Standing solemnly outside the historic Memphis motel where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was tragically assassinated in 1968, Willie Simon gazed upon a site that now serves as a museum honoring the Civil Rights Movement. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to dismantle a crucial element of the Voting Rights Act weighed heavily on his mind. Simon, a Black American, couldn’t help but ponder the implications for both his community and the entire nation, where political stability seems increasingly fragile.

As the leader of the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, Simon expressed his concerns about the precedent set by the court’s conservative majority. He feared that those who don’t belong to the “in-crowd” could be effectively marginalized and erased from the political landscape.

The Supreme Court’s decision undermined a vital requirement for states to draw congressional districts in a manner that allows minorities a chance to shape their destinies. This has intensified the redistricting battles across the nation, where both Democrats and Republicans have abandoned longstanding traditions in pursuit of political advantage. This week, two Republican-led states are set to convene sessions aimed at dismantling U.S. House districts currently held by Democrats, with more such actions anticipated.

This latest development is yet another strain on the American democratic experiment, which has been tested over the past decade, notably since Donald Trump’s ascent to power. The political discourse has become increasingly extreme, with a noticeable uptick in political violence and a disturbing series of assassinations. Even now, five years after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump’s supporters continue to exploit unfounded claims of voter fraud to alter the electoral process.

It’s the latest example of how the American democratic experiment has been pushed to the breaking point in the decade since Donald Trump rose to power. Extreme rhetoric has become commonplace. There’s been a spike in political violence and a rash of assassinations. Five years after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump’s allies are trying to harness the same falsehoods about voter fraud to reshape elections.

The rules and norms that once helped smooth over an unruly country’s vast differences have given way to a race for power at all costs.

“I’ve never subscribed to the idea we’re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “It speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.”

‘No more rule of law’

Trump ignited the conflict over redistricting last year by urging Republicans to redraw congressional maps to reduce the likelihood that his party loses the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.

It was an unusual step, since redistricting normally only takes place after the once-a-decade census to accommodate population shifts. But in 2019 the Supreme Court ruled federal courts cannot prevent partisan gerrymandering, and Trump saw a chance to push the limits.

Once Republican-led states like Texas started shifting district lines, Democratic-led states like California countered. The fight was heading for a draw until the Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued its long-awaited decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

The court weakened the last remaining national impediment to gerrymandering — the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that, in places where white people and outnumbered racial minorities vote differently, districts be drawn to give those minorities a chance to elect representatives they prefer.

The ruling opened a new set of political floodgates.

Republicans in Tennessee plan to erase the only Democratic congressional district, which is majority Black and centered in Memphis, by splitting it up among more conservative suburban and rural white communities. More than a dozen other majority-minority districts, mainly in the South, could face the same fate.

Louisiana moved to postpone its congressional primaries, set for May 16, to have a chance to redraw two majority-Black Democratic seats it was required to maintain before the recent ruling. Alabama is trying to get the Supreme Court to let it redraw its two majority-Black seats.

“We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. “That is more important than administrative convenience.”

He said Republicans could gain 20 seats through redistricting.

Democrats have threatened to retaliate by splitting up conservative bastions in states like New York and Illinois, which would reallocate Republican voters to more liberal, urban districts.

With fewer limits — either legal or self-imposed — people expect the issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage out of legislative maps.

“It’s hard to know where it ends,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA.

Partisans gleefully shared color-coded maps of California with all 54 House seats drawn for Democrats, or southern states with only a couple of blue districts. Most agreed that eventually it will be very hard for Democrats to get elected to the House in any Republican-run state, even if there are large swaths of blue-leaning terrain, and vice versa for Republicans in Democratic-run states.

That seems un-American, said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon who’s redrawn maps on behalf of judges reviewing redistricting litigation. The country’s system, he said, “was founded on this idea that it’s majority rule with minority rights.”

“There is no more rule of law in redistricting,” Cervas said. “There have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don’t really have elections.”

Politicians’ best tool to game elections

The arcane art of drawing legislative lines is the most powerful tool that politicians have for gaming elections. They can make districts an almost guaranteed win for their side by drawing lines that scoop up a majority of their voters and just enough of the opposition’s supporters to ensure the other party cannot win that seat or the one next door, either.

