Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, that time of the week where your intrepid GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the GNR Discord) bring you the good news to start your week off right.
I got nothing to add to the weeks proceedings so lets just jump right in. But first some music. Please enjoy the theme song from Space Jam.
Penguin Random House is known for its iconic status as a book publishing house and defender of the First Amendment, challenging book bans in states across the United States.
But in a new campaign, the company has made a banned book the… second coolest accessory.
Partnering with Online Ceramics, a Los Angeles-based clothing brand that makes hand-dyed apparel (most notably for A24 and the Grateful Dead), Penguin Random House has debuted a clothing collaboration, aptly titled “Reading Is A Right.”
So we get to support libraries and look stylish doing so? Sign me up.
Let’s get to it.
Only 6 days to go until what is likely to be the largest protest of the year, with more than 1,800 anti-Trump events planned across America.
One of the demonstrations on June 14th aims to form a 7-mile human chain in California. I can’t wait to see it come together. Thanks to our amazing subscriber Virginia for flagging this.
Gina Ortiz Jones triumphed on Saturday night, winning the San Antonio mayoral race. It was a tough campaign, where Jones had to face off against the GOP’s dark money machine. Jones won by more than 8%, despite being outraised by her opponent. A big Dem win.
During her victory speech, Jones declared: “Our city is about compassion and it's about leading with everybody in mind—and when one side offered racism, we offered compassion and focused on getting things done.”
A federal judge blocked Trump’s attempted ban on international students at Harvard, ruling that it was illegal. Trump lied, claiming they all were a threat to national security, but offered no proof of that in court. Because he has none.
And this is just a small smattering of the good news from the past week.
NEW YORK, June 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday temporarily stopped the Trump administration from moving ahead with an effort to eliminate the Job Corps, the largest U.S. job training program for low-income youth.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter in Manhattan issued a temporary restraining order in a
lawsuit filed by a trade group representing contractors that operate Job Corps centers. Carter ordered the government not to terminate Job Corps contractors or stop work at Job Corps centers until a further ruling in the case, and he ordered the Labor Department to appear at a court hearing on June 17.
Yet again, a judge tells Trump that he can’t actually do whatever he wants. That’s been the story all year and expect it to continue being the story for the next four years.
A small southern California school district must immediately pause its ban on critical race theory (CRT), a California appeals court ruled in a decision published on Monday.
The fourth district court of appeals ruling put a halt to the Temecula Valley unified school district ban until its litigation is settled in the California legal system. The decision is the latest in a long-running legal battle over the CRT ban, which was first adopted as a resolution by the Temecula Valley board of education in December 2022 as they attempted to purge elementary school textbooks that reference gay rights icon Harvey Milk.
The recent decision, authored by Judge Kathleen O’Leary, and concurred by the panel’s other two judges, said that the vague nature and lack of legal or academic terminology in the resolution jeopardized its constitutionality.
The Trump administration will never erase Harvey Milk.
A group of climber-activists has just hung a large Transgender Pride flag in the middle of El Capitan’s massive granite face, visible to onlookers in Yosemite Valley.
It’s an “act of visibility and resistance” meant to raise awareness about what the climbers call discrimination against transgender people by the Trump administration, according to a statement from the group, which described itself as a coalition of transgender, queer and allied climbers.
That is a beautiful flag right there.
Texas: Bluer than you think.
That is, on the June 7th, 2025 breaking stories, I’m seeing serious fearmongering about what’s going on in Los Angeles. I wish to say that the citizens of Los Angeles ultimately aren’t going to give into the incitement, nor are they going to give into intimidation. Because we know that Trump is doing this because he’s trying to deflect from how poorly things are going for him right at the moment, and Stephen Miller is coming out demanding 3,000 ICE arrests a day, which is impossible.
I do get disappointed with progressive/democratic/left voices who fearmonger for no reason. They too are under the cannons of journalistic ethics. We cannot under any circumstances fearmonger for clicks, and to cause people to freeze up and not do anything. We have to inform, but not cause panic. What’s happened on June 6, and 7th 2025 is a reminder of that.
