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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: 2025-04-21
Welcome back to the Monday Good News roundup, that time of the week where your intrepid GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the GNR Discord) bring you all the good news stories to start your week off right.
Its the day after Easter when you will be reading this, I hope everyone who observes had a good one. My dad made a Turkey dinner that could not be beat. Not much to say beyond that really, lets jump right into the good news this week.
But first, as always, some music. Downfall by Trust Company
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court early Saturday told the Trump administration not to take any action to deport Venezuelan men based in Texas it alleges are gang members. The court did not grant or deny an application filed by lawyers for the detainees, but effectively hit pause on the case, which affects people currently held within the jurisdiction of the Northern District of Texas. “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the brief order said.
Trump is burning bridges and political good will at a breakneck pace with all this deportation crap, and the Supreme court is not having it. Hopefully the courts will continue holding Trump at bay.
Always fun to see a scammer getting owned.
The American people are relentlessly turning out to oppose Donald Trump and his policies. In a growing sign that there is no mandate for Trump, Sarah Jones visited a protest in the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where the estimated number of protesters doubled from two weeks ago in a place that Trump won by 39 points. Attendees showed up with their signs and anti-Trump t-shirts and lined the same streets that transform into a Bedford Falls in tribute to their most famous homegrown son, Jimmy Stewart, and his iconic Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life.
The resistance against Trump is alive, well, and growing.
Plastic pollution littering Australian coastlines has dropped by more than a third over the last decade, signifying a “heartening step forwards” in the fight against a tide of pollution estimated to reach 53 million tonnes entering the marine environment by 2030. Doubling-down on the good news, the same survey – conducted by officials from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency – recorded a 16% increase in areas assessed with “no plastic debris at all.” Researchers surveyed inland, riverine, and coastal habitats across six metropolitan regions across Australia including Hobart in Tasmania, Newcastle in New South Wales, Perth in Western Australia, Port Augusta in South Australia, Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
Excellent environmental news, nature is healing.
Speaking of Abrego Garcia, Dem Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador in an attempt to meet with him and push for his release. Initially denied access, Van Hollen persisted until the Salvadoran government finally relented, allowing a meeting. The fight to bring Abrego Garcia home continues, but this is a bit of progress—something Trump surely tried to prevent from happening. As part of our massive contact Congress campaign, we launched our effort this week to get Abrego Garcia back to the US. Since November, we’ve sent 268,922 letters, and made tens of thousands of calls to the House and Senate.
Of course this is the big news of the week, that Senator Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father that Trump had illegally sent to a El Salvador prison. A lot of people wrote the poor guy off as dead, but here he is, alive. Hopefully we will be able to get him home soon safe and sound. But the massive outpour of people trying to get him home and the massive backlash against Trump for trying this tricky shit is very inspiring to say the least.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland steelworker, has been moved from El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison to a lower-security detention facility, according to Senator Chris Van Hollen. The Maryland Democrat traveled to the Central American country to meet with Abrego Garcia, who he said had been "traumatized" during nearly three weeks of incarceration in the high-security facility known for human rights abuses. "This is about safeguarding the constitutional rights of everyone living in the United States," Van Hollen said on Friday.
Another important step to getting Garcia home. Its not much but its a start.
Washington CNN — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will not recommend invoking the Insurrection Act in a memo the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to send to President Donald Trump about the conditions at the southern border, multiple US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN. The Insurrection Act is a 19th century law that would allow the president to use active-duty troops within the United States to perform law enforcement functions such as arresting migrants. Trump issued an executive order in January declaring an emergency at the southern border that ordered Hegseth and Noem to send him a report within 90 days about the conditions there, and advising whether to invoke the Insurrection Act to help obtain “complete operational control” of the border.
Yeah it looks like the rest of the GOP are not going to sign off on Trump declaring himself King Super Big nuts today. Probably because they realize that would put him out of a job.
Despite some pathetic grandstanding on capitol hill, I don’t think the rest of the GOP want this bum around anymore than the rest of us.
Judge Wilkinson spends little time disposing of the absurd request by the government to put a stop to what Judge Xinis has ordered, that is, an accounting by the government of what it has done and what it is doing to bring Abrego García home, including who the actual decision-makers are. Because Judge Xinis hasn’t actually ordered anything but a report, it’s far too soon anyway for appellate review: The relief the government is requesting is both extraordinary and premature. While we fully respect the Executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Then he dives right in, addressing the fascist elephant in the room. It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. Wow, I thought as I first read this. He just went there. So we’re going to talk about due process, we’re going to talk about the government’s bogus claim that it’s powerless to act, and we’re apparently going to rip the White House a new one. The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.
Another day, another judge that Trump has managed to piss off. Like I said the man is burning bridges like they were made of Cybertrucks.
