It wasn't the biggest or most important political news of the week, we admit, but the one story that definitely caught our attention was the earthquake which reverberated outward from the Democratic National Committee. This Wednesday, the D.N.C.'s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to upset the early-primary applecart to allow for the possibility of a complete shakeup of the roster of early-voting states (currently: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina). For the 2024 presidential race, all the states have now been encouraged to apply for a spot on the early calendar -- with no guarantees for the four states that have previously enjoyed the privilege of going first.

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There's a new poll out on the subject of what the American public thinks about schools that shows how wide an opening there is for Democrats to exhibit some leadership on the issue, especially considering how much political hay Republicans are planning on making over it all in the midterm elections. As a Washington Post article about the poll puts it, there is a "silent majority" that simply does not agree with the Republican position on things like banning books from school libraries and curricula, teaching sex and sexuality, or mentioning race and racism. But while a majority of the public can afford to stay silent on these issues, Democrats cannot. Which led me to an idea -- one I haven't heard anyone else put forward yet. Why not have a Democratic point person on education and educational issues that can articulate a clear position and back it up against the slings and arrows of the right? And who better to step into such a role than First Lady Dr. Jill Biden?

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It's time for another COVID checkup. I say this for two reasons, one personal and one media-related. The personal is that I just got my second booster shot this past weekend. Which I would have done anyway, because I personally trust medical science and want to be as protected as possible against the pandemic; but in the past few days I might have been more motivated to do so, if all the information I got was from television news. Because, according to them, it's time for everyone to panic once again.

The news media has taken a lot of flak for their pandemic reporting, some of it justified and some not. This is a deadly disease which has swept through the American population in multiple waves and is close to having caused one million American deaths. That's as serious as it gets, obviously. The number of deaths is almost certainly a lot higher than that, but when the official number does push through the seven-digit threshold, it will doubtlessly be big news. It is natural to note when such a milestone number has been reached, but what is less natural is to treat all COVID news as bad -- or to exclusively report on the bad at the expense of any good news at all. Which sums up the viewpoint of television news for roughly the past year or so.

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There are two major political storms on the horizon that will both break long before the midterm congressional elections, but as it looks now there is one overriding issue in domestic politics that will likely be one of the core issues in the race no matter what. Yes, it's time once again to dust off the 30-year old quip from James Carville: "It's the economy, stupid." This time around, it could be narrowed to: "It's the inflation, stupid."

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I know this might astonish some folks, but it is indeed a fact of life in America that the children of famous and influential politicians occasionally cash in on their last name. Well, technically, they don't even have to have the same last name, they don't have to be children (they can be other family members or even close friends sometimes), and occasionally the "cashing in" is a bit more nefarious than just your garden-variety grifting. But the fact remains that a closeness (or even perceived closeness) to power is indeed a saleable commodity out in the marketplace.

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History was made this week, as Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman ever confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court. It's rare that such a milestone is reached, and it is unquestionably worth celebrating when it does finally happen. Especially since the first Black woman ever to become vice president was the one presiding over the Senate as it cast this historic vote.

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For the first time in American history, today the Senate confirmed a Black woman to become a justice on the United States Supreme Court. Since its formation in 1789, the Supreme Court has only had two previous Black justices (Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas), both of whom were male. Out of 115 justices who have ever sat on the highest court in the land, 108 of them have been White men. Only seven have either been women or non-White. And when the court convenes next fall, for the first time White men will actually become a minority on the court. Or, to put this a much better way: for the first time, the highest court in the land will actually be a lot more representative of the makeup of the citizens of the United States of America. This is a historic occasion, and a very hard-fought victory for all who aren't White men.

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President Barack Obama returned to the White House yesterday, for the first time in five years. He was there to support President Joe Biden in a signing ceremony, although it wasn't for a bill but merely for an executive order. This directive will provide a fix for some people who had fallen through the cracks of the Affordable Care Act, and will wind up helping many American families afford health insurance for their whole family. So it's easy to see why Obama was invited, to help usher in a technical fix for his greatest achievement as president.

But I have to say, while it was good to see Obama give a short speech and crack a few jokes with Biden, it did kind of draw attention to how much he's kept himself in the background ever since he left office. And if Biden and the rest of the Democrats are smart, they'd be all but begging Obama to take a much more active role in his party heading into the midterm election season.

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Donald Trump's Big Lie continues to reverberate through American politics. The latest iteration of this is a growing Republican push to ban all machines used in the elections process and instead hand-count all the ballots. They've even got a snappy slogan: "Vote Amish!" I suppose that's better than "Vote Luddite," since it has a distinctly American flavor. But the entire concept is so unworkable and ridiculous (and downright dangerous) that it would be a near-guarantee of more election chaos, longer waits before the counts are complete, and lots and lots of new opportunities for challenging vote results that Republicans don't like (when Republicans lose, in other words). Which could be the entire point, of course.

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I can't believe I'm about to do this, but this is a column offering some free and helpful advice to Donald Trump.

No, really -- it's not an extended April Fools joke, I swear!

What inspired me to write some political advice for the former president was watching how his fledgling social media platform Truth Social seems to be going down the tubes. Launched in February (on Presidents' Day) it soon became a very popular download -- but that's where the success story ended. Because downloading the app (onto your Apple phone, since there is still no version for the Android yet) didn't get you in. People were put on a wait list with hundreds of thousands of people in front of them. Which is where they'd stay for weeks and weeks. The waitlist is now reportedly up to over 1.4 million. When people finally did make it onto the platform, there wasn't much of anybody there to talk to.

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