Lawmakers have used the trick since the country’s founding. Democratic gerrymanders helped the party hold onto the House through the Reagan revolution. After the 2010 midterms, Republican majorities in state legislatures allowed the GOP to draw districts to lock up control of the House even during President Barack Obama’s reelection two years later.

However, that didn’t prevent the “blue wave” in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when Democrats retook the House. It was a reminder that even the most partisan gerrymanders may stifle shifts in public opinion but eventually crack as political tides turn.

“When you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you can end up shooting yourself in the foot,” said Michael Li of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

Political coalitions also change, and voters that a party thinks will be reliable can switch sides. That’s what’s happened in the Trump era, as Democrats have expanded their support among wealthier and suburban voters and Republicans among Blacks and Latinos.

Although Republicans won’t be able to exploit the full force of the Supreme Court ruling until after the November midterms, it will be challenging for Democrats to find enough seats to counter those gains.

Sean Trende, a political analyst who has drawn maps for Republicans, agreed that the court decision is likely to lead to partisan gerrymandering run amok. He said it’s been hard to find neutral arbiters to rein in politicians who draw lines to benefit themselves.

The coming storm, Trende said, will be more of a symptom of polarization than its root cause.

“All our institutions are broken. We don’t speak a common political language,” Trende said. “This is what you get.”

Each year, Rob Michaels receives a notification from an IVF clinic regarding the continued storage of his frozen sperm. Without hesitation, he affirms his decision to keep it preserved.

Yet, he hasn’t shared this decision with his wife. The couple, both at the age of 41, have mutually decided against having children.

Despite this agreement, Rob has opted to freeze his sperm as a precautionary measure, joining a burgeoning trend among men in the UK.

Understanding that his ability to father a healthy child diminishes with time, Rob explained to Good Health: “I want to keep my options open if my perspective changes.”

“Being pragmatic, I recognize that many marriages don’t last forever. I’ve seen friends who suddenly desired children in their late 40s and 50s,” he added.

‘Yet your quality of sperm rapidly degrades as you get older, meaning you might not be able to have children – and if you do, you’ve got a higher chance of having a child with birth abnormalities.

‘The idea of having a child with serious care needs who will be a teenager when I am in my mid-60s is unfair on all of us.’

Rob’s wife is unaware of his decision, which is why he’s telling his story under a pseudonym.

Beth Warren, a physiotherapist from Birmingham, went to the High Court in 2014 to fight to keep her dead husband’s sperm frozen so that she could have his children in the future if she chose to

Traditionally, it’s been young women, warned about their ticking biological clocks, who’ve taken steps to safeguard their chance of having a baby by freezing eggs for future use – some employers even offer it as a perk.

Now a growing band of young men are taking similar action – while Rob is giving himself a safety net against his marriage collapsing, others are freezing their sperm so that they can get on with their careers or wait for the right person to come along.

Private clinics report the number of young men undertaking this kind of ‘social freezing’ has risen by around 60 per cent between 2022 and 2024.

And some experts believe it’s to be encouraged. Dr Wael Saab, a fertility consultant and medical director at the Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health in London, is unequivocal.

He says: ‘Men should strongly consider freezing their sperm while still in their prime.

‘For too long, the conversation around fertility and ageing was almost exclusively female.

‘The science is now firmly challenging that. A growing body of medical evidence has established that paternal age has a real and measurable impact on both sperm quality and fertility outcomes. The message is becoming harder to ignore: men should not wait.’

Certainly, science increasingly points that way.

The quality of a man’s sperm drops from as young as 40, according to study of around 3,000 men aged 16 to 56, reported in the journal Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics in 2024.

Meanwhile, research published last year in Nature found that while around 2 per cent of sperm from men in their early-30s carried disease-causing mutations, this rises to 3 to 5 per cent among those over 43.

Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and King’s College London used new high-tech equipment to analyse sperm from 81 healthy men, aged between 24 and 75, with greater precision than ever before. And many of the mutations identified in the new study have been linked to severe neurodevelopmental disorders in children and an inherited cancer risk.

This echoes previous research that suggested children of fathers aged over 40 are more at risk of autism and childhood cancers – and the daughters of these men may be at a slightly increased risk of breast cancer.

