The Homefront Report: The Grass Is Thriving. The Republic Has Questions.

Trump tours his luxury lawn while debt rises, public health wobbles, and thousands prepare to lose their health plan.

The United States national debt crossed $40 trillion on Wednesday, which would ordinarily be the sort of development that inspires a president to gather his economic advisers, soberly assess the danger, and perhaps refrain from purchasing anything with his name carved into it for at least one afternoon. Donald Trump took reporters on a 40-minute tour of his White House renovations.

He showed them the new granite driveway. He admired the freshly laid sod, donated by Scotts Miracle-Gro, a company he helpfully noted had contributed to his campaign. He displayed his refurbished columns, praised his own understanding of grass, and presented the ornate new helipad where a stone bearing his name will be installed. The helipad, he explained, could also be used for cocktails before guests proceed to the ballroom.

Nothing says fiscal restraint quite like converting the presidential helicopter landing zone into a cocktail patio while the country’s debt counter rolls over to a number containing fourteen digits. Trump also took time to discuss the quality of his flagpoles.

“This is a great pole,” he said.

The national debt has grown by approximately $2 trillion since October. Long-term bond yields have climbed, mortgage rates are near their highest level in a year, and the Treasury Department is more than doubling the amount of government debt it buys back in an attempt to calm the market. But the flagpoles are top of the line.

Here on the Homefront, we are also renovating, although nobody has installed a personalized helipad, the lawn is mostly whatever survived the children, and our granite budget currently stands at absolutely not.

Yesterday afternoon, I swept what felt like mountains of crap out of my children’s existing rooms in preparation for their move upstairs. It’s so interesting how you can love someone so much and also want to hang them upside down by their toes and shake them until the missing socks, snack wrappers, rocks, broken crayons, and unidentified plastic objects fall out of their pockets.

To be fair, it is summer vacation, and I haven’t been very on top of them. We have been too busy gardening, working on the house, playing outside, and enjoying our home life. I must accept some responsibility for the conditions inside those rooms. I can accept responsibility and remain mildly irritated, though. Two things can be true.

We have a dump trailer this week because we are giving up our storage space to create bedrooms for the kids, which means we have accumulated years of belongings that now require decisions. Unfortunately, I have ADHD, and I already know exactly how this will go.

I will walk into the storage area prepared to throw something away. I will find an object I haven’t seen in three years. The object will awaken a memory, suggest an unrelated project, or look vaguely useful for an imaginary future emergency. Twenty minutes later, I will be sitting on the floor surrounded by shiny things while the original object remains firmly inside the house. It will be a joy.

The Home Depot order is on its way, and the work will begin soon. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Our oldest has decided that he is a free person, which apparently means he can hop on his electric scooter and simply leave whenever the spirit moves him. This isn’t ideal, which means we must now do the parent thing and ground him from electric scooters, because freedom is a beautiful concept, but freedom doesn’t mean disappearing down the road without telling your stepmother where you’re going.

There were tears first, but at four years old, she has already developed an ability some people take their entire lives to acquire. She can look into the future, understand that throwing away the toys she no longer plays with will lead to something better, and then accept it. I couldn’t be prouder of her.

Ezra is perfect. He’s so happy all the time, and I feel incredibly blessed to have him. He is also beginning to experiment with climbing, so hold onto your hats, folks. We have a climber on our hands, which means my anxiety has officially gone from mild to moderate.

Then there’s my husband, whom I am moderately convinced is being worn down by the fact that there is never a moment when he isn’t needed in some form. There’s always another project, another child, another problem, another decision, another person asking him to carry something heavy or explain why a piece of the house is sagging.

He tries his best, but what can you really do when it seemingly never ends? Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we lie in silence, each carrying anxieties we can’t seem to explain clearly to the other. Sometimes we would both like to throw our hands into the air and announce that we won’t be taking calls for the foreseeable future. But we keep trying.

That’s what you do when you love each other and you love your family. You keep going, even when it’s hard. You remind yourself why it’s worth it, look at the smiles, listen to the laughter, and try to see the better future taking shape beneath the mess. We build, we grow, we get annoyed, tired, and completely done, and then we grow some more.

Five years ago, I never imagined I would be standing here, inside a house I can call my own, surrounded by these beautiful children with their individual gifts, married to a man who keeps trying even when he’s too tired to take one more step, writing these essays and fighting for independent media alongside my mom. Five years from now, who knows where I will be?

