The Resurrection of Authoritarian Nonsense
From Harvard to Kyiv to Boeing, the Trump regime spent Easter weekend proving it can’t govern, but it can punish, retaliate, and lie with stunning consistency.
Good Morning! It’s Easter in America, and nothing says resurrection like the President of the United States quietly panicking that his policies might trigger another Great Depression. According to leaks from within Trump’s inner circle, he’s been muttering about 1929 again, less like an economist and more like a man staring into a mirror trying to convince himself it was all the Fed’s fault. The mood inside the White House is not exactly eggs and lilies. It’s more like bunker-grade paranoia wrapped in a gold-plated golf cart.
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, China just sent one of Boeing’s 737 MAX jets right back to Seattle like an Amazon reject. Why? Because Trump’s latest tariff tantrum triggered a 125% countermeasure from Beijing, so steep that accepting U.S. aircraft deliveries became economically absurd. That $55 million jet is now a high-flying symbol of how badly this trade war is going. Trump promised to bring manufacturing back. He just didn’t say it would arrive involuntarily, on Chinese fuel.
Not to be outdone in the theater of the absurd, Elon Musk spent Easter weekend on X claiming he’s about to restore sight to the blind, fuse brains with robot limbs, and possibly become the first cyborg pope. Neuralink’s new “Blindsight” device, he says, will one day let users see in infrared, because who wouldn’t want Predator-vision uploaded straight to their skull jack? But while he was LARPing as the messiah of cybernetics, Musk also launched a frantic PR blitz to get ahead of whistleblower allegations that his DOGE task force illegally accessed National Labor Relations Board systems, and funneled sensitive data to Russia.
The whistleblower, Daniel J. Berulis, hasn’t even finished testifying, but Musk’s spin machine has already declared him a liar, demanded his prosecution, and reposted a glossy defense thread from one of his favorite propagandists. The problem? No official report has been released. No exoneration. Just Musk yelling “sabotage!” louder than the receipts.
Musk could post the unredacted findings. Instead, he’s amplifying carnival barkers and attacking the guy who says the emperor’s got backdoors. This isn’t the behavior of a man with nothing to hide. It’s the social media diary of someone sprinting ahead of the subpoenas.
Harvard officially told the Trump administration to pound sand this week. In response to demands for ideological audits and control over admissions and hiring, Harvard President Alan Garber said no, firmly and publicly. “The University will not surrender its independence,” he wrote, which prompted the administration to freeze $2.2 billion in funding, launch investigations, and start pressuring the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. So yes: the government is now using the tax code to punish schools that won’t play along with its MAGA monoculture. It sounds like fascism, because it is.
And in the streets? The second wave of “Hands Off” protests arrived yesterday. While turnout in places like Coos Bay fell by half, the energy in many cities remains palpable. But something darker is rising behind the chants. A report required under Trump’s January 20 national emergency order is due by April 20. Vice President JD Vance and Trump ally Pete Hegseth are reportedly involved in shaping the administration’s security recommendations, proposals that insiders fear could be used to justify invoking the Insurrection Act. With courts blocking policies, universities revolting, and protests growing (however unevenly), Trump may just do what authoritarians always do when things stop going their way: declare an emergency, and blame the people for noticing the fire.
Internationally, Fox News decided to commemorate Easter by casually labeling Kyiv, a city under siege from Russia, as “a Russian city.” The chyron remained onscreen for 20 minutes. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry is demanding answers. President Zelensky didn’t name Fox, but he did urge the media to stop broadcasting Easter services from Moscow and start pressuring it for a real ceasefire. Apparently, we’ve entered the phase of propaganda where “oops” can be 20 minutes long and still count as journalism.
Meanwhile, Trump’s not-so-subtle attempt to loot Ukraine under the guise of “mineral cooperation” is unraveling. Zelensky is pushing back. Trump is responding like a mob boss whose protection deal fell through: “He’s got some problems. Big, big problems.” On the same day, Ukraine quietly returned home 277 of their POWs in a major exchange with Russia, because unlike the guys trying to extract lithium, the people of Ukraine are still trying to save lives. One side is bleeding. The other is billing.
And finally, in Vatican City, Pope Francis decided he wasn’t quite up to seeing Vice President JD Vance, pneumonia or not, the Holy See has limits. Instead, the Pope dispatched Cardinal Parolin to deliver a pointed lecture on compassion, immigration, and Christian decency. Vatican officials described the exchange as “cordial.” Vatican watchers described it as “the theological equivalent of a wooden spoon to the knuckles.” In the end, Vance got a photo op. The Pope got to nap. And somewhere in heaven, Christ wept with exhaustion.
Happy Easter from the upside down. The tomb is empty, the swamp is full, and the empire is terminally online.