Amidst the chaos and violence it is ever more important to keep our heads up and eyes on the prize, long lasting positive change, and we accomplished a lot this week ending 6/17/17, as we do every week.

DEFENDING IMMIGRANTS – Following in the footsteps of the 4th Circuit, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also struck down the revised travel ban finding that the language in the executive order itself did not make a rational case for why a travel ban was needed. The administration quietly announced that it is leaving in place Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DACA and Jessica Colotl, one of the faces of DACA won a temporary reprieve of the revocation of her DACA status when a judge found that proper procedures were nor followed in revoking her protection.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM – Cook County IL State Attorney instituted a new policy instructing prosecutors to consider recommending no bail for those without prior violent criminal history who are charged with low-level felonies. NYC’s new Criminal Justice Reform Act was implemented this week and directs police to issue civil tickets rather than criminal one for petty offenses such as public drinking. TX enacted the Sandra Bland Act requiring jails to immediately determine whether inmates suffer from mental illness and divert those who do to a mental health facility. Louisiana passed a package of laws aimed at reducing the prison population, with shorter sentences and parole and probation periods, less fines for those unable to pay, and eligibility for public benefits, among other things. Agnes Gund sold her Roy Lichtenstein “Masterpiece” for $165 million to establish the Art for Justice Fund to support criminal justice reform and reduce mass incarceration in the US helping to move this momentum forward.

SAVING THE PLANET – A U.S. District Court ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to take into account how a spill at the Dakota Access pipeline might affect “fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice” and the Army must redo parts of its environmental analysis. The EPA said they are not revoking the waiver allowing CA to set higher air quality standards then the Clean Air Act. Five state and city officials responsible for the Flint Michigan water poisoning have been charged with involuntary manslaughter for the Legionnaires deaths caused by the water, in addition to the lead contamination.

THAT PESKY EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE – The Attorney Generals of Maryland and DC filed suit accusing 45 of putting hotels and convention centers operated by their governments at a competitive disadvantage. Almost 200 Democratic members of Congress allege in a lawsuit that 45 is profiting from business dealings with foreign governments without congressional approval and they have been deprived of their right to rule on whether he can accept such benefits from foreign governments. Let’s see who wins first.

PROGRESS THIS PRIDE MONTH – Danica Roem, become the first transgender candidate to win a primary for the VA House. NY named Paul Feinman, the first openly gay judge to NY’s highest court. Oregon became the first U.S. state to allow residents to identify as neither male nor female on state driver’s licenses allowing residents to choose an “X” for non-specified, displayed on their driver’s license.

AROUND THE WORLD – Serbias president nominated Ana Brnabic, as the country’s first female and openly gay prime minister. Australia will pay $70 million to compensate almost 2,000 asylum seekers held in a detention center on a remote Pacific island who were subjected to violence, rotting food, and denied access to drinkable water, hygiene and medication.

WINNING AGAINST HUNGER – Jeffrey Lew raised $93,000 to erase the school lunch debt and eliminate school lunch shaming at public schools in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane in WA after initially launching an online fundraiser for just the $97 owed at his child’s school. The Canyons Board of Ed. in Utah passed a new school lunch debt policy prohibiting school lunch shaming of children.

FREE SPEECH – WH announced it will nominate Jessica Rosenworcel, an ardent net neutrality supporter, to fill a slot at the FCC. Senate Republicans backed away from a proposal to restrict media access in the Capitol after it caused an angry backlash. A U.S. Ct of Appeals declined to block the FCC from easing Obama-era limits on local television ownership and preventing a wave of media consolidation.

MORE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE AND EDUCATION- SCOTUS held that that manufacturers of low-cost bio-similars don’t need to wait an extra six months after FDA approval to launch their product, which could save people billions of dollars. Nevada passed the U.S’s strictest requirements for drug companies requiring they reveal how certain prescription drug prices are set, disclose annual list prices, profits they make and discounts they give middlemen, and provide explanations for price hikes. Memphis launched a Student Loan Reduction Program providing eligible city workers with $50 monthly contributions towards loan repayment, becoming the first major U.S. city to offer this. The U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor announced that students with a family income less than $65,000 will receive free tuition.

