Melanie Nadon

Melanie Nadon (Wayne State) and Margaret Thomas (University of Chicago) will explore how frontline child welfare workers’ decision-making shapes parents’ economic experiences during Child Protective Services involvement. www.russellsage.org/research/gra...

Samantha Guz (University of Alabama) will examine how administrative burdens shape caregivers’ experiences with school-administered safety net programs and whether those burdens disproportionately affect Black and Latino families. www.russellsage.org/research/gra...

Thrilled to be part of the new RSF Pipeline cohort with my wonderful colleague, Maggie Thomas! And I am especially excited that my PhD cohortmate, Samantha Guz at the University of Alabama School of Social Work, will be in the cohort with me!

We live in a country where the government honors insurrectionists who sacked the Capitol, and defines peaceful protest, even before it occurs, to be terrorism. They know their position is weak, they know they are unpopular, which is why they are seeking to stamp out dissent.

Thanks for the shout out, SSR!!

Just Trump declaring war on a US city, a normal Saturday

"Street-level disparities: How place shapes the process of frontline child welfare investigations" -- new research by Melanie Nadon @mnadon.bsky.social -- www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1...

I am thrilled to share my 1st peer reviewed dissertation article! I use qualitative data to explore the decision-making of frontline child welfare workers in urban, suburban, & rural areas. I find that place both directly & indirectly shapes worker choices. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ. The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

substack.com/inbox/post/1...

This should terrify and enrage you.

Here’s a New York Times photo of the Chicago “No Kings” rally. NYT said the march that followed spanned at least 10 blocks.

Chicago's #NoKings protest today. Massive crowd, peaceful and powerful despite what the media will probably say. #Chicago #dumptrump

🇺🇸✊️ #nokings #nokingsday #resist #june14 #Chicago #50501chicago

New #childwelfare op-ed: imprintnews.org/opinion/pove... "Some have expressed concerns that families involved in the child welfare system will spend money recklessly... This is an old stereotype, and one that smacks of the myth of the welfare queen."

MAGAs ban Affirmative Action, ban foreign students from Harvard, yet embrace Legacy admissions, which is how 43% of white students are admitted—3/4 of whom don't qualify on merit Banning qualified BIPOC & foreign students but accepting unqualified white students isnt meritocracy—its white supremacy

this utterly clueless clown lecturing other people to “get your act together” lol

Trump shut down a Biden-era program to end sewage backups into Alabama homes, labeling the infrastructure “illegal DEI.” The White House also moved to end environmental justice in the EPA, which would hurt similar communities nationwide—the majority of which are where Trump supporters live.

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever they aren’t going into universities’ endowments they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research

took a few days off for my brain and one pretty alarming observation i have is just how easy it is to not hear about the bad stuff that is happening if you don't explicitly dip into specific information streams (not a new problem but feels orders of magnitude more siloed than even 2-3 years ago)

trump is engaged in an open war against women who report domestic violence and assault and the media just don't consider it newsworthy. non profits that work on this are getting defunded left and right. the final nail in the coffin will be defunding legal services corp.

We fired a bunch of park rangers and cancer researchers to build concentration camps.

We're at "Richard Nixon was too woke"

Lost amidst the chaos of Signalgate is this... "'[I]t appears as though this is another one of the administration’s building blocks in an attempt to avoid having to face the voters in 2026'..." www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Mahmoud Khalil released his first statement since he was unlawfully detained by ICE for his activism in support of Palestinian rights, and it's a must-read.

Called the capitol switchboard to tell my rep to oppose the #SAVEAct. A human answered the switchboard call and I was so taken aback I had to pause for a second... ANYWAY, contact your reps and tell them no SAVE Act (HR 22). Link courtest of @aclu.org or call 202-224-3121 act.aclu.org/a/save-act

Elon Musk has already poured $12+ million into an effort to shift control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to right-wing judicial activists. This is an unprecedented effort to seize control of a powerful state court. And it won’t be the last. Here’s the full story: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Just in case we need some reminders today about what a certain Department does, including supporting the 90% of children in k-12 schools and those in higher ed, my colleague @dskamper.bsky.social and I wrote up some thoughts. (Links in the replies)

You know people are furious when they show up at an 8am protest at @schumer.senate.gov house. Chuck you are betraying us. It’s not too late to change your mind and actually fight back! @indivisible.org @socialists.nyc @riseandresist.bsky.social @marisakabas.bsky.social @50501newyork.bsky.social

I keep getting hold music, busy signal, or immediate hang-up at the switch board line before I can get transfered to my senators this morning. Which I hope means many, many people are calling. @duckworth.senate.gov and @durbin.senate.gov VOTE NO on cloture and no on the spending bill.

NEW: I heard from a *bunch* of federal employees tonight with more backbone that Chuck Schumer. Spread the word! "Shutdowns suck, but what we’re experiencing is something much much worse and now is the moment to stand against it or you’re abdicating your duty as an elected official.”

AOC: It is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free when we've been sent here to protect social security, protect medicaid, and protect medicare.

it doesn't matter if the CR was bad or anywhere near good; as long as lawlessnes reigns supreme in Washington you don't vote for a single GOP bill or a single GOP nominee, why is this so fuckin' hard to understand

CALLS ARE WORKING - it has bought us precious time, but we NEED to keep the pressure up. Tomorrow is the cloture vote. KEEP CALLING: (202) 224-3121 ☎️☎️☎️ Tell your Dem Senator to vote NO on Cloture and NO on the Republican spending bill. Do NOT assume your Senator will be good on this. Trust me.

congress right now has all the power it needs to put an end to MAGA despotism. they just don’t want to. and there is no set of rules you could devise that could overcome that obstacle.

one thing i keep thinking about is how there is simply no way to design a constitutional system that can resist authoritarian incursion if participants in that system do not actually care that much

It is honestly wild to me that Republicans cooked up a bill that would prohibit D.C. from spending more than $1 billion of its own budget, devastating our city services out of pure spite, *and Senate Democrats might actually vote for it.* Utterly appalling. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

🚨 Everyone needs to call their Dem Senator right now. They are starting to cave. Tell them: 1. Vote NO on Cloture AND 2. Vote NO on the Republican spending bill. Don’t let them pivot to reconciliation. GOP doesn’t need Dem votes on that and they know it. TODAY is the showdown. 🤳🏽: (202) 224-3121

Snowy, cold #standupforscience rally in #Chicago today.

A key takeaway from Columbia should be that compliance does not buy safety. Unis are viewing the admin's attack on higher ed as a prisoner's dilemma (best strategy: comply), leading to a collectively worse outcome. The only way out is collective action, & unlike true PD, unis can coordinate action.