The Homefront Report: The Water Is Running Somewhere

The Trump administration puts a price on obedience, troops settle into Washington through 2029, military families are pulled apart, Iran keeps its hand on the world’s oil supply, and Oregon burns thro

Before we begin today’s Homefront Report, I’d like to take a moment to remember Jackie, the beloved bald eagle of Big Bear. For years, we watched her live an entire wild life before us. We watched her shelter her eggs beneath her body while snow slowly buried the nest around her. We watched her endure terrible losses, welcome new life and return season after season to rebuild beside Shadow. She belonged only to the wild, but somehow she became part of our homes. Thousands of people waited for the lift of her head, the spread of her wings and the first tiny crack in an egg. Jackie never knew how many of us were watching, hoping and loving her from afar. She only knew the ancient work of surviving, protecting and caring for the lives entrusted to her.

I can’t stop thinking that if Shadow could have been beside her during those final weeks, perhaps she might have found the strength to hold on. I know love can’t cure every wound, but theirs was the kind of bond that made you believe it might try. They weathered storms together, mourned together and returned to one another again and again. Perhaps that’s why losing her hurts so much. Somewhere in Big Bear, Shadow remains beneath the same wide sky, waiting for a mate who will never fly home.

Jackie and Shadow brought an extraordinary amount of kindness into this world, not simply because of the tenderness they showed one another, but because of the tenderness they awakened in us. They inspired elementary school students, including fifth-graders, to fight for the land surrounding their home. Those children wrote letters, held bake sales, sold lemonade, folded bald eagle origami and walked through their community carrying signs because two wild birds had taught them that loving something means trying to protect it. Their small acts became part of something much larger. More people paid attention, more people cared and an entire movement gathered around the belief that Jackie and Shadow’s home was worth saving. Eventually, $10 million was raised and nearly 63 acres of their habitat were protected from development.

That is what Jackie leaves behind. She leaves Shadow, her eaglets and a nest that will never feel quite the same. She also leaves children who discovered their voices, adults who remembered how deeply they could care and a piece of wild land that will remain wild because millions of people fell in love with two eagles. Jackie never knew that she had started a movement of kindness and care. She never knew that fifth-graders were fighting for her home or that people across the world were carrying her family inside their hearts. She simply lived, loved and endured, and somehow that was enough to make the human world gentler.

This morning, the nest remains, Shadow remains and the sky above Big Bear is still wide, but it feels immeasurably emptier without her in it. Fly free, beautiful Jackie. You were wild, you were deeply loved and the kindness you inspired will live far beyond the forest that knew you first.

Turning from Jackie to the day’s political news feels almost cruel, but perhaps that is exactly why her story belongs here. Jackie reminds us that care isn’t passive, it notices what is vulnerable, understands that power carries responsibility and brings people together to protect something larger than themselves. A group of fifth-graders understood that, the Trump administration, on the other hand, has found a new way to use power not to protect communities, but to pressure them into obedience.

The Justice Department is offering nearly $300 million to two to four cities willing to become national models for Trump’s preferred version of public safety. The money can fund police officers, prosecutors, surveillance technology, drones, detention facilities, treatment programs and other services. That’s the attractive fixture in the showroom, the plumbing behind the wall is considerably uglier.

Cities seeking the money must cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, adopt administration-approved policies on homelessness and secure support across their local governments. They must also agree that they may be required to reimburse the federal government for future law enforcement interventions if violent crime or “public disorder” increases.

In other words, the federal government may give a city money to adopt Trump’s policing model, decide later that the city is insufficiently orderly, send in federal forces and hand the bill back to the residents. It’s less a public-safety grant than a municipal obedience contract with a very expensive cancellation policy.

After spending nearly 72 hours dealing with a broken water line, I have become unusually sensitive to systems that appear fixed at the point of delivery while something important continues pouring away somewhere out of sight.

We’re making progress, everything is hooked up, and there are no leaks that we can see. The water is running, and everyone has taken a shower, which is fortunate because I don’t know how much longer I could have continued hugging my family under the previous sanitary conditions.

For one glorious moment, we believed we had won. Then we realized the water is continuously running somewhere. We don’t know where, there are no visible leaks, nothing is spraying dramatically from the ceiling, and no mysterious indoor pond has appeared. Yet the pump keeps running, apparently sending water into another dimension where it may be enjoying a peaceful life without us.