MORE GOOD STATE ACTIONS – Texas will no longer allow any one younger than 18 from marrying unless a judge consents and prohibit anyone under 16 from getting married at all. The NY Governor is expected to sign a bill that bans marriage for children under the age of 17 and requires 17-year-olds to get court approval after a thorough review process. Maine joins the bandwagon and requires insurers to provide 12 month of birth control at a time

Continue reading →

There is no Comey testimony here, only a brief summary of a fraction of our accomplishments in making the world a better place for all for the week ending 6/10/17.

THE SUPREME COURT –  SCOTUS upheld a lower court’s decision to throw out 28 NC legislative districts, another big ruling against gerrymandering by republicans. The Court rejected the Haris County (TX) emergency request for a stay of a lower court ruling challenging bail rules and ordering that inmates who can’t afford their bail to be freed from jail. They also placed limits on the government’s ability to seize assets from people who are convicted of crimes but receive little of the illegal proceeds.

SAVING THE PLANET – Hawaii became the first state to pass a law adopting the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. CA’s governor signed an agreement with China to lower greenhouse gas emissions and to partner on renewable energy, zero-emission vehicles, and low-carbon urban development. The United States Climate Alliance, a group of states dedicated to upholding the accord has grown to include HI, CT, DE, MA, MN, OR, RI VT and VA. Attorney Generals from NY, CA, ME, MD, MA, WA and VT formally challenged the EPA’s decision not to further restrict the use of the dangerous pesticide chlorpyrifos. Six conservation groups sued the EPA for suspending rules to stop methane leaks.

DEFENDING IMMIGRANTS – Arresting or denying someone services based on their immigration status is now against the law in Columbus OH.  Ipswich MA and Arcata CA voted to become “sanctuary cities”. Dallas joined other cities in the legal challenge against the Texas Anti-sanctuary law that prohibits cities from protecting immigrants. The American Immigration Lawyers Association is relocating its 2018 convention from Texas due to the state’s new anti-immigrant laws. The 15,000-member group pulled out even with penalties for venues already booked saying members wouldn’t feel comfortable in Texas.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM- New Mexico overhauled its bail system so that defendants are detained based on their individual risk of danger/flight, not on their ability to pay a bond and will permit some arrested on minor offenses to be automatically released without bail. Illinois also enacted bail reform, which will eliminate the requirement for cash bail for those charged with non-violent misdemeanors, offering home monitoring, curfews or drug counseling, and offering a rehearing for those who can’t come up with bail money. Provincetown RI passed significant police reform, including prohibiting police from profiling based on race, ethnicity, language, housing status, or political affiliation, baring officers from inquiring about immigration status or from complying with outside requests related to enforcing immigration law, and grants more power to an external review authority.

STATES DOING THE RIGHT THING – Colorado and Nevada passed laws requiring insurers to cover 12 months of birth control at a time and New Mexico instituted a policy allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control directly to women. Kansas has basically called their experiment with economic trickle down a failure after 4 years and even republicans voted to repeal the massive tax cuts because of the bigly deficit it caused, enabling them to spend more on education.

WINNING COURT CASES– A federal court awarded $6.7 million ($1.7 mil in compensatory damages and $5 mil in punitive damages) to a female Milwaukee County inmate who was sexually assaulted by an officer at the jail run by the notorious Sheriff David Clark. Des Plaines, Il will pay a Muslim group $580,000 to settle a federal lawsuit for using zoning laws to discriminate and prohibit them from building a mosque.

