(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Good News Roundup for Friday, June 23, 2023: Our Team Is Great! (Theirs Sucks.) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-23 Welcome 🌻 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News! I am filled with admiration for President Biden and so many others who are working to make our country and the planet a better place. I am also filled with astonishment that the other side can be, not just so corrupt, but so incompetent. tRump confessing on TV. Durham in the House. Betty and Veronica Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert calling each other names. And so on. Come on in, and see what the good guys are doing, and enjoy the downfalls of some of the bad. Please bring your own goodies, too. Regular Scheduled Programming No one here is naïve; we are aware of the many who are fighting to destroy our country. Some of us expected it: the cheating, the lying, the chaos, and yes, even the attempts to cling to power despite the clear will of the people. But we are here to read the efforts and the positive results of those (including us and our fellow gnus) who are working so hard to save our country from those very bad people. We are furious with them for what they are doing and we are letting them know. Remember: 💙 There are more of us than there are of them. 💛 They are terrified when we organize. THERE IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE TERRIFIED! 💔 They want us to be demoralized. The best way to keep up your spirits is to fight. So, take the time to recharge your batteries, but find ways to contribute to the well-being of our country and our world. 🗽 Biden as President ! 🗽 Biden, Harris and their administration have been hard at work. Here are the last week’s posts at the White House briefing room. Tuesday, June 20, 2023: Statement from President Joe Biden on World Refugee Day 👎 Out with the Bad, In with the Good 👍 Georgia state election board rejects takeover of Fulton County Stanley Dunlap, Georgia Recorder via Raw Story The State Election Board Tuesday rejected a state takeover of Fulton County elections following a lengthy performance review after a tumultuous 2020 presidential election brought some unwanted national attention to Georgia’s most populated county. State board members cited improvements in Fulton election operations that included a shakeup in leadership in their reasoning behind unanimously opposing the state takeover. The vote falls in line with a review panel’s report in January that said replacing the county’s local election board would be detrimental to progress made in Fulton during the last couple of years. Fulton’s elections have long been criticized for persistent long lines at voting precincts and for repeatedly lagging behind the state’s other 158 counties in reporting election results. Justins win their primaries! Adam Edelman, NBC News The two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee who were expelled by Republicans over gun violence protests won their primary races for their old seats Thursday night. [Note this was last week, June 15, but it hasn’t been repeated enough here] Justin Jones won in Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson won in Memphis. Pearson had faced a Democratic challenger, David Page, while Jones ran unopposed. Unofficial results showed that Pearson and Jones won overwhelmingly. Local government officials reinstated both to their seats days after they were expelled in April , but they still had to run to be re-elected to their old seats. The general election is August 3. Democracy prevails in Texas town Michael Daly, The Daily Beast Democracy may be under threat nationwide, but it is thriving in the small Texas city of Godley, whose mayor—once called a “narcissistic dictator” by a local talk radio host— resigned this week. Now-former Mayor James Acy McGehee could not be reached for comment. One of the five members of the Godley City Council suggested what prompted his departure. “First of all, he arrested a political enemy on a bogus charge,” council member Scott Yarbrough told The Daily Beast. “Well, that’s more than incompetence. That’s just un-American right there.” ✂️ The political enemy in question was Jennifer Thompson, who was then on the council. She began asking unwelcome questions late last year, after a departing police chief gave the council what became known as “the blue folder.” More on Jennifer Thompson down below, in the Honor Truth section. 💣 Republicans: Party of Crimes and Chaos 💣 🌵 Not-the-governor Kari Lake getting sued for defamation by someone from her own party: x JUST IN: Republican @stephen_richer has filed a lawsuit against @karilake in @maricopacounty superior court. pic.twitter.com/vXzWCBI7mo — The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) June 22, 2023 For the last seven months, a high-profile former statewide candidate for office — from my own political party — has spread falsehoods about our elections and about me specifically. — Stephen Richer Ken Paxton impeachment trial set for September 5, 2023 Rebecca Falconer, Axios Texas' Senate voted Wednesday to start state Attorney General Ken Paxton's impeachment trial on Sept. 5 and to bar his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, from voting on the historic proceedings. Driving the news: The Republican-controlled chamber approved rules prohibiting Angela Paxton from voting due to conflict of interest concerns. ✂️ The big picture: The GOP-dominated Texas House voted to impeach Paxton in May over allegations