Since the sitting 46th president of the United States Joe Biden entered the oval office in January of 2021, things have been unstable, chaotic and volatile at every level of American life and politics. Record levels of inflation not witnessed since Jimmy Carter was president in the mid-1970s have crushed working class families, hurting the already shrinking American middle class. Wages, stagnant for decades, have declined in many cases as the dollar has been devalued and the spending power of citizens has decreased. At the southern border, millions of illegal migrants have entered the nation on an annual basis since the commencement of the presidents first term, and the administration has remained unable to address the growing crisis even after a prominent Democratic mayor of a major city has called upon them to act.
On the international stage, the powers of Russia and China, emboldened by weak leadership from Washington D.C., have acted in increasingly aggressive styles. Russia invaded Ukraine in the winter of 2022 and remains stalemated in the conflict. China continues to take aggressive stances in the pacific, threatening U.S. dominance in the region. Ultimately, the trajectory of American affairs is on the decline. Domestically, political corruption is rampant; both parties have engaged in gerrymandering in terms of shaping the electoral maps in states across the union and in many other more serious illicit activities.
In South Carolina, plaintiffs have challenged the legitimacy of the boundaries of the states 1st federal congressional district. The ACLU and the NAACP were part of a larger suit that seeks to redefine the district. Plaintiffs allege that the new map moved over 30,000 black American voters (overwhelmingly Democrats) into the 6th congressional district. In 2018, the district had flipped from Republican to Democrat, before returning to Republican control in 2020 by a narrow 1% margin. The new map was then drawn, and the seat remained Republican by a 14-point margin in 2022.
