Gazing into a crystal ball, not to look to the future but to understand the past. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Nov. 17, 2025 by David Silverberg
Sometimes clearly seeing the future brings no joy. There is such a thing as being too prophetic.
Since 2022, as each year has dawned, The Paradise Progressive has tried to look ahead at domestic political trends and likelihoods in the year to come, trying to objectively think through the direction events were taking. What would be the big stories that would bear watching in the coming days?
But it’s not enough to just make predictions; when the year ends, anyone peering ahead has an obligation to evaluate his or her accuracy and ability as a seer.
Accordingly, in 2023 The Paradise Progressive began grading its own predictions when the year ended, first on an A to F scale and then, last year, as simply “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
It is doing this again this year, if a bit early. There’s still a month and a half to go in 2025 and given this president and regime virtually anything may happen in the next 44 days.
But in a year of momentous events it makes sense to take a pause on the eve of Thanksgiving. People who are able to afford to sit down to a full table, free from fear of sudden seizure or detention, should truly give thanks for the abundance of their blessings.
It is sad and startling to report that the predictions made by The Paradise Progressive at the beginning of 2025, just before Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, were horrifyingly accurate and the darkest prospects and most extreme dangers came to pass.
This analysis only includes those firm predictions that can be judged in light of later events, not the many questions and uncertainties that were raised by Trump’s election and inauguration.
Together, these predictions provide a view of what historians will surely record as one of the most—if not the most—grievous years in American history.
What were they? Let us review them together, first the predictions in italics, then the results.
Part 1—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead in domestic politics
“Trump and his legions can be expected to hit hard and move fast. There will be sweeping disruptions, especially in the first 100 days of the regime, indeed probably even announced in the inaugural address on Jan. 20. Even on his first day, Trump has said he will be a dictator and issue an avalanche of executive orders to—at the very least—encourage fossil fuel exploration and usage, round up migrants and pardon January 6th insurrectionists. But numerous other orders are likely to go much further.”
Trump and his regime knew they needed to act before opposition could coalesce and their measures could be challenged through litigation or legislation. So, as predicted, they hit hard and moved fast.
Indeed, on his first day in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, covering everything from establishing the Department of Government Efficiency to withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. As of this writing, he has issued a total of 212 executive orders. Some have been challenged in court and remain unresolved. But they nonetheless upended the United States government and the lives of all Americans.
Of the three matters explicitly named, when it came to fossil fuel exploitation, Trump declared a national energy emergency and prioritized oil exploration on federal lands—including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When it came to rounding up migrants, the Trump regime initiated what has amounted to an ethnic and racial war against Hispanics and all immigrants, sweeping up US citizens of long duration in its dragnet. When it came to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, on his first day in office Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the insurrectionists—and he has issued over 1,600 pardons for all kinds of federal criminals and miscreants since.
“It will be a year when Donald Trump attempts to dominate all thought, action, law, media, policy, and government and where he fails to do this personally, his cultists, followers and enablers will work on his behalf and toward his ends.”
That certainly proved prophetic. The second Trump administration not only pursued total dominance in all areas of government, it initiated a cultural revolution that attempted—and continues to attempt—a brutish cultural assault, from bullying and extorting institutions of higher learning to stop free inquiry, to suppressing critical media through threats and litigation, to disparaging and canceling individual artists and performers.
If any one act expressed this cultural revolution more than any other, it was Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, having himself named chairman of its board and even floating the idea of re-naming it for himself or his wife, neither of whom had any connection to it, its culture or its mission.
“This regime will be characterized by pettiness, cruelty, hatred, prejudice, rage, disparagement, racism, misogyny, and criminality. It will rule through threats, intimidation and defamation. It will be corrupt to its very marrow.”
This prophecy was fulfilled in so many ways that listing them would be exhausting—and redundant. Any American can recite a litany of Trump regime outrages, offenses and crimes. All one has to do is look at Trump’s Truth Social postings to document this prediction. What is more, every day brings new and often bizarre examples.
Fear has now been institutionalized as a governing principle and the regime is at war with the people whom previous presidents once served.