ELECTION WINS – A record number of 200 women (⅓ of lawmakers) and over 40 openly LGBTQ parliamentarians won seats in Britain’s election not mention the fact that the Labour Party gained 30 costing the conservative party their majority.  In DeSoto County MS, Horn Lake elected LaShonda Johnson, an African American woman to the Board of Aldermen for the first time since Reconstruction and in the town of Walls, Dr. McLemore and Calvin Farmer, were the first two African Americans elected as Aldermen. Continue reading →

Read up on the positive things that happened this week ending 6/2/17 while you were all busy with covfefe. I promise there are many.

AMERICANS STANDING UP FOR PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD – Mayors, Governors, philanthropists, and major CEOs are standing with the planet, pledging to do the right thing on behalf of all Americans.

• Bloomberg has offered $15 million to UN efforts to tackle climate change to replace US funding.
• Several of the largest U.S. companies, including Apple, IBM, GE, Pepsico, Exxon Mobile and Ford have pledged to stick to the climate accord and continue cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
• The CEOs of Tesla and Disney both left the President’s advisory councils after the announcement (and consequently were also removed from the grabyourwallet.org boycott).
• The Governors of CA, WA and NY formed the United States Climate Alliance aimed at meeting the U.S. climate goals and providing a means for interested states to coordinate on climate change.
• 187 Mayors have signed on to Climate Mayors agreement representing 52 million people.
• A group representing 100 cities, 3 states, 100 companies and 80 Universities are preparing to submit a plan to the UN pledging to meet the US emissions targets under the Paris accord. The three states alone make up about a fifth of U.S. population and GDP, and produce about 11% of U.S. emissions.

SAVING THE PLANET – Goldwin America, a Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer began a free training program for wind farm technicians for unemployed coal miners in Montana. A Ninth Circuit panel ruled the U.S. EPA failed to follow its own rules when it approved the use of the new pesticide, nanosilver, on a short term basis unanimously siding with the NRDC.  A new first of its kind, carbon capture plant, is now sitting on top of a waste incineration facility in Switzerland sucking CO2 out of the air to sell.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM – The ACLU has sued Lexington County in SC alleging it jails poor people who can’t pay fines for minor crimes and trying to put an end to “modern-day debtors’ prison.” Cleveland fired the police officer who killed Tamir Rice.

LGBTQ PROGRESS – Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields came out during a magazine interview, making her the department’s first openly gay chief. Ireland’s ruling party, Fine Gael, elected its first openly gay leader, Leo Varadkar, who is also the son of immigrants.

CITIES AND STATES STAND UP FOR THEIR CITIZENS – The democratic Governor of Minnesota vetoed the Republican Legislature’s effort to prevent cities from setting their own stronger labor rules for things like paid time off and minimum wage hikes, which would be greater than required by the state. San Antonio has joined the lawsuit brought by Austin to challenge the constitutionality of the Texas’ anti-sanctuary-cities law.  NYC became the largest U.S. city to guarantee some scheduling rights for fast food workers, requiring restaurants to schedule their workers at least two weeks in advance or pay extra for shift changes. A bipartisan group of 30 state Attorney Generals urged Congress to reject the administration budget proposal to eliminate funding for civil legal services for low-income Americans.

DEFENDING IMMIGRANTS – IKEA launched an initiative to provide jobs for refugees by starting a line of textiles made by Syrian refugees in partnership with local non-profits. A unanimous SCOTUS ruled that an immigrant convicted of consensual sex with his under-age girlfriend was not eligible to be deported, finding that for the purposes of immigration law a minor must be under 16 for the crime to be deemed serious enough for deportation. The New Castle County NH Executive signed an executive order barring law enforcement officers from asking about citizenship status or making an arrest because of it. Continue reading →

Big victories in NY, NH and the courts. Head to the glowing orb to see them or read about the good that happened week ending 5/27/17 below.

Empowering Court Decisions: The 4th Circuit Ct of Appeals upheld the injunction blocking the second version of the travel ban in a 10-3 ruling stating the order “speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.” The Supreme Court struck down two NC congressional districts ruling that the state violated the Constitution by relying too heavily on race and drawing them in a way that minimized the impact of black voters. Moving towards real gerrymandering reform one court decision at a time.

