Rachel K
@xrkulik.bsky.social
health policy and political science PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, studying the politics of data in American institutions. GEO steward. mixed race Chinese American. she/her
good news from Missouri as I obsessively refresh MI results Kansas defeated its thinly veiled anti-abortion ballot measure too!
The Downballot@the-downballot.com · 7d agoThe final margins on those two GOP amendments in Missouri are really wild. Better than 4 to 1 against for both!
ignoring the senate primary at the moment to drop in and say that local Ann Arbor politics (mostly around development) continue to baffle me
mood: turning an outline into paragraphs for my dissertation chapter while obsessively refreshing vote returns for the Michigan senate primary
so I'm studying data and measurement for my dissertation, and one of my case studies is maternal mortality data. Today for writing my intro I'm taking a step back from data to read some coverage about maternal mortality in the US circa 2017/18, and ooooof it's more devastating than I remember
😯 really interesting to see the radicalization of AAUP
AAUP@aaup.org · 2w agoThe AAUP is proud to endorse Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate in the Michigan Democratic primary. Dr. El-Sayed is a fierce champion for debt-free & tuition-free higher education & will be an invaluable ally for academic freedom & higher education as a public good in Washington.
public comment can make a difference! see: www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/07/yes-... or for something more academic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Yes, Comments Matter! - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Today’s news speaks to the doomsters yesterday who said that comments don’t matter. The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally...
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
Adrianna McIntyre@adrianna.bsky.social · 2w agoThe deadline for commenting on the interim final rule on Medicaid work requirements is tomorrow at midnight. So far, CMS has received almost 73,000 comments. www.regulations.gov/document/CMS...
with all the concerns from the establishment about Hong's electability, I sure hope *all* Dems in Wisconsin line up behind her if/when she wins the primary (Wacky for sure, but I think I still rather be in WI than MI at the moment)
Jonathan Bernstein@jonathanbernstein.bsky.social · 2w agoWI-Gov officially laps the field for Wackiest Election of the Year.
Voted! (Early voting ongoing in Michigan) Ypsi freighthouse has some old stickers
I’ve lived in so many purple-ish states and it’s funny in a makes-me-crazy type of way that I’m more optimistic about Wisconsin and Georgia politics (senate, governor) than I am about my current state of Michigan (Early voting underway!!)
also "fewer than half of Americans now have confidence in the CDC ... a 40% drop from the start of the pandemic" is wildly misleading, because that number was *after* RFK et al started wrecking childhood vaccines, according to Craig's own source 85% March '20 73% Nov '20 63% Sept '23 47% Jan '26
Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 2w agoThe piece also has a ton of victim blaming. It's not the anti-science movement's fault that public opinion has shifted against public health, it's the public health authorities they're constantly lying about!
i just spent an hour trying to figure out when CA state law was amended for death certificates to include information about pregnancy status. an hour!!! Haven't felt this dumb in a bit
Hot off the press! So excited to read @mshepruralpolitics.bsky.social’s new book, arriving earlier than expected
... this is probably obvious to legal scholars but I genuinely didn't realize how challenging it was to track changes over time to state-level legislation in the US. I'm looking at several states and it's just all so clunky
re: the latest Atlantic article about working with MAHA. What is so frustrating and baffling as someone who studies health and politics is the assumption of good faith when it comes to movement leaders and the assumption of coherent ideology when it comes to movement adherents
apnews.com/article/eeoc... the Trump administration continues wreck data collection, this time ending demographic reporting requirements to the EEOC
US civil rights agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years
The Trump administration is seeking to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment ...
apnews.com
cool cool cool Trump withholds 1 billion dollars in medicaid payments from CA and MN www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...
hhs.gov
bleak (the AI buying, not the used bookseller's principles)
Abigail Goben @hedgielib.bsky.social · 3w agoI heard about this exact thing at a used bookstore earlier this spring. The owner noted he could have made a lot of money but didn't want to participate in this kind of nonsense. www.404media.co/ai-companies...
I am down a rabbit hole because apparently no one has really descriptively answered the question "who fills out death certificates." it'll be a sentence in my dissertation chapter but I'm thoroughly distracted
while there are various stressors and frustrations, academic and nonacademic, it's nice to know that I actually enjoy dissertation research!
I’m far from an expert in food borne illness but I’ve been a pretty active follower of public health and politics (and sat right next to two public health nurses who did case investigation interviews pre covid)… Is this cyclosporidia outbreak different or have I memory-holed previous outbreaks?
I love spiced food but a stir fried you cai or gailan with a neutral oil and a pinch of salt is delicious
Frankie Huang 黄碧赤@ourobororoboruo.bsky.social · 4w agoWe don’t talk enough about how sometimes Chinese people make unseasoned food, but because we think the (usually) veggie tastes amazing on its own and only need to be made not raw in such a way that brought out its soul.
I'm interviewing a bunch of public servants (bureaucrats, data nerds) for my dissertation and can I just say bureaucrats are pretty great and I'm incredibly grateful for their work
It smells like smoke in my apartment despite my air purifier with a HEPA filter and I am not a fan
So excited to read the final version of this! Even though (no offense, Michael) I know it’ll be depressing for democracy and public health
Michael Shepherd@mshepruralpolitics.bsky.social · 4w ago🚨New Book Alert 🚨 Thrilled to announce the publication of my first book: Rural Pain, Republican Gain by @uchicagopress.bsky.social ‼️ Officially released in one month but at the warehouse and ready to ship to you and yours! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...