“For everyday consumers, anti-immigration measures will mean higher prices and harsher inflation and with national anti-immigrant measures coming on top of the ones that Florida has already enacted, the price at checkout is likely to be steep—to say nothing of the human suffering that will underly it.”
Prices are rising steeply, as anyone can see from their grocery bills (the price of coffee was up 18.9 percent in September). But it’s not just anti-immigration measures that are causing this; a major driver is Trump’s tariffs (more about them below).
Government-issued statistics on matters like inflation can no longer be automatically considered reliable. In August, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics when he disliked a revised report on the unemployment rate. The prolonged government shutdown and purges of vital government officials severely weakened the federal government data-gathering abilities.
This affected even vital functions like setting the Federal Reserve’s prime interest rate. When Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference on Oct. 29, he acknowledged the lack of reliable data for Federal Reserve decisionmaking and likened it to driving in fog.
“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog?” he asked. “You slow down.” In this context he meant the Federal Reserve might not change interest rates at its next meeting.
However, a variety of sources, both government and non-government put the real current inflation rate at 3 percent.
When it came to immigration, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“…the Trump roundup can be expected to be spectacular, very public and as harsh as possible. It will likely be conducted as a television spectacle, a reality show intended to send a message of mercilessness to the world that discourages all immigration, legal and otherwise.”
This prediction is horrifically borne out daily as stories emerge of brutality by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In every corner of the United States, people suspected of illegal residence are being snatched off the streets and in courtroom corridors by anonymous men without warrants, in unmarked vehicles, with dubious justifications. Then they’re whisked away into a gulag of unaccountable and untraceable detention facilities and denied due process or the opportunity to prove their innocence—or citizenship, or legal resident status.
Lest residents of Southwest Florida believe that they are immune, their communities are in the crosshairs too, as ICE agents descend on the town of Immokalee, round up agricultural workers and simply stop vehicles on Southwest Florida roads with people they deem suspicious or who are simply the wrong color.
“For the first time there will be concentration camps on American soil and Americans will see them on their television screens.”
Of all the 2025 predictions, this one came most horrifyingly and surprisingly true. That there would be concentration camps for the regime’s undesirables was entirely predictable. But The Paradise Progressive did not foresee that the first of these camps, the archetype and model for an American gulag, would be established in its own back yard, in Collier County, Florida, in the heart of the Everglades and that it would be designated “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“These roundups and deportations will likely be fought in the courts but with its placement of obedient judges, the regime will probably plow through the court system the same way Trump plowed through his criminal cases. Those cases that reach the Supreme Court will be adjudicated by a Trump-appointed majority of justices—and he may gain more appointments as sitting justices retire.”
The US courts have proved an occasional impediment to Trump’s arbitrary actions but they also proved little more than speed bumps on the road to autocracy. Nonetheless, some of the most egregious actions were at least delayed or reconsidered as they were tried, appealed and judged.
The judiciary, established as a co-equal branch of government, was intended by the Founders as an important check and balance on the other two branches. It has not always gotten things right.
But, extraordinarily, the six-member majority of the current Supreme Court, three of whose justices were appointed by Trump and confirmed in his first administration, has not only aided, abetted and enabled dictatorship but specifically and actively sought to confirm and elevate a Trump dictatorship. They want him as king and they’ve done everything they can to ensure his unfettered rule—not governance, but rule.
Of all this Supreme Court’s decisions—and that includes its 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade—the most fundamentally damaging one came with its ruling in Trump v. United States in 2024 holding that presidents are immune from the law in their official actions. That ruling, which overturned the concept of equal justice under law, the bedrock of American legal principle, enabled the wild, unchecked dictatorial rampage that characterized 2025.
“If Trumpflag-waving Southwest Floridians think they will be spared crippling inflation and a scarcity of goods, they should think again. At the very least the prices for the Canadian-made replacement parts for their sticker-covered pickup trucks are going to rise to the point where they’ll have to jury-rig their swamp buggies like Cubans keeping their 1959 Chevvies on the road.”
