Extra! Extra! 8/11 🎈🎈🎈
Another week for the recordbooks!
Hi, all, and happy Sunday!
My God, what a week! I was on vacation in Nova Scotia, but, of course, also watching everything happening here with growing excitement. Talk about a turnaround! Talk about enthusiasm! Talk about history in the making! It’s very, very uplifting.
I’m back in L.A. now, and boy am I ready to get back to work “finishing the job,” as Joe Biden says.
But first, let’s start off another sure-to-be-exciting week with a recap of all the good stuff that happened in the last seven days. (Spoiler alert: There’s a TON of it.) And remember, this is what happens when we don’t give up, screen out the noise, and take simple actions.
These wins are yours, folks. Celebrate that!
As usual, 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.
P.S. — Mike is also back, so we’ve got voiceovers again! Click the play button at the top of this newsletter to listen.
Read This 📖
I hope this isn’t paywalled, because it’s wonderful:
Celebrate This! 🎉
Kamala Harris was officially certified as the Democratic presidential nominee after earning a majority of roll call votes. 🪓
Jenna Ellis, a one-time member of Trump’s “elite strike force” legal team, has turned state’s evidence in the Arizona fake electors case.
More than a dozen Wisconsin businesses, colleges and economic development agencies are slated to share $49 million in federal funding for a medical sciences technology hub expected to create thousands of jobs. The funding was awarded through the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. 🪣
New rounds of CHIPS and Science Act funding are also going to help open new manufacturing facilities in Covington, GA, the Great Lakes region, and Albuquerque, NM. 🪣
Vice President Kamala Harris is adding a group of unlikely allies to her reelection campaign: Arizona Republicans.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $389 million to a coalition of New England states for improvements to the power grid that will significantly increase the region’s capacity for offshore wind development. 🪣
Michael Bloomberg is donating $600 million to four historically Black medical schools.
The Harris/Walz campaign sold out of its initial inventory of 3,000 camo-hats within 30 minutes — with camo-hat sales totaling nearly $1 million Tuesday via its online store. (I bought one!)
New York’s Castleton-on-Hudson bridge will be rehabilitated and strengthened, extending its life by 50 years, through a $21 million investment provided by President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law. 🪣
The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week. 🪣
The EPA is offering one-time subgrants through the agency's Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking program. 🪣
West Virginia will receive a $1.97 million federal investment aimed at cleaning up orphaned oil and gas wells from the Biden Administration. 🪣
A new poll out of Florida shows that 69% of voters in the state support Amendment 4, the abortion rights ballot measure. 🪓
An anti-abortion activists was sentenced to three years in prison for violating the FACE Act. 1
The HHS, through the Health Resources and Services Administration, awarded nearly $9 million to 18 HRSA-funded health centers to improve access to life-saving cancer screenings in underserved communities. 🪣
The window for Republican lawmakers to repeal the SEC’s climate-risk disclosure rule via the Congressional Review Act closed on Thursday.
The MI Supreme Court made One Fair Wage’s minimum wage ballot initiative state law, raising wages for 500,000 workers by February and 1.2 million by 2028, and making Michigan the first state East of the Mississippi and the first state in 40 years to end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. 🪓
Washington state just celebrated the 5-year anniversary of its Paid Family Leave Program. In those five years, customers have submitted more than 1 million applications and have received more than $5 billion in benefits. 🪣
The Washington, D.C. Attorney General sued the ticket resale company StubHub for allegedly deceiving customers about the true cost of ticket prices by tacking on arbitrary fees. 🪣
HUGE! A federal judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and related advertising. We can thank Biden’s FTC for this lawsuit. 🪣
Wisconsin is launching its first Home Energy Rebates program using $149 million from the Inflation Reduction Act. 2 🪣
Trump Media reported a net loss of more than $16 million for the most recent financial quarter.
LULAC, the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
Last month was Sister District’s biggest fundraising month of the year. As a result they were able to endorse six more state legislative candidates in Georgia, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Michigan! 🪓
Shelters on the southern U.S. border and in some major cities that were inundated with migrants a year ago say they are seeing sharp declines in migrants seeking refuge, some reporting drops as high as 60% in just the past few months.v
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s attempt to block or delay Trump’s sentencing in his criminal hush money case in New York. The sentencing hearing remains scheduled for September 18.
