Friday Homestead Dispatch
Week Number Nineteen
Let’s start with some good news:
— On Tuesday, Judge Tanya Chutkan greenlit lawsuits challenging Elon Musk’s position in the federal government and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as unconstitutional.
Chutkin also wrote that even though Musk has stepped back from his ‘guv’munt’ services, “Even if the DOGE entity and all affiliated positions terminated alongside the DOGE Temporary Service, that does not defeat an Appointments Clause claim.”
— This week, NPR and Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, and KSUT Public Radio filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's May 1, 2025, Executive Order seeking to cease all federal funding to NPR and PBS.
NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher stated: “This is retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination … The Supreme Court has ruled numerous times over the past 80 years that the government does not have the right to determine what counts as ‘biased.’”
Joining forces with Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio (these are member stations that represent rural, urban and tribal communities), NPR’s president Katherine Maher said they are taking the court action “both as a matter of principle and necessity.”
— The NYTs reports that the U.S. Court of International Trade said the president had overstepped his authority in imposing his “reciprocal” tariffs globally, as well as levies on Canada and Mexico. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.
The case is led by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. Also joining the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont. The decision halts the existing IEEPA tariffs. It also stops President Trump from increasing tariffs, including the threatened 145 percent tariffs on imports from China and 50 percent tariffs on imports from the European Union.
And, of course, A federal appeals court agreed to temporarily preserve many of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on China and other trading partners, freezing a decision that had sent the administration scrambling to preserve a major weapon in its global trade war. The appeals court stayed a ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade while it sorted through the arguments in the case, including the administration’s request for a longer delay.
— The Times also reported that Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Vermont, said she would grant bail to Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist employed by Harvard University, in an immigration case stemming from Ms. Petrova’s failure to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country. When Ms. Petrova told the customs officer that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there, she was transferred to ICE custody to wait for an asylum hearing, a process that can take months or years.
— According to Democracy Docket, while President Donald Trump has had mixed success before the Supreme Court, he’s getting crushed in the lower courts.
The Trump administration has lost a shocking 96% of rulings in federal district courts so far this month, according to a recent analysis by Adam Bonica, a professor of political science at Stanford.
— In one more of TACO’s hissy fits, I’m sure you have heard that he, and he alone, wants to rid Harvard of those criminally negligent international students. Yes, those communists and left-leaning skalliwags, rascals, and rogues, who are here to corrupt our lily-white youth, must go! BUT WAIT! Allison D. Burroughs, a federal judge, issued a preliminary injunction that would allow Harvard to continue enrolling international students — halting, at least for now, the Trump administration's efforts to ban the practice.
Kristi Noem, a cosplaying mis-cast actress from South Dakota who now heads up Homeland Security, wrote “We continue to reject Harvard’s repeated pattern of endangering its students and spreading American hate — it must change its ways in order to participate in American programs.”
For more on this agenda to purify the white race in the U.S., see number 4 below.
— Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, was booed by constituents at a town hall in her Iowa district Wednesday after she told her audience that she was “proud” to have voted for the bill. She also praised Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending plan and spoke approvingly of the “department of government efficiency’s” (Doge) efforts to downsize the federal government. In the video below you can see/hear that she is just reading a speech without really engaging with the people present.
— MAGA supporters got their panties in quite a twist over veteran CBS reporter Scott Pelley’s graduation speech at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University. “To move forward, we debate, not demonize; we discuss, not destroy. But in this moment, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack. And insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak, in America.”
*rump supporter and racist ranter Scott Adams, of the infamous and irrelevant Dilbert cartoons, called the speech an “angry, unhinged commencement address.”
— Robert Reich reports that BUB (Big Ugly Bill) is stymied in the Senate. GOP senators are vowing to rewrite the bill, but they’re still weeks away from putting together a package that can muster the 51 votes it needs to pass.
The more senators change the legislation, the more difficult it will be to pass again through the House — where Republicans control a slim 220-212 majority. (Identical legislation must be approved by both chambers before it can go to Trump for his signature.) Whatever it takes…
— Margaret Sullivan asks How can you, readers, help to hold the ground against this creeping autocracy? You can do these four things: Keep informed, Demand better of the news media you follow, Support worthy causes that support and defend First Amendment rights, and Stay engaged and don’t despair. Click on the link for more details.
1.
If you’re hankering to gather with some folks to protest a bit, Saturday, May 31 will be a Medicare for All! demonstration at 300 W. Congress St. at 9am.
And details for the June 14 Motor March (in Tucson) can be found here. As Phin and Mitch put it, we (Democracy Unites Us) will be conducting, along with Tucson Indivisible Action Alliance, 50501 and YOU, our own four mile car protest against everything Trump and his enablers are destructively doing to our Nation.
Also on Friday, June 6 there will be a rally and march to honor our WW 2 veterans at the Veteran's Hospital at 3601 S 6th Ave., 7—9am.
2.
One of my longtime Tucson friends, Mitzi Cowell, also publishes on Substack. Her post on Wednesday is chock full of ways to chew on American Democracy as a Culture:
We're having our democratic “come to Jesus” moment. The word “moment” implies something sudden, though, and this inflection point in American history that we're navigating is bringing up a very natural and organic patriotic instinct that feels more gradual and determined, glacial and monumental in its power. We're not being hit over the head by angels to be overnight saints. The word I got in one of my recent personal epiphanies was “activation.”