This absolutely came true. Tariffs have placed an enormous non-tax burden on the American consumer, according to both government and non-government estimates.
The rise in prices of common food items in September 2025. (Chart: CNBC)
“The accession of Donald Trump to the presidency will mean the return of what has been called ‘Trumpality,’ the Trump worldview or mindset in which objective truth has little to no value.”
Further,
“But in a broader sense, the imposition of Trumpality in the coming year will be pervasive and likely crippling to a United States whose whole success has been built on determining and responding to reality.”
Also,
“That delusional thinking will not only likely be evident this year, it will be imposed from above. It will likely affect everything from public health to weather forecasting. It will pervade the media whether mainstream, social or ideological as they both report what he asserts no matter how false and acquiesce to his version of events to avoid retaliation or retribution.”
Donald Trump’s war on reality and the media was aided and abetted by his billionaire supporters, who snapped up media properties in order to impose the Trump agenda from corporate boardrooms.
The First Amendment was not violated because Congress made no law abridging freedom of the press but the entire business infrastructure undergirding independent America media was undermined and subverted. Trump-obedient billionaires traded media properties among themselves like Pokéman cards.
The fiercely independent Washington Post of Donald and Katherine Graham became the cringing organ of Jeff Bezos, blocking the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, cheering on Trump’s destruction of the White House East Wing, and banning alternative viewpoints from its opinion pages. The once-proud CBS television network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite became the Trump cheerleading squad headed by Bari Weiss, a partisan, far-right columnist with no broadcast experience. The New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wall Street Journal and over 20 media organizations were threatened by billion dollar lawsuits for reporting and broadcasting facts that Trump didn’t like. Social media platforms like Facebook ripped down their community standards to allow disinformation postings and Trump propaganda.
Many media controls had been imposed to protect the public against dangerous disinformation being spread during the COVID pandemic of 2020-2022. But that changed too, as The Paradise Progressive predicted.
“The opposition to vaccines and public health measures as evidenced by the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has the potential to wipe out a century of medical progress and scientific advancement in promoting public health and replace it with a brew of conspiracy theories, disbelief and even outright superstition.”
After a horrifically botched response to the COVID outbreak based on Trump’s delusional assertions that “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” and his insistence that it didn’t matter, national science and public health staged a comeback under President Joe Biden. But as predicted, the Trump regime did all it could to undermine and subvert that, cutting jobs, dismissing scientists and experts and altering findings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
“The war on equality in all forms is almost certain to take place on many fronts this year.”
As predicted, the war on basic equality as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in all forms—already well underway in Florida—erupted with new ferocity during the year, with it being used as a club against higher educational institutions and corporations alike who faced extortionate fines and penalties for supporting equality in hiring, teaching and thinking. It was extended to the military by Secretary of War Peter Hegseth, who dismissed high-ranking female officers and eradicated monuments to black service people and heroes both at home and abroad.
“The most obvious possible Democratic presidential candidate to challenge Trump in 2028 (if there’s an election and if Trump runs again) is Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.”
And,
“The world can expect a massive Trumpist war against Newsom and the state of California starting this year and every year that Trump is president.”
Sure enough, Trump, who persisted in calling Newsom “Newscum,” embarked on a campaign of vilification and disparagement. But he didn’t predict—and The Paradise Progressive didn’t foresee—that Newsom would hit back with a campaign of his own that turned Trump’s social media postings against him with humor and pointedly funny parodies.
With his outspokenness and determination, Newsom emerged as the leader of the resistance among elected officials. He called out Trump’s autocratic moves for what they were and took concrete steps to counter them. And what were those autocratic moves? The Paradise Progressive predicted them too.
“Indeed, throughout the country expect attacks aimed at denying Democrats any possibility of ever winning any election again at any level, whether through ballot access denial or election interference in Democratic districts and cities, especially, in response to opposition to anti-migrant roundups and deportations and possible ‘sanctuary’ cities.”
The most blatant and egregious election interference was Trump’s attempt to get states to gerrymander district lines in mid-decade in order to deny Democrats seats in Congress in the 2026 elections.
