United States

This archive collects solutions-journalism stories and milestones from the United States — covering policy wins, community-led efforts, scientific advances, and social progress happening across the country. Each entry highlights what’s working and why it matters.

Kim Coco Iwamoto, for article on Hawaii transgender lawmaker

Kim Coco Iwamoto to become Hawaii’s first trans lawmaker

By / / Good News For Humankind

Hawaii just elected its first transgender state lawmaker, and she did it by unseating the sitting House Speaker. Kim Coco Iwamoto won her Honolulu Democratic primary with 49.3% of the vote, edging out Scott Saiki by about five percentage points without the backing of the party establishment. A longtime civil rights attorney and former Board of Education member, Iwamoto ran on a platform that includes the Green New Deal, affordable housing, and stronger protections for LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. At a moment when transgender Americans are facing a wave of legislative attacks, a win like this — built on years of organizing and persistence — offers a hopeful reminder of what representation can still look like.

Shot of a young male doctor standing with his arms crossed in an office at a hospital, for article on HBCU medical school funding

Michael Bloomberg gives $600 million to four Black medical schools’ endowments

By / / Good News For Humankind

HBCU medical schools just received $600 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies, with Howard, Meharry, and Morehouse each getting $175 million and Charles R. Drew receiving $75 million. The gift will more than double the endowments at three of the four schools, giving them the kind of long-term, flexible funding that lets institutions plan decades ahead — recruiting faculty, expanding class sizes, and offering scholarships without leaning so hard on tuition. An additional $5 million supports a new medical school launching at Xavier University of Louisiana with Ochsner Health. Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the U.S. population but less than 6% of practicing physicians, and research consistently links Black doctors to better outcomes for Black patients. Training more of them is one of the clearest paths toward closing that gap.

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California passes first-in-the-nation law banning forced outings of queer students in state public schools

By / / Good News For Humankind

California just became the first state in the country to ban schools from forcibly outing queer students, after Governor Newsom signed the SAFETY Act into law and it took effect immediately. The bill, which passed the State Assembly 60-15, also shields teachers from retaliation if they refuse to disclose a student’s gender identity to parents without consent. It arrived after years of organizing by educators like Karen Poznanski, a Murrieta teacher and parent of a nonbinary child, whose complaint helped trigger a state investigation. Eight other states currently require this kind of outing, so California’s move offers a real counter-model. For queer kids deciding when and how to come out, this puts one of life’s most tender conversations back in their own hands.

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New twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV achieves 100% success rate in late-stage trial

By / / Good News For Humankind

Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly HIV prevention shot, protected every single one of 2,134 women who received it in a late-stage trial across South Africa and Uganda — a 100% efficacy result so striking that monitors ended the blinded phase early. The breakthrough matters because daily prevention pills, while powerful in theory, often falter in real life: stigma, forgotten doses, and disrupted routines all chip away at protection. Two clinic visits a year, by contrast, means a full year of coverage. The remaining hurdle is access, with advocates pressing manufacturer Gilead to license generic versions for the regions hardest hit. If that happens, a tool this effective could reshape the global push to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.

Silhouette of cannabis leaf, for article on Maryland marijuana pardons

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore set to issue 175,000 pardons for marijuana convictions

By / / Good News For Humankind

Maryland’s marijuana pardons just cleared more than 175,000 convictions in a single executive order — the largest state-level pardon any governor has ever signed. Governor Wes Moore framed it as unfinished business from legalization itself, noting that people arrested for cannabis decades ago still carry those records into job interviews, housing applications, and college admissions today. The order falls hardest in favor of Black Marylanders, who were arrested for cannabis at three times the rate of white residents before the state legalized recreational use in 2023. Moore was honest about the limits: a pardon can’t return lost years. But paired with the federal push to reschedule marijuana, it signals a country slowly reckoning with who paid the price of the war on drugs.

X-ray image of the intestine, for article on dostarlimab bowel cancer trial

New bowel cancer drug is found to be 100% effective

By / / Good News For Humankind

Immunotherapy just delivered something almost unheard of in cancer research: every single one of 42 patients in a rectal cancer trial showed no detectable tumour after treatment with the drug dostarlimab. Even more encouraging, the first 24 patients have now been tracked for an average of 26 months, and their cancers haven’t come back. For people with this specific subtype, it could mean skipping the chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery that often leave lasting damage. Larger studies are now underway to confirm the findings, but the signal is remarkable. It’s a glimpse of where cancer care may be heading worldwide — treatments that work with the body’s own immune system, and let patients keep their lives intact.

A neuron or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell, for article on ALS synapse-regenerating pill

Breakthrough synapse-regenerating ALS pill moves to phase 2 human trials

By / / Good News For Humankind

A once-daily ALS pill designed to rebuild neural connections — not just slow their loss — has cleared FDA approval to begin Phase 2 trials, with patients across the U.S. starting doses in April 2024. SPG302 works on synapses, the tiny junctions where neurons talk to each other, which start vanishing before motor neurons themselves die. Every ALS drug currently on the market aims to slow decline; this one is being tested for whether it can actually help recover lost function. For the roughly 30,000 Americans living with ALS, that’s a genuinely different question to be asking. If it works, it could reshape how researchers approach neurodegenerative disease far beyond ALS.

Good news for public health, for article on CAB-LA HIV prevention, for article on lenacapavir HIV prevention, for article on HIV infections in young men

HIV transmissions in the U.S. dropped 12% between 2018 and 2002

By / / Good News For Humankind

HIV infections among young men in the U.S. dropped 30% between 2018 and 2022, the steepest decline of any age group in the latest CDC surveillance data. Researchers credit expanded testing, faster connection to treatment, and the growing reach of PrEP — a daily pill that cuts transmission risk by up to 99% when taken consistently. The South, long carrying the heaviest HIV burden in the country, saw the largest regional drop, and Black men experienced an 18% decline. Gaps remain, especially for transgender women and Latino gay men, but the news from this generation is genuinely hopeful: when prevention tools reach people early, they work. It’s a glimpse of what ending the epidemic could actually look like.

Packages of diapers, for article on Medicaid diaper coverage

Tennessee to become the first U.S. state to provide some children’s diapers

By / / Good News For Humankind

Free diapers through Medicaid are coming to Tennessee this August, with families receiving 100 a month for every child under two. It’s the first program of its kind in the country, and advocates expect it to deliver close to 100 million diapers a year to families who need them. The need is real: the National Diaper Bank Network found that 92% of Tennessee families receiving diaper assistance are working parents who still can’t afford enough. Local diaper banks helped lay the groundwork, and they’ll keep serving families the program doesn’t reach. Tennessee’s approach offers a tested path other states can follow, turning a quiet daily struggle into something a community can actually solve together.

Molly Cook, for article on LGBTQ+ Texas Senate

Molly Cook just became the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Texas Senate

By / / Good News For Humankind

Molly Cook just became the first openly LGBTQ+ person ever elected to the Texas Senate, winning her Houston-area special election with 57% of the vote. An emergency room nurse and sixth-generation Texan, she built her campaign around a simple idea: the laws passed in Austin show up in her ER, whether it’s a miscarriage complication under the state’s abortion ban or a neighbor freezing after the power grid fails. Her win places an out senator in a chamber that has produced some of the country’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Representation in rooms like this one doesn’t change everything overnight, but it changes who has to be seen, and that’s how long-standing ceilings start to crack.