So today, my husband, my brother, who has been recruited as acting plumber, and I are heading back into the world of pipes, pressure tanks and domestic despair. We will inspect the system, admit what we don’t know, test possible explanations and keep working until we find the problem. This is generally how responsible adults handle a crisis. Trump, on the other hand, appears to believe that when a system is losing something valuable, the answer is to increase the pressure and punish anyone who points toward the leak.

Washington, D.C., provides the finished demonstration model. What began last summer as a supposedly temporary National Guard deployment has now been extended through January 20, 2029, or until Trump decides to end it. The Defense Department estimates that keeping an average of 2,500 Guard members in the capital through fiscal year 2029 will cost roughly $1.4 billion. A temporary emergency has quietly acquired a four-year lease.

The troops have supported law enforcement operations, patrolled public spaces, removed snow and performed beautification work. The administration presents this as proof that its approach works. Local officials and residents see something else: soldiers placed on city streets by a president who directly controls the D.C. National Guard, in a city whose residents still have no voting representation in Congress. The Model Cities Initiative now invites other communities to apply for their own version, provided everyone in local government agrees and nobody becomes disorderly afterward.

If the administration truly wanted to help cities reduce violence, it could fund locally designed programs based on evidence and community needs. Instead, it has attached federal money to immigration cooperation, homelessness policy and ideological conformity. Public safety is being used as the faucet, political obedience is the pipe. My daughter is conducting her own, much smaller experiment with authority.

We have been so consumed by the water emergency and the ordinary nonsense of daily life that she has not received the parental attention she needs. She has responded by telling me no with remarkable confidence and looking directly into my eyes while doing precisely what I have just asked her not to do. It’s a battle of wills, and part of me wants to let her win. She’s a firecracker, strong-willed, loving and brilliant in every possible way; I never want to extinguish that strength.

Unfortunately for both of us, I remain legally and morally responsible for the safety of the household and its inhabitants, which means I occasionally have to remind her that being powerful doesn’t make her the emergency commander.

The beautiful thing about my daughter is that I can explain this with love. She has the emotional intelligence to understand that rules aren’t punishments, authority carries obligations and I want what’s best for her. We can reconnect, repair the problem and adapt. Trump, on the other hand, has apparently reached the age when direct eye contact while doing exactly what he was told not to do becomes a governing philosophy.

That philosophy is now reaching into military families. An Associated Press investigation found that immigration authorities have detained more than 50 spouses and parents of active-duty service members since Trump returned to office. At least six have been deported, and at least eight immediate family members remained in federal custody when the investigation was published.

Democratic senators have opened an investigation into whether the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs coordinated these actions and what they are doing to military readiness. The administration’s answer is that military service doesn’t automatically grant legal status to relatives. That may be technically true, but it avoids the actual question. The government is asking service members to deploy abroad while forcing some of them to fight at home to keep their spouses and parents from being deported.

Trump has also created a Military Spouse Commission, because this administration enjoys establishing ceremonial support systems for people its operational systems are actively terrorizing.

The damage isn’t confined to American cities or military homes. Iran is refusing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without major concessions from the United States, including sanctions relief, compensation for war damage, access to frozen assets, the lifting of the blockade on Iranian ports and the withdrawal of American forces. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes through the strait. Every additional day of uncertainty puts pressure on energy markets, shipping costs and household budgets.

The war was sold as strength, it has instead given Iran leverage over one of the most important arteries in the global economy. Trump turned the valve, broke the line and is now furious that the water didn’t flow in the direction he promised.

Here in Oregon, water has an even more immediate meaning. More than 2.3 million acres have burned across the state this wildfire season, surpassing the previous record of just under 2.1 million acres set in 2024. The Northwest remains the most active fire region in the country, with dozens of large fires still burning across Oregon and Washington. For those of us living among trees, this isn’t a distant statistic. Every acre represents habitat, soil, water, homes, livelihoods and living systems that may take generations to recover.

Just when we thought our water line was fixed, another ugly problem reared its head to remind us that relief is fleeting and there will always be more to repair. The difference is that my husband, my brother and I will work together. We will look for the hidden failure, we’ll change our approach when the evidence tells us we were wrong, and we’ll learn something, fix what we can and try not to flood the property in the process.

My daughter will test the boundaries, I will hold them with love, and she will adapt, because strength and accountability can live inside the same person. Trump, on the other hand, keeps turning up the pressure, declaring the system repaired and demanding applause while the country listens to the pump run. The water is going somewhere. Our job is to keep looking until we know who opened the valve, who is benefiting from the flow and who is being left to drown.

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