Hollywood and so many of our tropes, and perhaps the limitations of our language, show moments of activation as some sudden, dramatic change in our consciousness. But the real stories of those who step up to “do the right thing” are more like that of Rosa Parks. The Reader's Digest version of her story implies that she just one day bravely decided to sit in the front of the bus, when in reality it was one action in a whole series of natural actions she took while deepening her involvement in a movement that spoke to her soul and instincts; she had been an activist for awhile, and her bus protest was actually planned and supported by a whole community of allies. Rosa Parks was brave, but she was also not alone and she knew exactly what she was doing.
And this:
The democratic life is life, after all. It's not separate from the day to day life of feeding ourselves, loving our loved ones, doing our work, pursuing our dreams and (please) resting. Our democratic ancestors, and our ancestors before that, lived their lives and did their work so that we could enjoy more freedom than they did, and have better lives than they did. That's every parent's core hope for their child, whether they manifest it consciously, or in a healthy way, or not. Unless you feel a vocation to pure public service, for most of us the democratic life is simply a life lived as freely as possible, while also participating in, safeguarding and improving the democratic systems that make that life possible.
So let us be free. Sometimes I want to guilt-trip people into being more politically active, but that doesn't work any better than a parent trying to guilt-trip their child into behaving the way they want. Coercion of any kind has consequences – often consequences that bend in the other direction through rebellion and loss of respect. People need to come to their own moments of growth by their own free will. The best we can do is set examples, such as protesting and letting our friends know what we're up to, and letting them see that we're actually feeling alive and excited by what we’re doing.
Check out her writing…and you can also see her around tucson with liz Fletcher and Connie Brannock making sweet music as Mama’s Kitchen Sink, and with her own various bands.
3.
My neighbor informed me of House Bill 2721 (AZ) recently signed by our governor Katie Hobbs. The bill requires cities with more than 75,000 residents to allow middle housing on all single-family residential lots within one mile of the downtown core (with the specific area still being defined). The law also states that middle housing must be reviewed under the same standards and procedures as single-family homes. For any new developments larger than 10 acres, at least 20% must be middle housing. Cities are required to adopt these changes by January 1, 2026.
I haven’t been able to wrap my head around what this exactly means for the average homeowner. Will it actually help with the homeless problem in town? Will it make renting an apartment more affordable for people? Is it just a boondoggle for developers?
You can leave your own comment here where it states that The City of Tucson is working to expand housing diversity through new middle housing initiatives. Middle housing, which includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes, represents an opportunity to address our community's needs by providing more attainable and diverse housing options. The City is evaluating several approaches to implement these housing regulations, particularly which locations would be eligible for middle housing development. Community input is essential to this process. There will be three meetings in May. If you can not attend in person, please contribute your perspective on these changes via this comment form.
4.
Let that sink in for a moment…
Kaiser Kuo, brother of Jay, hosts a weekly podcast about current affairs in China, featuring in-depth conversations about books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends.
He writes, This will be framed, no doubt, as a national security measure. But no serious person believes this is about genuine risk mitigation. It’s about spectacle. It’s a gesture meant to placate a political base that’s been primed to see every Chinese student as a CCP sleeper agent, and every American university as a hotbed of un-American radicalism. It’s part of a larger campaign that, rather than diagnosing the real ailments of higher education or geopolitical rivalry, seeks only to punish and purge.
But beyond the immediate damage, this move will have profound systemic consequences. American universities, especially elite ones, rely on international students — many of whom pay full freight — to keep the lights on and the research flowing. It’s not just a matter of revenue. Those students help fund financial aid for their less affluent peers, subsidize public goods like libraries and laboratories, and often go on to produce the research, inventions, and companies that bolster American competitiveness. This is way beyond the petty, vindictive attack on the elites who’ve shunned the MAGA right. This is blowing our damn foot off.
This is not just bad for America. It’s corrosive to the already threadbare fabric of the U.S.-China relationship. Student exchange, for all its many challenges, has been one of the last remaining areas of genuine, good-faith engagement between the two countries. It has been a crucial vector of mutual understanding, and one of the few mechanisms still capable of generating interpersonal trust in an era of escalating suspicion.
To treat international students — especially Chinese ones — as potential enemies first and scholars second is to take a sledgehammer to one of the very few bridges left standing. That this is happening while bilateral trust is already at historic lows makes it all the more tragic. The bilateral relationship doesn’t just need “strategic competition” and military deterrence; it needs ballast. It needs spaces where Chinese and Americans can encounter one another as human beings. We are closing those spaces.
5.
And lastly today Thom Hartmann wrote that while Trump and his billionaire backers are playing chess, Democrats have been playing checkers. Throughout the past 4 years, Trump’s people were drafting hundreds of executive orders and regulations, creating what they openly called “shadow agencies” to implement their agenda on day one.
A shadow cabinet would change that overnight. It would create 26 Democratic leaders — one for each cabinet position — who could provide daily, coordinated opposition to Trump’s corporate/billionaire agenda while simultaneously showing Americans what real public service looks like.
Bill Scher, writing in Politico this week, suggested that instead of using ranking members of congressional committees in challenging the Trump administration, why not tap accomplished people with the ability to speak plainly and the credibility to puncture the Trump administration’s often Orwellian narratives. Don’t limit members to professional politicians. Pitch a big tent. Don’t draw rigid ideological lines.
Scher is suggesting folks ranging from our own Governor Katie Hobbs as Shadow Secretary Of Education, Jon Stewart as Shadow Secretary Of Veterans Affairs, and New York’s Letitia James as Shadow Attorney General. Check out the article for details.
And now…
