The Gospel According to Golf: 100 Days of Trump, Tyranny, and Techno-Feudalism

From FEMA-funded fairways to Elon Musk’s privatized launchpad city, America’s second act under Trump is equal parts satire and catastrophe

Let’s start with a simple truth: Donald Trump is very tired. Not from governing, of course, he’s spent almost a third of his presidency this term playing golf, often at his luxury resorts. Now, under the new GOP budget proposal, taxpayers could be on the hook for $300 million in “security and support expenses” tied to his travel, an item critics say is essentially a golf slush fund, even as Trump slashes spending on disaster relief, housing, and public health. When the country’s crumbling, nothing says leadership like billing the public for 18 holes and a cheeseburger at Mar-a-Lago. But priorities are priorities, and in Trump’s America, nothing screams fiscal responsibility like a bunker shot followed by a seven-figure government invoice.

Meanwhile, back in the policy dungeon, Trump and his handpicked USDA secretary, Brooke Rollins, have finished the job they started: gutting the Department of Agriculture. In just 100 days, they’ve slashed conservation funding, scientific research, food aid, and rural development programs, stripping a fragile safety net threadbare. Rollins, once known for cheerleading “free-market innovation,” has now pivoted to a more practical approach: letting the free market collapse rural communities altogether.

Nowhere is the rot more visible than in the fields of Virginia, where Black farmers like John Boyd Jr. are fielding desperate calls from others asking if it’s even worth planting this year. Trump’s reckless tariffs, combined with the rollback of civil rights protections and the erasure of USDA anti-discrimination programs, are driving many small producers to the brink. As Boyd said, “We spend most of our time just trying to survive on what’s thrown at us.” With Black land ownership already down to just over 5 million acres from 41 million in 1920, this isn't just bad policy, it's generational erasure by design.

Billionaire Miriam Adelson, who dropped a casual $100 million into Trump’s reelection effort, has found out the hard way that aligning with an autocratic demagogue isn’t great for business, especially in places like New York, where Trump’s legal vendettas and "king of congestion pricing" proclamations haven’t exactly endeared him to local officials. Her dream of a Long Island casino has evaporated, along with $400 million already sunk into lobbying, licensing, and architects. The reason? No one wants a Trump-tied name on the marquis. Turns out “Trump Tower but make it Nassau County” isn’t a winning pitch.

It gets worse: her family’s NBA team just made the worst trade in league history, and their Dallas gambling plans are also circling the drain. And this is just 100 days into Trump’s second act.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott celebrated his own crusade against public goods by signing Senate Bill 2, one of the largest private school voucher schemes in U.S. history. The $1 billion initiative will let parents, especially those already sending their kids to private school, claim about $10,000 a year in taxpayer funds, no STAAR testing required, no transparency needed. Up to 20% of the money can go to households making over $160,000, which, in voucher-world, qualifies as “disadvantaged.” It’s a brilliant con: frame the destruction of public education as a victory for freedom, then siphon public dollars into boutique prep academies where the Pledge of Allegiance is optional but the dress code is mandatory.

And just down the Texas coast, Elon Musk’s personal spaceport cult has now become a city. Over the weekend, a group of 283 residents, most of whom work for SpaceX, voted to incorporate the City of Starbase. The new town, which sits next to the culturally sacred and ecologically fragile Boca Chica Beach, will be governed by SpaceX-aligned officials, empowered to set zoning laws, control utilities, and maybe even lock the public out of the beach altogether. Musk is already pushing legislation to let Starbase dictate closures for rocket launches, up to 25 times a year. Locals protesting the move carried an Elon Musk piñata and signs warning that sacred land was being erased. Starbase calls it “streamlining.” Everyone else calls it corporate feudalism with beachfront views.

And if that weren’t enough, Musk took to X just hours later to declare that Tesla isn’t an investment, it’s his child. Not content with turning Brownsville into a company town, Musk is now selling Starlink subscriptions as a patriotic duty to fund Mars colonization. His followers eagerly posted diagrams of orbital transfer routes, pitching broadband as a launchpad for humanity's "destiny." Somewhere between the merchandising and the messiah complex, the line between product and cult dissolved entirely.

And yet even amid all this, Trump still managed to outdo them all in sheer surrealism. On Truth Social, the former president reposted a lovingly rendered AI image of himself as the Pope. Draped in papal robes, golden crucifix aloft, surrounded by adoring crowds who probably didn't exist, Trump captioned it with “We need faith, not weakness.” It was unclear whether he understood the irony. But for a man who once held a Bible upside down outside a church he’d never entered, this may just be his most spiritually unhinged campaign asset to date.

Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away, Ukraine is making history, not in the fever-dream sense, but on the battlefield. In a first-of-its-kind strike, Ukraine’s military intelligence unit Group 13 used a Magura V5 sea drone armed with U.S.-made AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles to take down a $50 million Russian Su-30 fighter jet over the Black Sea. Hours later, they downed a second Su-30 over occupied Crimea. The drones struck military depots, monitored rescue operations, and redefined modern naval warfare in a single day. It was a tactical triumph and a psychological blow to Russia’s long-fabled dominance of the Black Sea.

But the backlash was immediate. In a heavily staged interview, Vladimir Putin responded with the soft menace of a Bond villain sipping chamomile: “There has been no need to use nuclear weapons... and I hope they will not be required.” He then reassured the world that Russia had the “strength” to bring the war to a “logical conclusion.” This is nuclear blackmail in a tailored suit, a not-so-subtle warning to Ukraine and the West that every drone strike or depot destroyed is another excuse to roll the dice on mutually assured destruction.

Closer to home, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed what had already been whispered: Trump is pressuring her to allow U.S. troops onto Mexican soil to fight drug cartels. She refused, firmly and publicly, citing sovereignty and history, warning that any militarization of the U.S.-Mexico relationship would bring steep economic and diplomatic costs. TikTok nationalism in Mexico is rising fast, with viral boycotts of American products like Coca-Cola and street-level backlash to Trump’s insults. The old gringo-bashing politics, dormant for years, may soon roar back to life, courtesy of the U.S. president who seems determined to militarize diplomacy and alienate America’s largest trading partner in the process.

So if the week feels like an absurdist novel with too many villains, too many plotlines, and no clear protagonist, that’s because it is. But in this story, the stakes are real, the warheads are armed, and the punchlines are mostly true.