Extra! Extra! 1/11

Yes. Good things DID happen this week!

Spontaneous vigils popped up all over the country in the 24 hours after Renee Good was executed. I actually made the LA Times in this phot by Genaro Molina.

Hi, all, and happy Sunday!

It’s been a horrendous week, but you know what? This is one of the best good news roundups I’ve sent out in a while. A lot of really amazing things happened this week! This in no way makes ANYTHING else that happened less devastating, but it should at least remind us that good is also present, despite the absolute nightmare through which we’re living.

Remember, what we focus on tends to grow, so please take some time today to savor the many, many great things that happened this week amidst the noise and brutality.

I love you. We’ll get through this.

Talk tomorrow, friends.

Celebrate This! 🎉

A court has ordered $145 million in funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to immediately be released, allowing the agency to keep its doors open for the time being.

Congress is reversing Trump’s steep budget cuts to science. Some budgets may even increase slightly! Amazing!

A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing roughly $10 billion in federal funding for child care and social services destined for five Democratic-led states.

A broad coalition of groups across the country held a coordinated ICE Out For Good Weekend of Action this weekend to demand accountability, honor the lives lost to ICE, and make visible the human cost of ICE’s actions. I was at one. Were you?

The US House broke with Trump to pass a three year extension on the ACA subsidies. It now goes to the Senate, where there is at least a chance it will pass!

New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul announced a partnership with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to provide free child care for 2-year-olds in the city, with the state covering the full cost of the first two years of the initiative without raising any new taxes.

​Spotify confirmed ICE recruitment ads are no longer running on the platform. This may simply be because the campaign ended, so I’m not sure Spotify deserves plaudits here, but they could have re-upped the campaign and it appears they haven’t so I’m going to take it as a win.

For the fifth year in a row, U.S. teen drug and alcohol abuse rates declined, hitting a historic low.

Congestion Pricing in New York City has led to a measurable drop in traffic, and with it, a 22 percent decline in particulate pollution, according to a new study. Wow!

In one of her first acts as Mayor of Detroit, Mary Sheffield launched a program to financially support new mothers facing the high cost of taking care of children.

In two executive orders, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani targeted junk fees, hidden charges, and deceptive business practices in an effort to protect consumers.

A French ban on “forever chemicals” is now officially in effect. The ban targets a wide range of cosmetics and clothes and will also require French authorities to regularly test drinking water for all kinds of PFAS.

As part of “the most ambitious animal welfare strategy in a generation,” England will end the use of hen cages and pig farrowing crates, ban trail hunting and puppy farming, and more by 2030.

Avelo Airlines ceased deportation flights. They say it’s part of ‘streamlining its network’ but there isn’t a doubt in my mind that our protests and boycotts are behind this.

Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.

House Majority PAC, House Democrats’ main super PAC, and its associated nonprofit raised a combined $121 million in 2025, more than they have in any previous non-election year dating back to HMP’s 2011 founding.

The Tesla Diner in Los Angeles is officially a dud.

An associate professor of acting and directing at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee has been reinstated and awarded 500K following his removal over a social media post related to Charlie Kirk last fall.

Nina Simone’s childhood home has gotten a long-awaited rehabilitation and is now open for visitors as a museum and cultural center.

About 7,000 people helped Timothy Snyder raise more than $1 million for drone-jamming automobiles that are helping medics saving lives on the front in Ukraine.

$98 billion in planned AI data center development was derailed in a single quarter last year by community organizing and pushback, more than all disruptions tracked since 2023.

In 2025, for the fourth year in a row, the world’s biggest banks made more money on their renewables investments than they did working with fossil fuel companies.

Iowa is returning to the federal Summer EBT Program in 2026 after opting out last year in favor of a state-run alternative.

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill that would have allowed all complaints made to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to be appealed to state courts.

The U.S. Senate advanced a bipartisan War Powers Resolution 52-47 to block strikes on Venezuela without prior congressional approval. Last month, this same fight fell short by two votes in both the House and the Senate.

