Another Monday, and the headlines are piling up again: a drone strike that killed 80 people near a market in Sudan, a study linking tens of thousands of deaths in Europe’s heat waves this year to climate change, a U.S. ambassador warning that the war with Iran could last another year, and a seventh death in ICE custody in Texas. So, as we do every Monday, we went looking for the people proving that things can still go right.

After all, who doesn’t need a win to start the week?

Here’s what we found.

Nurses in Pittsburgh won the country’s first countywide paid parental leave policy

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the Allegheny County Council in Pennsylvania voted 11 to 4 to guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental leave, the first county-level paid leave policy in the nation, The 19th reported. Nurses at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh led the push, launching their campaign on Mother’s Day with a coalition of working parents, advocates, and elected leaders. Under the policy, birthing and non-birthing parents will get three months of paid leave within the first year after a birth, adoption, foster placement, or stillbirth, with their jobs and health benefits protected. Businesses with 15 or more employees must offer it. Requiring employers to fund the benefit drew the most pushback, according to The 19th, and the original 18-week proposal was scaled back to 12.

According to The 19th, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have created their own paid leave programs because the U.S. has no federal one, and Pennsylvania is not on that list. Research suggests the benefits reach the whole family. When fathers take at least two weeks of leave, children report closer relationships with them up to nine years later, Megan Kuykendoll, a certified family life educator at Miami University, wrote for The Conversation. She also noted that Hispanic and Black workers in the U.S. often have less access to paid leave than their white counterparts.

“I hope it’s one of the things that will maybe someday be recognized as an early example of when things started to change,” Jean Stone, a NICU nurse at Magee, told The 19th.

Texas counties broke first-day early voting records

The five most populous counties in Texas broke first-day early voting records on Monday, Oct. 19, Spectrum News reported. In Harris County, home to Houston, voters cast 105,000 ballots, 40,000 more than the 2018 record. Dallas County counted 76,000 voters, beating its 2018 midterm record of 59,000, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, and Travis County, home to Austin, broke its 2018 and 2022 records with nearly 41,000 voters, according to the county clerk. More than 42,000 people voted in Bexar County, its highest first-day turnout for a non-presidential election.

Turnout was also high along the border. About 30,000 people voted across the Rio Grande Valley on the first day, according to county numbers, and Hidalgo County, the region’s largest, saw turnout rise almost 50% compared with the 2022 midterms. Early voting in Texas runs through Oct. 30, and Election Day is Nov. 3.

California will help formerly incarcerated firefighters get hired by Cal Fire

Incarcerated firefighters are responsible for nearly half of the emergency hours spent fighting California’s wildfires, but once they leave prison, many struggle to find work in the field, CalMatters reported. A law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month is meant to help. Assembly Bill 2483, by Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, a Los Angeles Democrat, will standardize the credentials incarcerated firefighters receive when they leave prison so that, by 2028, they match the requirements for entry-level jobs at Cal Fire. It also gives them hiring priority for some of those positions, which can lead to a six-figure income and a state pension.

“Sometimes folks didn’t get any paperwork at all, coming home,” Elhawary told CalMatters. A similar bill the Cal Fire union opposed failed in committee last year. This version offers a hiring preference instead of a quota, and it was negotiated with help from Royal Ramey, who fought the 2013 Rim Fire while incarcerated and later worked for the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire before founding the nonprofit Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program. “The bill tells incarcerated firefighters that their hard-earned experience counts,” Ramey said.

U.S. clean energy keeps growing, despite the White House

President Trump’s signature tax law slashed tax credits for green investments, and his administration has stalled approvals for more than 150 onshore wind projects. Still, America’s clean-energy build-out has kept growing, the Financial Times editorial board wrote on Oct. 18. U.S. utilities generated a record amount of electricity from renewable sources in 2025, and a record 45 gigawatts of clean-energy capacity is forecast to be added this year, according to S&P Global Energy, as cited by the FT.

The economics are doing much of the work. Renewables are among the cheapest sources of new electricity in the U.S. without subsidies, the board wrote, and new solar and wind projects can be built in under two years, compared with at least three for gas. High fuel prices since the U.S. began striking Iran in February have also pushed more households to look at solar panels and electric vehicles. The board noted that the administration’s policies have still slowed the transition, but concluded that the case for clean power now rests on “the need for cheaper, faster and more secure power.”

Amazon deforestation could hit its lowest level on record this year

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon more than halved between 2022 and 2025, from 11,594 square kilometers a year to 5,731, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief. And experts told the outlet that 2026 could bring the lowest level since records began in 1988. Carbon Brief estimated that stronger enforcement of Brazil’s forest code since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office has spared at least 20,000 square kilometers of forest, an area comparable to New Jersey, when measured against a scenario modeled on the weaker enforcement under former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Aline Soterroni, a University of Oxford researcher who led the study behind the model, told Carbon Brief that the change “shows how quickly deforestation can respond to political will.”

Finally, the WNBA Finals packed an NBA arena and set a TV record

Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries drew an average of 2.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, the most-watched Game 1 in league history and an 11% increase over last year, according to NBC, Yahoo Sports reported. Fans showed up in person, too. After the league rescheduled Games 3 and 4 so the Dream could play them at the 17,000-seat State Farm Arena instead of their usual home, the 3,500-seat Gateway Center, the smallest venue in the WNBA, the Dream sold out Game 3 about a week after the change was announced, according to Front Office Sports. Their earlier playoff games at State Farm Arena had averaged fewer than 10,000 fans, FOS reported.

Tags: good news