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prof-b-t.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Political Science @CNU. Research on US climate policy + U.S. state politics. Virginia Pollster. Mom to 2 humans, dog & cat. Loves nature. Views are my own.
215 posts 1,676 followers 958 following
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It should not be lost on anyone that Minnesota Rep Melissa Hortman, who was shot to death in her home last night by an assassin, was a gun safety advocate who worked tirelessly to protect her constituents from gun violence.

Nice turnout for the #NoKings protest in Yorktown.There is something poetic about having this rally in historic Yorktown. Make your voices heard & be safe friends! It really is easier than you think to slide into authoritarianism & while a protest doesn't solve it, it's an important way to push back

The world is a hot mess. Here is my sweet pup smelling flowers to keep us sane (don't worry she does not eat them ever) #dogsofbluesky

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Trump overstepped his bounds in ordering the deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard members to LA after protests erupted over the immigration crackdown. It was unclear how that would change the situation on the ground. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/12/n...

The first U.S. bishop appointed by Pope Leo XIV—a refugee himself—is mobilizing priests to accompany migrants at immigration court on June 20. (Via Christopher Hale)

"the site published information about tornado season & wildfire smoke...original maps, charts & other data to explain drought trends, changes to rain & snowfall & seasonal climate outlooks...to help people plan for heat waves, floods & other extreme weather." www.npr.org/2025/06/12/n...

Yet another reminder that renewable energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are good for the environment and for the economy, particularly red-state economies. Keep sharing this information with your members of Congress. #ClimateSky virginiamercury.com/2025/06/09/r...

Repealing the inflation reduction act clean energy policies will make your electricity bills higher, while climate change makes your neighborhood hotter.

A personalist regime, not a government of laws

Los Angeles is not a war zone. The media keeps cropping the same damn photo to make it look like it is. There are plenty of live feeds going on right now that verify what is actually happening on the ground in real time. Nothing. The only unrest is coming from Trump & his thugs.

Re-upping this “One First” post from April asking—and trying to answer—five questions about the domestic use of the military:

It just takes a few moments of your time to comment on Trump's horrible plan to politicize the bureaucracy

Peak millennial today with my garden girl t-shirt 😆. Plus some garden updates 🌼

Virginia civic and political organizations- consider registering your group for a table at Christopher Newport University for the Wason Center's annual Captains Vote Day on October 7th! #VirginiaPolitics

When Dominion goes all in for a Democrat I am immediately concerned. Fellow Virginia environmental advocates should definitely pay attention to this and vote in the primary accordingly.

Baby bunnies are hanging out in my garden and I love it

It's all funny until people start dying. And they will. The work of government is largely invisible until we suffer the harms they help prevent - or need the help they provide in a crisis.

NEW, from me: It has attracted *shockingly* little attention, but last week the Supreme Court transformed one of the country’s biggest environmental permitting laws. The ruling could reduce the number of energy and infrastructure projects that face legal challenges: heatmap.news/climate/kava...

My dog is so beautiful and sweet #dogsofbluesky

Someone brought this @greenprofgreen.bsky.social book to my attention, and, people, I'm telling you that I'm now VERY excited about it. Green seems to tackle a core barrier for decarbonization—stranded assets—in a frame that policymakers might actually understand. I can't wait to read it!

New from me, @joshuabasseches.bsky.social , Kayla Gurganus, and @lraymond.bsky.social in Review of Policy Research, doi.org/10.1111/ropr... We conduct a survey experiment concerning a regulatory vs pricing-based climate policy design, both adopted at the same time in Virginia. 1/2

A bizarre deportation process against a Russian-born scientist at Harvard, prompted by her failing to declare frog embryo samples at customs, appears to be nearing an end.

This is to be applauded. This sort of thing in MISO states (& other RTOs) is what is needed to overcome the collective action problem of private interests that likely led to the "load-shedding" outage in New Orleans this past weekend: insideclimatenews.org/news/1205202...

The party of law and order right? www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...

The same people that tell you we can’t have mass EV adoption because “they will crash grids” also are fine with U.S. data centers consuming a staggering 130 GW (1,050 tWh) by 2030. #greensky #energysky #sustainability #datacenters

Snakes are largely misunderstood beautiful creatures in my book. Here are two ribbon snakes hanging out in some lovely foliage that I saw on a nature walk today, plus a pretty view and a box turtle

Texas has been in the news a lot lately as an example of "energy abundance:" lots of activity across all types of energy production and use. Less often mentioned: Despite this activity, climate pollution in Texas has been roughly constant since 2000, remaining about 10% higher than 1990 levels.

Vance told Roberts that courts shouldn't check executive 'excesses'—then invoked Andrew Jackson's defiance of SCOTUS. The data shows Trump losing 96% of recent court cases across ideological lines. When lawlessness is your only path forward, attack the judges.

Back to my regular schedule of communing with nature to suppress anxiety about American politics. I witnessed a fawn feeding from their mama and saw lots of beauty

Unlike NOVA, much of Richmond suburbs kept moving towards Dems even in 2024 I-64 corridor from Charlottesville to Hampton Roads keeping Virginia blue Dems targeting 6 GOP held House of Delegates seats this year in this area HD-57 HD-75 HD-71 HD-73 HD-69 HD-86 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

What this article doesn't say is demand is up because VA heavily incentivizes data centers. Also legislation that would limit them failed in the GA or was vetoed by Youngkin. Moreover, legislation that would have made it easier to build out renewables also failed www.wvtf.org/news/2025-05...

At risk: Climate Adaptation Science Centers, Cooperative Research Units, Breeding Bird Survey, Bee Lab, and more. "All 1,200 scientists and staff at the U.S. Geological Survey’s biological research arm are on edge this week as they wait to learn whether they’ll still have jobs come Monday."

#Solar stocks plunge as Republican tax bill worse than feared for clean energy www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/s...

As this opinion piece (gift article) makes clear, there are indeed cuts to Medicaid in the House bill. Republicans may call them ‘reforms’ or claim they are combatting “fraud.” The truth is that they want to rob the poor to pay the rich. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/o...

This is the company y’all wanna poison Memphis for? www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Another excellent reminder that most people want climate action and cleaner energy. These ideas are robustly popular. Trump's dismantling of these goals is the opposite of what most people want, and it's illegal in many cases.

Let's hope Democrats + moderate Republicans win out on this issue. Rep. Kiggans is my Congresswoman and while I don't agree with her on many things, I do on this. She is in a vulnerable seat so this is a wise stance, but it is also just the right thing to do for both our economy and environment.

Dominion wants to cut the amount of funds given for rooftop solar credits at a time when Virginia needs to increase energy capacity to keep up with its endless data centers. This is a terrible idea on all fronts richmond.com/news/state-r...

Politics is still about storytelling. Public opinion is rarely fixed.

Everything is just so dark and awful. This was a great program and I hope we see it funded again in the near future

@aleach.ca and I just published a new paper. We look at the impact of a succession of 3 economic shocks - the crash in global oil prices in 2015, COVID19, and the war in Ukraine - on Canadian climate policy. I think 1st 50 downloads are free. /1 www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TUANI...

Jessica has hit the nail on the head here. We should ALL be for green tech for a host of reasons including the environment and the economy