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

This is a legitimate worry. What if Trump’s repeated suggestion that he should have a third term isn’t just braggadocio? Think about it: what would he be doing any differently if it was his intent to stay in office in 2028?

submitted 8 hours ago • 1 comment

I mean, the correct third answer is Russell Vought at OMB. Vance is wicked but mostly an afterthought in terms of actual power.

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” A classic quote from Malcolm X, who was assassinated 60 years ago today.

submitted 1 day ago • 571 comments

Trump picked the wrong state to pick on when he went after Maine Governor Janet Mills. Mainers don't like bullies and it's one of the last states to have a strong independent streak. A plurality of its voters are unaffiliated or third party.

submitted 16 hours ago • 9 comments

Rufo called me a groomer and sent his audience after my family because I said I was fine with my daughter going to therapy. CPS got called. It took months to get rid of them. My former colleagues thought it was hilarious and did nothing.

submitted 1 day ago • 48 comments

Straightforward tyrannical thuggishness from Trump. 1) It is unconstitutional for a president to withhold congressionally-authorized funding from a state simply because it refuses to comply with an unrelated executive order.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

If the Trump administration actually cared about reducing fraud, waste, and abuse, it would've looked into privatizing these chargers rather than removing already existing infrastructure. What a waste.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

HP buying the Humane AI pin so it can incorporate its notoriously bad AI into their printers is next level tech dystopia. Printers are already the suckiest device in the home office, just stuffed to the gills with unnecessary and consumer-hostile software features.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Trump is not just mirroring the executive abuses of Richard Nixon. He is surpassing them in every way. Nixon ordered the firing of one special prosecutor; Trump ordered the firing of 17 inspector generals.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

"We don't know who is legally in charge of DOGE" is blowing right past all the Appointments Clause problems with admitting it's Musk and leaping headlong into breaking the fundamental inherent structure of what a government even is, people and agencies who report to some kind of officeholder.

submitted 4 days ago • 5 comments

Feels like a future project for @kkdumez.bsky.social, Elesha Coffman, Darren Dochuk, or Matt Sutton to compare this sacralized Silicon Valley meets national security state vibe to the Billy Graham in Los Angeles / J. Howard Pew / Cold War Christianity moment.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The Trump administration has gutted the inspector general system, with all its inconvenient requirements for transparency and accountability, and replaced it with an unaccountable, shadowy, Musk-led organization over which Congress has no oversight. @paulmatzko.bsky.social

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

submitted 4 days ago • 69 comments

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, et al are doing lasting damage to the techno-optimist, neo-liberal, abundance, and progress movements by linking those projects in the public imagination to fascism.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Besides being wildly racist, it’s worth noting that Donald Trump just disproved the basic hypothesis of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory by increasing his hispanic voter share in 2024. Hispanics are not and will never be a unified voting bloc (despite the GOP’s best efforts to alienate them).

submitted 5 days ago • 9 comments

Yes, @petebuttigieg.bsky.social is correct. Most of what DOGE is doing could’ve been done legally via the IGs. Trump / Musk just chose to do it illegally. www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-mas...

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

Not even six hours apart.

submitted 6 days ago • 1199 comments

Eliezer Yudkowsky: stop AI, bomb the data centers! AI alignment murder cult: okay, best I can do is stab an octogenarian in the eye with a samurai sword over a rent dispute.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Trump's dismissal of 17 inspector generals and appointment of Elon Musk as a supra-constitutional replacement is an impeachable offense.

submitted 6 days ago • 5 comments

Engraving on the exterior of the United States Department of Justice headquarters.

submitted 7 days ago • 302 comments

The answer is “mostly medicare and social security payments.”

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

submitted 7 days ago • 5664 comments

Not exaggerating when I say that the path back is going to be built on people in positions of influence regaining their sense of self-respect. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02...

submitted 8 days ago • 352 comments

The United States of America is coercing the Mayor of a major city to follow policies by threat of criminal prosecution for unrelated corruption.

submitted 8 days ago • 65 comments

This is so antithetical to the English legal tradition that they killed Charles I about it, and then they couped James II

submitted 8 days ago • 96 comments

Surely, the DOGE project to impound congressionally authorized funds, fire thousands of federal employees, and essentially shutter entire agencies can at least offer clear evidence of massive amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse?

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

A TikTok creator figured out where Elon Musk got that “150 year olds getting social security $” bit from. Also a reminder that algorithmically-sourced local knowledge is the future bedrock of news and information.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

The literal DOGE website

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

How to bring down prices and raise our standard of living: 1) Trade with everyone, and do it a lot. 2) Welcome tons of immigrants, of all skill levels. 3) Stop listening to NIMBYs. How to increase prices and lower our standard of living: 1) Slap tariffs on everything. 2) Scare off immigrants.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Market signals > political signals.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

NYU economist Bill Easterly, the leading free-market critic of foreign aid, was asked about Musk’s and Trump’s assault on USAID: “It’s illegal and it’s undemocratic,” he said. “Even if I like the idea of moving away from aid, I cannot condone this horrific way to go about it.”

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

The power behind the throne. Alt text: a white supremacist from South Africa lectures America on democracy while a confused, bored, elderly gentleman in the foreground looks on.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments