Good global news—after authoritarian Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded a new election when a candidate from the opposition party won the Istanbul mayoral election, the opposition candidate won again—by an even wider margin, dealing a decisive blow to Erdogan’s human-rights-violating, oppressive ruling party.
Republicans Against the Law
Despite the unilateral efforts of Virginia’s Republican legislature, the Supreme Court upheld redrawn maps in the state that were created after a previous ruling that the state’s former districts were illegally racially gerrymandered.
Don John may be rolling back protections and safeguards against global warming as fast as President Obama instigated them, but states are picking up the slack left in the leadership void at the federal level. New York joins the list of those that are taking action, approving one of the most ambitious climate plans to date: to eliminate all net greenhouse gases and use only carbon-free power by 2050.
The Senate voted—bipartisanly—to oppose Don John’s attempted unilateral end-run around Congress to offer emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia in defiance of Congress’s refusal to do so.
Social and Civil Rights Advances
Leander’s Open Cathedral church hosted a family Pride event after the local library caved to religious zealots and canceled the city’s popular monthly Drag Story Hour. Despite a number of protesters (and one waffling minister), families brought their rainbow-clad kids, and counterprotestors made sure participants and presenters were kept safe from anti-LGBTQ protesters. But best of all is the editor’s note at the bottom of this story, a delicious literary smackdown of one city councilman who showed up to protest.
A Jesuit school defied its archdiocese and refused to fire a teacher in a same-sex marriage, braving the consequences that the archdiocese has now cut ties with the school and refused to recognize it as a Catholic institution. I wonder which of those actions seems more like what Jesus would do…?
The Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence of a black man in Mississippi based on the repeated and “relentless effort” by the prosecutor in his trial to exclude black jurors.
Your Feel-good Stories of the Week
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