Victories & Good News Roundup

This edition of the Victories & Good News Roundup has been long in coming, on account of summer travels, general busyness of our all-volunteer team, and our desire to time the release to a moment when we all needed a big boost. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seems like such a moment. In the light of this vote, we will be reassessing our priorities for where to direct our resistance energies.

But know this: We persist. This is a fight for the soul of our country, the rule of law, the most vulnerable among us, the survival of our planet, and justice. We are in this for the long haul. Which is why we pause every once in a while to recall and savor our victories. Ponder them. Let them nourish your spirit. And know that we are not alone.

First, items in Maine and related to our calls to action…

• A lawsuit by Maine Citizens for Clean Elections forced Governor LePage to release $1.4 million in funding for clean elections candidates, which the law required him to do in the first place. We hope our next governor shows more respect for Maine laws.
• Maine voters received national attention for passing Ranked Choice Voting in the June primary (yet again), this time by a larger margin than the first time, definitively overriding both the legislature’s and LePage’s desire to thwart the will of the voters. Some have credited the new system with the state’s strong turnout in the summer primary this year. Maine is the first state to have Ranked Choice Voting in statewide elections.
• Maine’s Attorney General, Janet Mills, joined 20 other Democratic Attorneys General in calling on the DJT administration to end the policy of separating families.
• … and joined 18 other Democratic Attorneys General in a successful lawsuit against Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education over the Department’s abandonment of rules designed to protect student borrowers from abuse by for-profit colleges.
• The increase in Maine’s minimum wage, which we vigorously supported and which voters approved in 2017, has already significantly helped Maine’s poorest citizens and has helped lift 10,000 Maine children out of poverty. And remember all the scaremongering about how this would destroy businesses and jobs? Hasn’t happened.
• Maine’s high court ordered the LePage administration to file the paperwork for Medicaid expansion, another law enacted by voters through referendum which LePage decided to ignore. The expansion is expected to provide health care access to 70K Mainers currently without it.
• Thousands of Mainers rallied in the humidity on June 30th to insist that Families Belong Together, joining their fellow citizens all across the country.
• DJT withdrew the nomination of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit Court when Mitch McConnell did not expect to have the votes to confirm him – even though Bounds had been passed out of the Judiciary Committee. Bounds has a long history of racist writings. We like to think our C2A was part of the reason for the withdrawal (ahem), but some credit probably should go to South Carolina’s African American Republican senator Tim Scott, who refused to vote Yes and swayed several of his colleagues, too. We applaud Senator Scott.
• The proposed merger of Tribune Media and Sinclair Broadcast Group is dead! The FCC voiced serious misgivings, and Tribune withdrew from the arrangement. Had it gone through, this merger would have resulted in extreme, uniform, pro-Trump propaganda being pumped into over 70% of American households. (See our C2A.) Thanks to all who helped make some noise! We are thrilled and relieved.
• A federal judge ordered the Administration to fully restore DACA. DJT can appeal, but must provide a rational explanation for why it must be rescinded. The judge rejected DJ’s argument that DACA was unconstitutional and said ending it was “capricious and arbitrary.”

