Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
banner
kimberlyratliff.bsky.social
Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
@kimberlyratliff.bsky.social
narcolepsy + sleep advocate ~ NFL fanatic ~ Carolina Panthers fan ~ The Sims 4 ~ COVID cautious in CLT ~ pro-mask, pro-vaccine, pro-abortion ~ cat mom ~ DnD, Doctor Who & pro cycling lover ~ skeets are my own ~ she/her ~ @kimberlyratliff on TwitterX
Pinned
Gentle reminder that you can mute words & tags on Bluesky. So if there are subjects today making you mad or sad, and you need a break from them for a day, a week, or a month, hit Settings > Moderation > Muted Words & Tags, and then fill out this form:
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
I rediscovered this post I wrote in May, about how Trump has shifted the money the US used to spend on curing cancer into snatching your neighbors.

I think I'll keep harping on this point.

www.emptywheel.net/2025/05/09/s...
Stephen Miller's War on Cancer Cures - emptywheel
Stephen Miller is cutting your access to health care and cancer cures to pay to deport your nurse assistant and cancer researchers (and, given the unnecessary bump in DOD spending, to invade Canada to...
www.emptywheel.net
December 9, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
If your home was damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Helene, the deadline for Renew NC’s single-family housing program is December 31. Visit renewnc.org to see if you are eligible.
December 9, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Under Noem we have mass concentration camps, ICE murdering people, kidnappings of children, disappearances of US citizens and THAT isn’t enough for Stephen Miller.
Trump is considering removing DHS secretary Kristi Noem as early as Jan, four sources told @ms.now

Stephen Miller isn’t happy with pace of detention capacity expansion. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, possible contender for job, recently met with DHS/CBP officials

www.ms.now/news/trump-n...
Trump weighing Noem’s ouster at Homeland Security
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is on “very thin ice,” a White House official told MS NOW.
www.ms.now
December 9, 2025 at 9:43 AM
The GOP's policies are suuuuuuper unpopular among young voters here in NC, across the country, and at the federal level. So of course they're trying to disenfranchise college students by taking away on-campus polling places & early voting locations. They can't win without cheating. #ncpol
NC Republicans are stripping voting sites off college campuses because they’re afraid of young people and their power in elections. And that’s a powerful message for me to take to college campuses across the state in 2026. So run afraid, NCGOP. It won’t change your outcome.
December 8, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
If you've recently ordered from Amazon, go to the search bar on Amazon and type "thank my driver." As a special thanks, your driver will receive an extra $5, at no cost to you. This promotion is live for a limited period.
December 8, 2024 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
It costs the average taxpayer $34 a year to fund SNAP.

It costs nearly $200 a day to detain an immigrant in an ICE camp.

Your tax dollars are paying to detain people without due process instead of providing healthcare, food & housing.

Let that radicalize you.
December 8, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
December 6, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Corporate-owned outlets that answer to billionaires are increasingly showing they’re not built for this moment. Independent media is filling the gaps and building something new.

Help us keep building for another year with a gift subscription to one of these awesome outlets:
Giving the gift of independent journalism: a guide
The Handbasket has subscription suggestions for almost everyone on your list.
www.thehandbasket.co
December 6, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Support independent journalism and give a gift that's not "stuff" all at the same time. Win-win.
NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones!

My guide:
Giving the gift of independent journalism: a guide
The Handbasket has subscription suggestions for almost everyone on your list.
www.thehandbasket.co
December 6, 2025 at 7:21 PM
The editorial board of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the newspaper which serves an area including Palm Beach (Mar-a-Lago) along with many retirees, is calling for Congress to convene a blue ribbon health panel to independently evaluate the president's health and his medical fitness for office.
Gift link
December 6, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
This is all-hands on deck. RFK Jr. wants to destroy vaccination in the US. COVID and HBV vaccination were the first step. These diseases WILL come back. And your personal vaccination status is important, but so is the coverage in your community. So up your game and fight. www.vox.com/2015/3/25/82...
The lives vaccines have saved in the US, in one chart
Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters expl...
www.vox.com
December 6, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Is it any surprise that the regime of Donald "grab 'em by the pussy" Trump is not listening to a woman when she says no?
Sabrina Carpenter ratioed the White House after it used her song in an ICE video.