The Paradise Progressive foresaw the effort but not the specific means—the idea of a mid-decade redistricting was so bizarre and unconstitutional it was beyond imagining at the outset of the year. The state of Texas immediately redrew its lines and other Trumpist states are doing the same. In Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis (R) said he was open to the idea but concluded that Republicans wouldn’t gain that many seats. Still, as of this writing the notion hasn’t entirely been rejected.
Newsom understood the threat and launched a counterattack in California, pushing through a referendum on redistricting and proceeding to redistrict the state to counter Texas’ effort. Other Democratic states may follow.
However the Trumpist gerrymander turns out nationally, it was indicative of Trump’s determination to rig the 2026 election, stay in power no matter what, and deny Americans a genuine say in their government, as predicted at the outset of the year.
Part 2—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead abroad and the new triumvirate
As the year began, The Paradise Progressive noted that a new triumvirate had emerged to dominate the world. In a subsequent post, it theorized about the possibility that Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping could conspire to divide the world between them and support each other’s expansionist goals and territorial ambitions. (Warning: A Trump-Putin-Xi conspiracy theory.)
But just as Rome’s triumvirate didn’t last, neither did today’s. The Paradise Progressive predicted that too.
“But also militating against the survival of this triumvirate is Trump’s inveterate lying and his lifetime record of welching on commitments and contracts. Just as a Mafia loan shark doesn’t take kindly to a deadbeat borrower, Putin and his mafia-like siloviki won’t take kindly to Trump reneging on whatever agreement they had that put him in office. The embers of this conflagration already seem to be sparking.”
What The Paradise Progressive did not foresee was the degree to which Trump used international trade tariffs as wildly and whimsically as he did, imposing and lifting them without notice or explanation. He tried to use them to punish Brazil for enforcing its laws against its own would-be dictator and Trump protégé, Jair Bolsonaro. He imposed them on Canada because the province of Ontario dared to run a television ad he didn’t like. He imposed them on China, then lifted them, then altered them, then reimposed them and then lifted them again after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. There’s no telling where they’ll stand tomorrow.
All these tariffs, which Trump regarded as a cost-free form of revenue, were in fact a form of consumer tax and drove up consumer prices, exactly as predicted.
“At least initially, this year, it’s likely to result in higher prices across the board and scarcity of goods as these men’s rivalries take the form of trade wars.”
Unforeseen was Trump’s war against Venezuela. At the beginning of the year it was Canada, Panama and Greenland that seemed to be in Trump’s crosshairs. But then American forces started destroying what were purported to be drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, a campaign that steadily escalated.
As this is written American forces are gathering in the Caribbean in what appears to be preparation for an assault on Venezuela. But history provides a note of caution. Like Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, or Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a unilateral, Trump-commanded American assault on Venezuela has within it the possibility of a regime-changing catastrophe—and that regime very well might be Donald Trump’s.
Part 3—Defying darkness: Southwest Florida politics and the year ahead
Locally, The Paradise Progressive noted:
“As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.”
“In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.”
Further,
“An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.”
Indeed it was a major story but the outcome was different than anticipated. Oakes was never charged with any crime and the heavy hand of the law fell instead on Steven Veneziano Jr., an Oakes Farms vice president. Veneziano and six other defendants pleaded guilty to defrauding the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program by falsifying crop records.
Veneziano is also being sued by Oakes for allegedly defrauding and embezzling $12.5 million from the company. The ultimate outcome of this affair may become known next year.
“In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.”
By the end of the year the threat to Marceno seemed to have evaporated. The Florida Trident, a non-profit investigative online newsroom, reported on Oct. 3 that Ken Romano, a key witness against Marceno, was worried that the case was being killed by US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“Hey Carmine, pay attention,” Romano stated in an October TikTok video directed to Marceno. “So, word on the street from your own people, a lot of your own people, is that [Anthony] Lomangino, [a major donor to both Trump and Marceno] and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, is gonna take all this, whatever’s happened, and put it on the shelf for you. Is that true? Answer me, answer the public. Is that true?”