Election Wins: Democrats picked up seats in the state houses in NY and NH, winning House seats held by republicans in districts that voted overwhelming for Twittler.  Christine Pellegrino won in the NY Assembly District Nine in Long Island and Edith DesMarais won the House seat for District 6 in NH. DesMarais is the first Democrat elected to the NH House from the town of Wolfeboro since 1913.

Federal Immigration Relief: The administration extended the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haitians living in the US since the 2010 earthquake and stopping their deportation for another six months, the TPS was due to expire in July. The WH appears to be retreating in the war against sanctuary cities as DOJ has narrowed the definition of “sanctuary city” and significantly limited the potential financial consequences for non-compliance.  The State Department quietly lifted restrictions on the number of refugees allowed to enter the US, nearly double the number of refugees may be able to arrive in the country by next month.

Cities and States Do the Right Thing: Tennessee became the first state to offer a free two-year college education to all residents. The Seattle City Council unanimously passed significant police reform, bolstering community oversight of the department’s disciplinary system, creating a powerful civilian inspector general and civilian supervision of internal investigations. Denver reduced the penalty to less than a year of jail for many criminal ordinances so that undocumented immigrants convicted of these violations can avoid federal rules that can put them on the radar for deportation when they are convicted of crimes carrying a penalty of a year in jail.

Taking it to the Courts: The Southern Poverty Law Center sued Mississippi over discrimination in education arguing the legally binding obligation to operate a “uniform system of free public schools” for all children placed on the state as a condition of rejoining the Union after the Civil War is not being met because of systemic racially based inadequacies.

Saving the Planet: India has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations and has instead entered into contracts for solar electricity, now that for the first time ever solar is cheaper than coal in India.  Following in the footsteps of resistance projections on buildings in DC. Greenpeace lit up the dome of the Vatican with the message “Planet Earth First” during twittler’s visit. Continue reading →

Let’s not be distracted by the smoke and mirrors and instead take a deep breath and a moment to consider the good that was drowned out this week ending 5/13/17.

