In the headlines...

👏 A federal judge said the Trump administration cannot force recipients to stop programs that promote DEI or acknowledge the existence of transgender people as a requirement to receive grant funding.

🪧 As immigration raids continue across the country, so have protests, with at least 25 others organized in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta to rebuke the administration’s aggressive round-up efforts.

Environment

French Polynesia created the world’s largest marine protected area

At the U.N. Ocean Conference this week, French Polynesia announced the creation of the world’s largest marine protected area, covering nearly 5 million square kilometers, or over 1.9 million square miles. It also plans to add another 500,000 square kilometers by next World Ocean Day.

Of that area, 1.1 million square kilometers (424,712 square miles) will be designated as highly or fully protected, meaning only traditional coastal fishing, ecotourism, and scientific research are allowed.

Extractive practices like deep-sea mining and bottom trawling — a destructive type of fishing that drags large nets align the sea floor — will be restricted across the entire MPA.

Why is this good news? The ocean is critical to sustaining all life on Earth, and it’s extremely under-protected. Marine protected areas restrict these practices to keep marine ecosystems thriving — supporting all Earth’s ecosystems as a result.

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More Good News

​Arizona State University is leading a new sustainable shade program to combat extreme heat. It’s part of a larger, $5 million statewide effort to provide the shade needed to take the edge off the Phoenix metropolitan area’s increasingly hot summers — which saw the hottest temperatures on record last year ​— ​while creating new jobs for residents.

🏳️‍🌈 Gina Ortiz Jones just made history as San Antonio, Texas’s first openly LGBTQ mayor. The Air Force veteran also made history as the first Asian-American female mayor of a major city in Texas and the first female mayor in Texas to have served in a war.

​The UK government expanded its free school meals to 500k more of the country’s poorest children. The expansion to the former threshold for qualifying, which hadn’t changed since 2018, will lift 100,000 students out of poverty and give them “the nutrition they need to thrive”.

​Maine just passed a bill allowing doctors to remove their names from abortion medication labels. In the state, some doctors were hesitant to prescribe medication in support of reproductive health care due to threats, harassment, and fears of out-of-state lawsuits.

Must-read

New study finds 75% of people more likely to visit nature if under ‘park prescription’ orders from doctor

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good progress

Survival rates from the most common type of childhood cancer have risen dramatically

Before the 1970s, fewer than 10% of children who were diagnosed with leukemia survived for five years after diagnosis — now, in North America and Europe, around 85% survive that long.

In the 1960s, only around 14% of children diagnosed with a specific kind of leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, survived at least five years. The survival rate increased dramatically by the 2010s, with 94% of children surviving at least five years — and longer.

Progress in survival has come from many advances and improvements in treating the disease, with tailored chemotherapy treatments for each patient, targeted radiation, and more.

→ Read more​

More Good bits

🏠 What it’s like to live in a (recycled) glass house.​

🥵 Beat the heat and be prepared to save lives this summer.​

📚 You can buy books and do good.​

🔋 Two household staples could be put to good use.​

🏀 Dwayne Wade is behind one of the best summer reading programs.​

What’s good?

I personally do not need a doctor’s note to spend more time outside ... my little one makes sure I get at least an hour every day. 😉

Would a “prescription” help you get outside more?

I’d love to know!

— Megan