Extra! Extra! 7/28
THE "WHAT A WEEK" EDITION! 😁😁🎈🎈🎊🎊
Hi, all, and happy Sunday!
And it really is happy, for once! My God, what a week! What’s best about it, I think, is that it all feels so organic, joy-driven, and people-powered. It occurs to me that nothing that’s happened in the last seven days would have transpired without the conditions first created by the movement we’re part of—this vast sea of decent, loving, patriotic Americans who have simply refused to stop fighting for our country. It’s mind-blowing and deeply moving—like we’re all running for President with VP Harris.
As you might expect, I ran out of room when compiling this list of the week’s wins, because along with all the KH excitement there were other Dem wins coming, as always, thick and fast! I know I couldn’t include everything, and you’ll certainly feel I missed important stuff. That’s OK! Drop it in the comments! Let’s keep the good news coming!
And my goodness, please share.
As always, I’ve popped an 🪓 next to every item that everyday activists like you helped make happen, and a 🪣 next to every one that got done by lawmakers or administrations that we helped elect.
Read This 📖
This article, “After Biden’s Exit, Zoom Led by Black Women Mobilized 44,000 for Harris,” about the Win With Black Women call is AMAZING. Thanks to Merrill, one of my readers, for posting it in the comments.
And this one, “The Night White Women Raised Millions For Harris. And Broke Zoom,” is also thrilling.
Celebrate This! 🎉
We made AND SURPASSED our Movement Voter Fund match!! As of yesterday we were at $61,799!!! Holy Toledo, friends! Thank you to everyone who gave, and of course also to my anonymous donor subscriber for putting up the 50K match! WOWOW! 🪓
Secretary of the Interior Haaland announced the availability of $120 million in new funding to help Tribal communities prepare for the most severe climate-related environmental threats to their homelands. 🪣
Support for unions is higher than it’s been since the 1960s, with young people leading the charge. 🪓
Utility-scale solar in Puerto Rico has just received a $861 million boost from the federal government. 🪣
Thanks to explosive growth in renewable electricity generation — the IEA predicts it will officially surpass coal next year.
Team Harris has raised $200 million since President Biden's endorsement last Sunday – a record-shattering haul. Of that amount, 66% came from first-time donors. They also gained 43,000 new recurring donors – over half of which are weekly donors. They’ve also seen unprecedented grassroots support for the campaign across the country, with over 170,000 new volunteers joining Team Harris. 🪓🪣
And it’s not just the Harris team that’s getting flooded with volunteers. Democratic campaign offices across the country are seeing a huge uptick in offers of help—with one Congressional office getting 650 new volunteers in the 24 horus after Harris announced. 🪓
Trump is being mocked for pulling out of a debate with Harris.
A now-famous call on Sunday evening hosted by Win with Black Women had over 40,000 people on it and raised approximately $1.6 million in grassroots donations. 🪓
Congress now has a Slow Fashion Caucus! Let’s goooo! 🪣
A federal judge struck down a 2023 Ohio law that made it a crime for most people to help voters with disabilities return absentee ballots. Ohioans with disabilities can once again be assisted by the person of their choosing.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has awarded the Port of Green Bay $10,134,800 to convert the site of a former power plant to a multi-use port. 🪣
Industry pioneer SolarPanelRecycling.com opened a new, state-of-the-art solar panel recycling facility in Texas last week, leading the sector in its capacity to reuse and repurpose outdated solar panels.
A $110 million grant from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is going toward replacing the 60-year-old Alligator River Bridge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. 🪣
Former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is again suspended from practicing law in Washington, D.C. while a disciplinary case over his lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election proceeds against him. This follows Giuliani's disbarment in New York.
The Biden administration announced new measures to reduce emissions of powerful greenhouse gasses including nitrous oxide and other industrial chemicals. 🪣
The first details of a potential, and possibly massive, climate agreement between the U.S. and China were announced at a climate summit at the White House on Tuesday. The initiative could significantly reduce emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent and largely overlooked greenhouse gas that also harms the ozone layer. 🪣
J.D. Vance is making history as the least liked vice presidential nominee since 1980 following his party’s nominating convention.He’s also the first to have a net negative favorable rating.