1. We are making progress on the Russia-Trump investigation. The republican led Senate Intelligence Committee  subpoenaed documents from Michael Flynn’s associates after declining to give Flynn immunity. A financial intelligence unit in the Treasury Department has agreed to turn over financial records related to twittler and associates at the Committee’s request. This week a third republican signed onto democratic legislation to create an independent commission to investigate Russian election interference. And who can forget that Sally Yates testified calm, cool, and collected, at the Senate hearing that the WH was told Flynn was compromised by the Russians.
2. The FBI raided the Annapolis office of Strategic Campaign Group, a Republican fundraising and campaign consulting firm representing Republican candidates around the country. Can’t wait to hear all about it when criminal charges follow.
3. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information the WH is using as the basis for its voter fraud claims and the new executive order establishing a “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity.” The WH was ordered by a federal judge to disclose a memo drafted under the guidance of Rudy Giuliani that the Arab American Civil Rights League argues served as an outline requested by the WH to make the travel ban look like it wasn’t aimed at Muslims.
4. Three republicans joined the democrats in the Senate to block a resolution to repeal an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from drilling operations on public lands. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s had archived EPA data posted on the city’s website saying “while this information may not be readily available on the agency’s webpage right now, here in Chicago we know climate change is real and we will continue to take action to fight it” and is promising to add more. A federal judge ruled the EPA should not have approved a particularly toxic strain of pesticides called neonicotinoids that have killed hundreds of thousands of bees. Tillerson signed the Fairbanks Declaration, which states the foreign leaders signing it “recognize that activities taking place outside the Arctic region, including activities occurring in Arctic states, are the main contributors to climate change effects and pollution in the Arctic, and underlining the need for action at all levels”, paralleling the Paris Climate Agreement. I hope he remembers to tell his boss he did this. Even the jewelry company Tiffany & Co is trying to save the planet. They said on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and in an ad in the New York Times “Dear President Trump. We’re still in for bold climate action. Please keep the U.S. in the Paris Climate Agreement. The disaster of climate change is too real, and the threat to our planet and to our children is too great.”
5. The Jesuits are returning more than 500 acres in South Dakota to the Rosebud Sioux, given to them in the 1880s for use as churches and cemeteries by the U.S. government. The Jesuits said “It’s now time to give back to the tribe all of those pieces of land that rightly belongs to them”.
6. Democratic Rep. Maloney held a town hall in republican Rep. Faso’s district since Faso refused to meet with his own constituents. Maloney told the crowd of over 300 that he was on hand to “adopt” the 19th district and “If at any time [Faso] wants to come here and do his job, well I will pack up and I will leave.” More Democrat led town halls in republican districts without them are being planned. And speaking of town halls, the Town Hall Project that will locate your local town hall for you, including “empty chair” ones where the community holds them even when their rep chooses not to. Arizona, NY, NC and Texas have some this month, check them out.
7. Connecticut joined a number of other states and passed a ban on gay conversion therapy. Oregon decided the Elliott State Forest, will stay in public ownership, bringing an end to Oregon’s years-long flirtation with divesting the land. Maryland’s Public Service Commission approved subsidies to support two large scale wind farms, making them viable projects. The wind farms are expected to prevent emissions of hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide and create 5,000 jobs.
8. In more strong women good news, Connie Schroeder a civil engineer, defeated a 27-year veteran Council Member to become Bastrop, Texas’ first female Mayor. I previously reported that Jeanette Vizguerra, an Immigrant seeking refuge in a church to avoid deportation was named a TIME magazine 100 most influential people in the US, and now ICE has granted her a stay of deportation through March 2019. She can now leave the church without fear and resume her life.
9. Like France, South Korea is also rejecting conservatives. Moon Jae-in, an opposition leader won the presidential election, ending a decade of conservative rule.
10. Resistance inspires creativity, like the dude who posed for a photo with Speaker Ryan at a pancake breakfast while wearing a “Repeal and go f*ck yourself” shirt and posted it on Instagram. You can see it here. And the Rational Dress Society who are recycling and repurposing Ivanka Trump clothing into cool items.

Check out the new page on the blog with resources for resisting and bringing about change.  It isn’t too late to comment on EPA rule rollbacks or protecting national monuments as over 150,000 of you did to the FCC to protect net neutrality.  Keep on calling and fighting, and don’t forget to vote in your local elections.

I think a lot of us can use something to cheer us up and motivate us to continue on. So let me start with the breaking news today that the Far Right Has Lost the French Presidential Election. Now on to the roundup of what went right this past week ending 5/6/17.