In the world beyond Maine and our action items…

• The Supreme Court refused to endorse a constitutional right to open a gun store.
• Courts have ordered work on the Atlantic pipeline stopped because plans for environmental protections during the project were inadequate.
• A judge denied the administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to prevent the government from deporting people who are married to U.S. citizens and in the process of applying for legal residency. The government had been arresting people when they arrived for routine interviews at federal offices in the course of their application for residency.
• The Miami-Dade county commission flipped Democratic with the upset win by Eileen Higgins in a special election. The improbable win was the result of both grassroots engagement and strong support from the Democratic Party.
• Citing abusive language that violates their policies, twitter finally banned Alex Jones and InfoWars – permanently.
• The NRA suffered a dramatic decline in membership dues for the second year in a row, and is now seriously in debt. Of course, the potential bad news here is that this might make them even more inclined to seek money from enemy countries and unsavory characters, but still, we think it’s good. 
• By a vote of 62-34, the Senate blocked a proposed amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prevented enforcement of one of Obama’s clean water rules. 
• A federal judge blocked DJT’s latest attempt to prevent a lawsuit against him by the Attorneys General of D.C. and Maryland from going forward. The suit alleges that DJ has violated the emoluments clause in the Constitution, which prevents the president from using the office to profit personally from foreign governments. The suit focuses on the loss of business to other hotel owners due to the fact that foreign governments are booking at DJ’s hotels in order to curry favor with him.
• Boston named its first black police commissioner, William Gross, a veteran Boston police officer.
• Voter registration among those 18-29 has surged since the Parkland shooting. Be a voter! In every election.
• A judge denied the DJT administration’s request to drop a lawsuit alleging that the administration’s decision to end temporary protected status for Salvadoran, Honduran, and Haitian people was racially motivated. So the case is moving forward. A big shout-out to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice for their work on this case.
• A different judge declared a law the GOP administration has been using to target sanctuary cities unconstitutional and rebuked the administration for it. This judge had previously issued a temporary injunction (subsequently upheld by an appellate court) against targeting sanctuary cities; the new ruling is permanent and intended to cover the whole country.
• Yet another judge affirmed the dignity of a transgender woman in prison by deciding that the state’s decision to deny her transitioning hormones and access to standard women’s dress and grooming items violated Eighth Amendment. Big applause for our friends at the ACLU once again.
• In North Carolina, a three-judge panel struck down GOP congressional districting maps as unconstitutional due to their partisan gerrymandering.
• Workers at tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are organizing against the use of their companies’ platforms and technology to further DJ’s agenda, and they are coordinating their efforts across companies.
• In a victory for environmental groups and Native American communities, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from industry to an Obama regulation banning new uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
• Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed an executive order withdrawing from that city’s partnership with ICE, saying, “We will no longer be complicit.” Atlanta will not be offering space for holding detainees in the city’s jails. Instead, it has entered an agreement with Uber and with Catholic and Lutheran organizations to provide rides and free meals for detained immigrants reunited in Atlanta.
• A federal judge restored endangered species protection to Yellowstone’s grizzlies.
• In primary run-offs, Oklahoma voters ousted six more GOP legislators who had voted to deny funds to schools. Of the nineteen who had voted down funding for education, two others had been ousted in the regular primaries, and seven others were term limited or decided not to run. Only four will be on the ballot in November.
• Chris Wallace became the third Fox News host to break with the station’s pro-DJT propaganda, saying that DJT is responsible for the Mueller investigation because the trigger for it was his firing of Jim Comey and not anything that Jeff Sessions did.
• A coal plant in northern Texas announced that it will be closing in 2020 because it could not be competitive in the market. This is the fifth coal plant in the past couple years to announce closure.
• U.S. coal consumption is dropping, and U.S. coal exports are at their lowest level since 1983, partly due to DJT’s tariffs.
• The cost of clean energy, especially wind power, is dropping dramatically, putting a much greener energy future within reach.
• Costa Rica’s Supreme Court declared that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
• A federal judge blocked Kentucky from becoming the first state to mandate that Medicaid recipients must work, calling the stipulation “arbitrary and capricious.”
• A federal appeals court ordered the EPA to enforce limits on super-polluting “glider trucks.” Scott Pruitt had announced that the agency would no longer enforce these limits on his last day in office.
• Since the Parkland massacre in February, the number of states with red flag laws has doubled. Red flag laws allow law enforcement to temporarily remove guns from someone who is showing signs of violence.
• A U.S. District Court judge in Virginia ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, a transgender student who had been barred from using the boys’ bathroom at his school. Denying the school board’s request to have the case dismissed, the judge ordered both sides to schedule settlement meetings.
• Some members of Congress tried to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal a rule instated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers of payday loans, but they could not garner the necessary support before the clock ran out, so the rule will go into effect in 2019.
• Alex Jones and InfoWars were unsuccessful in their bid to get the defamation case against them by the Sandy Hook parents dismissed.
• Over 70 black women are running for office in Alabama, many of them inspired by Roy Moore and the success of their grassroots efforts to defeat him and elect Doug Jones last December.
• The Canadian company First Quantum became the fourth company to withdraw investment in an open-pit gold and copper mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, which provides half the world’s supply of sockeye salmon and is home to bears, eagles, and wolves.
• Thanks to a lawsuit by Earthjustice, a judge in Montana agreed that regulators had illegally failed to consider impact to wildlife and water quality when they approved a drilling project near Yellowstone National Park.
• A federal judge in South Carolina reinstated the Clean Water Rule in 26 states in a major blow to the DJT administration.
• A county in Texas voted to end its partnership with ICE and with Core Civic, one of the companies profiting off DJ’s anti-immigrant policy.
• A judge in Oregon ruled in favor of the rights of transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin widely used in U.S. agriculture. The EPA had been on track to ban it earlier, but Scott Pruitt had “delayed” those plans. Chlorpyrifos is especially harmful to children’s health and brain development.
• A federal district judge issued a ruling invalidating a recently adopted Federal Elections Commission regulation that would have allowed dark money to remain anonymous. The Supreme Court declined to block it, so that decision stands. We salute Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) for bringing this case.