I know things are tense in California right now, but we still need to keep our heads. Keep calm and carry on as they say. They want us to be afraid, I for one am not giving them the satisfaction.
Behind closed doors and far from the press pool, Donald Trump is begging for relief. The architect of America’s global trade tantrum has found himself outplayed, outflanked, and, for the first time in his political life, outclassed by someone he never saw coming: Prime Minister Mark Carney.
I hope they served TACOS at those meetings.
Are you starting to notice a pattern when it comes to Donald Trump's pressure campaign to make countries sign trade deals with him, the investigations he launches into his political enemies, and the sanctions he imposes on law firms who fail to capitulate to his demands?
I am. In all three cases, pretty much nothing has actually happened. Consider:
Trump is just plain full of hot air. And that’s the truth.
Alright, time for a music break. Take it away Crosby Stills and Nash: Live it up!
To those of you in the United States, the organizers, activists, community workers, and everyday people of the Global South are writing to you about hope. We do not mean the misunderstood interpretation of hope that prizes optimism or triumphalism. We mean the kind of hope fierce enough to confront the suffering caused by systemic oppression, and one that tactfully and persistently fights to put an end to it.
We know your panic because we are no strangers to your fear. We resonate with your anxiety—perhaps even on a greater scale than what most of you have felt. That’s because we are no strangers to authoritarian regimes, human rights violations, and the exploitation of our lands and lineages.
And for many of us in the Global South, our wounds are directly caused by the legacy of the United States, down to the everyday decisions of the American people—through taxpayer money and day-to-day capitalist consumptions that are seldom questioned yet passively or actively consented to—resulting in the dispossession of countless communities in the Global South.
Yet we are here to encourage you in a pivotal time. Think of the following as a letter, one rooted in the wisdom of the Global South to remind you of an alternative way forward.
Panic and despair will only work against us, we need to plant our feet and keep our heads above water.
Memory is a strange thing – the way sounds, images, and sensations converge to cement a moment in our minds. For millions of people, the memory of what happened to George Floyd five years ago in Minneapolis will stay with us for ever.
On Sunday, we remember the life of George Floyd and reflect on the summer of 2020, when movement builders activated as many as 26 million people into the streets to demand an end to the state’s violent disregard for Black lives. Many people will opine today about the perceived failures of that time and the years that followed, focusing on how corporate pledges to increase diversity have since been revoked or zeroing in on how many police departments did not cut their budgets, all in an effort to decide whether the summer of 2020 was really as powerful as it felt.
But to make any assessment of wins or losses, we have to look back beyond 25 May 2020. And more importantly, we must analyze several key social, cultural and political factors, not just those deemed paramount by elected officials or news pundits.
The fight goes ever onward.
I’ve been searching for a metaphor to grasp the meaning of Elon Musk’s departure from DOGE. The closest I can come is an abusive relationship, where the person being harmed makes a significant break from their partner, like moving out, but hasn’t completely ended the relationship.
As a friend, you know all is not well. The threat of violence remains. The relationship is still toxic and dangerous. Still, you applaud the move. You don’t feed your friend’s aching feeling of disempowerment and loss — you feed the courage, the agency and the strength to keep going.
So it’s in that spirit that I want us to take a moment to acknowledge, even celebrate, our collective achievement of a massive, unplanned retreat by the richest person on the planet. Yes, it’s not everything — but if we can only cheer when it’s everything, we’re going to live sad lives.
It must be said: Musk’s departure is not because of the 130-day limit on special government employees. Plans had already been made to blow past that. Sure, Trump will spin this as part of his plan — but we have to stop ourselves from thinking that everything they do is masterminded. The anti-authoritarian side can also be relentless, brilliant, courageous and strategic.
Workers ignoring Musk orders. Institutional resistance to DOGE. Tesla Takedown. Pension letters. All these efforts beat back the salesmanship of Donald Trump hawking Teslas on the White House lawn and the richest man attempting to insulate himself from the people’s will.
