Extra! Extra! 1/29
Hi, all.
It’s been another really, really hard week. As such, it seems wrong to celebrate anything—yet we can’t always be staring at the problem. Not if we plan to stay in this fight longterm. So please accept this momentary diversion from all of the awfulness to consider what also went OK this week. There happens to be a lot of it.
Enjoy, and above all take care of yourselves. The pain of this moment is real. But we’ll live through it—we must—and keep working to notch more wins.
Which we will. As long as we stick together and don’t quit.
So that’s what we’ll do.
Read This 📖
I’m assuming many of you read this (and watched the accompanying videos), but if you didn’t, do yourself a favor—you’ll thank me.
Celebrate This! 🎉
An Arkansas man who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and was photographed lounging at a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite was convicted Monday of eight federal crimes related to the incursion.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would put $490 million toward mitigating the risk of wildfires in 11 fire-prone landscapes across Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
The FDA now no longer requires all drugs be tested on animals before human trials.
Sierra Leone’s president has signed a “landmark” bill into law that will increase the number of women in positions of power, require companies to provide equal pay, and offer workers more protections against gender-based discrimination.
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that her Republican predecessor’s election fraud unit would refocus on protecting voter access and combating voter suppression.
Massachusetts lawmakers have introduced several proposals to end felony disenfranchisement through a state constitutional amendment.
Minnesota Democrats, newly in the majority, have introduced a bill to legalize marijuana, erase past convictions and prioritize marginalized communities for cannabis licenses.
The U.K. has already set both annual and instantaneous wind energy generation records this month. Wind generation has consistently accounted for more than 50% of British electricity, and gas is barely getting out of single digits.
Cape Verde, a 10-island archipelago off the western coast of Africa, has reached a deal with the European country of Portugal to exchange millions of dollars in national debt for investments in a new climate and environmental fund.
The Fender’s blue butterfly, found only in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, is moving off the endangered species list.
Wisconsin now has its first openly LGBTQ+ cabinet secretary.
Black workers, young workers, and people on the lowest rungs of the income ladder were among those who saw the largest pay increases last year.
Trump withdrew a second lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
New data released this week showed that in this year’s open enrollment period, a record-breaking 16.3 million Americans signed up for affordable health care through the Affordable Care Act.
A new report finds that the U.S. economy grew by 2.1 percent in 2022, notching six months of solid growth.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted this past Tuesday to approve an ordinance that will prohibit new oil and gas extraction activities and phase out existing oil drilling in unincorporated Los Angeles County.
The lone Republican attempt of the 2023 General Assembly session to repeal a law allowing Virginia’s participation in a regional carbon cap and invest program was killed in a Senate committee Tuesday.
The Biden administration reinstated the roadless rule in the Tsongas National Forest.
Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will no longer be forced to abstain from sex to donate blood under federal guidelines to be proposed in coming days, ending a vestige of the earliest days of the AIDS crisis.
The Biden administration unveiled a “Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights” and an accompanying set of administrative actions today, in a significant step forward for the tenants' rights movement.
Germany and the United States announced that they will send battle tanks to Ukraine.
Twitter suspended the account of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes less than 24 hours after his reinstatement on the platform.
California has allocated $20 million towards physical and digital security for abortion clinics.
A Virginia Senate panel with a Democratic majority (emphasis mine) rejected three different Republican proposals to restrict abortion, including a 15-week ban that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) pushed for the day Roe fell. SPECIAL ELECTIONS MATTER!
Five former Memphis police officers have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes in the arrest and death of Tyre Nichols, a black man whom the officers beat to death after a traffic stop. Their special unit was subsequently shut down.
The Biden administration announced that it will ban mining in Minnesota’s vast Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the latest effort to deliver on conservation pledges.
Senator Bernie Sanders will take the helm of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee next month and health insurance companies are terrified.
The State Bar of California, after a year-long investigation, announced that it intends to seek disbarment of Trump attorney John Eastman over his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
The period between October and January saw the “strongest quarterly results” in the number and strength of climate-related policy and technology developments around the world since November 2021, according to a new assessment released on Wednesday.
Good news for Arizona voters: A majority of county recorders agreed that they will not purge voters under Arizona voter suppression laws House Bill 2492 and House Bill 2243, which are the focus of ongoing litigation.
On Monday, a jury in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Oregon awarded $450,000 to Rose Wakefield for discrimination and ordered Jacksons Food Store and PacWest Energy, the local gas station operator, to pay $330,000 and $220,000 in damages, respectively. This, after a white attendant employed at Jacksons refused to pump Wakefield’s gas and told her it was because she was Black.
Undocumented immigrants enduring abuses from employers such as wage theft, safety infractions and gender discrimination can now obtain deportation relief when they report workplace violations to a government agency.
The Justice Department has asked the Federal Election Commission to hold off on any enforcement action against George Santos. The request is the clearest sign to date that federal prosecutors are considering criminal charges against Santos.
In a win for sustainable sanitation the city of New York is implementing curbside composting in all five boroughs by October 2024.
A man who attacked Brian Sicknick with chemical spray at the Capitol was sentenced to 80 months — nearly seven years — behind bars.
DirecTV dumped conservative cable channel Newsmax from its lineup
Watch This! 👀
Possibly my favorite thing ever.
You are just brilliant. That list is so heartening, positive!, and exhaustive. How did you ever do so much hopeful , clear, forward thinking research to bring back faith in a just world? You have my gratitude, my admiration, I will keep this to reread many times and share. Blessings.
Wow, wow WOW!! Thank you so very much, Jess, for this superb, lengthy, detailed, global infusion of re-energizing FACTS!
You are the best for bringing us all back to center and buoying us up when the media make everything look so bleak and hopeless. So very grateful to have your newsletter as a big part of my perspective everyday. You are a treasure!!