Welcome back friends to the Monday Good News Roundup, that time of the week when your intrepid GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the GNR Discord) bring you all the good news to start your week off right.
And its MOVING DAY! Yes, I am writing this Sunday night, but tomorrow I’m going to begin my move to my new residence. Its more spacious, safer, on the bus line, and I will be living on my own again. Wish me luck!
Anyway, in honor of this momentous occasion, a special musical arrangement: The theme from the Jeffersons.
The planting of what will become the UK's first new national forest for more than 30 years has begun.
The 30-hectare Pucklechurch Wood will be part of the UK's new Western Forest, stretching across Bristol, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.
We have a lot of work to do, but the process of fixing our Earth starts in a hundred little ways, and this is one of them.
The development of an HIV cure is a global health priority, with the target product profile (TPP) for an HIV cure guiding research efforts. Using a mathematical model calibrated to data from men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Netherlands, we assessed whether an effective cure could help end the HIV epidemic. Following the TPP, we evaluated two scenarios: (i) HIV remission, where the virus is suppressed in an individual without ongoing antiretroviral therapy (ART) but may rebound, and (ii) HIV eradication, which aims to completely remove the virus from the individual. Here, we show that sustained HIV remission (without rebound) or HIV eradication could reduce new HIV infections compared to a scenario without a cure. In contrast, transient HIV remission with a risk of rebound could increase new infections if rebounds are not closely monitored, potentially undermining HIV control efforts. Our findings emphasize the critical role of cure characteristics in maximizing cure benefits for public health and highlight the need to align HIV cure research with public health objectives to end the HIV epidemic.
I am super jazzed I might live to see the end of AIDS
For the second time in just over a month, a large-scale raid by dozens of immigration agents in New York City was met with a similarly large-scale counter-protest. This time, however, the protesters thwarted the authorities' plans before they began.
Multiple arrests were made on Saturday during scuffles on the edge of Chinatown, during which hundreds of protesters faced off with federal agents, eventually supported by the New York Police Department (NYPD), as they prepared to launch a raid in the area.
It comes just a month after a raid by 50 federal agents using military-style vehicles stormed nearby Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, and was met with a protest of hundreds in response.
Don’t mess with New York.
Indiana state Sen. Michael Bohacek said Friday that he wouldn’t support an effort in his state to redraw congressional district lines that favor Republicans after President Donald Trump used a slur for those with intellectual disabilities to describe Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences. I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority,” Bohacek wrote in a Facebook post after explaining that he has a daughter with Down syndrome.
Once again Trumps aspirations to fix the next election fall flat on their face, and once again Trump is his own worst enemy.
The world is clamoring for more electrons. It’s getting them from solar and wind.
Between January and September, the two clean-energy sources grew fast enough to more than offset all new demand worldwide, according to data from energy research firm Ember.
Power demand rose by 603 terawatt-hours compared to that same time period last year. Solar met nearly all that new demand on its own, increasing by 498 TWh. Wind generation, meanwhile, climbed by 137 TWh.
Solar and wind are kicking ass and taking names.
- Democratic-backed candidates won numerous school board seats nationwide, unsealing Republican incumbents who rose during the COVID-19 pandemic culture wars.
- Voters prioritized academic performance, fiscal responsibility, and routine school operations over ideological battles, leading to Democratic gains in key battleground districts.
- Groups like Pipeline Fund reported strong Democratic success and plan to expand efforts to 21 more states, emphasizing community-focused school governance.
Step one to getting our country back is fixing the schools that the GOP broke, so this is a good step towards that.
The news is moving so fast that it’s hard to make meaning out of each twist and turn. In a 24-hour span, Border Patrol turned tail and left Charlotte, Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she was quitting, and Mamdani both called Trump a fascist to his face and got Trump to say he would happily live in a New York City under his mayorship.
We’re indeed in a new phase of the struggle against authoritarianism in the U.S. — and it’s helpful to step back to track where we are and adjust our bearings accordingly. We’ve shaken off the early months of shock and the steamrolled losses. Now we’re showing we can sometimes defend and even get on the offensive.
Things are not going well for Trump. Its been only a year and he’s already flailing. I doubt he will last the full term this time at the rate things are going.