of bribery, obstruction of justice and abuse of public trust. He denies any wrongdoing. Paxton was immediately suspended following the House vote, pending the Senate trial. Matt Gaetz was mad at John Durham for not prosecuting successfully Alex Griffing Mediaite Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tore into Special Counsel John Durham on Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing and accused the Trump-era prosecutor of being part of the “cover-up.” Gaetz, known for his flamethrowing rhetoric, lit into Durham for not prosecuting more individuals that he believed were part of a conspiracy that fueled the FBI’s investigation into allegations the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia. “Do you see how silly this looks? You’ve found the lawyer, you found the phones, but the actual dude who got ordered by Western intelligence to go start this thing you couldn’t find,” Gaetz declared as he grilled Durham. They’re not going to find evidence of Biden being bribed, too, no matter what Rudy Giuliani said. Boebert and Greene are yelling at each other Gary Legum, Wonkette Aw, yr Wonkette hates it when our evil stepmoms fight. We’re speaking of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who on Wednesday got into some sort of back-and-forth on the floor of the House that resulted in Greene calling Boebert a “little bitch” and then uninviting her from the neighborhood potluck. “She puts raisins in her disgusting potato salad anyway,” Greene was heard to mutter as she left the chamber. Okay, we made up that second part. We have no idea what Lauren Boebert puts in her potato salad, and we assume any neighborhood potluck involving those two would involve less cooking and more cross burning. But the first part is apparently true. You can watch the moment it happened here, though mercifully you cannot actually hear those two high-pitched, nasally voices screeching at each other. And why are they fighting? They both want to be the one to submit articles of impeachment (against Biden), but Boebert got there first. McCarthy doesn’t want to do it, though. Emine Yücel, Talking Points Memo Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) encouraged House Republicans to vote against Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) resolution to force a vote to impeach President Joe Biden this week, just days after Boebert and others in the Freedom Caucus ground legislating to a halt to get even with McCarthy for making a debt ceiling deal with the President, CNN reported. In a closed door meeting on Wednesday, McCarthy told his caucus that it is not the right time to impeach Biden. He argued that Republicans should let ongoing committee investigations play out before voting on an impeachment article, adding that jumping ahead could threaten their ability to hold onto their slim majority in the next election. “What majority do we want to be,” McCarthy asked his caucus, according to an individual in the room CNN spoke to. “Give it right back in two years or hold it for a decade and make real change?” McCarthy doesn’t want to do it because he think it will lose the GOP the House, which may be true, and may be the only thing that will appeal to his caucus. There’s also, like, no reason to impeach President Biden. Which McCarthy knows. And McCarthy, after the debt deal, made it clear he respects President Biden. 🚚 💙 Democrats Deliver 💙 🚚 I-95 to reopen this weekend. Thanks, Governor Shapiro and President Biden! Can you imagine stuff like this under tRump? Didn’t the wall fall over? x Based on the tremendous progress these crews made over the weekend, I can now say: We will have I-95 back open this weekend. We have worked around the clock to get this done, and we’ve completed each phase safely and ahead of schedule. — Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) June 20, 2023 🌵 Governor Hobbs is protecting Arizonans with her veto pen EJ Montini, Arizona Republic, AZCentral For generations Republicans have railed against Democrats for trying to create a “nanny state,” the kind of place where the government, not individuals, controls just about every aspect of our lives. But here’s the thing. It’s a lie. If anything, just the opposite is true. And no place proves it better than Arizona, where the Republican-controlled Legislature passed bill after bill that would have replaced free choice with government mandates. And the only thing that prevented it from happening was Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ 100-plus vetoes of “nanny state” legislation. ✂️ With firearms, for example, GOP lawmakers passed a bill that would have forced cities on all levels to host gun shows. ✂️ There was legislation that claimed to protect children from sexually explicit material and to punish adults who exposed them to such things, but was actually a veiled attempt at banning books. There were attempts to prevent school children from learning an accurate history of race relations in the United States, about which Hobbs said, “It’s time to stop pushing students and teachers into culture wars rooted in fearmongering and evidence-free accusation.” Health-care workers who cover up patient abuse face stiffer penalties in Illinois Molly Parker, Lee Enterprises Midwest, and Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News IllinoisPro Publica Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill into law on Friday that strengthens the range of penalties that a state watchdog can mete out for health care employees who conspire to hide abuse or interfere with investigations by the state police or internal oversight bodies. The legislation was introduced following an investigative series by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises Midwest and ProPublica into rampant abuses and cover-ups at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, a state-run institution in southern Illinois that houses people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. The new law applies to employees at state-run institutions and at privately operated community agencies for people with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses that operate under the oversight of the Illinois Department of Human Services and its Office of the Inspector General. 