Extra! Extra! April 9th 🎊
Hi, all, and happy Sunday evening!
Also happy Easter and happy Passover to those who celebrate!
It’s been a beast of a week, so you deserve a particularly long list of things to feel good about.
Guess what? You’ve got one!
Soak it up! We really are banking a lot of wins—it’s critical that we acknowledge and celebrate them.
Here we go!
Celebrate This! 🎉
Swiss insurance giant Chubb Ltd. said it will stop writing insurance policies for oil and gas extraction projects that do not have "evidence-based" methane reduction plans, increasing pressure on fossil fuel companies to participate in the fight against climate change.
Vote Forward volunteers collectively wrote more than 316,000 letters encouraging Wisconsinites to vote in the state supreme court election.
Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, ordered the Washington Department of Corrections to use its pharmacy license to buy 30,000 doses of mifepristone, an estimated three-year supply for patients in Washington state. Smart thinking, in light of what happened this week!
Abortion funds in Texas are resuming their work helping people obtain out-of-state abortions after a court ruling that shields the organizations (at least somewhat) from prosecutions.
Progressives won their first majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 15 years on Tuesday night when Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Daniel Kelly! And turnout broke the previous record high set for spring elections that don't coincide with a presidential primary.
Brandon Johnson pulled out a win in the Chicago mayoral race!
In another Wisconsin judicial win, union-side labor lawyer Sara Geenen ousted a Walker-appointed judge on Wisconsin Court of Appeals. To show how far Dems have come on the courts, Brash ran *unopposed* in 2017.
Another Midwestern election, completely under-the-national-radar: we won a progressive majority on the St. Louis City Council. This was another milestone, many years in the making.
Also on Tuesday night: eleven Moms Demand Action volunteers in Illinois and Wisconsin won their general elections for mayor, city council, school board, and other local offices!
Also Tuesday night, Indivisible member and progressive community organizer Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth beat a FAR better funded candidate for City Council in Chicago’s 48th ward. Manaa-Hoppenworth will make history as Chicago’s first Filipino American City Council member!
March For Our Lives reported 7,000 Tennessee students left school on Monday to gather and protest at the Capitol.
NASA just named the first woman and first person of color astronauts to be sent on a lunar mission. Christina Koch and Victor Glover will join the Artemis II mission, the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than 50 years.
Trans creators raised over $2.25 million for trans healthcare. Mercury Stardust’s second annual TikTok-a-Thon, cohosted by Jory (a.k.a. AlluringSkull) reached its $1 million goal in under six hours.
Finland formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday
The Montana legislature passed S.B. 77, which would prohibit prison gerrymandering, ensuring that incarcerated individuals are counted at their home address rather than where they are imprisoned.
Pope Francis formally rejected the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a decree still used to legitimize occupying stolen Indigenous lands. The rejection is a historic recognition of the Vatican’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers.
Chemicals giant Albemarle announced it will build a $1.3B lithium plant in South Carolina—a big step toward the Biden administration's goal of beefing up the domestic EV battery supply chain.
The small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu won a major victory to advance international climate law Wednesday after it persuaded the U.N. General Assembly to ask the world’s highest international court to rule on the obligations of countries to address climate change.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer repealed an unenforceable Michigan law Wednesday that makes it a felony to administer most abortions with no exception for rape or incest.
Stacey Abrams is joining the faculty of Howard University, the historically Black college in the nation’s capital. Abrams will be the inaugural Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics.
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has lost a bid for emergency help from the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, to block some of his closest advisers from testifying about him to a grand jury, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to a new court filing.
The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening rules that limit emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants from coal-fired power plants, updating standards imposed more than a decade ago.
Upholding the “rights of nature,” Ecuador stopped a copper mining project in the Intag Valley. Setting a significant precedent, a court ruled the copper producer violated the community’s constitutional rights — and the rights of the environment.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected West Virginia’s request that it be allowed to enforce its anti-trans sports ban against Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 12-year-old transgender girl who is a member of her school’s cross-country team.
IRS and Treasury Department officials said Thursday that they will use $80 billion in new funding for the tax service to claw back unpaid balances from high-income earners and complex businesses — restoring audits on those taxpayers to higher rates from more than a decade ago — and boost customer service resources for middle- and low-income tax filers.
On Tuesday, The Lever revealed that after raking in huge money from oil and gas interests, New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul tried to help those donors gut her state’s climate law. Massive backlash ensued. A day after the report, Hochul’s office walked back the plan, saying it was “no longer a priority.” 🙌🏼
The two Democratic lawmakers who were expelled in Tennessee can immediately run in the special elections to fill their seats, and if they win, they can’t, per the Tennessee constitution, be expelled again. Take that, GOP!
FEMA will provide extra funding for low-carbon building materials in areas that have been hit by natural disasters, like those affected by the recent Midwestern tornadoes.
In just over ten years, the United Kingdom went from a third of their electricity generated by coal to just over two percent. Carbon emissions in the power sector have fallen over a third, and the UK is now gunning for complete decarbonization of the sector by 2035.
Suicide rates have fallen worldwide since 2000, with many countries recording substantial decreases. "These large declines in suicide rates," Our World in Data reports, "have been partly driven by greater awareness and help for people at risk, improvements in mental health treatment, and restrictions on some of the methods of suicide."
India has welcomed the birth of four cheetah cubs - the first to be born in more than 70 years after the animals were declared officially extinct there.
Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky has signed a bill to legalize marijuana, making the state the 38th in the U.S. to enact the reform.
The April BLS jobs report is out and its another good one
In Indiana, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that schools have no right to misgender transgender students.
A good list of things to read and celebrate as we head into another news cycle. Thank you for all your research and efforts to inform!
This is all fantastic news! I needed that boost of joy. The article I have going out in the morning was a heavy one to research, and so a little cheering up was in order.
Thanks so much, and happy Easter!