Since 2021, legislators and school board members in Ohio have continuously introduced, proposed, or adopted a barrage of measures aimed at restricting what can be taught in K-12 and higher education institutions. This article contextualizes the attacks in Ohio on higher education specifically in a national and global context; closely analyzes the provisions of proposed Senate Bill 83, Ohio’s version of the educational gag order bills which have been enacted in some form already in over twenty-five states; and, by using Ohio as a case study of the state as a “laboratory of autocracy,” demonstrates how such legislation signals a dangerous slide toward subnational authoritarianism in the United States.