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From the GNR Newsroom, its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-10
Welcome back dear friends to the Monday good news roundup, the time of week where your GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the GNR Discord) bring you all the good news to start your week off right.
I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you, things are gonna be rough the next few years. Right now President Musk and DOGE are doing their level best to mess up the Government (And oh yeah, that Orange guy is there too I guess, but he doesn’t matter), and things look pretty dire, but you know what’s happening? Resistance is happening. In the courts, on capitol Hill, on the streets, we are fighting back against Trump ans the Broligarchy, furthermore, people who voted for Trumpare finally waking up and realizing that maybe Trump isn’t the best guy in the world.
So lets jump right into the good news, starting with a song that’s very near and dear to me, the song Pollyana from the Earthbound series.
I honestly don’t think there’s a more GNR song than this song right here.
ew York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Thursday her plans to sue President Donald Trump's administration over the Treasury Department giving Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Americans' personal information. Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment on Thursday. James and other attorneys general have previously filed lawsuits challenging Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship for children born to people living in the United States illegally and freeze federal grant programs, both of which were blocked in court. However, James is best known for having led a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump's real estate company ahead of his 2024 election. Trump maintains his innocence, and the judgment of now over $500 million, including interest, is on appeal.
Trust me, I could write an entire GNR just about how many people are suing Trump and President Elon over their boneheaded stunts, I will try and restrain myself but trust me, there’s a lot.
Remember how I said I was gonna restrain myself? I might have been exaggerating a bit on that.
I’m not sure when The Phoenix Open started calling itself the “The People’s Open,” but it was probably in the ‘70s when the once laid-back PGA event that’d been around in some form since the 1930s started to take off and turned into golf’s biggest party. Attendance shot into the stratosphere after 1987 when the Open moved from downtown Phoenix, a few blocks from our home, to far north Scottsdale, curiously next to Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. It’s now the biggest event on the PGA Tour, always on Super Bowl weekend with more than 700,000 fans in a good year. Tiger Woods helped a lot, when in 1997 he made a hole-in-one on the 16th and forever turned that hole into the wackiest in golf (check out the hole-in-one Friday). I’m just waiting for them to add a mosh pit. Even if it’s a lot more expensive than it used to be—hardly “The People’s Open” anymore—you can still get silly and have a good time, maybe get drenched in a beer shower or get wasted (it’s also called “the greatest show on grass”) with an 80-degree sun blaring down on you. Sure, you’re reminded everywhere you look that all of it is sponsored by a trash company, literally, but the Phoenix Open has always had a party atmosphere, a reputation the organizers encourage. What you don’t expect at this or any PGA event are Nazis. And what this one racist asshole did not expect is the FO in FAFO because Nazi jerks rarely think things through to the “consequence” part when they’re drunk and playing SS around a lot of people with cameras.
Sing along you know the words:
If you’re a Nazi and we know it lose your job,
If you’re a Nazi and we know it lose your job ,
If you’re a nasty fashy twit
we wont put up with your shit
If you’re a Nazi and we know it lose your job
Allow me to first apologize for the thumbnail, I know some of my constituents have been avoiding using pictures of Donny two scoops for the mental health of our readers, but its really getting to the point where seeing the asshole is unavoidable. I will try and keep it to a minimum, but at the same time sometimes its not gonna be possible.
And anyway just remember, if you think you’re having a bad day, remember Trump is probably having a worse one, because He’s Donald Trump, and that’s life without parole (Plus he’s not even president anymore, Elon is).
Yes, things are dark right now, but it wont last, things will get better, I promise.
In these early days of the second Trump administration, many folks, especially Democrats, are expressing astonishment and exasperation that Trump is seemingly getting away with everything and doing whatever he wants without any checks on his power. Except, well, it isn't actually true that Trump is getting away with everything, or that no one is checking his power. As I intend to show with this article, since his victory in the November 2024 elections, Trump has actually been stopped, slowed, or forced to back down on at least 16 occasions.
Trump is not unbeatable, and we will win in the long run.
It looks like Elon Musk isn’t winning any popularity contests anytime soon. New polling has found that the billionaire technocrat has fallen out of favor with, well, everyone (including Republicans). Republicans are reportedly losing faith in Musk, who Donald Trump appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is currently on a slash-and-burn campaign through several essential federal agencies. At first, Republicans were on board with Musk’s radical plan to eradicate government agencies. In a poll from The Economist/YouGov taken in the days after the 2024 presidential election, 47 percent of Republicans said that they wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence in Trump’s administration. Twenty-nine percent said they wanted him to have “a little” influence, and just 12 percent said they hoped he’d have “none at all.”