Still so happy we finally drove Elon out. Good riddance. Go cry with DeSantis over it.
UPDATED, with comments from Capitol Hill lawmakers: Donald Trump and Elon Musk exchanged bitter comments and accusations throughout the day on Thursday, as an all-out feud broke out between the most powerful man on Earth and the world’s richest man.
After a series of attacks from Musk, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
He also wrote that Musk was “wearing thin” and that he “asked him to leave” his official White House post.
Trump wrote, “I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”
So the breakup isn’t going well I take it. You know what they say, there’s no such thing as a civil divorce (At least not with these two idiots).
x
BLUE WAVE 🌊 | Mississippi Democrats fight back and WIN big!
From Jackson to Horn Lake, Dems flipped mayoral seats & energized voters statewide.
Change is here—& it’s just the beginning. 🔵
#BlueWaveMS #VoteLocal #WeFightBack #MississippiDemocrats #BlackVotersMatter
— (@msdemocrats.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T16:11:58.357Z
A trial underway in Colorado could add to the financial problems facing the pillow salesman and prominent election denier Mike Lindell and will serve as another test of whether defamation law can be effective to fight false claims about elections.
Opening statements began Tuesday in a case brought by Eric Coomer, who formerly worked in security and voting technology strategy for the voting machine company Dominion. Coomer sued Lindell and a host of others who spread unproven claims that he interfered with the 2020 election.
Of all the Trump fanboys out there, Mike Lindell may be the second most baffling to me (The most baffling being, of course, Rapper Kanye West), like, does Trump even know Lindell exists? The MyPillow guy continues to worship at Trumps altar and seemingly gets nothing back in return. Why?
Ukraine just pulled off a stunning military operation, its success matched only by its sheer audacity. In one move, Zelenskyy reset the board not only with Russia but the entire Western alliance. He and his team instantly redefined modern warfare and shifted global thinking overnight on the question of nuclear deterrence.
For 18 months, Zelenskyy kept the mission secret, even from—or perhaps particularly from—the Trump White House. He personally oversaw what became known as Operation Spiderweb, a secret plan to strike a devastating blow to Russia’s air power, particularly its long range bombers that have been raining hell down upon Kyiv in the form of cruise missiles.
The Ukrainians decided back then they wouldn’t attack using conventional means. Knowing they were outmatched in firepower, the Ukrainians decided to fight asymmetrically, and to use the arrogance and false confidence of the Russians against them.
The result was a devastating blow to Russia’s air force. Some are calling it Russia’s “Pearl Harbor” moment. This is the story of how it went down.
Like I don’t think anyone is gonna argue that Zelensky won this week. Ukraine has struck a critical blow against the Russian military. Hopefully this will be the final act for Putin’s embarrassing failure of a war.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz shared some stark words for Democrats on Saturday, calling for his fellow party members to "be a little meaner" in the pushback against President Donald Trump.
“It’s because he is,” Walz said at the South Carolina Democratic Party Convention, addressing why he called Trump a “wannabe dictator.” Walz ran as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris against Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in 2024. The former public school teacher was initially praised during the election for his relatability and Midwestern appeal.
“‘Oh, the Governor’s being mean,’ well, maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner, maybe it’s time for us to be a little more fierce,” Walz said. “We have to ferociously push back on this…the thing that bothers a teacher more than anything is to watch a bully.”
I still think it was a major misstep to back off Walz’s “Weird” campaign during the 2024 election. Like I liked that, it was working I think. Hopefully now the Dems will heed his words.
And on that note, lets move on to some Pokemon.
And now the GNR Lightning round
A quarter of the cards sold in 2025 will be battery powered
What could go right: How to end extreme poverty
The history of successful liberal reform
Laughter really is good medicine
US steelmaking is slowly growing greener
And now, the cute corner.
And that does it for this week, have a good Monday everyone, and an even better tomorrow.
