Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States. “It is great to have him out of the office,” says student body president, Julia Smith. After the most insane presidency of our lifetimes, and arguably ever, we are just around the corner from normalcy; Joe Biden was sworn in on January 20th as the 46th president of the United States. While our president for the last four years has been a polarizing twitter-bully, our new president is known as a compromising centrist. Their personalities are vastly different, and we are undoubtedly going to see major changes in style- but where else will we see changes?

 Most of this depends on the Democratic Party- who now has control of the presidency, the house of representatives, and with the recent runoff elections in Georgia, the senate. For the first time in Georgia’s history, the Democrats elected a Jewish senator and a black senator. This is also the first time since 1992 that both senators from Georgia were democrats. Senior, Sam Ewing says that “it’s always good to see more diversity in our government, and I’m looking forward to what is in store for us as a country.” Ewing is a very politically engaged student at CHS. 

Some of the major changes that we will see very quickly will have to do with the pandemic. Because of the new changes in the legislative branch, a stimulus bill will likely be signed by Biden right away, and Americans could finally receive another round of 2000 dollar stimulus checks. Biden will also listen to scientists like Dr. Fauci, actively encourage mask wearing- a big step up from the Trump administration, and get a vaccine plan underway immediately. Aside from the pandemic, as well as erasing corporate tax cuts, and enacting new environmental policies, everything else is up in the air.

A lot depends on which wing of the democratic party will basically “be in charge.” On one wing of the democratic party, there are senators and congresspeople like AOC and Bernie, who would be in favor of free college, single-payer healthcare, and a wealth tax on the extremely rich. On the other wing of the party, there are people like Joe Manchin, a senator from West Virginia whose policies are as closely aligned with the average republican than they are with Bernie Sanders, and would be more likely to easily compromise with the other party. “It will be interesting to see what change is made, and how radical that change is,” says Senior, Daniel Espinoza.