The Veterans Affairs crisis hotline has responded to over 2 million messages in two years, meaning more veterans than ever are getting the support they need.
Kamala Harris won enough delegate support to become Democratic nominee in about 24 hours!!!
Endangered beluga whales and sea otters in Alaska just got a reprieve from fossil fuel development that could have further imperiled them.
Menendez resigned. Thank God. 🪓
Democratic challengers last quarter outraised their incumbent Republican opponents in 17 of the 29 GOP-held districts that either party considers competitive. And that was before Kamala Harris was our presidential candidate! 🪓
Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-OH) launched an ad campaign to coincide with the opening of the Summer Olympics in Paris that features her making a flip off a balance beam.
Sister District has launched an almost-daily “Childless Cat Lady & Friends Phonebank.”
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC reported that a week ago, those on a phone call of more than 400 people from Bank of America’s Federal Government Relations Team believed that a Trump victory was a “foregone conclusion.” Now that conviction is gone. “[T]here’s been a palpable sentiment reversal.” (From
)The Harris campaign announced that it will launch 2,600 more volunteers into its ground game in Florida, a state where abortion rights will be on the ballot this fall. The volunteers will write postcards, make phone calls, and knock on doors. (Also from
)Approximately $4 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s Low- and No-Emission Grant will help Racine, Wisconsin, buy 13 new electric buses to replace its old diesel buses. 🪣
Axios reports that Paid Leave for All Action and Reproductive Freedom for All are launching a $1 million media campaign together.
The day after Harris became the candidate the Blue Voter Guide website got 25,000 visitors on one day. According to the founder “This exceeds site usage on Super Tuesday.” Woot! 🪓
Almost 30,000 women joined the Women’s March call for Kamala on Tuesday night. 🪓
The U.S. economy is growing faster than economists predicted. 🪣
The Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina has received a $27 million grant for improvements. The funds come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 🪣
Allegheny County, PA will have access to a federal $1.25 billion digital equity grant program meant to improve internet access. The grant program is part of President Biden’s “Internet for All” initiative. 🪣
A federal judge signed a legal agreement allowing the Black mayor of a small Alabama town to lead his community after being blocked from taking office by his white predecessors. In 2025, the town will hold its first mayoral election in six decades.
The cities of Appleton and Green Bay in WI will receive over $15 million to improve public transportation, invest in zero-emission buses and build a new transit storage and maintenance facility. The investments are funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 🪣
The Montana Supreme Court kept in place a ruling that requires the Republican secretary of state to count signatures from so-called "inactive" voters in support of abortion rights and democracy ballot initiatives.
Painesville, Ohio is getting a utility-scale solar farm on the site of a former chemical manufacturing plant. The project is one of about two dozen clean energy and emissions-reduction initiatives across the country that are sharing $4.3 billion in funding announced on Monday by the Biden administration. 🪣
Voto Latino says it has seen a 117% increase in Latinos registering to vote in the days since Harris announced her bid, compared to the previous week. They registered more than 15,000 voters from July 21-25. The top states represented in the new registrations: Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, and Texas. 🪓
Apple Store workers in Maryland have made history, securing the first-ever tentative union contract at the world's most valuable company. Under the agreement, the workers will win 10% raises, scheduling improvements, limits on contracted workers, and more. 🪓
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed an education budget which includes free breakfast and lunches for all students, free community college, free pre-K for most families, and more. 🪣
There are already over 30,000 men signed up for the White Dudes For Kamala Harris call on Monday night! 🪓
Kamala Harris joined RuPaul’s Drag Race to underscore the stakes of the election. (Clip above.) 🪣
Over 53,000 Black men joined a virtual "Win With Black Men" conference call Monday which raised $1.3 million in four hours for the Harris campaign and Black voter mobilization organizations. 🪓
Democrats preempted former President Donald Trump’s visit to Charlotte Wednesday with a news conference featuring local leaders and billboards encouraging people to look up Project 2025, the infamous playbook outlining a potential conservative administration should he win the presidency in November.
