It has long been a Hollywood maxim: "There is no such thing as bad press." To movie stars, it doesn't really matter why you get your name in the papers, because it puts your name in front of the public, whether for good or bad. The worst tragedy for a Hollywood star is being forgotten by the public, to put this another way. So it doesn't matter what gets you in the news -- a scandal, a real stinkeroo of a movie, whatever -- it reminds everyone who you are and creates the magical "buzz," which means you stand a higher chance of getting better roles in the future.

We seem now to have reached the point where this maxim is true in politics as well, at least for some people. News that would previously have been not just bad but downright disqualifying in the past now boosts your name recognition and actually builds support among your party's base. This is becoming more and more frequent in the age of Trump, as more and more politicians learn how to capitalize on the phenomenon.

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It is "Supreme Court Decision Week" in the world of politics, and while a few earlier SCOTUS decisions of this term turned out surprisingly liberal, the court saved its most radically-restrictive rulings for the very end. Three big rulings this week will have the effect of: (1) removing race from college admissions processes and all but killing affirmative action, (2) halting President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program before it starts, and (3) making it allowable -- as long as you cite religious reasons -- for businesses to discriminate against and refuse to serve gay people. This was a pretty grim end to the court's legal term, obviously.

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President Joe Biden launched an interesting campaign strategy today -- one that wouldn't be all that remarkable for a Republican, but one that has proven somewhat tough for Democratic presidents to manage. He is going to take credit for the economy and make it a centerpiece of his efforts to convince the American electorate to give him four more years in office. And he's not doing this by halves, either, he is jumping in with both feet by embracing the term: "Bidenomics."

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It is "Infrastructure-Touting Week" again at the White House. I say this, of course, to draw a stark distinction between President Joe Biden launching a media blitz (to boast of his ongoing achievements in improving America's infrastructure) and the former president, for whom "Infrastructure Week" became the punchline to a long-running and rather sad joke.

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One year ago, the Supreme Court overturned a right that women had been able to freely exercise for the previous half-century. Since then, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade continues to reverberate across the political landscape. Initially it was thought by many that this would be some sort of minor and temporary political issue, as clueless pundits predicted that somehow women would just sort of forget about the fact that a freedom had been taken away from them -- that they likely wouldn't even remember it at all by the time the next election rolled around. This has been proven wrong on numerous occasions, and it will likely be proven wrong all over again in the 2024 elections as well. Losing the fundamental freedom of bodily autonomy is a lot bigger issue than many had assumed, for what are now patently obvious reasons. When has taking freedom away from people ever been popular with those affected, after all?

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President Joe Biden got some good economic news this week, as the official inflation rate fell to only 4.0 percent. This is down from last year's high of 9.1 percent, and is a significant achievement. Most economists will tell you that's still a bit too high and that 2.0 percent is the goal they're shooting for, but 4.0 percent is getting pretty close to that goal, you have to admit.

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I have to admit, in an otherwise rather extraordinary week in the presidential campaign, I learned an interesting factoid: there is already a convicted felon running for president from the inside of a jail cell. Amusingly, this is happening over on the Democratic side of things. The so-called "Tiger King," a.k.a. "Joe Exotic," is currently serving a 21-year sentence in a federal prison for a murder-for-hire scheme (as well as other lesser charges). He is currently also a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He's run for president before, in 2016 and 2020, but this is his first time running as a Democrat. Amusingly enough, an article about his campaign launch prominently featured one campaign promise from the Tiger King: "First of all, as soon as I'm sworn in, I have the right to pardon myself."

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It's hard not to poke at least a little bit of fun at Speaker Kevin McCarthy's problems with the most fractious and unruly members of his caucus right now, since the whole episode is such weak tea compared to the strength the Freedom Caucus and the whole MAGA faction were supposed to have leveraged over McCarthy. They haven't exactly turned into paper tigers, but I've read more than one article in the past 24 hours which used the term "defanged," which seems about right.

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And so it all ended with a whimper and not a bang. President Joe Biden will sign the bill passed by both houses of Congress to increase the debt ceiling until after the 2024 elections. The bill is a clear victory for Biden, since it contains very little (virtually any) of the initial Republican budget-slashing demands. But Biden couldn't come out and say how good a deal he got from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy until now, because if he had done so it would have fed into the resistance by the farthest-right members of Congress, but now that the bill has safely been passed Biden has scheduled an Oval Office address for later today (7:00 PM, Eastern Time). We should note this is too late for anything he says to be addressed or included here in this column, but we will definitely be watching Biden speak later on today. [Editorial Note: we did listen to Biden's address, and we know it may be hard to believe, but we had picked out our "Crisis Averted" headline before Biden used the phrase tonight.]

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The news broke in Washington over the holiday weekend that we finally have a deal. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to a plan which will constrain the federal budget and raise the debt ceiling past the 2024 elections. Nobody's exactly thrilled with the parameters of the deal, with grumbles being heard from both from the MAGA right and the progressive left. At this point, though, the deal looks like it will likely garner enough support to pass the House, and the Senate likely won't kill it off at the last minute. That's where things currently stand at any rate.

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