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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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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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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President Joe Biden has just announced he will be using the Defense Production Act of 1950 to support the mining of some critical minerals, to ensure that America produces more of these elements that are necessary for the high-tech world we live in. This is important, as we've all seen the automobile industry struggle to build cars when things like computer chips are in short supply. The scarcity of one product (or even one element of one product) has ripple effects throughout all sorts of supply chains. It's not just cars, either -- the biggest thing Biden's new order addresses is the minerals needed for the batteries which power hundreds of millions of the devices which are now almost necessary for modern life. But I have to wonder whether this is going to include rare earth elements -- because it really should.

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That headline isn't a judgment in any way, nor is it a metaphor or pun or even a boast. It's the literal truth -- California's state government has too big a budget surplus. They've got too much money, and the only question is what to do with it. This may sound strange, since governments normally don't fret about having too much in their coffers, but there is a 1970s-era state law that says that they're going to have to send some of it back to the taxpayers. So that's what the politicians in Sacramento are now arguing about -- how to rebate this money and to whom.

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Lo, how far the moralistic mavens of the Republican Party have fallen! They keep attempting to take the moral high road so they can piously point out all the failings of their political opponents in this realm... but they keep being undermined by fellow Republicans who have embraced the new amoralism Donald Trump ushered in to the GOP.

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Something rather astonishing happened on Capitol Hill this week. The Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent, acting with such blinding speed that some senators weren't even aware of what was happening. Contrast this to the Senate's usual modus operandi, which is for things to move so slowly that a glacier would be seen as zipping along by comparison. Arcane parliamentary procedures are routinely used to gum up the legislative works, which often leads to nothing at all happening -- after spending enormous amounts of time and energy in the attempt.

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Earmarks are back! After 11 years in the political wilderness, the budgetary tactic has returned to Capitol Hill. This means that individual members of Congress were once again able to reserve chunks of money in the massive omnibus budget bill that passed last week. The practice was largely seen as completely out of control back in 2010 and became a rallying cry for the Tea Party movement and Republicans in general, which led to a complete ban on the practice in Congress. That ban has now been lifted, and this is the first budget that includes earmarks to pass in over a decade.

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