Through a Glass Darkly

Welcome to 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: GERALD HERBERT [Associated Press]

[I scheduled this to post yesterday but, for some reason, that didn’t happen. My apologies. Updated to take into account new information.]

For personal or political reasons—or a combination of the two—at the end of every year since 2015, I’ve thought, “Next year couldn’t possibly be worse.” And surprisingly, sometimes shockingly, every new year was worse.

Now, I think we can say with some degree of certainty, that 2025 will be worse than its predecessor. This is rather shocking, considering what we lived through in 2024. But the the fact that an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, an inciter of insurrections, and a thief of highly classified documents (a very small selection from a very long list of his disqualifications) is going to be president of the United States really is worse than the fact that he was elected—or that he was even eligible to run in the first place.

If the first two days of 2025 were any indiction, I think it’s a safe bet that 2025 has a lot of bad in store for us. Three hours into the new year, a domestic terrorist—a veteran of the U.S. military, born in Texas—drove his pick-up truck into a crowd in New Orleans, killing fourteen. A few hours later in Las Vegas, an active duty officer with U.S. Army Special Operations, also born in the United States, parked a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas and shot himself in the head. Shortly after, the truck, which had been rigged in advance exploded. Seven people sustained minor injuries.

According to the FBI, there is no connection between the two incidents. The perpetrator in New Orleans appears to have been a pro-ISIS sympathizer, while the perpetrator in Las Vegas, according to family members, “Loved Donald Trump.”

And then, in the early hours of January 2nd, ten people were wounded in a shooting at a nightclub in Jamaica, Queens—twenty blocks from where I grew up—at an event to celebrate the life of a child who died because of gun violence, because America.

Whether this is a harbinger of things to come or just the way it is in America, we don’t yet know. But as I said in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, we do have certainty about what a significant plurality of American voters chose for this country. We have certainty about what the fight really is. And it is so much better to know what we’re up against; it’s so much better to shed the false hope that so often constrains us from making the right decisions and from making real progress.

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PREDICTIONS

Here are a couple of things I think need to happen if we’re going to make progress even though Democrats, the only major party that still believes in the American experiment, are out of power.

• Republicans do not know how to govern. We know this and that assessment was validated two weeks ago when Donald and Elon Musk blew up a bipartisan budget deal placing us on the brink of an entirely unnecessary government shutdown. We’ll see it again tomorrow with the vote for Speaker of the House. Mike Johnson may win reelection, but the fact that that is not a given, that Donald’s endorsement of him may not have enough influence suggests that the extremely narrow Republican majority in the House might go along way towards mitigating the disastrous policies of the incoming Trump administration.

  Having achieved his main objective—staying out of prison—Donald’s main objective over the next four years will be to plunder the U.S. treasury in order to enrich himself and his cronies and to punish his perceived enemies. He doesn’t care about governing and that will create chaos and division—the waters in which he has always swum. Chaos and division, however, are terrible if you have an interest in governing and the Republican Party will not be well served. This will expose weaknesses that the Democrats can—and must—exploit to mitigate the damage Republicans plan to do to civil rights and our institutions.

• The best bulwark against the fascism that is now here will be Democratic governors, especially governors of blue states like J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California, and Josh Shapiro, as well as Democratic governors of red states like Andy Beshear.

  A strong coalition among these states will protect undocumented workers, and lessen the damage the new administration plans to do to the environment, the health of the American people, the economy (at least as it applies to the working and missile classes) and women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom.

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HOPES

• Democrats need to turn to a new generation of leaders that understands the challenges we face and what is at stake. If the Democratic Party is going to regain power in 2026, and beyond, it has to build a coalition that centers the Democratic base, finally giving it its due.

• There is nothing more imperative than the left, and whatever billionaires aligned with it who are willing to make the investment, creating a strong, influential, independent media that rivals the vast reach of the propaganda networks on the right. These, for far too long, have dominated our information spaces, and failing to challenge them in any meaningful way is one of the major reasons we find ourselves in our current predicament.

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PLANS

The Good in Us will remain the epicenter of Mary Trump Media, but we will be expanding across platforms and coordinating content to create ease of use. Starting on January 6th, 2025, we're also rolling out new programming, bringing on new talent, and creating new ways to engage.

Obviously, it’s extremely gratifying when you all share our content and encourage others to join and subscribe, but, more than anything, I hope you continue to be part of this incredible community.

As for me, I’m going to make every effort to engage in a more healthy way with current events. For various )and some obvious) reasons, I’ve taken a lot of what’s happened since 2016 personally. But that, over time, can be really debilitating. So while I have every intention of staying in the fight, I need to do it differently; I need to get out in the world, travel, and have the kinds of experiences—getting together with friends, going to museums, learning new things, and developing new interests.

I think all of that will make me a more effective communicator.It will certainly make me healthier, and I believe it's going to make me a better person. And that is my major goal for 2025—as a human being to become a better human being.

There are a lot of challenges ahead, but we need to keep everything in its proper context and remember all the good there is. And for me, that is all of you. So thank you. Despite the obvious and as yet to be determined challenges, let’s make sure that the coming year is a happy and productive one.