Good News For 4/20

Good News for 4/20

My daily call reminder for everyone today includes some recent good news courtesy of this reddit post, which I've just copypasted wholesale for everyone over here to enjoy!

Resistance

crosswalks in Seattle were hacked to play AI audio of Jeff Bezos asking not to tax the rich, in reference to Washington’s regressive tax structure

crosswalks in Palo Alto were hacked to play AI audio of Elon talking about be being a friendless loser

A constituent at Marjorie Taylor Green’s town hall called her a “butch body bigot”

Constituents at Chuck Grassley’s town hall demanded they get Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador (this was in IOWA, and was mostly older white people)

5 Calls posted that people are averaging 50 calls a minute to representatives via the app, specifically about Kilmar and CECOT

Posters went up around Philadelphia just before 4/15 about Elon and his companies not paying taxes

Protesters showed up outside a courthouse in Vermont in support of Rumeysa Ozturk during her detention hearing

People travelled from all over Missouri to speak out in opposition of a proposed abortion ban during a committee hearing

Home Alone 2 director wants to cut Trump’s cameo out of the movie

Attorneys in the solicitor general’s office of the DOJ are resigning

A group of current and former Big Law attorneys are organizing to fight back against the administration’s attacks on law firms

More associates have quit law firms that capitulated to Trump

Harvard refused to comply with Trump’s demands, despite losing billions in federal funding

Protesters marched to Fetterman’s Philadelphia office demanding he hold in person town halls

Universities are creating NATO-like alliances of “mutual defense compacts”, where they’d all support and defend each other if Trump attacks one

Farmers in Maine had a tractor “parade” to protest USDA cuts

Boise city hall is continuing to have their pride flag up despite a new Idaho state law banning pride flags on government property

Republicans breaking ranks

Mark Kelly said republicans will start to distance themselves from Trump and speak out against his policies, that they’re saying things in private they won’t say publicly

Lisa Murkowski heavily criticized Trump’s policies during a nonprofit leadership summit, also said there’s a “growing number of republicans” opposing Medicaid cuts

12 house republicans signed a letter to Mike Johnson saying they won’t vote for a final budget reconciliation bill that cuts Medicaid

17 republicans in the Montana state senate joined democrats to block an anti-trans bill that would have made it a felony for an adult to help trans kids under 16 access gender affirming medical care

The Libertarian Party of Travis County, TX passed a resolution calling for Trump to be impeached

Dems doing stuff

Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador to put eyes on Kilmar Abrego Garcia and attempt to negotiate his release. After being denied access to CECOT or even a phone call on Wednesday, he was able to meet with Kilmar on Thursday

Robert Garcia and Maxwell Frost are trying to get a congressional delegation authorized to travel to El Salvador

Cory Booker, Maxine Dexter, Yassamin Ansari, and Mark Desaulnier have all said (separately) they plan to travel to El Salvador

Chuck Schumer is blocking Trump’s nominees for federal prosecutors in NY—this is different than when senators put holds on cabinet nominees and this would completely block the appointments instead of just slow them down

Becca Balint Led 67 House Colleagues in Demanding Answers from DHS and the State Department on Mohsen Mahdawi’s Arrest

Elizabeth Warren and Melanie Stansbury introduced a bill to create stronger ethics rules and crack down on conflicts of interest for special government employees

Sarah McBride forced the Trump admin to reverse course on slashing a manufacturing support program in Delaware

Sean Casten held a town hall in the deepest red district in Illinois

Democrats have identified 35 vulnerable republican house seats to target in the midterms

Texas state representative John Bucy introduced a bill to expand online voter registration

Kathy Hochul supported a law passed by NYC city council to shift payment of broker fees from renters to landlords, after the Real Estate Board of NY sued the city to block it

Tony Evers locked in an increase in public school funding in Wisconsin for 400 years, the state Supreme Court backed it up

Janet Mills refused to comply with Trump’s orders on banning transgender athletes, said “I’m happy to go to court”

