Extra! Extra! 3/12
Extra good news for my extra wonderful subscribers!
Watch this! WOW! 👆🏼
Hi, all! Happy Sunday!
Welcome to your giant dose of positivity for the week!
This edition includes a long list of victories you may have missed, as well as a handful of uplifting videos —a few more, in fact, than usual. After a week like this we need all the joy and gratitude we can get.
Take it in; enjoy the many, many ways we’re making progress, and the many people endeavoring to “right our ship” in different ways. There is so much negativity and fear everywhere, and the causes for them are real. But the quiet ways in which we’re winning are real as well, as are the many heroes on our side. All of this needs to be amplified.
So please share this with someone who feels anxious or stressed.
And remember—most of the wins below came about because of the hard work of folks like you. We chop wood and carry water every week so we can continue to grow and receive these lists. It’s cause and effect!
Thank you for making the world—and our country—a better place.
Celebrate This! 🎉
More than 100 of the United Nations’ 193 member states have now signed onto a climate resolution calling for the International Court of Justice to weigh in on what governments are legally obligated to do to mitigate climate change and protect people from its impacts.
Clean energy usage has hit a record high in the U.S. In 2022, 41% of the nation’s electricity came from carbon-free sources.
The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by oil companies who were ordered by a Louisiana state court to pay damages for environmental damages in Cancer Alley and other areas of the state. The decision clears the way fro 42 lawsuits filed since 2012 against a total of 200 oil and gas companies in state courts.
More than 190 countries have reached a landmark deal for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, agreeing for the first time on a common framework for establishing new protected areas in international waters.
The DOJ has sued to block the JetBlue-Spirit merger, saying airline consolidation would harm consumers. The case is the latest example of the Biden administration's efforts to fight consolidation. Good!
The world’s biggest hydrogen-fueled plane completed its first test flight last week, and the company who made it says the aircraft could be taking commercial passengers to and fro by 2025.
The United States government is redoubling its efforts to restore bison populations to Native American lands.
President Biden proposed a 5.2 percent raise for federal employees in his budget — the largest increase the White House has put forward since Jimmy Carter was president.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) sued Cochise County for transferring oversight of elections from the board of supervisors to County Recorder (and election conspiracist) David Stevens (R), arguing that the move violates state law and the state constitution.
California suspended a $54 million contract with Walgreens on Wednesday over the pharmacy chain’s decision not to distribute mifepristone in at least 20 states, including some where abortion is legal.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota signed Executive Order 23-03, a comprehensive order that safeguards transgender individuals, their families, and their providers from out-of-state prosecution.
Three major airlines have now guaranteed that parents can sit with their young children without getting charged since President Biden called out hidden airline junk fees a few weeks ago.
Thailand will ban imports of plastic waste from other countries at the end of 2024. Sending our waste around the world to be disposed of is environmental injustice at its worst.
A solar panel manufacturer in Switzerland announced it’s shifting away from using any plastic in its panels. Meyer Burger says the shift to 100% glass panels will lead to faster scalability and it’s just better technology.
A federal court in Georgia denied a request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s wet signature requirement for absentee ballot applications. The lawsuit, filed by Vote.org, Georgia Alliance for Retired Americans and Priorities USA, will continue.
President Biden’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year includes major investments in state and local election departments as well as increased funding for the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce federal voting laws.
The New Mexico Senate passed the New Mexico Voting Rights Act, which already cleared the state House. The bill will establish automatic voter registration, restore voting rights to people with felony convictions post-incarceration, expand drop boxes, enact the Native American Voting Rights Act and more.
The economy churned out 311,000 jobs in February, reflecting impressive labor market strength more than a year into the Federal Reserve’s fight to cool the economy.
Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who represented Trump in cases trying to overturn the 2020 election results, admitted she knowingly made false claims of voter fraud.
Scientists found a new way to remove CO2 from the air that’s up to three times more effective than current technology. The method transforms the gas, stores it safely and cheaply in seawater, and could help speed up the deployment of carbon removal technology.
President Biden will announce sweeping protections for more than 16 million acres of land and water in Alaska tomorrow. He will declare the entire Arctic Ocean off limits to oil and gas leasing and development. The DOI will also write new regulations protecting nearly 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s largest piece of public land, including ecologically sensitive areas that provide habitat for thousands of caribou and shorebirds.
On Tuesday, Burlington, Vermont, and Redondo Beach, California voters said YES to adopting Ranked Choice Voting for future city elections.
Minnesota—one of the states that flipped blue in the 2022 midterms—just passed a 100% clean energy bill! SF 4 requires all of Minnesota’s utilities to produce 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. Along the way, utilities will have to reach 60% clean power by 2030 and 90% by 2035.
For the first time in its history, Australia has invoked environmental law to block a coal mine. The proposed mine would have been just 6 miles from the Great Barrier Reef, which has suffered four mass bleachings in the past 6 years.
Minnesota’s House just passed a measure to create the first-ever Office of Missing and Murdered African American Women. It would be the first office of its kind in the country, created as Black women in Minnesota are three times more likely to be murdered than white women, and their cases are less likely to be solved.
A judge has permitted E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers to use the infamous Access Hollywood tape as evidence in her defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.
The Michigan House of Representatives passed SB 4, which protects LGBTQ+ residents under the state’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act. Watch the moment when it passed—beautiful! 👇🏼
Watch This! 👀
If you haven’t yet seen this take the time. Incredible.
Tell it like it is Jon! And thanks for all the good news, Jessica!
Both the Jon Stewart and Arnold Schwarzenegger videos are so worth watching! Thank you, thank you.