San Francisco decriminalizes psychedelics
City lawmakers have unanimously approved a measure calling for the decriminalization of psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca.
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.
Hawaii shuts down its last coal-fired power plant
In 2020, Hawaii’s Legislature passed a law banning the use of coal for energy production at the start of 2023.
U.S. to plant 1 billion trees as climate change kills forests
The Forest Service plans over the next couple years to scale up work from about 60,000 acres replanted last year to about 400,000 acres annually.
New Jersey governor signs bills protecting out-of-state abortion seekers and reproductive health care providers
The bills, A3974 and A3975, shield health care providers from other state’s inquiries and prohibit the extradition of any person who comes to New Jersey seeking legal abortion services.
California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plastic
California’s single-use plastic law sets a binding target to cut throwaway plastic 25% by 2032, and it puts the bill where it belongs: on the companies making the stuff. A new producer-led organization will run recycling programs and pay $500 million a year into a fund that helps clean up the mess and address its health impacts. That’s a real shift, because for decades the cost of plastic pollution has fallen on cities and taxpayers, not the businesses profiting from it. As the largest U.S. state, California tends to pull markets and other states along with it — making this a hopeful template for tackling plastic pollution far beyond its borders.
Colorado will not cooperate with other states’ abortion investigations after governor issues executive order
The Department of Regulatory Affairs was also instructed to protect people working in Colorado from disciplinary action against a professional license for providing reproductive health care
University of Arizona offers free college tuition to Native students
The introduction of such a program, which is offered to any students registered to any of the state’s 22 federally recognized tribes, is the first of its kind in an Arizona public university.
1,000 acres of forest to be returned to Onondaga Nation in historic lake cleanup agreement
Land has been returned directly to a Native American tribe in New York for the first time, and the parcel is significant: nearly 1,000 acres of forest, wetlands, and the sacred headwaters of Onondaga Creek. The Onondaga Nation, original stewards of central New York, will own the land outright and care for it using traditional ecological knowledge, with plans to bring native brook trout back to waters they fished for centuries. The transfer grew out of a Superfund settlement with Honeywell, the company behind decades of industrial pollution nearby. It’s one of the largest Indigenous land returns in U.S. history — a small but meaningful shift in a global movement recognizing Native nations as the rightful caretakers of their homelands.
Google to automatically delete abortion clinic visits from users’ history
Activists have said decisions like these could be important if the government begins seeking personal information in order to charge people who’ve had, sought or facilitated abortions.
California set to become first state to provide free health care to all low-income immigrants
California is doing something no state has done before — guaranteeing free health care to every low-income adult, regardless of immigration status. An estimated 764,000 people stand to gain Medi-Cal coverage, funded entirely by California since the federal government doesn’t pay for undocumented residents. For families like Beatriz Hernandez’s — whose mother has never had health insurance in the U.S. — this is the change they’ve waited over a decade for. One health policy leader called it the biggest coverage expansion since the Affordable Care Act, and advocates are already watching to see which state steps up next.