Looking Back at 2025 (posted 12/29/25)

 I hope everybody had a great Christmas.  We had a peaceful and quiet one.  In recent years I’ve gotten into the 12 Days of Christmas liturgical tradition, which was not a part of my Baptist upbringing, but which is appealing for several reasons.  I’ve always loved Christmas, and any chance to extend that holy/holiday feeling for longer seems intrinsically good.  (I know that Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday, but I’ve always like the idea of 8 days of celebration…so you know I’d be up for 12!)

And because I own a few rental houses in a college town, I really appreciate the feeling of a temporarily emptier town, and the opportunity that brings to do some maintenance work without having to work around tenants’ schedules, traffic, etc.  On the agenda this week is some yard clean-up – I’ve already removed three pickup loads of leaves and limbs – some minor carpentry, repairing and painting a picket fence, and repairing and painting some wooden window screens.    

I also appreciate the chance to look back at the year that has passed, and to look forward to the new year, too.  In this column I’ll look back at some highlights and lowlights of 2025, and in the next column – the last one for this year – I’ll look forward to some of my hopes and fears for 2026.

Obviously, Trump taking office was a huge deal, and a great relief after the four benighted years of the Cadaver and the Cackler and their horrible policies and personnel.  Trump’s most dramatic accomplishment was completely closing the border after 16 minutes in office – and after years of Biden and the Dems feigning an inability to close the border without “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation. 

(By which they meant opening the borders to millions of unvetted immigrants to ensure a leftist voting majority forever.)    

The deportations, though frustratingly slow, have been great too.  The relatively slow pace of deportations has not been because of lack of trying, and it’s been infuriating to watch the same Dems who allowed millions to stampede in – with NO due process to protect American citizens – now insist that every obviously deportable alien be given full, years-long due-process hearings.

Still, Trump’s move to offer cash and a plane ticket to those who will self-deport is smart, and has been paying dividends; I think around twice as many have self-deported as have been caught and forcibly deported.  And as long as Homan and Trump keep pushing aggressively, I would guess that more and more will self-deport, as the realization sinks in that Hulk Homan means business, and they’re going to be caught and tossed eventually.

I think another high point has been the improvements in the first year of Trump’s second term compared to his first.  The first time around, his win came as a surprise to many, and with no previous governing experience, Trump had to fumble his way up a very steep learning curve.  He left way too many oppositional deep-state bureaucrats in place, and his appointments were a mixed bag, with a lot of misses. 

And I’m not just talking about Amarosa and the Mooch.  (Terrible drive-time FM radio shock-jock duo, terrible political appointments.) Pence was a good man but an empty suit as VP; I can’t remember a thing about Rex Tillerson as Sec State.  I actually liked Mattis as Sec Def and Jeff Sessions as AG, but they both had some self-inflicted wounds. 

With the possible exception of Pam Bondi, I can’t think of an appointment this time around that hasn’t been at least as strong, and usually a marked improvement over their counterparts in the first term.  JD is a boss; Mario is doing half a dozen jobs and all of them well; Stephen Miller and Hegseth have taken everything the sleazy MSM could throw at them and spit right back in their eye.

And Tom Homan is my hero.   

Trump clearly put together a team during his four years in the wilderness, and he hit the ground running.  In a functional nation with sane Democrats in it, Trump could have passed much of his agenda through congress.  In the dysfunctional mess Trump inherited, he has had to sign a boatload of EOs and push through the imperfect omnibus Big Beautiful Bill, and those have been vast improvements over the last four years, and clear improvements over the first year of his first term. 

He’s also laid the groundwork for good things to happen in the near- and mid-term future.  The regulation cuts and tax cuts that kick in next month will help the economy, as will the trade deals that are bringing tons of investment into our country.  The appellate courts and SCOTUS are likely to grind along and keep knocking down the partisan lower-court judges’ attempts to stop every good thing that is happening, from immigration enforcement to the economy to pushing back on the discrimination and trans lunacy embodied in DEI ideology.

That’s not to say that everything is going great.  The DOGE effort was noble and much-needed, but has lost a lot of momentum with Elon’s departure.  While Trump’s tariffs push has provided some useful leverage in trade negotiations in some cases, and they have not produced the disastrous results predicted by many conservatives, their indiscriminate and impulsive deployments have hurt some of our allies, and caused some economic uncertainty and problems for many Americans. 

I think that SCOTUS is likely to trim Trump’s sails a bit with some forthcoming tariff opinions, and as a strict constructionist, I think that probably should happen.  I think it will be good for the economy, and it might also provide an opportunity to Trump to recalibrate, and hopefully make more congenial trade deals with our allies, while saving the punitive tariffs for our enemies, especially China and Russia.      

But highlights aren’t just instances when we do well.  Highlights also happen when our opponents shoot themselves in the foot, and defecate on their shoes, and step on rakes, and many other metaphors of hilarious self-injury that I cannot think of right now.

And boy, have the Dems been on a self-injury tear this year!  The TDS has settled over the deep blue areas of the country like the plague hitting Europe in the 14^th century, and the results are likely to be just about as devastating.  The insane, insurrectionist and violent resistance to ICE enforcing our immigration laws are already starting to bear fruit.  That hag of a judge in Wisconsin who helped an illegal felon temporarily evade ICE has just been convicted, and is providing a good example for the rest of the left-wing partisans in robes.

The flight of American citizens from blue states and cities to red ones is only accelerating, as the horrific results of leftist governance – high taxes, high crime, insufferable micro-managing Karens of both genders – are destroying the quality of life in those blue areas.  Ken Doll Newsom and Brandon Johnson and J(um)B(o) Pritzker continue to afflict the citizens of CA and IL respectively, and Mamdani’s incipient carnival of stupid is about to give NYC voters what they asked for – good, hard and sans lubrication.

As sick as I am of feckless RINO GOPers – thanks for not redistricting, Indiana Republicans! –Congressional Dems have reached new record lows of approval, around 18%!  And they’re still steering into the skid of stupidity.  They’re championing felon illegals, scamming Somalians, and drug-running Venezuelans.  And now they’ve set the Epstein files to blow up in their faces, too.  After four years of having total control over those files and doing nothing with them, they now look like morons as they clamber onto their high horses and accusing Republicans of doing slowly and bumblingly (fact check: true) what they themselves refused to do at all!

And as the newest tranches of Epstein material comes out, it turns out that there is no new damage done to Trump, while Bill Clinton is turning up in a whole photo album of hot tub and pool pics with every female who is not his Clydesdale-ankled harridan of a wife.

Or, as a Babylon Bee headline put it, “A Surprising Amount of Epstein Photos are Turning up in the Bill Clinton Files.” 

Of course the saddest political event of the year was the murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath.  It’s fitting that that is the clearest dividing point of 2025, because it became a focus of wildly different reactions that showed the essential nature of so many on both the right and the left.  For the vast majority on the right – and most independents too, I think – the brutal and evil nature of Charlie’s death was rightly repulsive.  So far, at least, it has produced a groundswell of support for Turning Point USA among young people, and a spur for many to turn to (or return to) Christian faith.  

For a tiny sliver of the right, including creepy racist Nick Fuentes and newly creepy anti-Semitic dunce Candace Owens and sadly deteriorating Tucker Carlson, Kirk’s death has provided a jumping-off point for conspiracy theories and mean-spirited attacks on innocent friends and associates of Charlie.

And for the left, his murder unleashed a tidal wave of shockingly ghoulish glee.  They have revealed the ugly reality of their political hatreds in a way that will hopefully inoculate many citizens from wanting to vote for them in the near future, at least.

Coming up next: my hopes – and a few worries – for 2026.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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