Doug

Aside from who started it, states like CA and VA putting a counter-gerrymander up to a referendum, where people are told and can make a decision on the context for why it's being done, has vastly more democratic legitimacy than state legislators rushing it through because they got bullied by POTUS.

Good feature/scoop on what the NYT describes as the origin of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, the 2016 injunction against the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan rule. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

I quite happily live in a neighborhood where most people do not share my religion, where multiple languages are represented, and where people have come from a lot of different countries. Bigoted assholes always assume everyone else actually shares their bigotries.

As one would expect. People like it if they’ve tried it. #rcv #rankedchoicevoting #irv

Majority of Arlington voters support ranked-choice voting, survey finds

The @washingtonpost.com can't even cancel my subscription without messing up. What is Bezos good at, again?

Original post: mas.to/@carnage4lif...

Original post: masto.ai/@rbreich/115...

We should all be yelling at our state officials about the complete insanity of posting vital emergency information *exclusively* on Twitter/X and/or Facebook in 2025. There is absolutely NO good excuse for this. Many, many people don’t use those platforms. Many never did.

I hope Elon Musk does try to make a new party, and that he figures out what has to happen first to make it fly…

I had such a sad reaction to this exclamation point. This will be my second season of not watching #Nats games because I finally got around to canceling cable. It’s just too expensive to justify. I’d pay a reasonable amount to watch my team but not if it requires me to pay for a whole cable package.

Tomorrow in the NYT: I voted for Donald Trump because I hate the people he hates and wanted to see them suffer. Now that I am suffering, why can’t you find it in your heart to be sympathetic? RUDE

Let it be noted that on the day Trump portrayed the United States as in deadly peril from which it needed to be "saved" it was prosperous, at peace and experiencing no civil strife following an election accepted as democratic by Trump himself. /5

Virginians -- since our AG Jason Miyares didn't sue, the judges order doesn't apply to us. He's up for re-election this year...

And the last guys to fight a civil war left very clear instructions on how to avoid the next one in the 14th amendment: (1) make sure everybody born here is a citizen (2) if states abridge voting rights, cut their seats in Congress (3) don't let insurrectionist hold public office

You mean Trump got a whole bunch of people to give him lots of money and power and then left them out in the cold? www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/s...

Those of us who couldn’t feel our toes until Valentine’s Day after the jam-packed, joyous inauguration of President Obama, suspect this move indoors may be driven more by the prediction of a relatively thin crowd, rather than the cold.

There’s no panacea to fix US politics, but proportional representation in the House would be a big positive step, and it is attainable. It goes well with #RankedChoiceVoting but either one could also be adopted on its own. #giftlink #proportionalrepresentation www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Folks are reacting to what they think this article will say, but in fact it recognizes that the non-story was due to preparation. Here’s a #giftlink “… Mr. Loeb soon learned that it had been “a serious problem, and how seriously it was taken by serious people.””

What I really appreciated about Rickey Henderson was that he kept playing even when he was only a marginal major leaguer. He wasn’t worried about tarnishing his “legacy.” If I were barely good enough to play in MLB, I would. Rickey wasn’t too proud. He loved to play. #RickeyHenderson #RIP

Where’s my ring? #Nationals https://www.mlb.com/news/michael-soroka-nationals-free-agent-contract?partnerID=mlbapp-iOS_article-share

Some good #Nationals news!

Can the #Commanders play the #Titans every week?

I hope he’s committed to this as much in his second term as he was in his first. https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/245884-trump-i-would-rarely-leave-the-white-house/

The @washingtonpost.com gets this right. The setbacks in some state referenda were unfortunate, but people who try #RankedChoiceVoting like it and want to keep it. It doesn’t favor either party over the other. It doesn’t fix every problem either, but it makes politics better. wapo.st/49aZAyZ

Hi Blueskyers. I run the organization @protectdemocracy.org which aims to do just that. Over the past decade we’ve won countless cases to protect voters and truth, helped pass legislation, and unfortunately predicted much of what’s happened. Follow and repost so we can keep doing that here.

Anyway, this kind of abuse of government power is going to get much worse and it’s essential that we keep rubbing the noses of the shitbirds and the useful idiots in it

#ArlingtonVA residents! Weigh in here to support #RankedChoiceVoting It was nice being able to vote for your favorite without having to worry about spoilers, right? #RCV

These Trump Cabinet nominations. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people

Boom. I think this is final from #Alaska. #RankedChoiceVoting survives by 664 votes. Still unofficial, but now a big enough margin that it seems likely to survive. #RCV www.elections.alaska.gov/results/24GE...