“Can’t stop, won’t stop” said all the good stuff that happened last week.
4 min readJun 5, 2017
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- Elon Musk quit the president’s business council in response to Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate agreement. So did Disney CEO Robert Iger.
- The California Senate passed a bill that aims for 100% renewable energy by 2045.
- Cambridge, bypassing the basic service offered by utilities, negotiated a new electric contract for residents that uses 25% more solar energy than the state requires. Several other communities, including Somerville and Arlington, are in the process of negotiating similar agreements.
- India cancelled its plans to build massive coal-fired power stations because the price of solar energy has hit record lows.
- Massachusetts’ last coal power plant, one of the last in New England, has shut down.
- A Seattle dad’s campaign to erase the lunch debt of every Seattle Public School student took off after John Legend donated $5000. They can already start covering school lunches for next year.
- Ontario will become the second Canadian province to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour.
- Michael Flynn has agreed to provide some of the documents the Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed.
- Australia plans to revoke the passports of registered child sex offenders in an attempt to curtail Asia’s booming child sex trade.
- The 7th Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that under federal law a transgender Wisconsin student has the right to use the bathroom of the gender with which he identifies.
- Fired FBI Director James Comey plans to testify publicly in the Senate Intelligence Committee about Trump’s attempts to pressure him to drop his investigation into Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia.
- A New York City police sergeant has been charged with murder in the shooting death of Deborah Danner, a mentally ill black woman. Danner’s family has blamed the incident on race because the officer’s stunt gun was still holstered and Danner was only holding scissors. In many of these cases, officers are allowed to keep working, rarely are they fired, and rarer still are they charged with murder. This is a step towards justice.
- Illinois’ Republican governor will sign the automatic voter registration bill passed by both legislative chambers. He vetoed it last year.
- Netflix’s documentary series The Keepers led Baltimore police to create an easier way for survivors to report sexual abuse.
- France welcomed its first gay Chechen refugees on Monday — the same day French president Macron met with Vladimir Putin at Versailles.
- Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is coordinating a group — consisting so far of 30 mayors, 3 governors, 80 university professors, and 100 business leaders — that’s preparing to submit a plan to the UN to meet U.S. greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement.
- More Michael Bloomberg news. Bloomberg Philanthropies and its partners will pull together $15 million to support the operations of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change by covering the U.S. share of the convention’s budget.
- “Climate Mayors” of 180 cities outlined a plan to align with the 194 nations that adopted the Paris accord and even more companies and states announced plans to press ahead with their climate policies and pursue lower greenhouse gas emissions.
- ExxonMobile shareholders passed a shareholder resolution opposed by management to compel the company to be more open about the impact of climate change on its business. The resolution passed with 62% of votes; last year it received only 38%.
- China and all 28 EU states reaffirmed their commitment to fully implement the Paris Climate Agreement.
- New York City voted to divest and suspend all municipal business with Wells Fargo.
- Paul LePage, Maine’s outspoken conservative governor, has commuted the sentences of 17 prison inmates, with the requirement that they find jobs or job training. Maine’s tourist industry struggling to hire workers in a state with only 3% unemployment.
- Trump is becoming increasingly isolated and is having difficulty recruiting staff. After Michael Dubke, the White House communications director resigned (after only three months!), four potential candidates declined to be considered.
- Anti-incarceration activists learned that activism works this week in Seattle when the city council passed a bill that would allow them to appeal controversial plans for what has been termed the “new youth jail.”
- Special counsel Robert Mueller has taken over a separate criminal probe involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and is expanding his probe to assume control of a grand jury investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
- France unveiled legislation that would implement numerous anti-corruption measures aimed at stemming ethical abuses in French politics.
Compiled by Mary Wasmuth and Abby Brockman, written by Mary, published by Abby.