Real, messy hope delivered to your inbox daily, from Good Good Good.
In the headlines...
🪖 President Trump at least temporarily abandoned his efforts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled the administration could not deploy troops in Chicago.
💵 Nineteen U.S. states raised their minimum wage on January 1, with most of them reaching $15 per hour or higher. Another 49 cities and counties are also raising their minimum wage at the start of the new year.
🍎 Zohran Mamdani was officially sworn in as mayor of New York City, and in his inaugural address, affirmed his agenda of “affordability and abundance” for working-class New Yorkers.
Environment
Miryan Delgado/Handou
Stingless bees from the Amazon rainforest are the first insect in the world to be granted legal rights
The planet’s oldest bee species and primary pollinator in the Amazon rainforest just made history as the first insects anywhere in the world to be granted legal rights.
Supporters hope that giving stingless bees the right to exist and flourish will set a precedent for similar protections for other bee and insect species around the world.
The native bees have been cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, and unlike their European cousins, they have no sting.
Why is this good news?Critical pollinators in the rainforest, sustaining biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, stingless bees face threats from climate change, deforestation, pesticides, and competition from other bee species — scientists have been racing to get them on conservation red lists.
Over two decades, a couple planted over 2.5 million trees to restore a Brazilian nature preserve
In 1998, award-winning photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, founded their nonprofit nature preserve, Instituto Terra. They spent the next two decades planting over 2.5 million trees.
They were inspired after Salgado returned from covering the Rwandan genocide to his father’s degraded cattle ranch, which was “as sick as I was.”
They started with a 100,000-seedling donation from a local mining company, and began to restore their little plot of land. Now, it’s so covered in trees, it can be seen from space.
These days, you’re probably carrying a level of uncertainty and anxiety around with you almost constantly. We don’t blame you.
But as stubborn optimists, we’re committed to making sure you have the tools to see all the good in the world that deserves to be celebrated, even when it feels hard to be hopeful.
That’s what the Mental Health Edition of The Goodnewspaper provides: Stories that remind you that there are solutions to even the most confounding problems. And even when there aren’t, there are steps forward we can all take to fill our hearts, minds, and communities with more good.
*Some of these recommendations may include affiliate links, which means if you buy anything from this email, we may get something in return at no extra cost to you. (Thanks for your support!)
What’s good?
I know some folks like to set intentions for a new year by encapsulating it in a single word.
Do you pick a “word of the year”?
I’d love to hear it if you’re comfortable sharing — reply and tell me!
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