't in the school system.

It's like, well, yeah, but you're way more likely than I am to have an ambulance.

I need an ambulance here, and you need the money to pay for that, right?

So we abandoned that idea if we if it was ever entertained.

Seriously, we obviously it was never it was never taken up because it doesn't work.

And I'm, I'm and I if we're going to start cutting deals on property taxes for entire populations of people, it shouldn't be the ones with the most money, right?

They're sitting on all the money and it's all in their house.

And I and you may not want to sell the house cause that's where the kids grew up.

But go cash that check, right?

Because you bought the house for 50 grand 40 years ago, and now it's worth 600, and you're and you're sitting you are sitting on a much bigger property tax bill.

You also said a lot of wealth, you know, and that's not the crowd we need to start with unless it is extremely means tested and only for those people who actually are going to lose their.

I really have that a little bit now with all the exemptions and all you have, you really have to get up to like, I don't know, somewhere around 150 or 160,000 before you pay any property tax.

Well, the governor also brought up a lot about, you know, the assessment process as well.

Is that a significant part of this?

Yeah, I have to be honest, when our reporter came back and said what he said, we were pretty surprised.

I kind of I wonder if he was just sort of spitballing a little.

And, you know, maybe he hasn't caught up with the fact that reporters tell you he's the governor, anything he says they're going to take as a very serious proposal.

And I think it was more just sort of talking about options or ideas.

I think the assessment is far more likely to be something they look at more strongly for, you know, another round of help or relief or reform, because everyone has seen their assessments, like my assessment last year only went up a little and we thought, oh, we're slowing down that big, you know, like climb we had seen after the pandemic.

And then this year it skyrocketed again.

And so, I think there's probably a lot more room on that side than just exempting one taxpayer of or another because you're just shifting that cost to someone else.

And this, of course, is all the result of the one that, impacted the property.

And we're seeing we're.

Still feeling the effects.

We're not sure that really has come to fruition fully in terms of the spigot.

And the funds, I. Think will typically flow school referendums.

And.

All right, we're already seeing some of the pain and we'll see more.

Nobody likes to pay taxes.

You know it's it surprise, surprise.

So what.

It's not surprising in this day and age where people will just sort of throw out these notions like, I'm going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

and in some ways, I'm not saying the governor's doing this, but oftentimes when you do have outrageous, impractical proposals, you're in, you're kind of thinking and in the back pocket, this will never happen because it simply can't, it'll be voted down.

But we've seen a lot of elected officials who will trumpet and advocate for crazy ideas so they can still be the champion, the standard bearer for said idea.

They actually do it.

Well, no, you should take it seriously.

It doesn't happen because.

Of property tax reform.

But he did it well in this I think, you're not picking up on my not so subtle, I guess, or maybe two subtle references to various people in in government.

We'll talk afterwards, but, well, it's I don't think it's this can happen.

I don't think it will happen or can happen.

for all the reasons that have been articulated, there's just too much at stake here.

Government does need to function.

And, so, but it's not going to prevent people in the coming session from promising, you know, heaven and earth and the moon to, to give people relief.

Never mind.

We'd still have a cap on assessed valuation, which is lower than a lot of people on the East Coast and West Coast pay.

And I've said again and again, not comforting to have your cousin in LA or your uncle in New York, in Manhattan and say, well, I'm paying a lot less, you know, but it is the fact of the matter with the cap on our rate, correct.

Once us value, that's, well.

1% of assessed value at 1% of your primary residence.

Time.

Now for our for your feedback.

Every week we pose an unscientific online poll question.

And this week's question, should property tax relief be expanded to all seniors?

Vote yes or no?

The last question posed to viewers will the newly backed Republican candidate for Secretary of State, Max Englling, beat out Diego Morales, 76% saying yes and 24% answering no.

If you would like to take part in the poll, go to WFYI.org/IWIR and look for the poll.

Some details of a settlement have been made public between Ball State University and an employee of the school, fired for social media comments on Charlie Kirk's death.

As Stephanie Wiechmann reports.

The school is also commenting on the situation.

Suzanne Swierc sued Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns after her firing for an online post that pointed to the, quote, violence, fear and hatred.

Kirk sowed the case.

The settlement was first announced in early April, but some details now come in a statement from the ACLU, which represented Swierc.

According to the ACLU, the university will pay her $225,000.

Swierc's lawyers have said she was not asking for her job back, as Swierc doesn't feel Ball State was a place she could work at again.

When asked for comment, Ball State sent an email from Mearns that had been sent to university leaders.

Mearns explained at length why he believes he had the legal authority and professional responsibility to fire Swierc.

He said her post was, quote, extraordinarily damaging to our university's reputation and image.

So, Niki, do you think that sets a precedent for freedom of speech issues at universities?

Well, I think it certainly points out you know, that, you know, they were kind of in trouble.

You know, there are limits on whether you can fire someone for private speech on her private Facebook post.

Again, another thing that's important about this issue, someone screenshotted it and made it public, but she didn't.

you know, this is not the same as if, you know, your doctor's office down the street does something to a nurse.

Those are different rules, but these are public entities.

And whether you can, you know, basically be retaliated against for your private, you know, freedom of speech.

And so, you know, I think they didn't want this to drag on and they certainly say or content that they're saving money on attorneys fees.

But look, you know, she's going to pocket three times what her annual salary was.

So tax free.

Were you surprised by the university president's, response to the settlement, Jon?

I'm surprised that he took the action he took in the first place.

Yeah.

He's not a you know, his background is academic.

Background is not in medieval scholarship or medieval studies or the or the antiquities.

