Awesome, thanks for considering the feedback! Signed up for your mailing list and am excited to see how this develops :)
One quick follow-up for #1, I wonder if a political boundaries layer would be helpful? Like districts for state/federal House, or local government divisions. When I lived in Chicago, being able to filter by ward would've been great. It's only gonna get more confusing as gerrymandering increases :)
Best of luck with the project, and thanks again for taking this on!