1. The Supreme Court ruled that under federal housing law cities can sue banks for discriminatory lending practices that hurt low-income neighborhood, holding that “cities can be an “aggrieved person” who can sue over the impact of housing discrimination on the city’s finances. SCOTUS also rejected an appeal on religious freedom grounds to a California law banning gay conversion therapy, leaving the law intact.
2. In more good legal news, a federal court reinstated a Kentucky couple’s case for damages against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who refused to give them a marriage license. The court ruled that Kentucky changing marriage licenses in 2016 did not eliminate the harm Davis may have done to their constitutional right to marry in 2015. A gay couple won a landmark legal ruling that paves the way for same-sex marriage in Bermuda when the Bermuda Supreme Court found that the Human Rights Act took primacy in Bermuda and protected their right to marry.
3. A Federal Appeals court denied to rehear a case upholding rules on net neutrality that that forbid internet providers from blocking or slowing internet traffic. Activists at Fight for the Future raised $25,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to purchase full-size billboards on heavily traveled roads in the home states of four Republicans who lead the passage of the bill allowing the sale of browser history. The billboards will show how much Blackburn, Heller, Rutherford, and Flake took from the telecom industry. In un-legal news, the ACLU reversed course and said it won’t file a lawsuit challenging the executive order on religious political exemptions because the “signing was an elaborate photo-op with no discernible policy outcome.”  After careful review the ACLU determined that the assertion that the Executive Order would “‘totally destroy’ the Johnson Amendment has proven to be a textbook case of ‘fake news’”
4. As part of the effort to follow the WH order to reduce regulations, the EPA is collecting public comments by phone, online, and in writing, about which clean water regs should be targeted and so far 6,000 comments have been published and they are dominated by those staunchly opposed to the regulatory rollback. You have until May 15^th to post your comments. You don’t need to be an expert. Do it here.
5. I’m going to call the budget deal a win, while some may disagree for a variety of reasons, it does not include money for a wall, increases federal spending on medical research, green energy programs, saves PBS and the arts, and other areas the WH pegged for reductions. While it does include $1.5 billion for border security, the money is for technology and infrastructure repairs, not more detention facilities or deportation officers. The legislation is also free of policy riders intended to restrict abortion access or loosen financial regulations, it prevents the DOJ from using any funds to prevent implementation of state medical marijuana laws, or serve other Republican priorities.
6. The Boston Red Sox permanently banned a fan from attending for making racial slurs against the Kenyan singing the National Anthem, after his comment was reported to them by another white fan. Trayvon Martin’s parents will accept a posthumous bachelor of science degree in aeronautical science conferred on him by Florida Memorial University “in honor of the steps he took during his young life toward becoming a pilot” before he was killed. In other University good news, Butler College in Pence’s home state is now offering a course entitled “Trumpism and US Democracy” The course describes 45 as perpetuator of “sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism and imperialism” and explains that students will discuss and possibly engage in strategies for resistance. Since I don’t know of any resistors who were actually paid for protesting, contrary to republican claims, I guess college credit will have to do.
7. The CEO of KeraVada, a black hair care product company, removed his hair products from an Asian owned Beauty Supply company after learning the company mistreated black women at the store. An international group defiantly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women priests, the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, ordained its first woman Catholic priest in the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte NC.
8. The major television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CNN have all refused to run twittler’s 100 days of accomplishment propaganda ad. CNN said “the advertiser must remove the false graphic that the mainstream media is ‘fake news”. As the mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false and per policy will be accepted only if that graphic is deleted.”
9. The second nominee for Army Secretary, Mark Green, withdrew his nomination after weeks of withering criticism over his past extremist statements against LGBTQ and Muslims communities. The first nominee withdrew because of financial entanglements. Another Republican Congressperson has announced they will not run for re-election in 2018. The decision by Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen not to run gives Democrats a chance to pick up a seat in the 2018, as her district went for Clinton in 2016.
10. New Yorkers gave 45 an appropriate welcome home by coming out in thousands to boo him and unfurl anti-trump banners. He was so afraid of the protestors that he ran away to his home in NJ rather than stay in NYC.

Feel free to comment on anything I missed. The fight to save the Affordable Care Act is not over.  It is more important now more than ever to write, call, fax, text, tweet, email, and show up at your Senator’s office or town hall meeting to demand they vote against repealing the ACA.

Samantha Bee entertained us last night at the Not the WH Correspondent’s dinner about the last 100 days, now let me remind you of what went right just this past week (4/29/17)

