Dave W writes: Interesting substack article by a woman who grew up in a MAGA-adjacent family and got out, about her Trump-supporting relatives.

These days, my dad won't condemn Trump. He says, "We had to do something about immigration." He doesn't want to talk about climate change. He doesn't care about what's going on with DOGE.

Neither does my brother.

Even though neither of them vote, they're a classic example of voting against your interests. They don't vote out of conscience. They don't opt out of politics for any reason other than their own indifference. They honestly don't care who's running things. They believe it doesn't affect them.

And yet, my dad lost at least a hundred thousand dollars to a broken healthcare system over my mom's mental and physical illness. He paid astronomical bills to doctors who never returned his calls and complained when he nagged them for the results of tests he paid for. He spent years looking for the only longterm care facility in the state that would take a paranoid schizophrenic patient. He spent countless hours haggling with his insurance.

You know when they say if you don't do politics, politics does you? Well, politics did my dad. It did him over and over.

He never did politics back.

My dad doesn't understand, or won't admit, that Republican lawmakers in his state screwed us out of a fortune, by presiding over a broken healthcare system designed to exploit people like us. His solution to every problem like this one has been: work harder, save more, and ride it out.

My dad doesn't identify as MAGA, but he's MAGA adjacent. My in-laws don't identify as MAGA either, but they still support Trump.

Heebie's take: It's a quick read, and it rings true to me. I have so much anger aimed at these people.

I don't have access to this Atlantic article, but anyway: America's Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall Off a Cliff. Here's an NPR interview with the author, a guy at Stanford.

This has never occurred to me, but it makes 100% sense. Basically, the crime rate started plummeting about 30 years ago, and prison terms are a lagging indicator of that same trend.

I am wondering exactly how this plays out, in terms of the privatized prison system. There are lots of examples of when an industry feels threatened, they become immoral monsters in the name of self-preservation. It's not a stretch to imagine them lobbying on behalf of ICE or increased penalties for minor infractions, or generally fear-mongering about crime in cities, etc. But probably I'm just not capable of imagining what else they'd come up with.

How bad is this Supreme Court ruling that Trump can fire everybody? Catastrophic or par for the course? What about the one limiting the scope of injunctions? What is wrong with these people?