He was a lawyer.

He was a law school dean earlier in his career.

So to me, when you talk about precedent, yeah, there's precedent.

But it wasn't set by this.

It was set a long time ago.

And I'm no lawyer, but I know enough to know that this was a slam would have been a slam dunk.

And if she had wanted to contest this and in a court, rather than just a court of public opinion, it might have been even uglier for Ball State.

And and you don't have to just say this instance is pretty clear cut.

This is happening all over the country.

Lots of people who took strong and ultimately unconstitutional stands against free speech are paying the price now millions of dollars across the country.

So I don't know if it's precedent as much as, gee, lesson learned.

This was obvious from the outset.

Maybe now you'll think twice before you try it again.

I think the precedent ought to be that if you're the, the president of a public institution and you get an opinion letter from the attorney general of the state of Indiana, you ought to get legal counsel.

Right, because the bill should be sent to Rokita.

Well, I. Wasn't law school dean, but by also point out I have before letters.

Relied on Rokita.

I have nothing against medieval studies or antiquities.

Okay.

They both play a great part in the academy, so I don't want any angry medieval scholar.

Workforce from those, because that's the only thing that higher education is supposed to be.

For.

Hey, what's all this new again?

So antiquities and medieval studies.

Yeah.

The hot new thing.

When this had happened last year, Mike, I mean, it was it happened so quickly and it was it did seem like a bit of a knee jerk reaction when the backlash was so significant.

But as Jon mentioned, now we're seeing, you know, it play out in the courts.

is this a warning to other universities to maybe not be so quick to action?

Yes.

And, but it should also be a warning to people to just put the phone down and stop celebrating the death or attempted murder of elected officials.

I mean, this shouldn't be hard or political figures.

I don't think anybody celebrating the death.

I think there was a condemnation.

Of.

Condemnation of the death in this.

There were people celebrating the Republican dominance in this, in this one instance, what it's on the other side is the same formula.

None of it's okay.

And I think that's that's got to be part of the lesson here.

It's like, maybe I should turn the Facebook off.

Maybe I'll go have a conversation with my family about what I think the impact on the political system or the party or an election or whatever is.

But I struggle.

I actually do struggle with this because I have one hand.

I'm like, yeah, I can.

I can't say whatever I want while I'm sitting here and not have a client sit there and look at it and go, you know, I don't need that guy represent me.

Right.

and that's fair enough.

So we all need to be cognizant of, hey, you know, like, yeah, I can go, I can go pop off and say whatever I want, and I've got the freedom to do that and I shouldn't.

I'm not going to be thrown in prison.

That doesn't mean there's going to be a consequence that a friend alienates me, or a client fires me, or there's some consequence.

The repercussions.

There should be a consequence.

From a public institution, or.

Should there be a consequence for Rokita for stirring the pot in the first place and giving an opinion election that could be fired without consequence.

That speak out on social media?

Well, saying things that maybe, Like our president who is the war is over, the war on the wars over the words on I can't keep it straight.

I'm sorry.

Should I just sit down with our families?

Well, two people who helped lead a pair of troubled virtual schools faced federal criminal charges for an alleged scheme to defraud the state.

Dylan Peers McCoy reports.

This trial is scheduled for July.

After months of delays.

The U.S.

attorney for the Southern District alleges that Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy improperly collected tens of millions of dollars in public funding by inflating enrollment.

The government charged three people involved with the schools.

One pleaded guilty last year.

School founder Thomas Stoughton and director Phillip Holden turned down plea agreements.

The trial has been rescheduled three times, but a legal expert told WFYI another delay appears unlikely.

Holden's attorney, Jon Little, told WFYI that his client is innocent.

Stoughton's attorney and the U.S.

Attorney's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

So, Jon, what kind of guardrails exist to make sure this type of fraud doesn't happen?

Well, there are rules in place.

They've been put in place in recent years about, synchronous, teaching.

You have to have some actual classroom instruction.

You can't just let it be independent.

There are audits.

And in fact, it was a state Board of Accounts audit that brought this to light in the first place.

So you also there's a prohibition on giving perks or hey, you want a gift card if you enroll in my school or put your kids in my school.

Can't do that.

However, in this situation, what's alleged is you had not only fraud in terms of inflation, of the number of enrollees in students, but also then you had people writing checks from the school coffers to companies that were essentially controlled by or at the very least, related to the principals of those schools that would not get caught up, necessarily detected in in the kind of framework we're talking about.

But thankfully, if in fact, that's what happened, it did, trigger, the good folks, the, the eyes and ears of the good folks at the State Board of Accounts.

Well, and this has been going on for quite a while now through the court system, but it is one of the largest school scheme, actions of.

The Republican entrepreneurship at work.

You know, let's make a profit from education if you want, if you want to, if you want to shut down and make sure it doesn't happen again, you shut down virtual schools.

You have rooms where people can come in and see how many children are there on any given day, like we've always done.

And you'll you'll solve it.

Otherwise there'll be an end run around it by some other entrepreneurial Republican looking to make a buck.

entrepreneur.

What criminal.

Republic?

Finally figure it out in the courts.

Hopefully.

Well, thats Indiana Week in Review for this week.

Our panel has been Democrat Ann Delaney.

Republican Mike O'Brien, Jon Schwantes host of Indiana lawmakers and Niki Kelly, editor in chief, Indianapolis of Indiana Capital Chronicle.

You can find Indiana Week in Reviews podcasts and episodes at WFYI.org/IWIR or on the PBS app.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

Join us next time, because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey.