Karen Benjamin Guzzo
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karenguzzo.bsky.social
Karen Benjamin Guzzo
@karenguzzo.bsky.social

Demographer and Sociologist. Director of the Carolina Population Center. LEGO Karen

Sociology 28%
Political science 28%

Ah, yes, let's actually punish people for doing their jobs if doing so makes the gov't look bad.
White House economic adviser says Fed researchers should be punished
One of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers assailed Fed research into the administration’s tariffs policies, saying the authors deserved to be punished.
www.washingtonpost.com
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is now also the temporary head of the CDC, a role in which he is expected to continue to do nothing but appear on right-wing podcasts and further cement the complete lack of respect of his colleagues.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya will take over leadership of CDC temporarily
The transition is the latest in a monthslong series of leadership shake-ups across federal health agencies.
www.nbcnews.com
The Heritage Foundation is now calling for the overturn of Plyler vs. Doe, the Supreme Court ruling that banned states from denying an education to the children of undocumented immigrants.

And their nostalgia for the 1950s breadwinner homemaker family is similarly problematic, as Coontz has shown. It was an anomalous period made possible by a unique post-war, pro-union set of circumstances. And many groups were shut out of those circumstances.
To the extent it existed, the nativist era of consolidated European whiteness Trump and his allies pine for — the era of “greatness” they’d like to resurrect — was an anomaly and an outlier in U.S. history. www.ms.now/opinion/elon...
Opinion | The right’s obsession with American "heritage" is all about who get to be seen as "white"
Philip Bump: What Elon Musk was really getting at when he incorrectly claimed “American culture” is of “English-Scotts-Irish origin.”
www.ms.now
To the extent it existed, the nativist era of consolidated European whiteness Trump and his allies pine for — the era of “greatness” they’d like to resurrect — was an anomaly and an outlier in U.S. history. www.ms.now/opinion/elon...
Opinion | The right’s obsession with American "heritage" is all about who get to be seen as "white"
Philip Bump: What Elon Musk was really getting at when he incorrectly claimed “American culture” is of “English-Scotts-Irish origin.”
www.ms.now

“Tax law is not just about raising revenue. It communicates whose work and whose lives the law values. A feminist tax code would be attentive to how tax rules shape economic independence, caregiving and bodily autonomy. We need to stop privileging wealth over work.”
Is the U.S. Tax Code Anti-Feminist?
www.nytimes.com
📢 #episky #mortality #opendata
📈 #US #HMD series updated through 2024

🔓 Data is freely available at mortality.org

Continuing divergence in #lifeexpectancy at birth between the US and other high-income countries in 2024.
The idea that the Chamber of Commerce is "left-wing" is beyond insane. It is completely disconnected from reality. Chamber of Commerce was to the right of Reagan.
libs getting the chamber of commerce in the national divorce, sure, why not, welcome aboard
www.reuters.com/world/us-cou...
KF Research Fellow @andrew-whitehead.bsky.social has studied the fears shaping public attitudes in the United States. His research finds that people who strongly embrace Christian nationalism often align in three major areas:
libs getting the chamber of commerce in the national divorce, sure, why not, welcome aboard
www.reuters.com/world/us-cou...

Just got an email inviting me to learn more about "Bongo-powered AI activities in MindTap Courses," and I could not begin to tell you what any of that means.
a picture of a cartoon character with the caption now youre just talking gibberish
ALT: a picture of a cartoon character with the caption now youre just talking gibberish
media.tenor.com
Our new research shows that hundreds of federal surveys removed questions about sexual orientation and gender identity since the start of the second Trump administration. Read the full report at: tinyurl.com/SOGIdata

"You can’t have 'great replacement' without the failure of women to fulfill their role as childbearers. White women are at the center of right-wing concerns about demographic change because their reproductive capacity is seen as a key bulwark against the browning of America."
My @liberalcurrents.com essay on the “repeal the 19th” guys from last November

www.liberalcurrents.com/women-should...
My @liberalcurrents.com essay on the “repeal the 19th” guys from last November

www.liberalcurrents.com/women-should...
$3K mini-grants available from Pew Research Center to prepare papers reusing their data on religion. Deadline to apply (not to write the paper) is March 2. www.pewresearch.org/2026/01/16/s...
New and competitive renewal awards.

The number of awards is 569 compared with more than 2200 through the same date in earlier fiscal years.

All ICs have now made awards except for NIAAA, NCCIH, NLM, FIC, and OD. NEI (Eye Institute) made its first award during the new period.

3/4
LGBTQ+ adults in the US have distinct partnership and living arrangements often missed in surveys: less often married, more likely to cohabit or have non-coresidential partners, and more likely to live alone, with roommates, or in smaller households.
www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
🚨🚨 It's new research week for me on the socials! 🚨🚨

First up, just released today as an NBER working paper:

"More Hours, More Work: Head Start Expansions Boost Maternal Employment" with fantastic coauthors Esra Kose and Maria Rosales-Rueda

www.nber.org/papers/w34831

@profsamperry.bsky.social has some great insights into how pronatalism links with Christian Nationalism. Pat Buchanan was writing about the "death of the west" 20+ years ago b/c white college educated women weren't having enough babies & the US was gonna be overrun by non-white "breeders"
Very excited that @lauralindberg.bsky.social and I just posted a preprint of a paper that we've been working on for a while, looking at the (lack of) comparability of the most recent NSFG with prior waves of data. Feedback extremely welcome!
osf.io/preprints/so...
OSF
osf.io
This scheme to make passports harder to obtain comes as Republicans are trying to make passports one of the few documents that can be presented in order to be permitted to register to vote.
State Department orders nonprofit libraries to stop processing passport applications
The State Department has ordered nonprofit public libraries to stop taking passport applications, cutting off a popular local service.
apnews.com

France is sending letters to 29 yr olds to encourage them to have children before it’s too late. That’ll absolutely raise the birth rate. 🙄
France’s letters to 29-year-olds to remind them to have babies is a spectacular missing of the point | Zoe Williams
A serious plan to tackle low birthrates could include addressing the fact that if people could afford to house themselves, they might be quicker to settle down, writes Zoe Williams
www.theguardian.com
1/3 What Musk is really referring to here is, of course “race” - that construct that served to define the hierarchies of wealth & power structured by modern colonialism. Like other far right racists though, he uses the word “culture” as a seemingly less pernicious synonym.
This message from the US State Department about "not wanting allies to be shackled by guilt and shame" is a pretty direct call-out to the German far-right argument that Germany has spent too long feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and needs to move on and stop doing remembrance.
Analysis of U.S. deaths of pregnant and postpartum women from 2018–2023 indicates that obstetrical complications and disease are no longer the leading causes of maternal death, replaced by homicide, suicide, and overdose. Read the full analysis: nej.md/4a96wPp

#MedSky #Psychiatry #OBGYN
You need to know about the SAVE Act, which recently passed in the House.

So here's a crash course from reporter Ari Berman on how the sweeping voter restriction bill could disenfranchise millions of Americans
Kristi Noem tried to fire a Coast Guard pilot for forgetting her blankie but then needed that pilot to fly her home
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Oh, absolutely. They've cleverly identified something they can mobilize a large base behind to ultimately accomplish anti-feminist, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ policies they've long wanted to achieve. Low birth rates are just a pretense.