1. The Mayor of New Orleans had a public statue honoring racism in New Orleans removed. The statue honored members of a white supremacist paramilitary group who fought against the city’s racially integrated police force in 1874. The mayor said, “We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal in the heart of our city” after a federal court granted permission for four such statues to be removed
2. The Governor of Indiana signed a religious liberties bill which symbolically and primarily codifies case law to protect student religious liberties in schools allowing; schools to teach survey courses on world religions, student to pray in school and express their views on God in schoolwork and to wear clothing or jewelry with religious symbols, religious student groups to use school facilities, and prohibits discriminated against students based on their religion.
3. In a dramatic response to a power-grab by Republicans in the NC legislature, Republican Judge J. Douglas McCullough resigned 36 days prior to his mandatory retirement age to purposely circumvent efforts by republicans to strip power from the Democratic governor. His resignation allowed the Governor to appoint Arrowroot (who is openly gay) to the Court of Appeals, just hours before the republicans were going to restrict the Governor’s power by overriding the Governor’s veto of a law that reduced the number of judges on the panel.  Sorry if I made your head spin on that explanation.
4. A coalition of progressive citizens in Morgantown West Virginia, inspired by the Indivisible Guide, took control of the seven member city council in their deep red state, in an election that brought a large turnout.  Each of the seven seats was contested in the council race unlike the 2015 election that had just three contested seats. Repeat after me, change begins from the ground up.
5. S. District Judge William Orrick of California temporarily blocked the executive order defunding “sanctuary cities”, finding that San Francisco and Santa Clara could prove that it violates the Constitution because the president doesn’t have the power to withhold federal money. As other judges have done in the past, Orrick found that the government’s arguments in support of the order directly contradicted WH public statements, trump tweets, and Spicer and Sessions comments at press conferences. A federal judge ordered ExxonMobil to pay nearly $20 million plus attorney’s fees for spewing millions of pounds of air pollution higher than allowed by law from its Houston-area industrial facilities as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club and Environment Texas.
6. A white principal of a predominantly black elementary school in Florida was forced out when it became pubic that she told her staff to put white students in the same classrooms, separate from the black students. This school district is also currently under investigation for racial discrimination.  I don’t think this will help their case. Wyoming residents banded together to support the LGBTQ community by wearing tutus to bars and other places after Senator Enzi made insensitive comments about tutu wearing gay man at a high school.
7. Showing yet again how boycotts work, the restaurant Koi, located in the Trump Hotel Soho in New York City is closing because business has been down significantly since Election Day. Staffers said that former clientele told them they don’t want to patronize anything with “Trump” in the name. NRA members should have boycotted this year’s annual convention when the Secret Service banned their guns at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center during the by keynote speech by 45.  Why would the Secret Service think anyone with an AK47 at an NRA gathering posed a threat to 45? and why did NRA members stand for this unreasonable gun ban?
8. 45 continues to back down on some of his racist and ridiculous ideas, and this week that included removing his demand for funding his border wall as part of a temporary budget bill. Those calls to congress and the angry crowds at congressional town halls have members of congress too scared to give him what he wants, keep up the good work.
9. Astronaut Peggy Whitson not only broke the record for oldest woman in space, but she just broke the U.S. record for most time in space at 355 days, Whitson is also the first woman to command the space station twice and the only woman to have led NASA’s astronaut corps. Female Scientist Rock! And so did the amazing number of people who believe in science who turned out for the March against Climate Change all over the world.
10. The Fair Labor Association, an industry monitoring group, found two dozen violations of international labor standards during an audit of the factory owned by the company that produces Ivanka Trump branded clothing.

I continue to be amazed at the ingenuity this election has inspired. We have text alerts for daily actions that directly connect you to the right legislator, government office, or even a random trump property, at the click of a button, the ability to fax and mail letters for free to elected official through a few simple text messages, apps to message your representative and keep track of congressional voting, an online national resistance calendar, an app variation of a drinking game that will allow you to automatically donate to worthy causes every time the twittler-in-chief texts (with a maximum cap or you would go broke), and winner for most creative this week is the immigrants’ rights activists who have organized a campaign to overwhelm the new ICE hotline for crime victims of aliens 1-855-48-VOICE with complaints of crimes committed by space aliens. Which one will you use this week?

Shout out to my local peeps, Trump coming to NYC May 4^th, be a part of the protests that day to let him know what New Yorker’s think of him, let’s make the Women’s March look like a warm up.

Need to do something other than march, donate, call, and text? Want to make a difference in the resistance from the comfort of your own home? Want to be the reason that we have change happening at the local level to report on in future editions of What Went Right. Then here is your chance.

Run for Something needs volunteers to do some super easy research to connect potential candidates to offices they can run for and it takes less than an hour of your free time. I did it and it is simple and informative. Sign up here and spread the word to your family and friends.