Friday Homestead Dispatch

Later, the retrospectoscope, that handy tool of the wags and pundits, the conveners of the farce we call M&M—morbidity and mortality conference—will pronounce your decision right or wrong. Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.
—Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese

1.
So, maybe this Democratic Socialism thing is gaining traction. In New York this week, three candidates backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primary elections over their corporate funded Democrats. US congressman Dan Goldman was beaten by progressive challenger Brad Lander in New York’s 10th congressional district in a contest that laid bare the party’s divisions over the Israel-Gaza war.

Also, Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the 7th district, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student who has joined pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, won her race in New York’s 13th district.

As Aalia Mauro of Liberation project Substack wrote, the machine lost. The machine that has spent decades deciding what is and isn’t acceptable politics in the most powerful city in the country, the one backed by AIPAC money, real estate money, union endorsements traded like currency, and the full institutional weight of Hakeem Jeffries, lost. To three democratic socialists who said genocide is genocide, abolish ICE, tax the rich, and meant every word of it.

We need to sit in that for a second because we all have spent years watching left candidates get crushed by exactly this machine and being told to be realistic, to moderate, to accept incremental progress, to stop making things uncomfortable for people who are comfortable.

Spread the word: Democratic Socialism has nothing to do with Havana or the old Soviet Politburo (the way Republicans and much of the press want you to think).

Democratic Socialism now means really scary and radical ideas such as healthcare for all, worker’s rights, taxing the billionaires to oblivion, affordable everything for the average American, ending military support for Israel and ending aggression, and cooperating once again with our allies (if that can ever happen again).

Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid discusses this topic with San Diego journalist Heather Delaney Reese. Here’s a snippet from their discussion.

Click here to watch the entire interview, less than 40 minutes.

2.
Speaking of Reese, she reports that on Wednesday, House Republican leaders stood at a press conference celebrating the most significant bipartisan achievement of this Congress, a housing bill that had passed the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32, the President of the United States posted 39 words on Truth Social and ended it all. He would not sign the bill. Not today. Not until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, a voting bill that his own party leaders have told him repeatedly does not have the votes to pass.

That c**ksucker enjoys humiliating EVERYONE. Senator Bill Cassidy stood up and began yelling at the President of the United States. Trump told him to sit down. He refused. Trump called him a lunatic. Cassidy called him brother. Trump told him he was not his brother. And still, the shouting continued, until the senators sitting beside Cassidy quietly urged him to sit down. What had been sold to the press as a unity meeting became something no one could spin: the sound of a party continuing to fracture under the weight of Donald Trump’s impulsiveness, as even some of the people who helped build his political movement have decided they can’t keep living in Trump’s pretend paradise.

It is one thing to betray our allies. He has done that. It is one thing to betray our adversaries. He has done that too. But today was different. Today, Donald Trump publicly undercut his own party on the single piece of legislation they had spent months building and desperately wanted to campaign on heading into the midterms. He didn’t just embarrass them. He reminded every Republican on Capitol Hill that any promise he makes exists only until he decides it no longer serves him. There is no deal too important, no victory too valuable, and no ally too loyal to be sacrificed if it means satisfying his immediate political demands.

I made a little poster that you can borrow…

3.
And in a bit of good news, on Wednesday a federal judge blocked *rump’s effort to make voters show proof of citizenship.

We are all still waiting for GAWD ALMIGHTY (or a judge who isn’t bought and paid for*) to strike down his executive order regarding a proposed rule that would require states to hand over lists of voters who requested mail-in ballots and barcodes associated with their ballots to the postal service. The move usurps state authority over elections at a time when many states are fighting the Trump administration over attempts to access state voter rolls. The US postmaster ⁠general, David Steiner, said on Wednesday that the postal service would not deliver mailed ballots in states that refused to turn over their lists, which would greatly hinder voting access.

Rachel Hurley writes mail voting is how a lot of seniors vote. It’s how a lot of disabled folks vote. It’s how military families overseas vote. None of that has anything to do with fraud, because the fraud doesn’t exist. Election officials from both parties have said that for years.

If this rule sticks and blue states refuse to play along, you end up with mail voting in red states and nowhere else, right before the midterms that decide who runs Congress. Steiner says it’s just about matching ballots and being efficient. A guy who can’t keep the post office out of bankruptcy is going to lecture us about efficiency while he sets up a national list of mail voters.