Postal workers in Medford, Oregon rallied with community members on Saturday to raise awareness about USPS mail consolidations and how it could affect elections. 🪓
Brown University’s Nelson Fitness Center recently installed a handful of cardio machines that convert human energy into electricity.
The State Superintendent of Georgia announced that the state will reintroduce funding for Advanced Placement African American Studies in public schools. The decision came weeks after the superintendent pulled funding for the course and received massive backlash from educators, parents, and students. 🪓
The EPA announced an emergency suspension for the herbicide Dacthal, a weedkiller linked to serious health risks for fetuses. An emergency suspension effectively halts legal application of a pesticide from the moment it is officially announced. 🪣
More power was generated by wind and solar than fossil fuels in the EU for the first half of 2024 per a new report showing all renewables are now making up about half of their energy.
A U.S. court dealt a major blow to a string of giant fossil fuel projects under development in coastal Texas. Big win for the climate!
Trans nonbinary runner Nikki Hitlz became the first openly transgender and nonbinary athlete to make an individual Olympic final. (This made my nonbinary kiddo so happy!)
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed a sweeping housing bill into law authorizing $5.2 billion for the construction and repair of new and affordable housing. 🪣
Kamala Harris has wiped out Donald Trump’s lead across seven battleground states.
The U.S. will pay for flu shots for farmworkers this year, a strategy to prevent bird flu from changing into something more dangerous. 🪣
The EPA announced over $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition. 🪣
1,122 of the low propensity climate voters the Environmental Voter Project targeted in Arizona ended up voting for the very first time in the AZ primaries last week. These 1,122 new climate voters are now almost guaranteed to vote again in November. In 2020, Arizona was decided by only 10,457 votes. 🪓
The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $19 million in new grant and loan awards under its Green and Resilient Retrofit Program after announcing more than $142 million last month. 🪣
39% of registered voters have now heard a lot or some about Project 2025 up from 23% in late June. 🪓
A Trump supporter who stood in front of a gallows and spoke of his desire to hang Democratic politicians before he assaulted numerous police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Ohio started selling recreational cannabis on Tuesday. Voters did that! 🪓
The Department of the Interior awarded $20 million in funding to Alabama to address dangerous and polluting abandoned mine lands, create good-paying, family-sustaining jobs, and catalyze economic opportunity across the state. 🪣
The Biden-Harris Administration launched EnvironmentalJustice.gov, a new website that highlights the Administration’s actions on environmental justice and shares tools, resources, and funding opportunities to empower communities to navigate federal programs and advance environmental justice in their neighborhoods. 🪣
The United Auto Workers officially endorsed Kamala Harris for President of the United States — joining a long list of labor unions backing the Vice President. 🪓
The DOI formally established the Blackwell School National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas as the nation’s newest national park. 🪣
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled further confidence that victory is in sight in the Fed’s battle against inflation, suggesting a rate cut could come as soon as next month. 🪣
There was so much good news on the Harris-Walz front this week that I had to make a separate video just about that. It’s here. 🪓
For the first time ever, electric Ford F-150 drivers are getting paid to run their homes from their pickup truck batteries during peak hours to help meet grid demand, and it’s happening in Baltimore, MD!
The DNC put up billboards thanking President Joe Biden for his career of service in and around Scranton, the president's boyhood hometown, and in Wilmington, Delaware.
A new solar cell manufacturing company announced plans to open up shop in Albuquerque, NM. The growth in renewable energy manufacturing follows the passage of federal legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act. 🪣
Great stuff! I love the billboards thanking Biden and also that Harris is thanking him during her rallies. This generation of Americans will never fully appreciate everything he's done for us, and he was treated shamefully by the press corps, but despite all that he put his country over himself. It now must be wonderful for him to watch Kamala soar and further validate his decision to pick her for VP 4 years ago.
Isn't this just absolutely exciting!!!! "Exhilarating" has become my word of the past two weeks! So much momentum and it's especially encouraging and *exhilarating* to see how many new voter registrations and first-time donations from the 18-34 year olds! Choosing Walz was choosing joy and I know Kamala has used the phrase "Joyful Warrior" to describe herself in the past.
Together We the People will prevail! Not that we should become complacent though, esp. with Elon's fake voter registration site up, and his million$ along with his techbros' million$ not to mention the 1%ers still supporting the side of evil.