Home To Roost

This week on Home to Roost: Trump announced in Wasilla that Taiwan is ready to buy Alaska LNG, but Taiwan still remains only gas curious. A Republican accused his opponent of witchcraft. Does MAGA want to make Salem great again? And we discover how John Locke's Christian understanding of natural rights contradicts Christian nationalism—apparently, the troublesome part of “all men are created equal” is all. Tune in for gas, witches, and an Enlightenment badly in need of a revival.

This week on Home to Roost, South Korea insists Alaska’s LNG pipeline must make financial sense before investing, while the Trump administration apparently believes federal money can be handed out in $500 and $90 installments without Congress’s permission. A GOP senator warns that your airline pilot might secretly be a furry. Does he secretly desire Rocky and Bullwinkle to fly his plane? And we ask whether Thomas Paine would recognize a democracy in which the people are supposed to be sovereign, but where five Supreme Court justices get to define the Constitution.

South Korea is investing $54 billion in the Alaska gas line! Except, apparently, it isn’t. We follow the money—or, more accurately, look around for it. Meanwhile, bipartisan support for green energy shows signs of photosynthesis, we play another round of Public Policy Pursuit, and Thomas Paine declares, “In America, the law is king.” But did the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States dethrone the king?

This week we do something a bit different. We present interviews with four Alaskans who describe how changes in federal policies have affected them or their organizations, whether for better or for worse. Specifically, we interviewed Alaskans involved with libraries, social work, foster care, and fish processing. We hope you find their stories insightful.

This week on Home to Roost: the Fed raises rates, Sutton’s Evan Jones Mine supplies fossils for a conversation about Alaska’s warmer future, and Trump’s remarks about blood and genetics put purported pedigrees on the agenda. Then we open some very old mail: Kendall v. United States (1838), a reminder that presidential supervision doesn’t erase duties Congress assigned the postmaster. Interest, ancient leaves, and legal briefs: considerably more variety than your usual mailbox. 

This week on Home to Roost: Social Security approaches insolvency while Trump offers a $5,000 “dividend” financed more like a forced loan. Meanwhile, Alaska gets hammered by fuel prices, and Speaker Johnson’s vow not to “allow” Democrats to control Congress makes us wonder what the Constitution says about who ultimately decides elections.

This week on Home to Roost, we follow the federal government into some strange territory. Trump's DHS, not just the Postal Service, plans to review mail-in ballots, and the Ninth Circuit reminds the Administration that Congress defines spending. Meanwhile, President Trump publicly ponders an astronaut’s mustache, and the Pentagon briefly wonders if some service women need more testosterone. We also discuss the Appropriations Clause. Checks, balances, ballots, budgets, facial hair, and hormones. Just another week in Washington.

Trade wars, robot wars, and Blackbeard with broadband. Canadian tariffs come for Alaska, delayed federal ferry money finally docks, and AI agents discover cooperation—and even self-sacrifice. John and Rachel also ask whether cyberwar will revive an old constitutional idea: privateering. 

 Tariffs, trees, and Tina Peters. John and Rachel look at why Alaska parents are paying more for school supplies, what the Trump administration’s plan to scrap the Roadless Rule could mean for the Tongass and Chugach National Forests, and why using federal dollars to pressure Colorado into freeing convicted election official Tina Peters set a worrisome precedent for a state as dependent on Washington as Alaska. Then they head to Article IV and the Constitution’s Property Clause—the remarkably short provision behind some remarkably large arguments over who gets to decide what on federal land.

 In this episode,  Rachel wonders whether $272 million in federal Rural Health Transformation Program money might fail to fully land in Alaska, while John looks into the billions of dollars some Native corporations are getting in ICE contracts. We also see who has called Trump a mere temporary tenant of the White House, and we discuss what George Washington might have thought about our war with Iran.