Wow, I’ve never seen a President with poll numbers this bad.
New legislation in Congress aims to tackle a financial burden weighing on millions of households -- rent that is "too damn high," as one New York City housing activist famously claimed. The bill, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and co-sponsored by eight other Senate Democrats, targets companies that collect data on rental markets from landlords and then use the data for an algorithm to help broadly determine rents.
Rent is a serious problem in this country, especially in my home state of New York, so any relief on that front would be highly appreciated.
California is ramping up its efforts to protect its laws safeguarding transgender people after President Donald Trump's anti-transgender executive orders. Why It Matters Since beginning his second term, Trump has taken steps to unravel protections for transgender people, signing an executive order on his first day in office declaring that there are "only two genders, male and female." In another executive order, Trump said the United States would no longer "fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another" and would seek to cut off funding to Medicare, Medicaid and hospitals that provided or promoted such care. He has also barred transgender people from serving in the armed forces and transgender student-athletes from playing on teams corresponding with their gender identity. The orders from Trump have created a dilemma for states with a progressive agenda, like California, that have legislated to protect transgender identity. California is now making efforts to "Trump-proof" its laws.
Its not just the courts that are fighting back against Trump, blue states are doing their part as well.
This weekend’s head-spinning headlines were enough to spike blood pressure nationwide. Mass purges of prosecutors and agents at the FBI. A shutdown of an entire agency at USAID. Even a tech bro putsch at Treasury and the Office of Personnel Management, giving an unelected billionaire access and possible control over our entire federal workforce HR and some $6 trillion paid annually by our federal payment system. The most common question I saw across social media and in the comments was understandable: Is somebody doing something about this? The short and important answer is yes. And we need to understand a few things to help bring things into focus.
Don’t think for a second that anyone is sitting idly by and letting this just happen, people are working hard to keep Trump from enacting President Elon’s shitty agenda.
Think we can go for another musical interlude, a personal favorite of mine: Dividing by Zero/Slim Pickens does the right thing and rides the bomb to Hell by the Offspring
Demonstrators gathered in cities across the U.S. on Wednesday to protest the Trump administration’s early actions, decrying everything from the president’s immigration crackdown to his rollback of transgender rights and a proposal to forcibly transfer Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Protesters in Philadelphia and at state capitols in California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana and beyond waved signs denouncing President Donald Trump; billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency; and Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society.
As I said before, Trump is being opposed on all levels: from the courts to the streets. We just have to keep the pressure on. He’ll crack before we do.
He can't do it. This requires a bill in Congress. But his majority in the House is 218 : 215 right now. Will go down to 217 : 215 temporarily soon. Even when back up to strength only 220 : 215. It just takes 3 moderate Republicans in the House to vote with all the Democrats and it can't happen. Trump is going to have major challenges getting even his core promises across the line in the maximum of 3 budget reconciliation bills a year. This one is just impossible. Many moderate Republicans would join likely all Democrats in opposing it. Also if he tried to close it down with a separate bill, it would be stopped in the Senate by Democrat senators, a filibuster of 41 needed to stop it and there are 47 Democrats. The only way to avoid the filibuster is to try to pass it using the process called "reconciliation" in one of a maximum of 3 big budget bills a year. That makes it even harder because with many Republicans opposed on principle to anything adding to the debt, he probably won't even get the bills passed without Democrat votes and certainly doesn't want to add anything to reduce the number of Republican votes. . BLOG: Trump won’t be able to pass anything except blandest partisan laws or bipartisan with Democrats — with only a 220 : 215 majority in House and 47 Democrats can filibuster to stop most laws in Senate READ HERE:
https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/trump-wont-be-able-to-pass-anything
Yeah remember there are limits to a presidents powers, there’s only so much Trump can actually do (especially since he’s not the president, Elon is. And I encourage everyone on social media to remind Trump of this to his face, at every opportunity, that Elon is president and not him. He may need the reminder).