Nearly 12,000 acres of land were just returned to a Native American tribe in Minnesota. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Reservation Restoration Act was signed into law in 2020, reversing a land seizure by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1940s.
1,074 of the low propensity climate voters Environmental Voter Project has been mobilizing have already voted early for the 7/30 Arizona Primary! These are all *first-time* voters, and now that they've voted in a primary, they're basically a lock to cast a ballot in November. 🪓
Keir Starmer, the new British PM, is promising to build enough offshore wind over the next five years to power 20m homes, by using taxpayer money to develop parts of the seabed owned by the crown estate.
July is on track to see the fifth consecutive monthly drop in migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border and the lowest level in illegal immigration there since the fall of 2020.
Three more Starbucks stores won their union elections this week, in Woods cross, UT, Louisville, KY, and Philadelphia, PA. 🪓
Grassroots groups leading voter registration drives in North Carolina have passed 227,000 voter registration forms turned in, with 2.5 months to go to the deadline – already the largest number of any swing state in the US. Many of you donated to these groups at our NC fundraiser, so thanks! (Missed out? There’s another one on August 6!) 🪓
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from a former Colorado county clerk to halt her upcoming trial on charges stemming from her alleged involvement in an apparent security breach at the county’s election offices in 2021.
On Thursday the President signed into law the “Federal Prison Oversight Act,” which establishes an inspections regime for the Bureau of Prisons and an Ombudsman office in the Department of Justice. 🪣
President Biden nominated Florida’s Val Demings to be a new Postal Service Board of Governors member! 🪣
Justice Elena Kagan said that she would support the creation of a committee of judges to examine potential violations of the Supreme Court’s new ethics code.
American law enforcement has arrested two top leaders of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most dominant criminal groups in Mexico. This is a huge win for the Biden Administration in the war on fentanyl. 🪣
The Obamas announced their endorsement of Kamala Harris.
The Ohio initiative to end gerrymandering will officially be on the ballot! 🪓
17 leading youth organizing groups announced their endorsement of Kamala Harris for president of the United States. 🪓
Within 48 hours of Biden bowing out and Harris stepping up, more than 38,500 people—mostly young—registered to vote. By Friday, that number exceeded 100,000. Eighty-four percent are younger voters, and 18% are 18-year-olds.
Inflation fell to 2.5%! 🪣
A federal judge decided to let the Biden Administration’s noncompete ban stand until the courts issue a final ruling by the end of August. 🪣
The Biden-Harris Administration hosted a White House Super Pollutants Summit to announce new domestic and international actions to tackle climate super pollutants. 🪣
Environmental regulators in the US will start considering the human health risks of pesticides drifting on wind and water currents before approving them for use. 🪣
Missouri ballot propositions aimed at protecting abortion rights, mandating paid sick leave, and increasing the minimum wage will likely be voted on in November, as they have all cleared the minimum threshold required to qualify. 🪓
The “Answer the Call: White Women Show Up for Kamala Harris” Zoom had 200K live participants and has raised, as of yesterday, 11M for the Harris campaign. WOW! (There’s another one for ALL women on Monday! Register here.) 🪓
Over 200 golf carts joined a rally for Kamala Harris at the VILLAGES in Florida this weekend! You heard that right! See the video here.
Kamala Harris’s campaign TikTok account went from 400k to 2.3M followers in just a matter of days.
A bunch of progressive groups are organizing a Cat and Dog Ladies Unite for Kamala Harris call for Tuesday night. Do NOT mess with the pet people! 🐈⬛🐕
Watch This! 👀
I’m sure most of you have seen this, but on the off chance you haven’t…song of the week!
What a great edition. You do such good work in keeping us informed. So many good things happening. And that ABBA song! Wow. Thank you.
Omg FINALLY some action on the USPS front!! 🥳