Pick pretty much any metric--education, healthcare outcomes, income levels, infrastructure quality--and you'll probably find the South clinging to the bottom of it like it's a badge of honor.

It's a region where systemic issues like underfunded schools, poor healthcare access, and entrenched poverty have been compounded by decades of political choices that often prioritize ideology over solutions.

And yet, it’s the same region that rails the loudest against federal intervention, even as it consistently benefits from it, whether in the form of Medicaid funding or disaster relief.