Nick Sementelli
nsementelli.bsky.social
Nick Sementelli
@nsementelli.bsky.social
National progressive political strategist by day, local safe streets and housing advocate by night. @ggwash board member.
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Have you ever seen a bike lane sweeper - pulled behind a bike?

Volunteers in Kirkland have a new tool that attaches to the back of an e-bike. It's good for protected bike lanes, sidewalks, and narrow trails.

My @kuow.org story: www.kuow.org/stories/clea...
November 28, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
The $25 million econ impact is nonsense concocted by project supporters, yet it's repeated in the "news" story as if it's a reasonable expectation. This is a major reason why such boondoggle projects continue to be approved. Journalists *have* to do better than this. @wxyzdetroit.bsky.social
November 28, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Little men like simple stories because the complexity of the world scares them
This is just gutter racism and it’s a standard that would never be applied to say, the descendants of Italian immigrants who fled the lawlessness of Southern italy post unification and now staff this fascist administration bsky.app/profile/publ...
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
This is just gutter racism and it’s a standard that would never be applied to say, the descendants of Italian immigrants who fled the lawlessness of Southern italy post unification and now staff this fascist administration bsky.app/profile/publ...
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
I found this terribly sad. A young woman with her life ahead of her, and she becomes one of the last American victims of the Long War.
November 28, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
precisely my thought. the president and his dumbass republican allies put these men and women into harm’s way for a political stunt and look what has happened
Whether this was random street crime or targeted political violence, I think it was bad for the president to unnecessarily put the National Guard in harm’s way like this. They simply don’t need to be there.
November 26, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
I grew up in this building and can still hear my mother screaming every time she found a “visitor” in our apartment. @acornpark.bsky.social and I talk a lot about how MoCo’s reluctance to stand up to NIMBYs means even folks with a little money get stuck in substandard housing
November 26, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
A councilmember who won his primary last year with 23.7% of the vote wants to delay implementing ranked choice voting. The at-large CM who won her last primary with 35.9% agrees that making her run for reelection next year under RCV would be a bad idea.
Felder continues to be critical of the election board's capacity to pull off ranked-choice voting in 2026.

"Before we roll out something of this magnitude I would think we need to do a needs assessment," he says to Evans. "You’ve been tasked with an arduous task. It’s unfair."
November 24, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Great piece on how density restrictions in zoning are essentially BS.
November 24, 2025 at 4:19 PM
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The latest evaluation of bike lane projects in Boston continues to show that if you build bike infrastructure, people will use it.

Full report: www.boston.gov/sites/defaul...
November 24, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
If I’m understanding this correctly, X is owned by a white nationalist who pays poor people of color in developing countries to pretend to be working class white Americans to scare other white Americans into being afraid poor people of color from developing countries are going to ruin America?
November 23, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Except, of course, it’s *not* all he can say.

Cassidy could concede publicly that confirming Kennedy was a tragic mistake. He could call for RFK Jr's resignation. He could schedule hearings, haul the secretary to Capitol Hill, and demand the CDC’s public resources reflect the scientific cannon.
TAPPER: You were the deciding vote that allowed RFK Jr to ascend to the role of Health Secretary. Did you give him too much credit?

CASSIDY: The fact is the scientific community agrees that vaccines are safe. That's all I can say.
November 23, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was. Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024 – but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.*

The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths.
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
So taxing hotels and other businesses in your city is fine but taxing the spurs via revenue sharing is not fine? The rationalizations lawmakers come up with to justify growing team owner wealth at everyone else’s expense never ceases to amaze.
November 22, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Idle thought, we all understand that dense urban infill improves the net lifecycle balance of infrastructure costs. So why do we charge high development fees on this kind of infill?
WATCH: If you really STILL don’t understand how car-dependent suburbia is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by downtown & all the urban parts of your city, please watch this EXCELLENT video by #NotJustBikes helped by #UrbanThree & @StrongTowns.org. And then please SHARE it as much as possible. youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI
November 22, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
New research compares the use of electric and regular bikes in DC's Capital Bikeshare network.

Conclusion: E-bikes make bikeshare better.

"E-bikes enable broader dispersion across the city by connecting more distant bikeshare stations and supporting extended mobility."

doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...
November 22, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
I think entirely too much about how California’s climate plan explicitly says that converting to EVs is not nearly enough to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets so we need to reduce VMT 25% by 2030, and then we do basically nothing to try to achieve that goal
November 22, 2025 at 2:48 AM
Trump being conman-in-chief in no way reduces the fact that he has always been one of the biggest right wing marks who genuinely believes the propaganda. He's normally too incurious/easily distracted to inquire about the truth until it literally enters his direct field of vision.
Q: Stefanik has called Mamdani a 'jihadist.' Do you think you're standing next to a jihadist right now?

TRUMP: No, I don't. I met with a man who's a very rational person
November 21, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Our Neighbor to the North is eating our lunch when it comes to allowing new homes. They got rid of parking mandates and are poised to eliminate exclusionary zoning, too! Will @OPinDC draft a comp plan anything close to what Baltimore has been passing?
archive.is/qXdY0
November 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
the Washington Post ran a powerful story about dangerous roads and pedestrian deaths across the US with this interactive map–and not ONE SINGLE WORLD about the many deadly roads in the DC area which, famously, is in the Washington Post's name www.washingtonpost.com/business/int...
November 20, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Good morning. I've got a banger new post out today that develops a new method for placing voters on the left-right ideological spectrum, and adds a new, "non-ideological"/affordability axis to usual way we chart & think about US voters (esp swing voters). www.gelliottmorris.com/p/not-just-l...
Not just left vs right: Most voters think about affordability and material wellbeing, not in ideological terms
Most voters want a party that emphasizes cost of living issues and makes the world a better place. Few Americans think in solidly ideologically terms. "Moderates" are mostly non-ideological.
www.gelliottmorris.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Trump in a room with a very charismatic person results in like half a day of Trump agreeing with everything that person said, so this has the potential to be very, very funny.
Trump says he’s meeting with “communist” Mamdani at the White House on Friday
November 20, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
You gotta pay more for houses with walkability because we don't build nearly enough of them...

Walkability shouldn't be a "perk"

It should be the default
November 19, 2025 at 10:55 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
I love how the firefighters union, when confronted with data about the safety of single stair, argue “Well New York and Seattle have good firefighters, unlike here in California where we suck ass at our jobs”
November 18, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Nick Sementelli
Giving away a record amount of money from my checking account to my savings account
November 19, 2025 at 2:38 AM