Extra! Extra! 3/16

The Visibility Brigade kept up its excellent work this week (more on that below)

Hi, all, and happy Sunday!

It’s been a hell of a week, and yet…great things did happen. I’ve got a long list of them below; I urge you to spend some time reading them and sharing them with friends. Remember, what we focus on grows. If we ONLY focus on the hell we’re going through we won’t have the stamina to persist until we get to the rebuilding part.

So enjoy this list. Savor it. Relish every word.

And never forget that people like YOU are making these wins possible. Thanks for that.

Read This 📖

One of my subscribers sent this to me and I want to share it with everyone I know. May we all become George Dales!

Celebrate This! 🎉

A coalition of unions and retirees filed a motion for emergency relief to halt DOGE’s seizure of personal, confidential, private, and sensitive data regarding millions of Americans across the country from the Social Security Administration.

In Kansas, GOP Rep. Ron Estes held a meeting with a friendly crowd of about 35 supporters to make a pitch for continuing Trump’s tax cuts. More than 200 people gathered outside to protest.

Texas is setting new records with its nation-leading clean energy fleet.

A growing number of House Republicans are urging the Trump administration to preserve the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act — and warning they may oppose the party’s budget bill if those incentives get axed.

TN Rep. (and CWCW subscriber) Aftyn Behn organized a protest outside a Nashville social security office which was on the DOGE list of leased buildings to cut. This is what good local leadership can do! Draw attention to impact! Behn is another amazing Run For Something alum, by the way. (:

CO employee health insurance plans will now cover abortion care.

PA Rep. Amen Brown (another Run For Something alum) gave out over 1,000 cartons of eggs at his local district office.

Speaking of Run For Something, they have now had 27,000 new candidate sign-ups since Trump won!

A federal judge has halted the deportation of a Columbia University graduate student who was detained by immigration authorities for his participation in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

The MacArthur Foundation announced it would be increasing its giving for the next two years in response to a “crisis” of funding for foreign aid and federal grants.

The number of Monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico rebounded this year.

Tesla shares plunged 15% in a day.

X got taken down by hackers for most of a day.

A federal judge found that DOGE is likely subject to public disclosure laws and must promptly turn over documents to CREW, a group that had sued for access to its internal emails.

A federal judge ruled that Trump’s foreign aid freeze usurped Congress's constitutional authority and ordered the administration to provide a detailed redistribution plan of the $2 billion owed to the groups involved in the lawsuit.

Costco raised their hourly wage. Minimum wage is now $20 and the average work wage is $31.

A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s blanket pardon for the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, does not cover a conspiracy by one defendant to kill the law enforcement officials who investigated him.

Ruth Marcus, a top political columnist for The Washington Post, resigned Monday, after Post Publisher Will Lewis killed her column that criticized owner Jeff Bezos' drive to overhaul the opinion pages to focus on his libertarian priorities.

El Paso, Texas, broke ground on the first facility in the country that will treat wastewater for direct reuse.

The UN’s biodiversity conference has ended on a successful note thanks to a productive extended session, with stakeholders finalizing the details of a $200 billion annual commitment to global biodiversity!

The Supreme Court turned away a bid by Republican-led states to block lawsuits brought by a group of Democratic-led states that seek to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their fossil fuel products' contributions to climate change.

Newport Beach, CA debuted a $5.5 million device designed to capture trash flowing into Newport Bay and the ocean.

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced that every Team USA athlete will receive a $100,000 retirement benefit for each Olympic Games they participate in.

SpaceX had another rocket blow up.

CNN came out with a brutal new poll for Trump. His job approval is 45%-54%, a 5 point drop in the last 2 weeks. Musk’s job approval is 35%-53%. Both are deeply underwater. And voters’ views on the economy are very, very poor.

The European Union and Canada hit back at President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs with their own levies, announcing tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of products, including bourbon and motorcycles, while warning of further retaliation.

In Greenland’s elections, the party that denounced Trump’s ambitions to annex the country came out on top.

Ten new U.S. electric vehicle battery factories are currently planned to go online in 2025! (You can help make sure it happens by clicking here.)

