I don't have high hopes for 2025.
* Trump.
* H5N1. Trump makes this a much, much more serious and more likely to be lethal risk. This is one mutation away from mass pandemic status and may be much more deadly than COVID-19.
* The war in Ukraine continues. It will be three years old in two months. Trump is eager to abandon Ukraine and please Russia. The rest of NATO will continue to support Ukraine. Russia's capacity to fight a conventional ground war has been dramatically degraded and its conventional naval forces have been revealed to be more vulnerable than widely believed beforehand. While Russia is incrementally gaining territory, longer range Ukrainian strikes and covert operations have put targets deep inside Russia's borders at risk. Russia continues to lose soldiers and hard to replace military equipment on a daily basis. Russia's economy is straining. It's secrets about how to conduct a war and its weaknesses have been broadcast to the world. Troops sent by North Korea to support it are getting slaughtered by the thousands.
* We will see what kind of regime emerges in Syria with the fall of Assad's regime.
* Israel's multi-front war with Iran and its proxies continues and it has indefinitely occupied some Syrian territory on its border in the wake of the fall of Assad's regime there.
* Gaza has been leveled.
Millions of Palestinians are still in Gaza because they have no way to go anywhere else. But this is unsustainable. It is basically impossible to make this a place that can sustain life for millions of people without mass deaths before this is done, and no one has the will and money to make that happen anyway.
At this point there are really only two possibilities: Either the number of deaths surges from a few tens of thousand to many hundreds of thousands or more, or many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are exiled indefinitely from Gaza, a burden that no one has been willing to accept in the necessary numbers. Still, my assumption is that sooner or later, hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza will be relocated, willingly or unwillingly. The West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan would be the most obvious places to move them, but there are endless possibilities. Iran, which created this problem by encouraging the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas is the country that should take in the people of Gaza, but it probably won't.
* The civil war in Sudan continues to be a shit show. Nobody even has more than a rough estimate of how many have died or been injured in the conflict. Neither side is good, but the side that is backed by the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide is worse and backed by Arab monarchies. There are no signs of short term improvement in this catastrophic war.
* Because Trump took office, a massive global trade war is imminent. It will drive up prices in the U.S. at the expense of U.S. consumers, and destroy the economy. It will do almost nothing to help U.S. companies.
* Trump's promise of mass deportations promises to destroy the U.S. economy (especially agriculture, construction, and hospitality), to be a humanitarian nightmare, and to test once again the rule of law in the U.S.
* Trump's threats of conquest directed at our allies poses a risk of war.
* Trump's extreme weakness, stupidity, and hostility towards China could encourage more warlike action by China against Taiwan and the Philippines.
* Trump's promise to pardon the thousand plus people convicted or facing charged from January 6 will lead to a surge in right-wing terrorism in the U.S. and undermine democracy.
* Maybe, if we are lucky, Trump won't live to complete his term. He isn't young, he isn't healthy, he isn't careful, all of which could lead to his death from natural causes, and he seems to have advancing dementia as well. Also, lots of people would like to assassinate him and there were two serious attempts to do so in 2024 already. If Trump died from natural causes before January 20, 2025, this could save the United States as a country.
* We can expect a surplus of serious natural disasters and extreme weather in 2025 that will probably surpass 2024, due to global warming.
* We are close to the internal combustion engine/electric vehicle tipping point. If it isn't in 2025, it will happen soon, even though Trump's policies may delay it in the U.S.
* While the left and the middle of the American political spectrum agrees that health care in the U.S. needs sweeping reforms, if anything, the Trump administration will only make things worse.
* The political right in the U.S. is increasingly opposed to education and libraries at all levels. We've seen a preview with book banning efforts, anti-intellectual Florida mandates for educators, and the effective ruin of New College in Florida already. An all out attack on academia and education, which is particularly intense in red states, is likely to get worse during the Trump administration.
* It isn't at all clear what the future looks like for reproductive rights. Dobbs was a catastrophe, but referenda and courts in many states have clawed back some of the losses. Other states, like Texas, for example, are absolutely horrible, with the quality of women's healthcare generally destroyed.
* MAGA's efforts to scapegoat transgender people continues and is gaining ground. Fleeing red states and conservative controlled institutions look like the only options for now.
* MAGA has rekindled racism in the U.S. and made it more strident. This seems likely to continue.
* Right wing Christianity's hate and sexism seem likely to continue the exodus from Christianity which came to a brief pause.
* Tax cuts are likely to undermine infrastructure in the U.S.
* If the right's battle against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public benefit programs is successful, we are going to see tens of millions of new poor people struggling for survival (and sometimes failing). The Trump recession will make it even worse.
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