• Virginia passed Medicaid expansion, which will allow 400K people to have medical insurance.
• Due to a backlash of protests from employees, Google decided not to renew its contract with the Pentagon to assist with the artificial intelligence analysis for the Pentagon’s drone activities.
• In the wake of the new FCC rules curtailing net neutrality, so far 29 states have passed laws ensuring net neutrality, and 5 governors have issued executive orders prohibiting the state from doing business with companies that violate neutrality.
• The $19 billion EPA project to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is working, with several species seeing a comeback. This is a plan that Obama started by executive order in 2010. DJ tried to cut its funds by 90% in his budget, but Congress pushed pack and maintained project funding.
• A federal judge struck down as unconstitutional a Kansas voter obstruction law that Kris Kobach had personally defended and ordered Kobach to attend more classes in continuing legal education after he was found in contempt of the court.
• … and now a grand jury will be investigating whether Kobach deliberately obstructed voting in 2016.
• Six hundred Catholic organizations used the third anniversary of the release of Pope Francis’s letter on the environment, Laudato Si, to declare that they are “still in” the Paris Climate Accord.
• The Senate included in its defense spending bill a provision that would block DJT’s ZTE deal, the one that protected the Chinese telecommunications company from penalties. Although some of DJ’s allies tried to prevent provision from being included, pushback against the administration and in favor of existing Commerce Department penalties for ZTE was bipartisan.
• On the anniversary of Charlottesville and the murder of Heather Heyer, counter-protesters in D.C. and Charlottesville took to the streets to vastly outnumber the white supremacists and push back against their hate.
• New York’s Governor Cuomo pardoned 7 immigrants who were guilty of minor crimes committed years ago and have been crime-free since, in order to protect them from deportation. These follow 18 more he pardoned in December.
• Voters in Missouri blocked a GOP right-to-work law that would have crippled labor unions. Be a voter!
• Massachusetts now has a law implementing automatic voter registration whenever anyone has any interactions with the state’s Motor Vehicles or Medicaid offices. It will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.
• A judge in Iowa issued an injunction barring implementation of some provisions of the state’s recently passed GOP voter suppression law. She said they appeared to be against the state’s Constitution.
• A federal judge ruled against the Department of Health and Human Services for its decision to end a grant for reducing teen pregnancies. The case had been brought on behalf of 62 organizations that had received funding, and it was the fifth such case that DHHS lost. Virtually all 84 organizations originally funded have thus had their funding restored.
• California passed the nation’s toughest net neutrality law, making theirs the fourth state in the country to pass similar laws. More than 20 states are suing the FCC over its revocation of net neutrality rules.
• In yet another rejection of DJT’s vision of America, Rashida Tlaib, daughter of Palestinian immigrants, won her Democratic congressional primary in Michigan and will run unopposed in November, so she is poised to become the first Muslim woman in the Congress. Less than 5% of her district identifies as Arab American.
• Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) started a program called Build the Bench – a one-day boot-camp on running for local office in Illinois. So far 11 one-day sessions have happened, paid for out of her campaign funds. She personally identifies promising women, people of color, and young adults and invites them to attend. To date, 260 Democrats have gone through her program. Of those who have decided to run, 71% have won.
• Microsoft became the first company to require its subcontractors to grant paid parental leave (12 weeks) to their employees. This will apply to companies of over 50 employees who provide services such as staffing Microsoft’s cafeterias and various other products and services.
• An arbitrator ruled that Colin Kaepernik’s case against the NFL can proceed because he produced sufficient evidence that the organization colluded to keep him off the field.
• The U.S. Marine Corps issued a new rule emphasizing that participation in white supremacist activity is prohibited and directing any Marine who knows about a fellow Marine’s involvement in such hate groups to report it. This is part of the response to the involvement by an active-duty Marine at Charlottesville.
• When the French far-right, anti-immigrant politician Marine LePen arrived in a small town in the south of France in a region that had voted for her, she was met by a crowd telling her to leave and that they didn’t want her hate in their town. She was there to visit an empty retirement home that is being converted into housing for immigrants. We salute our allies fighting anti-immigrant hatred across the pond.
• Verizon is leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a powerful pro-corporate lobbying group responsible for pushing some of the worst legislation in the country, because of ALEC’s ties to an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim group. Verizon has been a member and major donor to ALEC for three decades.
• Michele Dauber, the Stanford law professor who launched a successful campaign to recall the judge who ruled in the Brock Turner case, has started a PAC (called Enough Is Enough Voter Project), to help unseat elected officials credibly accused of sexual assault, etc. or who have voted or spoken against women and their rights.
• Four more white supremacists active at Charlottesville have been arrested. Charges are inciting a riot and conspiracy to incite a riot.
• Hyatt Hotels announced a new policy banning hate groups from renting its facilities.
• On National Voter Registration Day (Sept. 25), over 800K people registered to vote. Organizers had aimed for 300K. This is a record.
• A three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously vacated a permit previously granted under the Clean Water Act to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, saying that regulators lacked the authority to substitute one kind of construction for another one. Congrats and thanks to the Sierra Club and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and their partners for this victory.
• A judge barred the DJT administration from ending the temporary protected status that has been permitting citizens of the Sudan, Haiti, Nicaragua, and El Salvador to live and work legally in the United States due to extreme conditions in their own countries. In issuing this temporary injunction, the judge cited DJ’s own speeches as evidence he “harbors an animus” against non-white, non-European immigrants. You think?
• Rev. William Barber has won a MacArthur Genius Grant for his work through his Poor People’s Campaign and other endeavors to address the neglected poor and marginalized in our society. The grant includes a no-strings-attached $625K for the winners to use in any way they see fit.
• Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated battery (16 counts) for the death of black teenager Laquan McDonald in 2014.
• Due to a September Supreme Court decision involving paperwork errors in deportation forms, tens of thousands of deportation cases may be tossed out due to a clerical omission.
• Many, many men all over the country have stepped up in public support of Dr. Blasey Ford or Deborah Ramirez. They include the 1600 who took out an ad in the New York Times and Kavanaugh’s Yale classmates. Men, too, are saying, “Enough.”

Want more good news? Read our previous lists here.