The hope is that I won’t be trapped beneath an authoritarian dictatorship, which brings me naturally to today’s trash heap of a news cycle. While Trump was admiring the emotional well-being of his grass, he also nominated Dr. Heidi Overton to become the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Overton is a physician and senior White House policy aide who has helped develop the administration’s health agenda. She previously worked at the America First Policy Institute and now serves as deputy director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council.

In other words, Trump has selected someone from inside his own political operation to oversee the federal agency responsible for determining whether our medications, vaccines, medical devices, food, and countless other products are safe. Overton stood beside Trump as he ordered a review of childhood vaccine recommendations and promoted separating the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine into individual shots. The American Academy of Pediatrics warned that the proposal was dangerous and misleading, particularly during the country’s worst measles outbreak in decades.

There’s no credible evidence that the combined MMR vaccine causes autism. Separating the doses would require children to receive more injections over a longer period, potentially delaying protection and creating additional opportunities for children to miss doses entirely. The virus doesn’t care whether the president has concerns and measles doesn’t pause politely while parents schedule three separate appointments.

Overton has also opposed expanded access to medication abortion and criticized the distribution of abortion pills through telehealth. As FDA commissioner, she would have enormous influence over the rules governing mifepristone, one of the two medications commonly used in abortion care. Her nomination must still be confirmed by the Senate, where lawmakers will have the opportunity to ask whether one of the nation’s most important scientific agencies should be led by someone chosen primarily because she has been a loyal architect of the president’s political health agenda.

This isn’t happening inside a stable public-health system. The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently apologized to employees for what she called the “extreme psychological unsafety” they have experienced. She attempted to reassure the remaining staff that the agency could still respond to the next disease outbreak despite drastic cuts to personnel and programs.

It’s comforting to know that the people protecting us from epidemics are being reassured that they can probably continue protecting us from epidemics. The administration is hollowing out public-health institutions while insisting everything is fine, then placing loyalists at the top and asking Americans to trust the process. The grass, meanwhile, has received brand-new earth containing what Trump described as many good ingredients.

Americans looking for healthcare may not be so fortunate. Providence Health Plan is now shutting down its insurance business entirely after a deal to preserve its Medicare Advantage operation fell apart. More than 64,000 Medicare Advantage members will need to find new coverage. The broader wind-down also affects more than 260,000 commercial insurance members and over 58,000 Medicaid enrollees, predominantly in Oregon.

The company employs approximately 1,150 people. Providence had already announced that it would leave much of the insurance market beginning in 2027, but it hoped another national insurer would take over its Medicare Advantage plans. That agreement never materialized.

For seniors, changing Medicare Advantage plans isn’t simply a matter of selecting a new color from a pamphlet. A new plan can mean a different network of doctors, different prescription coverage, different prior-authorization requirements, and different rules governing where and how a person receives care. People who have spent years assembling a workable combination of doctors, specialists, medications, and benefits may be forced to begin again.

Providence has blamed regulatory pressures and consolidation among enormous national insurers for creating what it called an untenable situation. Its health plan reported a $102 million loss in 2025, even as the healthcare system has been selling assets and restructuring its operations. This is what consolidation does. It doesn’t create more choices. It creates a market in which only the largest companies can survive, and everyone else is told to select from whatever remains.

In our house, when a child decides freedom means vanishing on an electric scooter, we take away the scooter. When the bedrooms become unlivable, we get a broom. When the storage area overflows, we borrow a dump trailer. When my husband and I are exhausted, anxious, and failing to communicate, we try again. We do these things because the problems are real, the people affected are real, and love requires more from us than polishing the top layer and pretending everything beneath it is perfect.

Government should work the same way. A better future doesn’t arrive because someone installed excellent sod and declared the renovation complete. It must be built beneath the surface, inside the systems that keep people alive, housed, educated, protected, and free. It requires maintenance, honesty, and listening when something is sagging in the middle instead of carving your name into the nearest available stone and inviting everyone over for cocktails.

We’re building bedrooms because our children need room to grow. We’re clearing away years of accumulated things because our family has changed. We’re fighting, apologizing, worrying, laughing, and trying again because we believe there is something ahead worth reaching.

Five years ago, I couldn’t see this life. Five years from now, I want to look back and know that we kept building toward something better, even while the people in power were busy discussing flagpoles. Until then, we’ll keep growing children, gardens, independent media, and the stubborn belief that this country still belongs to all of us.

The grass at the White House may be very happy. The people of the Republic, however, still have questions.