JLRay
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jlray.bsky.social
JLRay
@jlray.bsky.social
Texas. Senior director of polling at YouGov. Adviser to Young Men Research Initiative.
johnlray.github.io
Reposted by JLRay
Early voting in Texas starts on Tuesday! We've had a run of big wins and strong fundraising, and Texans want to hit the ground running for the general! I urge you to support these efforts with a few bucks to the Texas Young Dems and the 2026 general nominee fund.

secure.actblue.com/donate/jrsli...
Support Texas organizers.
Show your support with a contribution.
secure.actblue.com
February 13, 2026 at 12:48 AM
Reposted by JLRay
Two ICE officers were put on leave and are under criminal investigation for potential perjury in a shooting in Minneapolis last month.

As has happened in the other shootings by federal agents in Minnesota, video evidence appears to have done in the officers.
talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...
ICE Agents Under Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Lying About Shooting
‘Materially Inconsistent’ Two ICE officers were put on leave and are under...
talkingpointsmemo.com
February 17, 2026 at 3:43 PM
Due to the smallness of his brain one of his favorite things to play with is freshly picked habanero peppers, deliberately stored in what I *try* to keep a cat-free area barring his catly wiles, and I have to admit part of me is just praying I'm there when this backfires on him
February 17, 2026 at 12:43 AM
I say this with all the care and gentleness it warrants, I really need this dumb old fuck to die before he breaks into the Smithsonian and adds his signature to the Declaration of Independence
February 16, 2026 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by JLRay
An in-depth new report from YRMP using data from Catalist shows the swing in who young men vote for - and whether or not they vote - could make or break many key 2026 races.

Check out the report at www.ymrp.org/reports , which does a deep dive on the key 2026 battleground states
February 11, 2026 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by JLRay
"The thought of masked thugs descending upon polling places terrifies me, just as the thought of masked thugs descending upon my community, upon my children's elementary school, terrifies me. But I do not think they have a reliable path to victory through that method."
Editor's Notes: Gaming Out Antidemocratic Tactics
How worried should we be about election interference in 2026, exactly?
www.liberalcurrents.com
February 15, 2026 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by JLRay
The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that the state can put a redistricting plan on the ballot this spring that could add as many as four more Democratic seats in Congress.

The referendum will take place on April 21.
February 14, 2026 at 6:56 PM
Do people just like, forget Trump has already been in office or seeking it for over a decade. He has literally tried exactly this already and it was immediately thrown out in court.
This may be the most dangerous development of all. It will give Trump fake legal pretext to reject Nov election results. American democracy has like 9 months left.

Trump says he will issue executive order to get voter-ID requirements before midterms www.cnbc.com/2026/02/13/t...
Trump says he will issue executive order to get voter-ID requirements before midterms
President Donald Trump proclaims that he will find a way to implement national voter-ID requirements by November's elections.
www.cnbc.com
February 14, 2026 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by JLRay
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
If one flips in November,
Then, on net, that's two.

This Valentine's Day, spice up your relationship by kicking Republican politicians out of it. Be the cause of the breakup of the most toxic unity government in American history.

secure.actblue.com/donate/jrsli...
Help Democrats organize and win!
Help Democrats organize and win in Maine!
secure.actblue.com
February 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM
Having gone through Carnegie Mellon's statistics program and a solid 2/3rds of its international relations courses I can assure you the only risk to the military of sending students there is that when they return to active-duty they spontaneously wedgie themselves to death
The US DOD has just blacklisted military personnel from taking courses at most of America's top universities and specialist tech and medicine schools, including Harvard, Yale, MIT and Johns Hopkins. Somehow I don't see the PLA making this kind of unforced error.
February 14, 2026 at 6:35 PM
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
If one flips in November,
Then, on net, that's two.

This Valentine's Day, spice up your relationship by kicking Republican politicians out of it. Be the cause of the breakup of the most toxic unity government in American history.

secure.actblue.com/donate/jrsli...
Help Democrats organize and win!
Help Democrats organize and win in Maine!
secure.actblue.com
February 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM
Some really important swing state specials comin up
📣 Dems have overperformed 13 pts on avg across 87 Special Elections so far!

