The Year 2025

A Saga

The year opened in fire and blood. A man drove into the crowds in New Orleans on the first day; fourteen died. Fire took Los Angeles for a month; thirty died, sixteen thousand structures burned. On the twentieth day of January, Trump returned to power—the second president to reclaim the office after defeat, the oldest ever to hold it. He promised to seal the borders and tax the world. In Ireland, Storm Éowyn flattened the country. The year had shown its hand.

Governments fell and rose. Germany chose new leaders after months of crisis. Canada changed prime ministers. In Nepal, the young brought down the old. Coups swept parts of Africa. Hungary quit the International Criminal Court. The Dalai Lama, eighty-nine, said his successor would be reborn; Beijing said no—the next one would be Chinese, or there would be none they recognized.

In Rome, Pope Francis died on the twenty-first of April. A quarter million came to mourn him. From the conclave emerged an American: Leo XIV, born in Chicago, missionary in Peru. The first pope from the New World.

The deportations began. Raids in cities across America—farms, churches, courthouses. The National Guard to Chicago and Los Angeles. Marines to the border. Ten thousand troops ordered to seal it. The government claimed 622,000 removed, nearly two million more who left on their own, fentanyl cut by half. Others told of families torn apart after decades, citizens detained, a farmworker who fell to his death. Protests rose; the Guard was federalized; the courts were split. For the first time in fifty years, the immigrant population fell.

The war in Ukraine ground into its fourth year. Russia struck the cities with missiles and drones. A thousand of their soldiers died each day; they gained less than one percent of the land. In June, Ukraine struck back—Operation Spiderweb, drones launched from hidden trucks on Russian soil, five air bases hit. It changed nothing.

Trump met Zelensky in February. They shouted at each other before the cameras. "You don't have the cards," Trump said. In August, Trump met Putin in Alaska. The summit collapsed. By autumn, there was talk of a peace deal that favored Moscow. The fighting did not stop.

In Sudan, the war the world forgot killed 150,000 and displaced twelve million—the largest, fastest displacement ever recorded. Half the country starved. In October, El Fasher fell after eighteen months under siege. People had eaten peanut shells. When the city fell, there were massacres. Blood visible from space. The UN called it genocide. The world sent prayers and little else.

In Gaza, a ceasefire held. Elsewhere, the Levant burned.

Israel struck Iran's nuclear sites in June. Iran struck back. Then America: Operation Midnight Hammer, bunker-busters on the enrichment facilities. A ceasefire followed. A twenty-point peace plan was announced. The Houthis kept attacking ships. American strikes continued. The peace was fragile as glass.

America's navy hunted drug boats in the Caribbean. A hundred people died in strikes whose legality was questioned. Washington blockaded Venezuelan oil tankers and called the president a cartel boss. Caracas called it pretext for conquest.

In the South China Sea, China and the Philippines grappled over reefs and shoals. Chinese vessels rammed Philippine ships, blasted fishermen with water cannons, cut their anchors. In August, a Chinese coast guard ship and a Chinese warship collided with each other while chasing a Philippine patrol boat. Two Chinese sailors likely died. Beijing said nothing. The Philippines and America formed a task force. Barriers went up at Scarborough Shoal. No shots were fired between nations. Not yet.

The tariffs came. Ten percent on nearly everything, then more. Steel at fifty percent. Chinese goods at 145 percent before the rollback. The stock market crashed in April, recovered, stumbled again. China retaliated with rare earths—they controlled the supply, and now they squeezed. Europe prepared countermeasures worth ninety-three billion euros. Courts struck down some tariffs; the administration appealed. In October, Trump and Xi met in South Korea and made a partial deal. The average American household paid $1,200 more. Global trade grew anyway. The old system bent but did not break.

Political violence stalked the land.

In April, a man burned the Pennsylvania governor's home during Passover. The governor fled with his family. In June, a man dressed as a police officer killed a Minnesota legislator and her husband in their home, shot another legislator and his wife. He had a list of sixty-seven targets. In August, a gunman killed two children at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. In September, a sniper killed Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, at a Utah university. The government designated Antifa a terrorist organization. Six hundred people lost their jobs for what they said online about the killing.

In December, a gunman killed two students at Brown University. At Bondi Beach in Sydney, a gunman attacked a Hanukkah celebration; sixteen died, including a Holocaust survivor and a child of ten.

The old ones passed.

David Lynch, who made nightmares beautiful. Marianne Faithfull, who survived everything. Gene Hackman, found dead beside his wife. The Aga Khan. Pope Francis. José Mujica, the president who gave away his salary. Jane Goodall, who walked among the apes. Diane Keaton. Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness. Dick Cheney, the power behind the throne. Jim Lovell, who circled the moon but never touched it. Tom Stoppard. Jimmy Cliff.

The world burned and flooded. Hurricane Melissa tore through the Caribbean. Three typhoons struck the Philippines in succession. France saw its worst fire in fifty years. Hong Kong lost 160 in a building fire that burned for forty hours.

And yet: for the first time, wind and solar outpaced coal. China's emissions may have peaked. Denmark pledged to cut emissions eighty-two percent. Sanctuaries were declared in distant seas. The fever rose, but so did the resistance.

The machines grew. $1.5 trillion poured into artificial intelligence. Nvidia briefly exceeded five trillion in value. The technology wrote, drew, spoke, remembered. Companies used it to justify layoffs. Lawsuits multiplied. A teenager's parents sued, saying the chatbot encouraged their son's suicide. The machines did not pause for the lawsuits or the grief.

The young rose up—in Nepal, Peru, Madagascar, Morocco, Tanzania. Some won. Some were prosecuted.

In sport, Messi lifted another trophy. India won its first Women's Cricket World Cup. In space, Polish and Indian astronauts reached the station together.

In Paris, three men with a ladder walked into the Louvre, smashed the cases, took eighty-eight million euros in crown jewels, fled on scooters, dropped a diamond crown in the street. The jewels were not recovered.

So passed the year 2025.

Wars without end. A pope buried and a pope crowned. Borders sealed and families scattered. The powerful met in summits that solved nothing. The forgotten died in famines the world ignored. The climate warmed. The machines learned. The young made noise. Thieves robbed a museum in broad daylight and vanished.

The saga records. It does not judge.

What comes next is unwritten.