"Trending: Easter Controversy," or: How little lies pave the way for the next big lie

No-News Weekend Internet is stupid-dangerous in the Trump era — as this weekend's attack on the Transgender Day of Visibility shows.

This weekend’s gaslighting from the right around Easter falling on the same day as Transgender Day of Visibility is a stark sign of how empty the Republican Party has gotten — and how dangerous Donald Trump is, not only to transgender people, but to America.

If you, blessedly, have no idea what I am talking about, congratulations, you live a life free from what I think is best thought of as “No-News Weekend Internet.” In short, when nothing is happening, something must happen. It will always be stupid, but, in the past, sometimes that meant stupid-fun. Now, it means stupid-dangerous.

This time, it was two things. Easter moves around because it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21. Transgender Day of Visibility, which was founded in 2009, takes place on March 31.

This year, again, BECAUSE OF THE MOON, Easter is on March 31.

For a group of Republicans looking to demonize Joe Biden and transgender people, this was all that they needed to start a weekend of hate. Then, for kicks I guess, they added in an attack on the “new rules” for the White House children’s egg decorating contest — specifically, that submissions can’t be overtly religious — as a second anti-Christian thing that Biden has done despite the fact that the Biden administration didn’t change the rules.

It’s disgusting and done in extremely bad faith — but also dangerous.

Because of that danger, I’m going to go through what happened in detail and discuss why it’s so disturbing.

On Friday morning, the Biden White House Press Office sent out this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility proclamation, as they have done in the other years of his presidency. In fact, in 2022 and 2023, the White House Press Office also sent out a related “Fact Sheet” to highlight related administration accomplishments. Biden issues many similar, and temporally overlapping, proclamations. He issued 11 on Friday — addressing celebrations or commemorations for the days, week, and month ahead.

This one was handled differently. At 9:50 a.m. Saturday, Owen Shroyer, a conservative talk show host with 1776 in his username, appears to have been one of the first people to take advantage of No-News Weekend Internet.

Self-identified “[t]heocratic fascist” Matt Walsh followed up with a quote retweet of Shroyer a little past noon literally calling Biden a “demon.”

A Daily Wire staffer, Megan Basham, had already tweeted about it. Before that even, Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, decided to sent out his take on it. He is a former George W. Bush White House staffer and has been an adviser to Mitch McConnell:

Many far-right figures — including, belatedly, Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik, as well as Jack Posobiec, who quote retweeted her 12 minutes later — jumped on the hateful bandwagon as the day went on.¹ It was not, however, left to right-wing trolls to share and exploit ignorance. Multiple sitting governors weighed in on, as Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared, this “intentional attempt to insult and mock Christians.”

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee — i.e., a Jim Jordan sock puppet account — was a part of the effort with a tweet declaring that “Today is Easter. Nothing else.”

Speakers weighed in, with right-wing House Speaker Mike Johnson tweeting that recognizing the humanity of others is “outrageous,” “abhorrent,” and had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter.”

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a religion class, but, if memory serves, I think it’s pretty clear that Jesus would be more likely to overturn the tables in Mike Johnson’s House than be upset about Trans Day of Visibility.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker behind much of the legislative hate of the 1990s, was eager to jump in once he figured out what was going on, with an Easter Sunday tweet declaring that the calendar being the calendar was an “obscene insult to every Christian.”

Of course, Trump used this to attack Biden:

This, of course, then gave an excuse for sympathetic outlets to go all in. Fox News is obsessed with this story. I’m not linking to them, but a quick review found at least five stories related to this.

Other right-wing outlets covered this anger at the moon as well. Caitlyn Jenner wanted a moment of relevance again as well, so she tweeted away, which the New York Post covered as a news story because, No-News Weekend Internet.

On the secondary, “new rules” issue, which Fox News is on board with attacking and was also covered by other right-wing outlets, by the way, they … aren’t … new.

The Egg Board had to step in, which is a sentence that I never thought I would write. As NBC News reported:

Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, a group that supports the White House Egg Roll, said in a statement, "The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations."

It would be easy to ignore all of this — as many people undoubtedly did this weekend while they were instead living their lives and celebrating Easter and/or recognizing Trans Day of Visibility and/or doing literally anything other than pretending that this is actually a matter worthy of concern let alone a full-on attack — but for two things.

First, this is happening in the midst of ongoing legislative attacks on trans people, not to mention all of the other attacks, physical and otherwise, that trans people face in their daily lives.

There are few ways to make more clear how much a Trans Day of Visibility is needed than to see the deranged, bad-faith, hateful anti-trans comments spewed by people — from a radio host to the speaker of the House — over this weekend. (And, of course, as Chase Strangio has explained, this is just the smallest of starts: “Trans visibility is nice. Safety is even better.“)

Biden, for his part, did not fall for this, tweeting Sunday about both Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility (above) — like an ordinary person without hate in their heart might be expected to do.

Beyond this weekend and this incident, moreover, this is a reminder of how bad things are going to get over the next seven to 10 months (or longer). This was a “zero-to-60” moment this weekend, and the right-wing outrage machine made something out of literally nothing. And everyone was all in.

Now, think about the fall. Think about mail-in ballots. Think about election night and the aftermath. Think about a state decisive to the outcome of the election going to a recount. Think about state certifications. Think about the new Congress and Jan. 6, 2025. Think. Think. Think.

I will have much more about these latter concerns in the future, but this seemed like a key moment to show how prepared and aligned the right-wing media ecosystem and Republican Party are, highlight how absolutely and aggressively uninterested in facts they are, and set the framework for how dangerous that is and could be.

1. This sentence was added after initial publication at 11:55 p.m.