Extra! Extra! 12/31 🥂
Happy New Year's Eve!
Hi, all, and happy New Year’s Eve!
I hope you’re keeping well and enjoying these last moments of 2023.
Today’s collection of good news is slightly shorter than normal, not because fewer positive things happened over the week, but because some of my go-to sources are on vacation. This simply means that the next “Extra! Extra!” will be lengthier than usual. Yay!
Speaking of next week, I’ll be back to my regular posting schedule starting on Tuesday; frankly, I can’t wait. I’ve loved taking this long break and feel replenished by it, but I’ve also missed you, and missed doing the work.
Now onwards to the wins of the week! As always, I’ve placed an 🪓 next to every item that came about either with the help of people like you, or because of the work of lawmakers we helped elect.
Enjoy! These are the fruits of your labors!
Oh, and really—happy New Year. I can’t wait to spend 2024 saving democracy with you.
Read This 📖
Finding Light in Winter, a short essay on getting through darker days by Mary Pipher.
Six Reasons to be Optimistic About the Energy Transition by Canary Media.
13 Ways the World Got Better in 2023 from Time Magazine.
Celebrate This! 🎉
A federal administrative law judge in Colorado has ruled that Starbucks Workers United organizer Len Harris was illegally fired for organizing a union. The judge has ordered Starbucks to not only rehire her, but issue back pay and apologize.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that would have banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth in Ohio. 🪓
A federal appeals court denied Donald Trump’s request to halt proceedings in the upcoming E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill into law that changes the state’s election calendar so more local elections are timed with statewide races in an attempt to boost voter turnout. 🪓
The NY Supreme Court denied the Republican Party’s motion for a preliminary injunction in their challenge to New York State’s universal vote by mail law.
Maine’s Democratic secretary of state has declared Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency under the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment. 🪓
A federal judge rejected a request from Sen. Bob Menendez’s legal team to delay the start of his corruption trial by two months.
The country is on track for a record drop in homicides, and many other categories of crime are also in decline. 🪓
Dolly Parton called a terminally ill fan and sang to him, proving once again that she’s an amazing human being.
The world’s first sodium-powered electric vehicle will go on sale in January.
The woman who set fire to a Wyoming abortion clinic has been ordered to pay close to $300,000 in restitution.1
On the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act President Biden issued a proclamation both celebrating and promising to expand it. To state the obvious, this would not be happening under a Republican president. 🪓
The New York Times is suing tech companies for using its articles to train AI.
A federal judge in Idaho blocked the state’s felony ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors, finding that it is likely unconstitutional.
Opioid deaths saw an incredible deceleration in 2023 thanks to prevention success stories, particularly in the Northeast.2 🪓
U.S. retail sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 rose 3.1% compared with the same period last year.
The Chicago Catholic Church has announced that beginning in January, its nearly 400 parishes, schools, cemeteries and offices will switch to 100% renewable energy.
A huge new EV manufacturing plant backed by Ford is coming to West Tennessee, promising 6,000 good-paying jobs for local residents.
Lina Khan’s FTC won an important court fight over a merger. There were two other excellent rulings, too—one on crypto and one on private equity. According to
these cases are truly significant. Read more from him here. 🪓A federal judge has temporarily blocked key parts of an Iowa law that bans some books from school libraries and forbids teachers from raising LGBTQ+ issues.
California will welcome the new year by becoming the first state to offer health insurance for all undocumented immigrants. 🪓
A federal appeals court ruled that lawsuits against Donald Trump over the U.S. Capitol riot can move forward, rejecting the former president’s bid to dismiss the cases accusing him of inciting the violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
After receiving significant public backlash a conservative Missouri school board announced it would reinstate Black history classes it had voted a week earlier to remove. 🪓
Patients receiving a new mRNA vaccine for skin cancer are 49% less likely to experience recurrence or death a median of three years after treatment.
A federal appeals court cleared the way for a California law that bans the carrying of guns in most public places to take effect at the start of 2024, as the panel put on hold a judge's ruling declaring the measure unconstitutional.
Adam Kinzinger encouraged people to ‘wear a mask’ when they’re in the presence of former president Donald Trump due to his apparent odor of, well, excrement. #TrumpSmellsLikeA** proceeded to trend on X. It’s petty, vulgar, and beneath civilized people…but I’ll take anything that weakens Trump in the eyes of his followers.
Thank you for the steady doses of emotional vitamins, and may 2024 be wonderful to you, Ms. Craven!
Thank you, Jess -- and here's to a very Happy New Year! Two ideas for you to consider re: language choices.
1. Let's call the J6 "riot" an "insurrection." Several courts/judges have made this legal distinction, and insurrection doesn't downplay what happened into a "spontaneous unruly riot". I submit using "riot" plays into Trump/R hands that it wasn't planned. It clearly was engineered by Trump as central to his attempted coup (also a more accurate name instead of the namby-pamby "election interference").
2. Let's call "conservatives" the "extremists" they are. You could modify using "far-right", if you want. What the Missouri school board -- and too many extremist states -- is doing to citizens is extreme, hurtful and dangerous. It is not "conservative," and we fall into the R's trap. R desperately want to cast D's as profligate "liberals" who don't know the value of a dime and themselves as defenders of rational government. We know that's a lie, but it resonates with too many selfish and frightened voters. We should embrace our Big Tent philosophy that every starfish counts, and we can't let up on clearly calling out the stranglehold on too many Americans represented by R's.
Thanks for listening❣️