markwillard.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

When Rubio was nominated, I’d hoped he’d be one of the precious few adults in the Trump II administration. It’s now abundantly clear why he’s there: For Trump to publicly humiliate him by making him effectuate the polar opposite of every foreign policy position he’s historically held.

submitted 13 hours ago • 2 comments

How sad it is to see The Leader of the Free World shouted down by the President of the United States.

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

We’re only a week or 2 out at most from MAGA flying Russian flags as an “ironic” sign of tribal loyalty.

submitted 14 hours ago • 1 comment

So: We have news of very promising developments in cancer treatment with mRNA vaccines. The Trump administration wants to gut cancer research and hamper the development of mRNA vaccines.

submitted 21 hours ago • 64 comments

it's like watching ants find their way around a puddle. you can do it little guys! keep working those tiny brains!

submitted 1 day ago • 106 comments

Tate is like Trump in this sense: the most grotesque thing is not that he exists, but that he’s hugely popular, and what that says about us as a species.

submitted 1 day ago • 169 comments

Today in the category of the Trump admin doing terrible things that benefit absolutely no one just because they can... www.nbcnews.com/news/world/a...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

This is what I hate about when people are like “oh you’re surprised they’re just following the playbook.” No, they’re doing some of the playbook and they’re doing a way amplified version of some of the playbook and also Elon’s child army wasn’t in the playbook at all.

submitted 2 days ago • 14 comments

Will be interesting to see how a state that shreds its own capacity to collect taxes can sustain global power status

submitted 2 days ago • 109 comments

So - I've actually led Ebola outbreak response at USAID. This is bunk from Elon. They have laid off most of the experts, they're bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC. What's left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically.

submitted 2 days ago • 479 comments

It is really hard to watch people willfully tear down an infrastructure that allowed us to double lifespans, drastically reduce poverty, and become one of the richest countries in the world.

submitted 2 days ago • 183 comments

RFK JR on Measles Outbreaks just now: "It is not unusual. There are measles outbreaks every year." It is actually very unusual. This is the first Measles death in the US in 10 years.

submitted 2 days ago • 927 comments

Kind of funny that Kash refers to himself as 009, an agent who appears briefly in the intro of a James Bond movie dressed as a clown who is quickly stabbed to death

submitted 2 days ago • 30 comments

Does Musk know he's on live TV and that the US DOJ has repeatedly made sworn statements in court that Musk is not the Administrator of DOGE?

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

The chyron says one thing; the body language says something else

submitted 2 days ago • 26 comments

"While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces... But the rock became a mountain and filled the whole earth."

submitted 2 days ago • 14 comments

The “red line” language is something else. Following the undisputed meaning of a statute enacted in 1974 that clarified Congress’ Constitutional power of the purse that everyone universally agreed on until just over a month ago is now a “red line” for the branch that it directly benefits. Wut.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Is there no limit to the scorn that MAGA pours on the democratically elected president of an ally under vicious assault by an expansionist and tyrannical enemy of the United States? I wish these people would take the words "America" and "great" out of their mouths.

submitted 3 days ago • 8 comments

Serious question - did he get this idea from American Express' charge cards product line? If he announces a Platinum card that costs $10 million but comes with monthly rebates at Walmart and Fox News after this we'll know for sure.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

TFW something someone says lands hard enough to make you write it out so you don’t forget… @libradunn1.bsky.social

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

The Fort Knox conspiracy theory seems to have begun with this exchange on X. 2 days later Fox ran a segment about it. A few days after that Trump began bringing it up w reporters. Hard to overstate how much influence posters on a far-right forum have over the national conversation right now

submitted 4 days ago • 185 comments

That everyone outside your own political base isn’t “real people” is a very succinct summation of populism’s core premise. It’s not about some nebulous notion of representing the masses, it’s about claiming the power to decide who counts as “the people” with rights and legitimacy.

submitted 3 days ago • 45 comments

I wrote back in 2022 that if Trump is reelected, democracy will not fail all at once, but in red-state pockets, one step at at a time. Like, say, this place in Idaho. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

submitted 4 days ago • 105 comments

Manager: "What's this milestone 'Living on a prayer' ?" Me: "That's the documentation deliverable." Manager: "What's the status of that?" Me: "We're halfway there" Manager: "Why is progress so slow?" Me: "You fired Tommy" Manager: "So?" Me: "Tommy used to work on the docs"

submitted 5 days ago • 89 comments

NYT Today: It’s Past Time For Zelensky To Respond To Trump’s Reasonable Question: Why Are You Hitting Yourself, Why Are You Hitting Yourself, Why Are You Hitting Yourself?

submitted 4 days ago • 10 comments

If you go back and read the country’s original user manual it lists factors that help you identify monarchical malware and suggests solutions.

submitted 6 days ago • 85 comments

A president rapidly sundowning into full-blown dementia ambiguously handed power over the entire government to a delusional billionaire drug addict in a made-up illegal quasi-office and the Cabinet is split over whether their departments have to listen to his mad orders. It's day 34.

submitted 5 days ago • 112 comments

Not the biggest part of the story, but it is pretty funny how Trump routinely forgets that JD Vance even exists

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

It is legitimately distressing to face what appears to be conflicting instructions from the Secretary of Defense and the White House, all the more so when the President's official statement is in the form of a Spongebob Squarepants cartoon.

submitted 5 days ago • 13 comments

The official policy of the United States of America is that having values or believing in the rule of law is the equivalent to having a fetish for watching your wife get nailed by a stranger. That’s Trumpism.

submitted 5 days ago • 154 comments

A month ago, the idea that the new German chancellor would talk about "independence from the US" would have been unbelievable

submitted 5 days ago • 245 comments

incredible exchange, @marisakabas.bsky.social

submitted 9 days ago • 331 comments

This might be one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. And I am really struggling (and so far failing) to come up with a convincing counter-argument for any of it. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

This remains the defining tweet of the Trump era

submitted 9 days ago • 15 comments

Maybe I wasn’t clear about this. I wanted more egg and no plane crash, not many plane crash and no egg.

submitted 11 days ago • 605 comments

Citizen Lab released a report that highlights three serious security issues in the RedNote app, including that the app retrieves uploaded user content in a way that allows anyone else on your network, at your ISP, or organizations like the NSA, to see everything you look at and upload to RedNote.

submitted 10 days ago • 6 comments

Schrödinger's DOGE Musk both is and is not in charge, depending on who’s asking.

submitted 10 days ago • 22 comments

There is a reason we have kept all this personal data about YOU compartmentalized, and run by extremely boring and fastidious bureaucrats who seek neither fame nor fortune. Because you are not going to enjoy the alternative.

submitted 11 days ago • 12 comments

When you dump an entire agency into a "wood chipper" — as Musk boastfully did two weeks ago (see his tweet at x.com/elonmusk/sta...) — this is the kind of tragedy that can result. Many more tragedies will come to light. This is the core and legacy of the Trump-Musk administration: pure destruction.

submitted 11 days ago • 17 comments

For the last four weeks, there has been an enormous discrepancy among: 1) What Musk publicly brags about doing on X 2) What the media is reporting that DOGE is doing 3) What the White House publicly states Musk/DOGE can/will do Now we also have: 4) What the DOJ says about Musk in court filings

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

I voted for Trump because he said he would make planes fall out of the sky every day but I never thought he'd actually do it

submitted 11 days ago • 120 comments