Advanced paternal age is also linked to higher rates of congenital conditions, such as cleft lip or palate, regardless of the mother’s age.

Children of fathers aged 45 and older are more likely to be born prematurely and develop seizures than those born to fathers aged 25 to 34, according to a major study of 40 million births published in The BMJ in 2018.

There are implications for the mother’s health, too – with older fathers increasing a woman’s chance of developing diabetes during pregnancy, the same study found.

Faced with these worrying findings – and with the NHS only funding sperm freezing for specific circumstances (such as men about to have medical treatment such as chemotherapy, and for soldiers facing active service) – younger men are taking preventative steps.

‘We’re seeing more men in their 20s and 30s interested in freezing their sperm to preserve their fertility,’ says Dr Cesar Diaz Garcia, an NHS consultant in fertility medicine based in Scotland and chief medical officer at the private clinic IVIRMA Global.

‘While many men freeze their sperm because they have a health condition or are facing treatment for a condition that might affect their fertility, some freeze their sperm purely because they’re aware the quality of their sperm will deteriorate with age,’ he says.

He says this is part of a growing awareness of the potential implications of delaying fatherhood.

‘Although the impact of age is far less in men than in women from their 30s onwards, recent research has been clear that male sperm quality does decline with age – and, as a result, more men are becoming conscious of their own fertility and the steps they may need to take to preserve it if they want to start a family later in life,’ says Dr Diaz Garcia.

The High Court backed Ms Warren’s case to stop the sperm, taken before her husband started treatment for cancer, from being destroyed by April 2015

Private clinics report the number of young men who have decided to start ‘social freezing’ has risen by around 60 per cent

‘Older paternal age can delay conception, increase the risk of miscarriage and even raise the chance of mental-health disorders in offspring,’ he adds.

(Some research suggests the offspring of older fathers may be more likely to develop bipolar disorder, for instance, but other factors may be involved.)

‘It can also affect IVF success, with live birth rates dropping significantly when the male is 40 or older,’ adds Dr Diaz Garcia.

Indeed, research co-authored by Dr Saab, published in the journal Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica in 2021, found that only 42 per cent of men aged over 51 undergoing IVF had sperm meeting normal standards, compared to 61 per cent of younger men – and their partners were one-third less likely to achieve a live birth.

‘This was the case even when the woman was young and healthy,’ says Dr Saab.

Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, and the number and quality declines steadily – with a sharp fall in fertility after the age of 35.

‘Men, by contrast, produce fresh sperm approximately every 74 days throughout their lives,’ says Dr Saab. ‘But quantity is not quality – and this is where men cannot afford to be complacent.’

As men age their sperm experience greater DNA fragmentation, where there are breaks in the genetic material.

‘Put simply: sperm is made in “factories” in the testicles and as you get older the testicles age with you,’ explains Dr Kevin McEleny, a consultant urologist at Newcastle Hospital NHS Trust.

‘These “factories” stop being so efficient as you age so you accumulate more DNA mutations.’

Apart from more traditional reasons for freezing sperm, such as before cancer treatment, Dr Saab says ‘pre-vasectomy banking is now increasingly common – where men are confident their family is complete but want a biological safety net, just in case circumstances change’.

But ‘social’ freezing – freezing sperm to delay starting a family – ‘is the fastest-growing group,’ he adds.

‘A man in his late-20s who isn’t ready for a family yet can bank his sperm at its peak biological quality, for use years down the line.’

Rob says that in his 20s and 30s, he was ‘on the fence’ about having children.

‘My friends began having children, but I generally found kids annoying,’ he says.

He and his wife married five years ago. Initially, he says: ‘We were both not keen on having children.

‘Then she found the hormones in the pill were making her unhappy. We talked and decided she should come off it and that if a baby happened, it happened.’

A year passed with no pregnancy. ‘By then we were both 38,’ says Rob. ‘Suddenly we went from “we don’t want kids” to “what if we can’t have kids?”.’

The couple went to a fertility clinic on the NHS and, as part of this process, Rob had to give several sperm samples for testing.

‘I had the option to freeze these in case we wanted IVF later,’ he recalls. ‘But as we went through more invasive tests, my wife decided she did not want kids after all. I was left with the dilemma – let the clinic destroy my samples, or keep them? I decided to keep them.’