Donald Trump is finding fewer and fewer supplicants for his series of extortion attempts, with Harvard University becoming the latest institution to reject the administration’s demands. As with most things Harvard-related, the school’s primacy is overstated: Michigan State University, New York public schools and other education institutions have already pushed back against White House overreach. The schools are not alone: From law firms to corner offices, some of America’s most prestigious institutions are finding their spines — or at least their voices — in the face of Trump’s power grabs. If anything, though, these institutions are trailing popular sentiment. Many observers treated Trump’s victory in November as a profound change in American politics. At the most extreme, the president and his allies tried to claim that his victory — the third-narrowest since World War II — represented a sweeping “mandate.” Even some of his critics argued his second term brought with it a “vibe shift.”
Trump is not as popular as he thinks he is. And he’s not gonna win.
Cory Booker plans to travel to El Salvador, a source familiar with the New Jersey senator’s itinerary said, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return a wrongly deported Maryland resident. Booker’s trip to the Central American country would come after the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen traveled there this week to meet with his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian national deported last month in what the Trump administration acknowledged was an “administrative error”. Despite a supreme court ruling saying his administration must “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return, Trump has refused to take steps to do so, and El Salvador’s government on Wednesday denied Van Hollen a meeting with the deportee.
President Cory Booker. Has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?
Doctors in New York City were able to save the lives of three children with one heart transplant. When an 11-year-old girl received a full heart transplant at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, doctors say parts of her old heart were able to be transplanted to two boys in need. It's called a split-root domino heart transplant.
Now this is a real inspiring story. There’s no better present than a future.
Right, time for a second song. Kazzer petal to the metal
A federal judge has temporarily halted the deportation of immigrants in Colorado who could be removed under President Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law rarely invoked in modern times. U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney issued the emergency order Monday night in response to a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing two Venezuelan men detained in Denver. The men expressed fears of being falsely accused of ties to Tren de Aragua, a violent gang Trump has claimed is part of a broader "invasion" of the United States.
Don’t think for a second we’re gonna let Trump get away with this nonsense.
It might come to be seen as the moment the “woke liberal empire” of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings struck back. Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost. That, in shorthand, is a summary of the exchange of letters between three Trump officials and Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, that may in time be seen as something of a turning point in relations between the administration and academia. Echoing pressures imposed on other elite colleges, notably Columbia University, the Trump team – representing the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration – had demanded sweeping reforms in how Harvard is run, including the installation of viewpoint-diverse faculty members and the end of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
As I said, every day the resistance grows stronger.
A new poll has revealed President Donald Trump is suffering in terms of the public perception of his handling of the economy. Why It Matters The economy is of upmost importance to American voters. A Gallup poll showed that voters overwhelmingly cited economic pressures as the key reason they voted for Trump in the November 2024 presidential election. However, in the first few months of his presidency, confidence in Trump's handling of the economy has fluctuated in tandem with the president's fluctuating tariff policies. After the introduction of 10-percent import tariffs on trading partners around the world, markets plummeted, and when he later paused them for 90 days, the numbers rebounded. A series of polls suggest many Americans are feeling anxious about the tariffs and how they could impact the economy.
I’ll never understand why people equate Republicans with a good economy. Like people seriously need to brush up on their history more.
Investments in clean energy are now seven times larger than in fossil energy in the Global South's electricity production, compared to an even split ten years ago.
One-fifth of countries in the Global South have already surpassed wealthy nations in key statistics on solar and wind power usage or electrification.
In eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, solar energy's share of electricity is more than twice as high as in the USA.
The major point here is that renewable energies are still on the rise, which is great news for us.
A federal judge says some nonprofits awarded billions for a so-called green bank to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects cannot have their contracts scrapped and must have access to some of the frozen money. The ruling is a defeat for President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, which argues the program is rife with financial mismanagement. The order late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan “gives us a chance to breathe after the EPA unlawfully — and without due process — terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated,” said Climate United CEO Beth Bafford.
Great news, Biden’s victories for the Environment will endure despite Trumps worst efforts.
Yet the dictators may not have had the last word: A renewed push for accountability is brewing. In Argentina, prosecutors and civil society organizations gathered enough evidence against Ortega and Maduro to persuade Argentine courts to issue arrest warrants against them (the Maduro warrant was handed down in September 2024, and the Ortega warrant came in December). Dozens of their associates also face warrants. This issuance of such warrants was made possible by the principle of universal jurisdiction, under which countries can prosecute people suspected of committing international crimes without being bound by the traditional rules of jurisdiction (under those rules either the perpetrator or the victim of the crime must be a citizen of the country that wishes to investigate, or the country bringing charges must allege that the actions under investigation were carried out on its territory). Since international efforts have done nothing to dislodge either dictator and the courts in both Nicaragua and Venezuela are under full regime control, universal jurisdiction offers the best and perhaps the last chance to impose legal accountability on these rights abusers. As its name implies, universal jurisdiction is meant to transcend borders, and has its roots in the recognition of a collective responsibility to punish these grave crimes.
No one is above the law, and these monsters need to be torn down and taken to task for their crimes against the people.
Instead of a quote, just gonna post the video:
I think this is a good place to end for now. Now for Pokemon.
And now the lightning round.
Dominoes are falling
Whatcom county eyes a prime election upgrade
What could go right? Accountability came for these wannabe authoritarians
And now its time for the cute corner.
And that’s all we have for this week, see you next week for more good news and hope.
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