Democratic activists, donors, and ordinary voters are understandably frustrated that President Trump’s torrid assault on the rule of law, on U.S. national security protections, law enforcement, trading partners, sane governance, and truth has not been stopped dead in its tracks. In particular, many Democrats have been dismayed that their lawmakers in the House and Senate have not been more forceful in their response to unprecedented attacks on the Constitutional order. Nevertheless, the tide may be turning.
Lets remind this orange gasbag and his tech bro president pal who they are actually dealing with.
As an independent news outlet, The Fucking News is inherently inclined to point out bad things. We’re the health inspector, not the restaurant reviewer. So if we spend four years pointing out bad shit at an 82-year-old restaurant, it’s not because we want it replaced by Chez Sanders or Bernie’s Bistro, it’s because we want the restaurant to succeed and its patrons not to die from brucellosis. It’s definitely not because we secretly want McDonaldTrump to take over, infested with rats and oligarchs. But part of TFN’s mission is also to steel Newsfuckers. To point out those areas where the gleam of hope shines through. And so, on the cusp of the second, mind-boggling, are-you-fucking-kidding-me Donald Trump presidency, I wanted to do a few things that might be helpful. One is to catalog just some of the victories won by Pres. Joe Biden and Democrats and non-Democrats at all levels. One reason is to remind you Newsfuckers that Trump is not picking up from where he left off. Not at all. We didn’t hear about a lot of progressive victories over the past four years because some were incrementalist or small — but they should be recognized in the cumulative. And there was no big, national kerfuffling over many of these. Which meant little coverage. And no cathartic victories. Some just passed easily with little or no notice! But we should take notice, because together they form a redoubt against Trumpism.
One of the great injustices is that Biden never got the credit he was due when he was president. I hope history remembers him better than what he got when he was at the lever.
It can be unsettling to watch Donald Trump, and his minions, rapidly engage in what seems to be widespread illegal activity. This is especially the case when, as my colleague Matt Kerbel discussed yesterday in his article "The Trump Crime Spree," the primary means of stopping these illegal activities—lawsuits, the upcoming government funding negotiations, and the 2026 and 2028 elections—are either slow-moving or will not take place for some time. However, that is just the way it is right now, and we have to deal with it: Trump gets to move fast, and our only real means of stopping him moves slowly. That said, while slow, attempts to block Trump are moving. In fact, they might be moving a lot more than you realize. To demonstrate this point, I decided to compile a long list of all the lawsuits that have currently been filed against the Trump administration to block executive orders and actions that might be illegal. My thinking is that in seeing this list, you might be comforted by its length and reassured that a lot of people are taking meaningful action to stop him. Please, read through the entire list of lawsuits, and add any that I may have missed in the comments. Also, consider following the links to the websites of the groups filing these lawsuits, so that you can learn more about them and support their efforts if you are able and willing to do so.
Alright I promise this is the last lawsuit story, I’ll try and find something else to talk about. But I think it bears repeating that people are fighting back.
The Proud Boys, a far-right sect of Donald Trump supporters, has lost its naming rights to a predominantly Black church after vandalizing its premises and demonstrating “hateful and overtly racist conduct” in December 2020, a court has found. The all-male group of self-proclaimed “Western chauvinists” was stripped of its “Proud Boys” trademark a Washington, DC judge ruled on Monday.
Some moments were just made for the Nelson Muntz laugh.
n August of 2020, a horrific fire swept through California's Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Ignited by lightening, the fire was unprecedented in the scale of damage it wreaked on the ancient trees. It left behind enormous charred trunks in what had once been a lush forest. Concerned scientists thought it might be the end of these trees as we knew them. But upon returning to the scene months later, researchers discovered the bereft trees had used long-stored energy to grow buds long hidden within their bark. These green sprouts demonstrate the resilience of the redwood trees.
Nature can be really amazing.
A Portland church that made headlines for offering a sanctuary more than a decade ago has proclaimed it will continue to be a safe haven for immigrants seeking shelter, even as the federal government cracks down on illegal immigration. Francisco Aguirre still remembers when agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to his Fairview, Oregon, home in 2014.
Once again, people on all levels are fighting back in a thousand small ways. Even us posting this GNR is a form of resistance.
Anyway, that’s enough good news for this week, time for Pokemon!
And now its time for the cute corner.
And now for the organizing corner, with information on how you can help fight the Trump Administration.
Chop Wood, carry water
Democracy Docket
Consolidated Oregon Indivisible network
That’s all for this week, see everyone next time!
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