Extra! Extra! 8/26
So. Much. Winning!
Hi, all, and happy Sunday!
Hope you’re having a great weekend! Sure has been a superb week!
The below list of amazing news all comes on top of the incredible convention we had. I’ve mentioned a few things about it in the below, but generally what I’ve listed are additional good news items, as we all already know that we had about as good a week convention-wise as we could have. Yay for that!
The rest? Gravy! Enjoy it!
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.
Bask in these wins, and then please share them! Let’s boost our friends’ and family’s moods going into the week!
Read This 📖
The Balloon Drop at the DNC Had More Meaning Than You Might Know. Beautiful.
Celebrate This! 🎉
Our Chop Wood, Carry Statehouses Giving Circle MADE IT’S NEW 10K MATCHING GOAL!! WOWOWOW! We were at $101,000 and now we’re at $112,641.51! (Of course don’t stop giving! We need every penny!) 🪓
Kamala Harris announced a slate of progressive economic policy proposals before and during the Democratic National Committee. These include permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit to $3,600, banning AI software from dictating rent costs, canceling medical debt for millions of Americans, capping the price of insulin to $35 per month and limiting the total cost of prescription drugs to $2,000 annually for all Americans, instead of just those on Medicare—and much more! 1 🪣
A new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump nationally by seven points among likely voters, 50% to 43%. (P.S. IGNORE THE POLLS!)
Ron DeSantis’s takeover of Florida school boards had a big setback on Tuesday, when at least 11 of his endorsed candidates appear to have lost their races. Who won instead? In almost every case they were RUN FOR SOMETHING’s candidates!! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 (This is why we’re raising money for them, too!) 🪓
Postcards to Swing States has completed sign-ups for all 36 million postcards! WOW! 🪓
A federal judge ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven employees at a Memphis store after finding the company illegally retaliated against them for helping organize a union.
RFK Jr. has dropped out of the race, and it doesn’t seem to be hurting us.
A coal-fired power plant in Ohio that opened in 1908 is about to find a new incarnation in the clean energy era: a massive solar farm with a battery storage system, integrating wildflower meadows and a bike path. 🪣
Private and public investment in clean energy rose to a total of $147B in the first half of this year — a record-setting figure. 🪣
Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Vice President Harris over Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy.
The Interior Department announced a $46.7 million investment in community-led local park projects in eight U.S. states. The funding will go toward the redevelopment or creation of local parks in cities like Tuscon, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Houston. 🪣
In a major policy shift, the United States will support a global treaty calling for a reduction in how much new plastic is produced each year. 🪣
George Santos plead guilty to identity theft and wire fraud.
Cuts in greenhouse gas emissions may soon begin slowing the rate of global warming, which some researchers say has been speeding up in recent years, according to a new study. 🪣
The EPA is solidifying its use of $27 billion in climate funds by “officially obligating the funds to recipients.” These entities can now access the funds, the agency said. It also means that Republicans, who want to repeal the IRA, will find it virtually impossible to claw that money back. Phew! 🪣
Thanks to new legislation, Illinois is eliminating single-use plastic bottles in hotels. 🪣
The EPA issued a game-changing proposal to protect our national parks from haze -- starting with the nation's dirtiest coal plants. 🪣
Former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) said she will vote for Kamala Harris for president, marking the latest former GOP member to break from the party’s support of Donald Trump.
The Harris-Walz campaign launched a grassroots broadcasting channel through the messaging app WhatsApp. With nearly 100 million users in the U.S., WhatsApp is one of the most popular social platforms, particularly among Latinos.
House Democrats’ largest super PAC got a $10 million cash infusion from Michael Bloomberg,” Politico reports.
The 100,000 balloons that fell from the rafters when Vice President Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president were biodegradable.
Climate Hawks Vote’s endorsed climate hawk, Yassamin Ansari, won her July 30 primary election in AZ-03 after a recount found that she beat out her primary opponent by 39 votes: 19,087 to 19,048. THIRTY-NINE! EVERY VOTE COUNTS! 🪓
The first night of the Democratic National Convention averaged 20 million viewers across 13 networks, surpassing the audience for the initial day of the Republican National Convention by about two million viewers.
Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) ranked first on Tuesday in an open primary to set the field for her re-election bid, claiming just over 50% of the vote in preliminary results, well ahead of 11 challengers vying for her position as the state’s sole member of the House. 🪓
Montana became the eighth state with a measure seeking to protect abortion rights on the ballot. 🪓
In a victory for voters, New York's highest court upheld the state's new law allowing any eligible voter to cast a ballot early by mail, rejecting a lawsuit from the RNC claiming the law is unconstitutional.
Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the right-wing violent militia The Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington D.C. to two charges related to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Thanks to pressure from frontline organizers, climate activists, and some of YOU, Chubb insurance has become the first major insurer to drop their coverage for Rio Grande LNG, a dangerous methane gas export terminal planned near Brownsville, Texas. 🪓
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and its affiliates raised $82 million during the Democratic convention in Chicago last week.
A new federal lease will let Maine build an array of floating offshore wind turbines for research purposes — a key step for the emerging clean energy source. 🪣
The Scottish government proposed banning trawling, a highly destructive type of fishing that drags weighted nets along the seabed, in parts of the country’s offshore waters, to protect and restore damaged marine ecosystems.
Chile is phasing out coal faster than any other developing nation.
Headed into the Convention, the Harris-Walz campaign hosted a weekend of action, and volunteers completed 10,000 shifts and contacted over 1 million voters. The convention generated nearly 200,000 new volunteer shifts. On Thursday and Friday alone, volunteers signed up for 90,000 shifts. [Source: Harris-Walz campaign email] 🪓
20.6M people tuned in to the second night of the Democratic National Convention across 12 networks,” Deadline reports. That’s about half a million more than the first night, once again besting the audience for the Republican National Convention, which suffered from a steep decline to just 14.8M viewers in its second night. Ouch.
The Kamala Harris campaign is launching its own Twitch channel. WOW.
70% of voters now agree that the U.S. government should take strong action to combat climate change.
66% of voters feel unfavorably about “lawmakers who deny that climate change is a threat,” while just 18% feel favorably about them.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech drew 22% more viewers than Donald Trump’s speech last month.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican push that could block more than 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots for president in the state that Democratic President Joe Biden won by less than 11,000 votes four years ago.
Less than 100 people showed up to JD Vance’s rally in Kenosha, WI this weekend.
New York’s highest court upheld the state’s Early Mail Voter Act, a newly enacted law that allows all registered voters to vote by mail during the early voting period.
A big facility for recycling lithium-ion batteries is now operating in Central Ohio, where workers are busy salvaging and repurposing the metals and minerals needed to drive the clean energy transition.
The Biden administration began accepting applications for a new immigration program that would put the undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens on a path to citizenship. 🪣
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ordered Walmart and Reynolds Consumer Products to stop selling certain types of plastic bags in the state for two and a half years after finding that the companies inaccurately labeled the bags as recyclable.2 🪣
Independent presidential candidate Cornel West lost a legal challenge in his bid to get on the ballot in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
A dozen Republican lawyers who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush endorsed Vice President Harris and warned of the dangers posed by another Trump presidency.
The legislature of Mexico City, one of the largest cities on Earth with 22 million people, has passed a rent control law that limits rent increases to the rate of inflation.
Andrew Warren, Tampa's Democratic prosecutor who was removed from his job by Ron DeSantis, won his Democratic primary on Tuesday and has a great shot at winning his old job back. 🪓
Amazon delivery drivers represented by Teamsters Local 396 in Palmdale, Calif., won a groundbreaking decision that sets the stage for Amazon delivery drivers across the country to organize with the Teamsters. 🪓
Wind and solar power are on track to surpass coal as the leading sources of electricity in the U.S. for the first time in history. 🪣
Baltimore, Maryland launched the first-ever vehicle-to-grid (V2G) pilot project, allowing electric Ford F-150 owners to earn money by powering their homes from their trucks' batteries during peak demand times.
Watch This! 👀
They played this at the DNC and I couldn’t watch it enough times afterwards
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This and the one above also from The Lever.
Another lovely long list of accomplishments!!
Thank you again for linking us to the text banking training/session yesterday!! It was so easy and fun once we got through literally overloading TextOut!! So easy, in fact, that my dad and fiance are seriously considering signing up with me for future sessions! Enthusiasm is contagious, y'all, and watching both of these people in my life (and other friends, too) become more interested in being involved just because they see how excited I am is so encouraging! We all have always had service minded hearts, but without you, Jess, we still wouldn't really know where to start 💜💜💜
Wow, as someone who's been reading these every week for a long time even I was shocked at the amount of good news this week. Two comments:
1. The public rejection of Trump by Republicans is unprecedented and way underreported. And it's not just mealy-mouthed statements about not voting or writing in a candidate; they're explicitly voting for Harris and encouraging others to do the same. If this were happening on our side it would be the top story every day until the election.
2. I think the Twitch thing is kind of a big deal. One of the not-stupid things Trump is doing is trying to engage with young men on these kind of platforms. We can't cede that ground, and as someone who enjoys video games I hate that it's often associated with right-wing toxic masculinity. The Harris campaign can play in these spaces in a way the Biden campaign probably couldn't have pulled off.