So Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent an Easter email to USDA employees last week. The message said “Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed!” and called Easter “the foundation of our faith.” That’s it. That’s the whole crime. She wished people a happy Easter and mentioned the entire reason Easter exists. In a country founded by Christians. During the most important Christian holiday of the year. And now a union president has filed a formal complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, because apparently three words about Jesus constitute a “pro-Christianity sermon” that violates the Constitution.
I want you to picture the kind of person who receives a “Happy Easter” email from their boss and immediately thinks, “I need to contact my lawyer.” Picture that person. Now picture nearly thirty of them, because that’s how many USDA employees reportedly complained to the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Thirty federal employees — people we pay with our tax dollars — saw an Easter greeting and experienced what I can only describe as a constitutional crisis of the soul. These are the people deciding America’s agricultural policy. No wonder eggs cost six bucks.
Let’s be very clear about what happened here. The Secretary of Agriculture — a Cabinet-level official appointed by the President of the United States — sent a holiday email during a holiday. She didn’t make anybody pray. She didn’t require a baptism to keep your GS-12 paycheck. She didn’t install a crucifix above the entrance to the USDA building and demand everyone genuflect on the way in. She said “He is Risen” in an email that every single recipient could have deleted in half a second. You know, the way normal people handle emails they don’t care about.
But no. We don’t do normal anymore. We do federal complaints.
The union president — and I use that title loosely because this person clearly has way too much free time — claims the email was a violation of the Establishment Clause. For those of you who didn’t go to law school or spend three semesters pretending you did, the Establishment Clause says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Congress. Shall make. No law. An Easter email is not a law. It’s not even a memo with a signature block. It’s the government equivalent of your aunt posting “He is Risen!” on Facebook, except with better formatting.
But here’s where it gets really fun. The Freedom from Religion Foundation — a group whose entire existence is dedicated to making sure nobody anywhere ever accidentally encounters a religious thought — says they received complaints from “nearly 30” USDA employees. Out of roughly 100,000. That’s 0.03 percent. We’re restructuring the constitutional framework of government communication because three-hundredths of one percent of the Agriculture Department got their feelings hurt by Easter.
You know what I’d love to see? I’d love to see the complaint form. I’d love to read the part where a grown adult with a federal salary and a pension plan writes, in their own handwriting, that they were personally harmed by the phrase “He is Risen.” I want to see where they describe the damages. Did they lose sleep? Did they develop an Easter-related anxiety disorder? Did the email cause them to involuntarily convert to Christianity against their will? Because if three words in a holiday greeting have that much power over you, the problem isn’t the email. The problem is you.
And let’s talk about what the same people who are filing this complaint would never, ever complain about. When the White House puts out a Ramadan statement — and they do, every year, every administration — nobody files a complaint. When federal agencies send Diwali greetings, nobody contacts the Office of Special Counsel. When government buildings light up in rainbow colors for Pride Month — which isn’t even a religious holiday, it’s a corporate marketing event with a parade — not a single union president has ever filed a constitutional challenge. But “He is Risen” during Easter? Sound the alarm. Call the lawyers. The Republic is falling.
This is what we’re dealing with, folks. We live in a country where the government can spend $6 billion on a website that doesn’t work, lose $21 trillion in unaudited Pentagon transactions, and pay federal employees to sit at home for three years during COVID — but the one thing that triggers a formal investigation is a Cabinet secretary acknowledging that Easter is about Jesus.
The part that really gets me is that this isn’t even new. This is part of a broader pattern where the professional offended class has decided that Christianity — and specifically Christianity — is the one belief system that must be scrubbed from every corner of public life. You can put “In God We Trust” on the money, but don’t you dare say it out loud in a government building. You can swear on a Bible in court, but don’t reference what’s actually in it. The rules are simple: Christianity is fine as long as it’s purely decorative and nobody actually believes any of it.
Secretary Rollins sent a sincere Easter message to the people who work for her. She shared her faith during a holiday that exists because of that faith. And for that, she’s now the subject of a federal complaint filed by people who would rather spend their workday policing emails than doing whatever it is the USDA actually does. Which, based on recent egg prices, isn’t much.
Here’s my suggestion for the thirty brave souls at the USDA who were so traumatized by a three-word Easter greeting that they had to involve a national atheist organization: next time, just delete the email. Hit the little trash can icon. It takes less than a second. It’s free. It doesn’t require a lawyer. And it doesn’t make you look like the most fragile human beings in the entire federal workforce.
But they won’t do that. Because this was never about the email. It was never about the Establishment Clause. It’s about making sure that Christians in government understand that their faith is the one thing they’re not allowed to bring to work. You can bring your politics, your pronouns, your Pride flag, and your emotional support animal. But leave Jesus in the parking lot.
Not happening. He is Risen. Deal with it.