We were going to take Easter weekend off and forgo a newsletter this morning—but gosh, too much news breaking overnight to ignore! Happy Monday.
A new New York Times/Siena poll, released at 6:00 am Monday, shows President Joe Biden reversing his previous deficit and opening up a five point lead over former president Donald Trump. The change was due to a 12 point increase in voters’ unfavorable judgment of Trump. One voter, 57-year old I.M. Crewshall of Waukesha, Wisconsin, interviewed after attending church on Good Friday, said “That ridiculous Lee Greenwood Bible—that was a bridge too far.”
In a major surprise in the battle over Ukraine funding, House Speaker Mike Johnson stopped outside church after attending Easter Sunday services in Shreveport, Louisiana, to read a statement: “After praying on it, I’ve decided to bring the Ukraine aid package to the floor of the House as soon as we reconvene in a week. Moses stepped up to confront tyranny in his day, and I’m going to follow his example. We can’t sit on our hands and just offer thoughts and prayers as brave men and women fight for freedom.”
The Miami Herald reports this morning that it has obtained a draft opinion circulating in federal District Judge Aileen Cannon’s chambers. The opinion is dated April 1, when Judge Cannon’s court is scheduled to reconvene. In the opinion, stamped HIGHLY SENSITIVE AND CONFIDENTIAL, Judge Cannon writes: “This Court has bent over backwards to try to accommodate the former president. But this Court will not be played for a fool. I am therefore scheduling the trial of former president Donald Trump on charges of keeping and obstructing the return of classified documents to begin on a date certain of June 3, 2024.”
Meanwhile, in sports news:
Basketball powerhouse Duke University is dropping Division 1 basketball after its 76-64 loss to North Carolina State in the NCAA men’s basketball tourney. Duke’s president, Cameron B. Devil, said that he looked forward to fielding a “competitive D3 program that would enhance the educational experience at Duke.”
Finally: The Bulwark has learned that the Shakespeare Theater Company of Washington, D.C., will announce later this week that it will abandon its experiment of the last decade in what it now calls “fashionable and trendy” programming. Next season’s Shakespeare Theater performances will instead consist entirely of traditional productions of works by . . . William Shakespeare. “It’s time to let Shakespeare be Shakespeare,” Company artistic director Peter Quince proclaimed.
And WHOA . . . BREAKING NEWS, as we write:
Mitt Romney will announce his resignation from the Senate later today to join the Biden administration as special presidential adviser for Russian and Ukrainian Affairs. There are further reports, so far unconfirmed, that former Representatives Liz Cheney, former Governor Nikki Haley, and former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper will be among a group meeting at the White House tomorrow with President Biden to “discuss how to broaden the coalition of forces fighting for American democracy.”
Happy April 1!
—William Kristol
Much Ado About Easter
Okay, okay, now on to serious matters, like who’s taking Easter seriously enough. Here’s CNN:
Republicans are taking aim at President Joe Biden for proclaiming Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility, though the two days only coincided this year by chance.
The Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, is held annually on March 31. The date of Easter, meanwhile, changes from year to year.
But several Republicans seized on Biden’s proclamation to attack the president.
“It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House . . . formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility,” former President Donald Trump’s campaign said in a statement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the Biden administration had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter” in a post on X. “The American people are taking note.”
We’re not here to take stances on the religious appropriateness of counterprogramming Easter with other business, trans or otherwise—although we’d note the NCAA played its Elite 8 games yesterday afternoon without anybody getting too worked up about it. But if you’re the type of American (we imagine there are millions of you) who picks their presidential candidates based on how diligently they uphold the sanctity of high Christian holidays, may we submit the other guy:
It’s easy just to point and laugh—get a load of these hypocrites, groping for their smelling salts about how the other guy won’t take Easter seriously enough while studiously ignoring their guy trampling all over it—but there’s a serious point to make here. Self-identified evangelical Christians are the backbone of the MAGA movement, but—as many have noted over the years—theirs increasingly tends to be a Christian identity that’s primarily cultural and political rather than religious or theological.
And if your ideological identity is a mishmash of populist right-wing grievance and a vague half-remembered Christian vocabulary, it’s no surprise that you’d look at these two statements and feel no friction at all. Trump defends Christianity, and the left attacks him for it! Meanwhile, Biden’s trying to replace our holiday with one of theirs—ceding cultural territory to the woke mob!
Keep your seatbelt fastened—it’s only getting weirder out there.
—Andrew Egger
That’s all from us today—don’t miss Iowa-LSU tonight and we’ll see you here tomorrow!
For a couple of minutes, the world seemed like a brighter place.
I got as far as Judge Cannon. Next, I thought Clarence Thomas would apologize for all the damage he's done and resign. Good ideas though. I'd like to live in that world.