The WH deleted the post…but now it’s back with a new ICE video, this time using an altered clip from Carpenter’s SNL monologue.
December 6, 2025 at 10:12 AM
If you're still on X, you're being manipulated. And even if you think you're too smart to be manipulated you're being manipulated. Stop going over there. Stop giving Musk and revenue with each scroll. Because if it's true for Europe ⬇️ it's at least partially true for your country, too.
"The EU concluded that X had become the single most dangerous vector of election disinformation in Europe."
I'm not exaggerating and the EU agrees with me.
deanblundell.substack.com/p/elon-muskx...
December 6, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
You can help Bolts continue to provide crucial coverage of local elections. Here's how:

- Repost this = I donate $1.
- Follow @boltsmag.org = I donate $1.
- Donate (link below) + tell me how much = I match your donation.
(Donate monthly = I match a year's worth)
Support Bolts
We are a nonprofit publication that covers the nuts and bolts of political change, from the local up, and we need reader support to build our journalism.
boltsmag.org
December 3, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Bolts Magazine covers consequential elections taking place nationwide that you might not know about. Right now, @russ41.bsky.social is matching gifts! Repost, follow, and donate to multiply their ability to cover elections that matter.
You can help Bolts continue to provide crucial coverage of local elections. Here's how:

- Repost this = I donate $1.
- Follow @boltsmag.org = I donate $1.
- Donate (link below) + tell me how much = I match your donation.
(Donate monthly = I match a year's worth)
Support Bolts
We are a nonprofit publication that covers the nuts and bolts of political change, from the local up, and we need reader support to build our journalism.
boltsmag.org
December 5, 2025 at 3:57 PM
This is why we have to coordinate to boycott big business & withhold our labor. In my household we've made it a goal to pay cash as much as possible (to starve big banks on credit card interest & Visa/MC on processing fees), to buy used/thrift/shop small biz/trade with neighbors whenever possible.
The bottom 90% lost a collective $79 trillion in wages over the past 50 years.

Why? Because the top 1% ate up an increasingly larger share of the national income — so that $79 trillion flowed to them instead of the working class.

The greatest trick of all is trickle-down economics.
December 5, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Some warnings from Spain that flu is collapsing care at overtaxed ERs. Our vax isn’t a good match this year, and our immunity is low because of repeated covid infections, so please wear N95s this holiday season. For everyone, but infants and seniors in particular, flu can be fatal.
December 4, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Wake up babe new recession indicator just dropped
December 4, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
SATURDAY Dec 13 2PM
16th St NW & H St NW
Surround The White House
Deliver the People’s Indictment of Donald Trump: A Unified Declaration of Illegitmacy

TRUMP MUST GO NOW!
Sign up & spread the word:
bit.ly/DCD13
FLOOD DC FOR UNRELENTING NONVIOLENT PROTEST TO DEMAND TRUMP MUST GO NOW!
We the People Must Act Together, United for One Demand: TRUMP MUST GO NOW! YOU ARE NEEDED TO BE IN WASHINGTON DC! NOT STOPPING UNTIL TRUMP IS REMOVED FROM POWER
bit.ly
December 4, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Tomorrow, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (made up primarily of vaccine skeptics appointed by RFK Jr) will be voting on whether to continue recommending the Hep B vaccine for newborns. This will likely be contentious.

You can follow updates tomorrow with the ACIP feed.
December 4, 2025 at 4:41 AM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
Masks are our last, first, and best line of defense, and it would really benefit y’all to get used to the idea of wearing them more because soon they might be the only tool we have left.
If new proposals detailed in an FDA memo are put into place, experts told me it would mean the end of annual flu shots. And end of most vaccines for pregnant people. And maybe the end of updates to pneumonia vaccines. And more.

www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...
FDA official proposes ‘impossible’ standards for vaccine testing that could curtail access to immunizations
www.cidrap.umn.edu
December 3, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
I think the fact that a special election generated basically midterm level turnout and a Trump +22 district is now only Rep+8 should absolutely be a pants shitting moment for elected Republicans across the country. It would be one thing if turnout was low but it definately wasn't!
Updating - total reported turnout in the TN7 special is now 168k, or 93% of the total votes cast in the November, 2022 midterm general election, a race the GOP won by 22 pts. The GOP has some serious issues right now.
December 3, 2025 at 5:48 AM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
an actual lefty candidate managed a 13 point shift left from 2024 on midterm-level turnout in fucking Tennessee

we are going to win
December 3, 2025 at 4:22 AM
Reposted by Kimberly #MaskUp Ratliff, MSc
A +14 shift to the Dems in a very red district applied nationwide next year means a solidly blue House and a chance to retake the Senate against an extremely unfavorable map.
December 3, 2025 at 2:30 AM
I don't have Long COVID, but a household member does. We can't find a medical office that will honor our request for everyone we interact with during the appt to wear a mask (including receptionist, nurse or medical assistant, physician or provider). He masks but 2-way masking is safer. #MedSky
During our Long COVlD forum, Ann Wallace, Ph.D told us that finding healthcare providers who don’t do harm has been one of the most challenging things in caring for her daughters with #LongCOVID.
Watch the full presentation: masktogetheramerica.org/blog/masktog...
December 2, 2025 at 11:33 PM