*So yesterday, a ruling from Judge Indira Talwani amounted to a broad rejection of the Trump administration’s attempts to change federal election procedures through an executive order, repeatedly emphasizing that the Constitution grants authority over elections not to the executive branch but to individual states and Congress.

“It is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling Confirmed Citizen Lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the U.S. citizens residing in every State. The President lacks any authority to compile voter lists for each State,” said Talwani.

We’ll see how this all shakes out but it’s just one more BS distraction move by the con man to deflect any sort of attention on shit that matters.

One more bit: U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the Justice Department to either release un-redacted versions of several files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein or explain why it can’t do so, following a lawsuit accusing Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of improperly redacting documents.

Another wait and see…

4.
Sheriff Joe may be gone but the troubles and shenanigans at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office remain. ProPublica reports that a monitoring team has determined that the sheriff’s office has regressed in its compliance with the reforms mandated in a settlement of the Melendres v. Arpaio class-action lawsuit. The suit accused the law enforcement agency of using traffic stops to arrest people on immigration charges, racially profiling Latinos in the process. At the time, the court found that when the public did report misconduct, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others interfered with investigations. The court held Arpaio in criminal contempt in 2016 for continuing to make immigration arrests in violation of court orders, though he was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump.

5.
AZ Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed most of the crappy Republican bills from the crappy Republican dominated Arizona legislature crowd. As most of those folks will be in their seats for years and years it’s up to us to VOTE her back into office this fall.

According to the AZ Mirror, Hobbs has shattered the state’s record for vetoes during her four years in office.

To bypass her veto hammer, Repub legislators have sent 10 measures to this year’s ballot, where voters will get the final say.

And, as usual with Props and Ballot measures from the far-right, intent is often hidden and words are twisted in a way to make you think A PROGRESSIVE MUST’VE PENNED THIS! GREAT! I’M FOR IT!!

EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS

HCR 2048 (2026) — Military families’ ESA scholarship protection
— Buried in the legislation is a clause that says it is not just limited to “scholarship account programs that are established and maintained by this state for only children of military families.” Democrats said that means it would effectively bar any reforms to the ESA school voucher system.

HCR 2040 (2026) — School districts and labor unions
— Labor advocates say a provision tucked into the amendment could ban all public sector union negotiations across Arizona, not just in school districts. The proposal was developed by Republicans to punish the Arizona Education Association for launching an initiative campaign to reform the state’s universal school voucher program.

SCR 1032 (2026) — 60% direct-instructional-spending mandate
— This one sets strict controls on how public school budgets are spent, forcing more school closures and district bankruptcies.

ELECTIONS AND VOTING

HCR 2001 (2026)— “Fast Election Results Act”
— This one has *rump written all over it. The provisions limiting voting to citizens and requiring voter ID at polling places are already in state law; it is unclear how voters would show their ID if they vote by mail, as more than 70% of voters do.

DEI AND GENDER (always a crowd favorite!)

HCR 2044 (2026) — Anti-DEI amendment
— Bars public institutions from compelling endorsement of race-based preferences or DEI/intersectionality tenets, and from spending public money on offices that promote race-based preferential treatment.

HCR 2003 (2026) — Anti-trans “Protect Girls’ Sports Act”
— The always popular bathroom argument amongst the low IQ crowd. This one would regulate bathrooms and locker use by transgender athletes in private, public schools and sports associations.

PUBLIC SAFETY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

HCR 2055 (2025)— Drug cartels as terrorist organizations
— This one amends state law to declare drug cartels terrorist organizations and direct the Arizona Department of Homeland Security to act against them, meaning it can be used against anyone or anything defined as violating citizens rights, health or general welfare.

SCR 1004 (2026) — Photo-enforcement voter approval
— I’m not sure about this one but you can read about it here.

TAXES AND GOVERNMENT FINANCE

HCR 2021 (2025) — Cap on local grocery taxes
— This may be hardest on rural communities where it may force massive cuts in first responders and local services.

SCR 1004 (2025) — Ban on vehicle-miles-traveled taxes
— The Mirror writes that this amends the Arizona Constitution to bar all levels of government from imposing a tax or fee based on vehicle miles traveled, or monitoring those miles. The proposal seeks to preemptively eliminate possible replacements to the gas tax that currently pays for road construction and maintenance, but which is underfunded both because the tax has not increased in decades and the proliferation of electric vehicles and fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles.

6.
We first were introduced to the fabulous Nina Conti in a quiet little movie titled Family Tree. You should know her work, too. We all need tears of laughter right now…

And now…