Rob adds: ‘I’ve met older men who suddenly wanted children in their 50s after spending their life pursuing a career. There came a point where their work didn’t satisfy them any more, that they looked around and felt there must be more to life.’

Under UK law sperm can be frozen for a maximum of 55 years – although the man has to renew his consent every ten years.

And his consent is key: in a famous case in 2014, widow Beth Warren, a physiotherapist from Birmingham, went to the High Court to fight to keep her dead husband’s sperm frozen so that she could have his children in the future if she chose to.

‘Men should strongly consider freezing their sperm while still in their prime,’ says Dr Wael Saab

Her husband Warren Brewer had his sperm frozen before undergoing radiotherapy for cancer – the couple married six weeks before he died at the age of 32.

While he’d given his consent for her to use the sperm, the clinic where it was stored threatened to destroy the sample as he hadn’t renewed it. The court ruled in his widow’s favour.

There are financial considerations as well as practical ones, as every year sperm is stored, the bill adds up.

Private clinics typically charge between £400 and £600 to freeze the sperm and a yearly charge of £300 to £450 to store it.

And not everyone believes it is worth the money.

Dr McEleny, who is chair of the British Fertility Society, told Good Health: ‘We know that when men get into their 40s the quality of sperm declines a bit – and we know that the partners of older men take longer to conceive and are more likely to miscarry. There is also an increased risk of abnormalities such as autism.

‘What there isn’t is this abrupt cut-off in quality that women have,’ he adds.

‘So if I see older men I might mention that to them – but would it be worth freezing sperm on that basis? It’s difficult to say.

‘If they have good sperm quality at age 30 or 40, it probably wouldn’t be worth their while. It’s unlikely to have declined that much unless there’s some change in their health.’

But, he says, ‘men generally are not aware of the risks of delaying fatherhood.

‘Women are brought up to know how their bodies work. If a woman doesn’t have regular periods, she might be pregnant or assume she is infertile.

‘Men have no such markers. They don’t recognise the quality of sperm can decline or that there could be no sperm in their ejaculate.’

Dr McEleny adds: ‘What men can do if they’re concerned is to get a semen test. That might suggest earlier treatment, an earlier time to conceive or even storing sperm – but if it’s normal and they have good sperm at 30, or 40, it’s still likely to be reasonable by the time they get to 50.’

Rob, whose sperm is being stored for free on the NHS, says: ‘Freezing sperm when you are younger means they’re in better health, have better motility [their ability to efficiently move and fertilise an egg] and your genes are stronger and can make stronger, healthier kids.

‘I know my wife doesn’t want kids – and I’m fine with that, too. But I also know not all marriages last.’

Exciting news from the royal family: Princess Eugenie is expecting!

On Monday, the princess took to Instagram to announce that she and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, are anticipating the arrival of their third child.

In a charming post, she shared a photo featuring her sons, August, 5, and Ernest, 2, proudly holding up a sonogram, along with the caption, “Baby Brooksbank due 2026!”

The Royal Family confirmed the joyous news with a statement on X, expressing, “Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Mr. Jack Brooksbank are delighted to announce they are expecting their third child, due this summer.”

The statement also highlighted the excitement of soon-to-be big brothers, August and Ernest, as well as the joy shared by His Majesty the King.

Eugenie, 36, also took to Instagram Stories to celebrate her husband’s 40th birthday, sharing several intimate family photos.

The couple met in the Swiss Alps in 2010 while celebrating her father now-former Prince Andrew’s 50th birthday. They went on to get married on Oct. 12, 2018, at Windsor Castle.

The sweet baby announcement marked Eugenie’s return to the platform after stepping back from public life following scrutiny surrounding Andrew and his links to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

In the recently released Epstein files, Andrew and his ex-wife — Eugenie’s mom — Sarah Ferguson were name-dropped.

Faced with public scrutiny, King Charles stripped his brother — now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — and his former sister-in-law of their titles and evicted them from their royal home in November.

Since then, Eugenie and her sister Beatrice have kept a low profile in public.

The sisters did not attend the royal family’s Easter Sunday service at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, as they — and their husbands — were granted permission to skip it.

Andrew has long faced scrutiny over his association with Epstein. He has denied any wrongdoing.