Tim Walz is launching a national tour of town halls in Republican House districts.

After a massive backlash, DOGE scrapped plans to cut phone service at the Social Security Administration.

Anti-vaxxer David Weldon’s nomination to run the CDC was pulled. He didn’t have the votes. HUGE.

A federal judge ordered federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired amid President Donald Trump’s turbulent effort to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy.

A federal judge has also ordered Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” to hand over a range of documents, including those that would reveal the identities of staff behind the aggressive cuts to government programs.

A Democrat won a special election for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, returning partisan control of that chamber to an even split during an unusually acrimonious legislative session.

Jewish protestors stormed Trump Tower demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil.

The US clean electricity transition continued as wind and solar generated more than coal for the first time in 2024. Electricity demand growth sped up and solar generation rose more quickly than gas to help meet it.

Georgia and Illinois both doubled their solar deployment in 2024 over the year before.

Indivisible’s new membership continues to skyrocket. Over the last week about ten new groups formed EVERY DAY. Crazy!

Pete Buttigieg is almost definitely running for President in 2028. (I’m inferring this from his launch of a new Substack and his announcement that he won’t run for senate in 2026.)

A group of protestors from Women’s March and Popular Democracy staged a sit in and banner drop about saving health care in the Capitol building. 38 of them—including at least one CWCW subscriber—got arrested. Nice job!

So many of you called Senator Schumer’s office on Wednesday that we literally broke his phone lines for several hours.

Hank and John Green launched an eco-conscious cleaning line that donates its profits to protect coral reefs.

Five billionaires at Donald Trump’s inauguration (including Musk) have lost a total of $209 billion in wealth since then.

A Republican lawmaker intentionally misgendered Rep. Sarah McBride in a House Committee meeting. Democratic Ranking Member Keating snapped back ferociously. Way to be an ally.

A coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration, two days after the Education Department fired more than 1,300 workers, saying that the dismissals were “illegal and unconstitutional.”

The Trump administration abruptly cleared out a second group of migrants it brought to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, returning to the United States 40 men it had flown there in the past few weeks.

The visibility brigade is starting to really become a movement! They have added a tab to their toolkit with a gallery of other brigades happening all over the place. Let’s keep it coming!

Constituents from at least half a dozen western NC counties showed up in huge numbers to give GOP Congressman Chuck Edwards an earful at his town hall in Asheville. (This first-person account from an attendee is awesome.)

The Department of Energy reinstated employees who had been fired last month in governmentwide cuts.

The DOE will also resume payments to efforts the Trump administration labeled “DEI,” including funding for stakeholder engagement and workforce development.

Farmers and environmental groups are suing the Trump administration over its decision to pause grants that are part of the Democrats’ climate, tax and health care law.

Greenhouse gas emissions fell by 3.6% in the U.K. last year, reaching their lowest levels since 1872, while Germany’s emissions dropped 3.4% to put the country on track to meet its 2030 climate goals. [H/T Canary Media]

Pro-voting groups reached an agreement with Montana’s secretary of state and attorney general to permanently block portions of a Republican-backed law that criminalizes voters who are inadvertently registered to vote elsewhere.

After the National Endowment for Democracy sued Trump for withholding $200 million in federal funding, new court filings revealed $97 million was released to the organization earlier this week, with another $72 million expected soon.

Florida is now a “solar superpower.” It built more large-scale solar than California in 2024 and was second for residential.

Boston City Council has voted 12-1 to make the City of Boston a sanctuary city for members of the trans, nonbinary, and LGBTQIA+ community.

Spotify took down several Andrew Tate podcast episodes saying that they violated the platform’s policies — the podcasts in question were also the subject of employee complaints and a petition with more than 92,000 signatures.

In Chicago, Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon announced new DEI initiatives and pledged her office will not share vital records that could be used to harass residents.

Chair Ken Martin just announced that the DNC is partnering with the DCCC and Democratic State Parties to host People’s Town Halls in all 50 states, starting in vulnerable red districts! Bravo!

J.D. Vance and his wife went to a concert at the Kennedy Center. They got roundly booed.

Watch This! 👀

Fantastic—from the Daily Show.