Illinois house democrats advanced legislation to require public colleges and universities to provide reproductive health care services to students

Jared Polis signed the Protecting the Freedom to Marry Act, protecting every Coloradan’s right to marry who they love

Nevada democrats introduced legislation to help the state hire federal workers fired by Trump and Elon

Wes Moore signed legislation aimed at connecting laid-off federal health care workers with jobs

NC AG Jeff Jackson sued property management companies over using RealPage to set and inflate rents, the second largest one settled and agreed to stop using it

Legal stuff

A lawsuit was filed against the DoD on behalf of students at schools on military bases, stating that book removals and curriculum changes violate their first amendment rights

Gavin Newsom is suing Trump over tariffs

Newsom is planning to sue Trump over the dismantling of Americorp

Judge Boasberg finds “probable cause” to hold Trump admin in contempt over Alien Enemies Act deportations

Judge Xinis ordered two weeks of discovery in the Abrego Garcia case, including depositions of the four officials who signed affidavits, and doesn’t rule out holding them in contempt

An appeals court denied the Trump administration’s attempt to appeal the order from Judge Xinis to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice had his law license suspended for 3 years for violating professional conduct rules during a probe of the 2020 presidential vote

A group of small businesses is suing Trump over the tariffs, arguing they’re illegal under the IEEPA

A judge blocked Trump’s EO targeting law firm Susman Godfrey

Appeals court blocked the ban on trans military service members

Supreme Court temporarily blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act

A court denied the administration’s attempt to appeal an order mandating officials’ depositions about Kilmar’s deportation

A judge blocked the administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” gender markers on passports

Foreign students are suing DHS over their visas being terminated

A federal judge blocked the Department of Energy from cutting over $400M in research funds to universities

A judge blocked the EPA from withholding billions in funds from clean energy programs

An Idaho judge ruled to broaden medical exceptions to the state’s abortion bans

Misc

Trump’s approval rating among independents is -22, the lowest ever for this point in a presidency

Three pentagon officials have been suspended in a leak investigation

Spokane, WA city council is proposing an ordinance that would include Two-Spirit people in the city’s human rights code, double up on state shield protections and ensure city employees’ insurance covers gender-affirming and reproductive healthcare

David Hogg (DNC vice chair) is planning to spend $20M funding primary challengers against sitting House members in safe blue districts who aren’t fighting hard enough

Florida lawmakers unanimously approved making medical marijuana cards free for veterans

Run For Something reported that over 200,000 people have signed up with them to run for office since 2017, and they’re currently averaging 500 new signups a day

National Republican Senatorial Committee is warning republicans that democrats are out-fundraising them

Six men in Coeur d’Alene, ID have been charged after dragging Teresa Borrenpohl out of a town hall in February

Mike Lindell (MyPillow guy) cried to a judge that he was “in ruins” and had no money after refusing to pay sanctions to Smartmatic

Portland city council unanimously voted to grant an appeal to stop a Portland General Electric project that would cut down 397 trees in Forest Park to build power lines

Unions form pro bono legal network for federal workers targeted by Trump

Funding was extended for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database (cybersecurity)

Democrats are more trusted on the economy than republicans for the first time in years

The FDA granted fast track status to a bird flu vaccine

Dems won against Maga candidates in the Newark school board election

Labor union reps in Utah got twice the required number of signatures to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal a recent bill that ended collective bargaining

Washington state senate passed a bill that would require insurance companies to cover a 12-month supply of hormone replacement therapy at a time

Betty Martinez Franco became the first Latina elected to Irvine city council. She came to the US as an undocumented immigrant and has since become a citizen, gotten a masters degree, started a PR agency, and is now elected to city council

Elon’s L’s

Elon dropped DOGE’s savings goal from $2T to $150B—less than 10% of the original goal

Elon was outed as dm’ing women he’d never met and offering to impregnate them, shortly after that he announced he was deactivating twitter’s dm feature

Elon’s meeting at the Pentagon on China was stopped by Trump (“what the fuck is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go”)