📣 NEXT:
02/17: GA SD-18 (R+25) LeMario Brown

02/24: ME HD-094 (D+12): Scott Harriman
02/24: PA HD-022 (D+42): Ana Tiburcio
02/24: PA HD-042 (D+27): Jen Mazzocco

Donate today! #Blue26

secure.actblue.com/donate/speci...
Chip in!
Show your support with a contribution.
secure.actblue.com
February 14, 2026 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by JLRay
This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:
Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement
The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...
www.latimes.com
February 14, 2026 at 4:57 AM
Reposted by JLRay
Our top story: After over 25 years in the U.S., and despite raising a family here and having a path to citizenship, Moizali Momin was nearly deported to India. He spent months in cramped, dirty detention centers at taxpayer expense.
How Trump's ICE Is Locking Up Longtime Texans with Paths to Legal Status
The case of one Houston man, nearly deported to India after a quarter-century here, shows what happens when prosecutorial discretion is abandoned.
www.texasobserver.org
February 14, 2026 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by JLRay
In his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told U.S. senators that he would not cut funding for vaccine research or change the nation's official vaccine recommendations. He did both. n.pr/46QDn9p
RFK Jr. made promises to get his job as health secretary. He's broken many of them
In his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told U.S. senators that he would not cut funding for vaccine research or change the nation's official vaccine recommendations. He did both.
n.pr
February 13, 2026 at 2:20 PM
At last, we have built the massive space catapult from the classic Kim Stanley Robinson novel "2312: Oh God, Why Did You Build The Interplanetary Space Catapult, You Have Ruined Everything"
xAI all-hands meeting: Elon Musk tells staff that xAI needs a factory on the moon to build AI satellites and a massive catapult to launch them into space (New York Times)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink
February 13, 2026 at 9:03 PM
Not a huge share of the electorate but natsec-focused conservatives really hate this shit

www.thedailybeast.com/laughing-ice...
February 13, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by JLRay
The Hamburglar burgled the hamburgers.

Who could have foreseen this?
February 13, 2026 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by JLRay
Steven Rattner: America is great because people come from all over the world to start businesses here. Nearly half of unicorn company founders are immigrants.
February 13, 2026 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by JLRay
In addition to shame, we need to bring back a little journalistic incredulity
February 13, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by JLRay
Fun fact: Clay Parikh joined a petition with fellow crank, Rick Weible, to force a South Dakota county to do a recount in 2024. Weible is one of the Rockland County conspiracy theorists claiming 2024 was stolen... by Donald Trump

www.projectminnesota.com/more-countie...
bsky.app/profile/jlra...
Clay Parikh does not want to talk about who he is working with inside the White House. However, in an extraordinary and extensive conversation with TPM, he had a lot to say about many other things. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/meet-th...
Meet the ‘Cabal’-Hating ‘Special Government Employee’ Involved in the Fulton County FBI Raid
Clay Parikh unloaded in a nearly two hour conversation with TPM.
talkingpointsmemo.com
February 12, 2026 at 4:34 AM
Early voting in Texas starts on Tuesday! We've had a run of big wins and strong fundraising, and Texans want to hit the ground running for the general! I urge you to support these efforts with a few bucks to the Texas Young Dems and the 2026 general nominee fund.

secure.actblue.com/donate/jrsli...
Support Texas organizers.
Show your support with a contribution.
secure.actblue.com
February 13, 2026 at 12:48 AM
Reposted by JLRay
For an in-depth analysis of what the Trump administration can and can’t do recdenaturalization, see my @lawfaremedia.org piece from July. They can’t do nearly as much as what they want to scare people into thinking they can do.
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...
cool, cool. so we are sort of like citizens, but not really?
February 12, 2026 at 11:45 PM
I know a major climate group spent all of 2024 loudly and proudly proclaiming it could see no difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris that would justify actually voting for one over the other, but perhaps controversially I do not think a Harris Presidency would have done this
February 12, 2026 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by JLRay
If folks say Americans aren't protesting the Trump administration, ask them where they get their info.

Yes, major American media outlets like NYT, LAT, WashPo, CBC all diminish the efforts to resist Trump.
The volume & geographic distribution of protest nationwide during year 1 of Trump's second term was extraordinary.
February 12, 2026 at 6:38 PM