And in the most recent poll in November, the vice-president’s margin continued to fall. According to the survey of 439 voters conducted between November 17 and 24, Vance’s lead over Trump Jr had plummeted to just 10 points. The latest results put Vance at 34 percent and Trump Jr at 24 percent.
Mark Shanahan, an associate professor at the University of Sussex, believes Vance’s apparent fall in popularity is linked to his connection to Trump.
“The issue for Vance is that he’s so closely tied to this administration,” Shanahan told Newsweek. “For the moment, he has to be in lockstep with the president. If he’s not, he simply isn’t doing the job he has been elected to fulfill. So, while Trump’s polling is languishing, Vance suffers.”
Yeah maybe he should have asked Pence how that was gonna work out for him.
Anyway, time for a music break: Green Day, Welcome to Paradise.
Just ten months into Donald Trump’s second term and more than a year since he was reelected, the American people are sending a clear message in poll after poll that they are just not that into him.
This week, a new Reuters poll found Trump’s approval has fallen to a new low of 38% as a result of two distinct issues weighing him down:
Another reminder that Trump 2.0 Rise of the Machines is crashing and burning.
The Department of Education appears to have resumed processing student loan forgiveness for borrowers in income-driven repayment plans, following a brief hiatus due to the government shutdown. Borrowers on Reddit have reported receiving the “golden letter” from the department on Tuesday indicating that their student loans have been approved for discharge, and practitioners have corroborated these accounts.
Excellent news, something I will have to look into for myself one of these days.
Protesters and freelance journalists are suing the Trump administration, claiming federal officers’ use of force against them during protests outside the Portland immigration facility violated their First Amendment rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Oregon, names President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security as defendants.
Good job ACLU go get him.
A flurry of social media posts from Maga influencers have laid bare the disorientation felt by members of Trump’s base at the spectacle of Friday’s cordial Oval Office meeting with Mamdani, who the president previously painted as a “communist lunatic”.
“Wild to allow a jihadist communist to stand behind the president’s desk in the Oval Office. Sad to see,” wrote far-right activist Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s most fervent online backers.
She returned to the theme several times. “I had to drink a bottle of ginger ale today after seeing Mamdani in the Oval Office because it physically nauseates me seeing Islamic jihadists infiltrate our government and continue to get a pass to promote Islamic jihad and anti-American values with zero push back,” Loomer wrote.
Its kind of sad that this is what it takes for them to Turn on Trump but you know what I’ll take what I can get.
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, Brasília, after his conviction for plotting a coup.
The far-right populist, 70, who governed Latin America’s largest democracy from 2019 until 2022, was handed the punishment in September after the supreme court found him guilty of leading a criminal conspiracy to stop his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking power.
The plot – which involved a plan to assassinate Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin – foundered after military chiefs refused to take part and the court later convicted Bolsonaro and six accomplices of trying to “annihilate” Brazilian democracy and plunge the country back into dictatorship.
And justice is served. I know a lot of people despair Trump will never get the punishment he deserves. All I can say is, I bet Bolsorano thought he was untouchable too.
President Donald Trump is considering removing Kash Patel as FBI director in the coming months, as he and his top aides have grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated, according to three people with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.
Patel has come under scrutiny for his stewardship of bureau resources, including his girlfriend’s security detail and use of a government jet, and for his squabbles with other Trump loyalists.
Yeah it turns out that just putting some random guy in charge of the FBI was a bad idea. Who knew?
A prominent GOP strategist says House Republicans are so fed up with Congress that many are eyeing the exits — and he explained why this particular wave is “unusual.”
Strategist Doug Heye told CNN News Central on Monday that the dysfunction on Capitol Hill has turned Congress into a “bad workplace.”
“We could have had this same conversation last week, last year, eight, 10, 12 years ago. What we’ve seen in Congress, over now a generation, is it has become a bad workplace,” Heye said.
Yeah it looks like morale is at an all time low among the GOP congressfolk having to deal with Trumps BS, so a lot of them are quitting. And their loss is our gain.
And on that note I think we have enough for this week. Now for Pokemon.
And now the cute corner.
And that’s it for this week. See you next time from my new place.