💜 Unity? 💜 🎩 PW Some Rs and Ds are working together David Leonhardt, New York Times Senator J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive, have collaborated on a bill to claw back executive pay at failed banks. The two worked through the details through in-person conversations, weekend phone calls and late-night texts. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has signed a public letter calling for the reinvigoration of collective bargaining and praising the German approach, in which labor unions play a larger role in the economy. Rubio this month published a book, “Decades of Decadence,” that criticizes the past 30 years of globalization. Senator Todd Young of Indiana has helped write a bipartisan bill to restrict noncompete agreements, which companies use to prevent their employees from leaving for jobs at a competitor. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who began pushing a few years ago for federal subsidies to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing. President Biden signed a version of the policy last yea I prefer Ds. But when I can’t get that, I’ll take bipartisanship. 📥 Actions You Can Take 📤 Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. You can fill this out for the NRA and lots of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying? Voting rights. This may be the biggest issue threatening our democracy right now. Besides contacting your representatives at the state and federal level to do the right thing (depending on who they are), you can support and contact these organizations: ACLU — American Civil Liberties Union Democracy Docket — founded by Marc Elias, so important in fighting the challenges after the last election. Fair Fight — founded by Stacey Abrams 🌱Grass roots. Biden and Harris can do the top-down stuff, but we have to support from the bottom. I don’t know how to deprogram 75 million people, but some things have been written about, such as deep canvassing, and lots of people are talking about this. If you know someone (who did not storm the Capitol), then see if you can be pleasant. Instead of trying to reason with them (logic is obviously not their strong point) distract them with something else. We need to remove the sources of lies and to take down the temperature. If we get more of the Rs to wear masks and to get vaccinated and to vote for Ds, the country will be a better place. We need to coax some of them out of the rabbit holes and diffuse the anger and the crazy. 🏃 Run for something. If you want to run for something, but have no idea what to do, these people will help you. They also like money and volunteers to help those people who are running, so even if you’re not in a position to stand for office, you can help. Note: they are especially planning to target the 57 Rs in local governments who participated in the insurrection. 👎 Defund the seditionists. Defund the seditionists. This is a list with companies that sometimes have donated to the seditionists. The list is long. You will recognize many of the corporations, and you probably have a relationship with some — either you are a customer, a shareholder, or maybe even an employee. Contact them and compliment or complain, but let them know you are watching. Forward it to others. 🔎 Want to check out what’s going on with campaign contributions? Check out this diary. 👀 🐍 Schadenfreude 😈 ⚡️ Special Counsel Jack Smith turns over discovery early Daily Kos This means the former guy now knows who talked to the grand jury. It also means that Smith and his team believe they know what they’re doing. I bet they do. 🐟 Samuel Alito seems to be embarrassed. Ruth Marcus Washington Post Another justice, another luxury trip, all expenses paid by conservative activists with ideological or financial interests before the Supreme Court. This time, it’s Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the venue is an Alaskan fishing lodge, and the underwriters of the junket are hedge fund tycoon Paul Singer and businessman Robin Arkley II. Both are donors to the conservative Federalist Society and were joined on the 2008 fishing trip by Federalist Society official Leonard Leo. Leo was fresh off helping Alito get confirmed two years earlier. ✂️ This time, in another story by ProPublica, the defense is, in part, effectively “I barely knew the guy when he offered me a spare seat on his private plane.” Heads, I travel; tails, you don’t know about it. More insurrectionists going to prison — this one for a long time (14 years!) x Bureau of Prisons report says Jan 6 defendant Pete Schwartz to serve 14-year sentence at high-security fed prison in Waymart, PA Feds: "Wielding a large MK-46 canister & carrying a wooden tire thumper, Schwartz began indiscriminately spraying..at any retreating police officers" pic.twitter.com/alPGGPEcWQ — Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 22, 2023 Just a remark: x Fitting that the John Durham hearing and the John Eastman disbarment hearing are happening at the same time. — Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) June 21, 2023 📣 Let’s Honor Truth ☀️️ Let’s honor Jennifer Thompson, of Godley, Texas Michael Daly, The Daily Beast. This is part of a twisted saga that did not catch the attention of most national media. And due to fair use, I can only present a small part here. But Jennifer Thompson is the one who was arrested for asking questions. ...But Jordan was not done. He also filled the folder with diary entries and texts and other papers that, in the view of City Council member Jennifer Thompson, document a municipality in administrative and financial disarray. Thompson runs a pizzeria and she studied the papers with the eye of a small business owner. She was shocked to see the town had no formal inventory of its assets. Expenses were rounded off. And the budgets seemed haphazard at best. “Lots of red flags,” Thompson told The Daily Beast. Thompson began asking lots of questions, and they were followed by lots of resignations. The police chief had been immediately replaced by a sergeant with the department, but the other vacancies could only be filled with the approval of a majority of the City Council. Thompson and two others on the five-member body were ready to reject the choices of the longtime mayor, Acy McGehee. And since the mayor can only vote to break a tie, that meant Thompson’s crew would be a 3-2 majority when it came to voting on the replacements. 🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️ Well done, Rodney Smith! And what an impressive number! 15000+ x Eight years ago, Rodney Smith Jr. made this post on Facebook. Today, he and his team of volunteers have mowed more than 15,000 lawns for free. One person really can make a difference. pic.twitter.com/To7kJdi4b0 — Goodable (@Goodable) June 19, 2023 📎 Odds & Ends 📎 ☀️ In new record, solar and wind beat coal for first 5 months of 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch Solar and wind power generation has set a new record, with more power generated from those renewables than coal for the first five months of 2023, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, as CBS News reported. It’s the first time solar and wind production has surpassed coal for five months straight, industry publication E&E News said. “From a production-cost perspective, renewables are the cheapest thing to use — wind and solar. So, we’re going to see more and more of these records,” said Ram Rajagopal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, as reported by CBS News. 🌊 Newly adopted UN High Seas treaty gives ocean a fighting chance Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch The “high seas” treaty is internationally legally binding and was adopted by the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The 75 articles of the high seas agreement seek to take stewardship of the world’s oceans for present and future generations, care for and protect the marine environment and ensure its responsible use, maintain the integrity of undersea ecosystems and conserve marine biological diversity’s inherent value, another press release from the UN said. ✂️ “Around the world, the ocean is under threat on multiple fronts. Climate change is heating our planet, disrupting weather patterns and ocean currents, and altering marine ecosystems and the species living there,” Guterres said in New York. “Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic have recently risen so high that they are literally off the charts. The axis of a long-standing graph tracking those temperatures had to be redrawn to reflect unprecedented temperature increases.” The high seas treaty contains “polluter-pays” provisions, as well as provisions requiring parties to assess the potential environmental impacts of planned activities that reach beyond their jurisdictions. Time for a sassy cockatoo 🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: Hunters of the Feather, a story about a thinker-linker crow who wants to save birdkind from extinction, and sequels, Scavengers of Mind and the brand-new Familiars of the Flock (They’re really good! They’re really cheap! Buy and review or rate positively! And Hunters is also available on Audible!) Other stories, based on Jane Austen novels — including a new one for lovers of Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies — and others on Greek mythology, can be found here. All titles are available through Kindle Unlimited, but I only get paid if you turn the pages. 💙 What You Can Do to Rescue Democracy 💙 It turns out that participation in democracy is not just an every-four-years event but requires active participation, like, whenever you can find time. Current projects: Look in the comments for Progressive Muse’s report on Postcards to Voters And some other ideas: You can relax and recharge. You can join protests and freeway blog. You can help register new voters. You can smile. You can say something nice to friend or a stranger. You can get out the vote for special elections. You can reach out to upset Republicans. We need to win some back. You can share your ideas below. 🌻 💙 “Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured.” 💙 President Joseph R. Biden 🌹 🌹 🌹 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/23/2175982/-Good-News-Roundup-for-Friday-June-23-2023-Our-Team-Is-Great-Theirs-Sucks Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/