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🍨 Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen was arrested at a Senate hearing for protesting the country’s response to the war in Gaza, saying that “Congress is paying to bomb poor kids in Gaza and paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the U.S.”

🚫 With an executive order, the governor of Illinois became the first in the country to block the federal government from collecting personal health data related to autism.

👏 European police dismantled KidFlix, a major platform for the distribution of child sexual abuse images that had 1.8 million users worldwide in “one of the biggest blows against child pornography in recent years, if not ever.”

Environment

Less than one year after dams and reservoirs were removed, wildflowers are blooming along the Klamath River

Four dams and three reservoirs were removed from the Klamath River as part of the world’s largest dam removal project that wrapped up last year.

Already, the surrounding environment is showing remarkable signs of recovery with wildflowers blooming along the now free-flowing 420-mile river near the border of Oregon and California.

The return of local flora is thanks to a crew of primarily Yurok tribe members who began collecting seeds from native flowers and trees in 2019, growing them in nurseries, and producing more flowers and seeds to prepare for the “over 2,000 acres that needed revegetation.”

Why is this good news? After the dams were built between 1918 and 1962, the surrounding ecosystem started to collapse, and by 1997, coho salmon in the river — once the third-largest salmon fishery in the country — were listed as endangered.

Local tribes like the Yurok have been fighting for decades for their removal, and to see the surrounding ecosystems already recovering thanks to their efforts is inspiring.

→ Read more​

More Good News

​With grocery prices on the rise, a home chef is showing people how to turn a $20 Dollar Tree trip into four full family meals. Throughout her videos, Rebecca Chobat continues to challenge herself again and again by making $20 Christmas dinners, recreating restaurant-style recipes on a budget, and stretching $100 of groceries into 30 days of meals.

​Locals built a bridge made out of recycled fire hoses to help endangered monkeys cross a busy road in Malaysia. Since the bridge was installed on Penang Island, zero mammal deaths have been reported, and more than 7,000 wildlife crossings have been captured on camera — and it’s being replicated in more locations.

​In an effort to reduce stigma around menstruation, three secondary schools in Malta are providing free period products for students. The Menstruation Pilot Project will impact around 900 secondary school students, who even helped choose the products that would be offered in the free vending machines.

​A congressman from New York introduced a bill that would allow volunteer firefighters and EMTs to get student loan forgiveness. He says the dwindling number of volunteer first responders could be boosted if those offering their time could be eligible for student loan forgiveness, too.

Reasons to be hopeful

Thank you for your replies this week — I wanted to respond to one reader who told us they were “definitely feeling most hopeless about climate change and biodiversity loss.”

In addition to inspiring the top featured story in today’s newsletter, there is so much good going on here, even amidst the not-so-good headlines.

Here are a handful of stories of progress to give you hope:

🌳 The same landscapes that inspired the Brontë sisters are being protected as one of England’s biggest nature reserves.​

🪸 Scientists in Florida raised over 1,000 coral “babies” that contain special ingredients to stave off a warming ocean and save the state’s reef from extinction.​

🌊 One of the most restrictive in the world, the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone.​

🌵 Siding with environmentalists, a federal court struck down an attempt to withhold Endangered Species Act protections from the Joshua tree by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, saying that it “sidesteps climate science.”

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They’re not perfect solutions or quick fixes, but they’re important stories that we ought to know about and celebrate!

People doing good

A former USAID worker is connecting big donors with overseas programs that have lost their funding

Beginning in 2023, economist Caitlin Tulloch worked for USAID using data to achieve the biggest “bang for your buck” when it comes to humanitarian aid: saving as many lives, educating as many children, and lifting as many people out of poverty as affordably and effectively as possible.

When her work was “just wiped off the map” by DOGE this year, including Tulloch being let go and reinstated multiple times before she ultimately resigned, she and some colleagues started Project Resource Optimization.

With donors wanting to continue supporting global aid initiatives, PRO connects these big givers to former USAID projects and humanitarian needs like basic sanitation programs in Ghana, tuberculosis control initiatives in Malawi, STD control projects in Nepal, and more.

And PRO offers advice on where to invest their money to have the biggest impact.

→ Read more​

More Good bits

🦷 If a fluoride ban comes for your community, here’s what to do.​

🎮 A teen gamer helped stop a catastrophic school attack.

🏞️ First, the billboards. Now, the thirst traps.​

💧 Pakistan has a creative water supply solution.​

📚 Burn 100 books? They’ll donate 1,000 more. (YouTube)

What’s good?

This week’s most-clicked story was the one about a game-changing 3D-printed wheelchair for kids (that the creator is giving away for free)!

Was there any good news you saw this week that we missed?

Hit reply and let me know about it!

— Megan