11 blue states have committed to filling in funding gaps created by the OBBBA which blocked federal Medicaid funding for reproductive health care services provided by Planned Parenthood and other organizations that also provide abortion care.

On January 1, because of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, the cost of some of the most expensive prescription drugs came down. Nine million seniors will save a total of $1.5 billion in annual out-of-pocket costs.

A federal judge ruled that John Sarcone, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, has been serving unlawfully for months. The decision makes him the fifth Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney deemed illegitimate by the federal courts during the president’s second term.

For the first time, California’s State Senate is being led by a woman of color.

A new internal GOP poll confirms Republicans are in deep trouble on health care. Only 38% of voters approve of his approach.

A second poll found that Trump’s popularity amongst young men is in free-fall, as many have turned their backs on the president for failing to deliver on a key campaign promise: lowering the cost of living.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) delivered one of the strongest rebukes yet to the DOJ’s attempt to seize voters’ private data, vowing the department would have to “put me in jail” before he would illegally hand over unredacted voter rolls.

Rep. Chuck Edwards’ (NC-11) hometown paper awarded the Republican its 2025 “Nothingburger” Award for putting out self-congratulatory press releases, despite failing to secure meaningful relief for his community after it was devastated by Hurricane Helene.

Missouri officials confirmed that roughly two-thirds of the more than 300,000 signatures submitted to block the state’s new GOP gerrymander are valid — far exceeding the number needed to force a referendum.

In a bipartisan effort, two U.S. lawmakers asked a federal judge to appoint an independent monitor to compel the DOJ to release the Epstein files.

White storks will return to London for the first time in over 600 years, marking an important milestone in urban rewilding. The majestic birds have been extinct as a breeding species in England since 1416.

While the Trump administration continued its attempts to whitewash history on the 5-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, NPR published a detailed archive of truthful information about the attacks.

Within hours of Trump saying he would be “honored” to receive María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Institute said its rules do not permit the passing on of its coveted prize to someone else.

Solar arrays provided more power to Texas’ standalone grid in 2025 than did coal-fired power plants, marking the first time that has happened.

A Democratic candidate in a South Carolina state House special election on Tuesday overperformed her 2024 results by more than 6 percentage points.

The Washington National Opera announced it will move its performances out of the Kennedy Center, abandoning the hall where it has played since 1971 in perhaps the largest artistic rebuke yet to Trump’s campaign to remake the Kennedy Center in his image.

According to a Republican legislative leader, the prospect of gerrymandering Kentucky’s congressional map to draw out its only Democrat in Washington is not going anywhere.

In a surprise move, senators of both parties agreed unanimously to erect a plaque honoring the officers who fought the mob at the Capitol on Jan, 6, 2021 — breaking from Trump’s false narrative about that day.

Jack Smith is going to get to testify publicly!

Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings publicly vowed to vote for whatever 2028 presidential candidate vowed to “prosecute” members of President Donald Trump’s “regime” in the next administration.

More than 1,000 companies are now reportedly suing the Trump administration over tariffs and demanding refunds

A leading Catholic paper branded JD Vance a “moral stain” and accused the vice president of having a “twisted and wrongheaded view of Christianity” for his comments on Renee Good.

Californians can now use a government website to request that certain companies stop selling their personal information online. The Drop website, which stands for the “Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform”, launched on New Year’s Day as part of a state law aimed at enhancing data privacy.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vetoed a bill passed by Congress cutting former President Jair Bolsonaro's 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election.

ICE’s approval rating has collapsed since Trump took office — from +16, according to YouGov/The Economist polling last February, to -14 as of November.

Democrats have retained two seats in Virginia's General Assembly after winning a pair of special elections by significant margins on Tuesday night.

Jimmy Kimmel won the Critics’ Choice Best Talk Show Award. In his acceptance speech he thanked Donald Trump, “without whom we would be going home empty-handed tonight.”

Visibility Brigade chapters did emergency actions across the country this weekend condemning Renee Good’s murder at the hands of ICE and honoring her name. AMAZING! (To see more check my Instagram feed—I posted a whole carousel of them!)