Home page shows old posts before recent posts in feed

Hello all!
I’ve been using this theme since it first came out and after taking a break from blogging, I’m revisiting my design and freshening things up. One thing I notice on my home page is that below the featured post slider I have 12 other posts from the “featured” category I have that show *before* the recent posts. I’ve gone through every setting option both for my WP in general as well as for the theme specifically and can’t seem to figure out what the deal is.

If anyone has a little bit of code or insight as to how to only have those featured posts show in the slider, I would be forever grateful.
I tried eliminating the featured slider altogether, “featured” posts still show first. I’ve tried setting it so there’s no category, same thing, with the exception of putting one recent post first.

For reference: https://www.homespunaesthetic.com