Extra! Extra! 9/10 👏🏼👏🏼
A whole lot of good!
Hi, all, and happy Sunday!
Here’s your list of all the good things that happened this week while we were busy phonebanking, doorknocking, and postcarding for Democrats! Thanks for all you’re doing! If we keep it up these lists are going to get a heck of a lot longer come November!
So let’s do that!
As per 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.
Enjoy! And please share!
Celebrate This! 🎉
The EPA has awarded a $1 million grant to local groups to clean up a contaminated Brownfields site in Camden, NJ. 🪣
Kamala Harris’ campaign and the DNC are sending nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democrats — an earlier investment and far more money than the top of the ticket has sent in past election years. 🪓
Consumer confidence is up slightly in August.
The last of the four dams in the Klamath River along the California-Oregon border was demolished, opening the door for a thriving salmon population. It’s a significant win for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who, for decades, have fought to restore the river to its natural state. [Source] 🪓
In North Carolina the State Board of Elections approved the use of the University of North Carolina's digital student ID for the purposes of voter ID.
The Biden administration announced more than $1 billion in funding to help make the nation's streets safer. The grants to local governments will help fund 354 safety projects around the country. 🪣
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced that the Apache trout — Arizona's state fish — has been removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife following more than five decades of recovery efforts. 🪣
Maryland announced that it will join the IRS’s Direct File program. This means that about 700K taxpayers will be able to file their taxes for free next year. 🪣
The Mississippi Department of Health will receive nearly $4 million from the federal government for a home-visitation program in 16 counties designed to assist families of young children. [Source] 🪣
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that Colorado was selected to receive a $20 million grant to help implement its building performance standards — ambitious rules that limit the amount of carbon pollution big buildings can emit. [Source] 🪣
President Biden visited Westby, Wisconsin, to announce a historic $7.3 billion investment aimed at bringing clean, affordable, and reliable electricity to rural America, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. [Source] 🪣
Over the course of the last hundred years, Norwegian forests have tripled in size according to a new report.
A judge in Ohio repealed two anti-abortion laws: a ban on telemedicine for abortion medication and a law that blocked prohibiting non-doctors (like midwives and physician assistants) from prescribing abortion medication.
A judge in Alaska struck down a similar law this week that banned anyone other than a physician from performing abortions, ruling that there was “no medical reason” for the law.
A poll from The New York Times found that abortion is now the number one election issue for American women under 45 years old, and that it’s nearly tied with the economy as the number one issue for women of all ages in battleground states.1
The number of publicly available electric vehicle chargers has doubled since Biden took office. 🪣
The National Institute of Health has launched a program that will support Native American communities to lead public health research to address overdose, substance use, and pain, including related factors such as mental health and wellness. 🪣
Trump spent $32 million more than he raised in August. Too bad. So sad.
Wind turbine service technician is the hottest job in the country, with 60% growth projected between 2023-2033. 🪣
Starting on Sunday, Sept. 1, and lasting the entire month, the lights of the St. Louis Arch will not shine at night to help birds safely navigate through the city. 🪓
Team Harris-Walz announced that it raised $361 million in August, the largest haul of the 2024 cycle and nearly triple Team Trump’s August fundraising haul. They are also reporting $404 million in cash on hand. Nearly 3 million donors contributed in August alone. 95% of all August donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations. Over 60% of all donors in August were women and almost a fifth of donors were registered Republicans or Independents. 🪓
After 15,000 public comments and 19 community meetings, US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that protections against oil and gas development — including mining claims — across 28 million acres of federal lands in Alaska will remain intact. 🪓 🪣
The United Kingdom will shut down its last operational coal-fired power plant this month, a major milestone as the country’s CO2 emissions continue to plummet.
The Biden-Harris Administration announced $149 million in grants to support states in implementing evidence-based reading interventions, including efforts to ensure every child is reading fluently by third grade. 🪣
The Biden-Harris Administration is advancing the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary to protect 4,543 square miles of ocean off Central California. 🪣
The Oakland, AC Unified School District became the first district in the country to use all-electric school buses. [Source] 🪣
The gray wolf is making a strong comeback in California, with this year marking the species’ biggest population increase in a century.
The IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high wealth tax dodgers since last fall, the agency announced, crediting spending that has ramped up collection enforcement through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 🪣
The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that the Green Party—and its candidate, Jill Stein—is ineligible to appear on the state’s presidential ballot.
Starbucks workers at the Main & Mclean store in Elgin, IL voted to unionize. They are the 491st Starbucks store to do so. 🪓
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a series of actions aimed at disrupting foreign efforts to influence American elections.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) officially voted to endorse Vice President Harris and Governor Walz for President and Vice President of the United States. 🪓
The Biden administration announced $7.3 billion to help rural areas electrify. 🪣
Eighty-eight corporate leaders signed a new letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the former U.S. House Democrat now challenging Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for the Senate (in a race that has gotten surprisingly close), has launched a new campaign on WhatsApp to reach voters.
1st Lt. Jimmy McCain, son of former Republican Senator John McCain, announced his support for Kamala Harris for President of the United States.
Kamala Harris has erased Trump’s edge over Hispanic voters when it comes to the economy, according to a new Reuters’/Ipsos poll. That group also favors the VP’s approach to health care by 18 percentage points and climate change by 23 percent points. [Source]
New research, published by RMI, indicates that an exponential surge in renewable energy deployment is outpacing the International Energy Agency’s most ambitious net-zero predictions for 2030.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Montana law imposing criminal penalties on voters who do not cancel their voter registration in other counties or states. [Source]
A Pennsylvania appeals court ruled that Butler County must count provisional ballots from voters who inadvertently submitted mail-in ballots without an inner secrecy envelope — known as “naked ballots.”
US gas prices fell to a fresh six-month low of $3.31 a gallon on Thursday, down 50 cents from this point last year. 🪣
Illinois passed a law that says homeowners associations can’t stop residents from planting native gardens, a move aimed at boosting biodiversity and environmental stewardship. 🪣
VP Harris has tapped Matt Hildreth of the progressive Rural Organizing group as her campaign’s rural engagement director. According to Politico this is “part of her team’s push to clinch must-win states this fall by keeping former President Donald Trump from running up the score in rural counties.” Good!
Liz Cheney endorsed Vice President Harris. So did her (awful) dad, Dick. And Bloomberg published an Op-Ed about what a huge problem for Trump the “Republicans for Harris” movement is becoming.
Trump admitted on a podcast that he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker.”
The Biden-Harris administration is investing $11 million to support multilingualism in schools to preserve Indigenous languages. The funding will support the recruitment and retention of bilingual and multilingual educators and provide high-quality programming to Native students. 🪣
A new report, published by Generation180, a clean energy nonprofit, found that one in nine K-12 schools in the United States now use solar energy to power their buildings. [Source] 🪣
San Bernardino, CA just launched Zemu, America’s first hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions passenger train.
Natron Energy is launching "Project Neptune," a $1.4 billion gigafactory in North Carolina to produce 24 GW of sodium-ion batteries annually—the largest scale ever in the U.S.! 🪣
A federal judge ruled that the VA must build more than 2,500 housing units for veterans on its flagship Los Angeles campus.
Watch This! 👀
This is a bit longer than my usual Sunday video fare, but if you haven’t had a chance to watch Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier’s discussion about the recent dramatic uptick in voter registration numbers I *highly* recommend that you do! You’ll feel good afterwards, indeed!
This took significant effort to pull together and I really appreciate that effort. Thank you.
Great stuff, thank you! I also highly recommend watching Simon's discussion with Tom. Also check out "Closing Strong" from Courier Media which also features Simon.
This morning I felt crappy when I heard about the new NYT poll and what passes for analysis these days by the mainstream press. Then I realized that's exactly how it was intended to make me feel! Whether or not that particular poll is accurate, it was framed as the inevitable resurgence of Trump and that nothing that happened over the last month mattered. Public polling has become weaponized as part of a pysops campaign to make Trump's victory seem inevitable and minimize our enthusiasm for the historic movement we're now a part of. So I got over myself and signed up for a phone bank :)