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Bat 🦇 Borus

@matthewborus.bsky.social

7.3K followers 1.1K following 4.2K posts

Sociologist, social work faculty Posting topics include community, disability, social welfare, Chicago, social movements, organizing, policy, the state, labor, coffee, and various nerdy side trips. Personal account

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · Feb 26

New from me: A look at four (of many) areas where Trump and his GOP allies threaten to roll back disability policy:

-Disability rights at work
-Cuts to the federal workforce
-Education
-Health care, both in terms of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid

Please check it out!

Cutting Medicaid and federal programs are among 4 key Trump administration policy changes that could make life harder for disabled people

Tracking disability policies has long been challenging − this will become a harder task under the Trump administration.

theconversation.com

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26m

Three key points:
1) The admin has been planning mass firings to begin in October since February
2) The work necessary to carry out mass firings is illegal during a shutdown, violating the Antideficiency Act, which carries a criminal penalty
3) This harms America, ridding us of talent and expertise

Russ Vought v @russvought
The RIFs have begun.
12:27 PM • 10/10/25 • 15K Views

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 16h

Even by Andrew Cuomo standards, this is laughably bad.

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 17h

Andrew Cuomo keeps saying he’s the only candidate who can take on Trump once he’s in office.

Yet in his statement about the indictment of Letitia James, the highest-ranking Black elected official in the state, he doesn’t even mention Trump by name….and, more importantly, he doesn’t mention James.

Andrew Cuomo * @andrewcuomo
X.com
In a democracy, the rule of law must be sacred - impartial, objective, and above politics. When the law is weaponized or manipulated to advance political agendas, it erodes public trust and weakens the very foundation of justice. Whether it comes from the right or the left, from prosecutors or politicians, the politicization of law enforcement is dangerous and corrosive.
We must restore faith in fairness, facts, and due process - because once justice becomes partisan, everyone loses.
3:56 PM • 10/9/25 • 41K Views

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Nancy Parmalee @nparmalee.bsky.social · 19h

I don’t want to generate or receive an email, document, manuscript, PowerPoint deck, post it note, grocery list, novel, film, or hit list that has been generated with AI.

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 19h

I write because I love writing. I love writing even when I'm struggling with a writing problem that is killing me. Finding a way through that problem is both intensely rewarding and also helps me become a better writer. There is no reason for me to ever outsource that.

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 19h

there’s this weird idea a lot of people seem to have about how all of us writers and artists must secretly want to use AI and are merely resisting temptation for ethical reasons, and like, no, it’s not hard for me to resist drinking the bowl of Piss With Glass In It actually

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 18h

Making clear that it’s a lie probably won’t, on its own, stop his attacks. I don’t expect it to make his goons stop kidnapping parents picking up their kids from school.

But the more he erodes his legitimacy, the less power he has to wield.

Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 18h

The President insists on telling a story that’s false. It’s some mix of his own fixations, the Fox News Cinematic Universe, and whatever Stephen Miller feeds him.

But it’s fiction. He has no credibility. I’m glad that some judges are recognizing that. And we need to keep hammering it home.

Heather Cherone @heathercherone.bsky.social · 19h

Perry: Four (4) federal judges have issued rulings in the past two (2) days in separate cases that cast significant doubt on federal officials' "credibility and assessment of what is happening on the streets of Chicago."

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 20h

It really is amazing how diametrically opposed this is to the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution.

Some of that has a long history. Dick Cheney claimed to “restore” the power of the presidency.

But this administration is in an entirely different league of unabashed authoritarianism.

Heather Cherone @heathercherone.bsky.social · 22h

Hamilton: “The president’s power is unreviewable.”

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 21h

I don’t want to wade into the discourse on this one, but I’ll note that he referred to “children who are circumcised EARLY,” raising the possibility that RFK Jr. has a particular timeline in mind as he opines about your junk.

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"

Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Captain America’s gf and a super soldier herself in some Marvel universes

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 1d

Yikes indeed. After multiple quarters of success in bringing down backlogs, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is taking a turn for the worse.

The latest data shows that in the first six months of 2025, total net backlogs rose 26%, up by 1.1 million pending applications (of all kinds).

A bar chart showing Total Net USCIS Immigration Application Backlog by quarter, Fiscal Year 2023 Q4 through Fiscal Year 2025 Q3. The chart shows that total applications pending dropped from a bit over 4 million in FY 2023 Q4 to 3.8 million in FY 2024 Q4. In FY 2025, every quarter there has been an increase, with the sharpest increase from Q1 to Q2 and then a smaller but still significant increase from Q2 to Q3, peaking at 5.4 million pending cases.

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

Explaining a meme to my gf and thinking that I should probably lock myself in an internet-free space for a month at least.

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Marko Kloos @markokloos.bsky.social · 1d

"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"

An image of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, twirling on an alpine meadow in a long Austrian skirt, next to an image of Christopher Plummer as Georg Von Trapp in the same movie, tearing a Nazi flag in half.

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🐈‍⬛ Spooky L.A. 🕸️ @tiredderit.bsky.social · 1d

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

Took the air conditioner out of my window. I guess it’s really October.

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Jacob Lesniewski @jplesniewski.bsky.social · 1d

Stephen Miller feeds gremlins after midnight

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Stanislav Vysotsky @professorstas.bsky.social · 1d

When the “experts” you invite to your antifa roundtable are fascists, it says everything about your position.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 1d

From Donald Trump's Roundtable on Antifa just now —
"Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years in some instances, going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
— special guest Jack Posobiec

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

Yet no one is looking for him, because ew.

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 1d

A study of nearly 300,000 people published today in the New England Journal of Medicine found “that last season’s 2024–2025 mRNA COVID vaccines reduced people’s risk of emergency department visits by 29 percent, their risk of hospitalizations by 39 percent and their risk of death by 64 percent.”

Annual COVID Vaccines Save Lives, New Study Shows

A new study shows that receiving an updated COVID vaccine reduced people’s risk of severe disease and death in all age groups, regardless of immunity from prior infection or vaccination

www.scientificamerican.com

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Ashes to Ashes 👻 @ashincorn.bsky.social · 2d

Stephen Miller is neither excellent to anyone, nor does he party on, dudes.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

"Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years in some instances, going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."

- Jack Posobiec at Trump's roundtable on antifa

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

I appreciate that caveat. Still, it feels relevant that you have legal training, even while these are fundamentally political questions.

Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 1d

Worth mentioning here that unlike many of us on here, Dr. Halloran is, in fact, a lawyer.

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · Jul 8

🎵 Everybody's working for a llama
Everybody wants a camelid.
Everybody's backin' an alpaca
Everybody wants that wool tonight, oh 🎶

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 9d

In 2013, I was furloughed in a government shutdown spearheaded by Ted Cruz, who sought to block parts of a law that expanded access to health care.

Now his party is shutting the government down again, instead of extending health care subsidies under an iteration of the same law.

Feels repetitive.

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 2d

Arthur Miller worked as part of the Federal Theatre Project during the New Deal.

He also delivered a lecture commenting on the “arts of performance in the 2000 presidential election.

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 2d

you ever think about those real weird overlaps. like tennessee williams might have listened to the ramones

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