Since The Florida Trident report, there have not been any publicly reported developments in the case. Marceno is reportedly thinking of running for Congress in Florida’s 19th Congressional District.
As with the Oakes affair, Marceno’s ultimate fate may be resolved in the year to come.
“The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.”
This too turned out to be prophetic. Despite some positions being floated, DeSantis received no offers (at least none publicly announced or acknowledged) from Donald Trump. Their animus seemed to recede when Trump came to open the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in July and joked that “We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long.” But there was never any evidence of a deeper thawing of relations or a place for DeSantis in the regime in the days that followed.
When it came to the people of Florida as a whole, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).”
This turned out to be spectacularly predictive. In September, Ladapo announced the lifting of all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, denouncing them as “slavery.” Now Florida health experts fear a rise in instances of childhood diseases, in particular measles, cases of which are increasing in the state.
As though destroying defenses against childhood diseases and epidemics was insufficient, in May the state of Florida decided to wage war against dental hygiene by banning the addition of decay-preventing fluoride in community water, a move that was preceded by the Board of Commissioners of Collier County in February 2024.
When it came to the state legislature,
“Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks.”
However,
“There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis ‘line,’ whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.”
That proved to be prophetic. The state legislature rebelled against DeSantis but largely in form rather than substance. Both the governor and legislature wanted to pass measures imposing penalties on undocumented migrants but DeSantis thought the legislature’s proposal was “weak sauce” and insufficiently harsh. State House Speaker Daniel Perez (R-116-Miami) and the legislature responded by passing their own anti-immigrant Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy (TRUMP) Act, designed to also punish criminal migrants. DeSantis vetoed the TRUMP Act and the legislature was unable to override the veto. Ultimately a compromise measure was passed and signed into law.
Unchanged and unmoved in all of this was the Florida state government’s continued hostility to migrants and foreigners in general.
Meanwhile, for everyday Floridians,
“Every indication is that inflation will soar. Whether from tariffs and trade wars or a drastic reduction of the migrant workforce that makes the local economy work, every policy proposal from Trump to date leads to higher prices and fewer goods.”
That prediction plays out every day. But another prediction has already come true:
“Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and ‘far left Marxist radicals’ for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.”
Unexpected—and inspiring
The Paradise Progressive did not cover or make predictions in the off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia, New Jersey or the mayoral race in New York City. However, those elections proved to be stunning repudiations of Trump rule and the MAGA program even though he frantically denied that he was on the ballot and blamed the debacle on the government shutdown and lack of Republican fervor.
Nor did the repudiations occur only in those major races. Across the country, in towns, cities and counties that held elections there was a marked shift away from Trumpism and the Republican Party in what amounted to a blue wave.
The Paradise Progressive also did not anticipate the resistance to tyranny, the grassroots organizing and popular outrage that led to national “Hands Off” and “No Kings” protests that attracted progressively larger and larger crowds.
Just how impressive this development was could be seen in Naples, Fla., an otherwise deeply Trumpist town, where each event brought out more and more people in what amounted to a massive turnout for the area—and throughout Southwest Florida in places not otherwise known for their activism, like Port Charlotte and Sanibel.
But while enormous crowds turned out in major cities, perhaps the most impressive demonstration occurred in rural Okeechobee, Fla., far from large gatherings or other “No Kings” protests. There, Linda Winner, a grandmother who had never demonstrated in any protest throughout her 76 years took a stand.
“I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching all the protests, and so I said, if I'm ever going to do it, it better be now, I might not get another chance,” she told reporter Eileen Kelley of WGCU. So she stood alone on a street corner for three hours holding a “no kings” sign,
She explained her action to her son in North Carolina, who disagreed with her. “I called him to confirm that he knew that his mother loved America, to make sure that he understood that my protest today was not because I didn’t love America, but because I did,” she said.
Standing on her street corner she received a few fingers from passing motorists but also a lot of support and was treated to a free lunch at a nearby restaurant.
When the Linda Winners of the country take to the streets alone to fight dictatorship it shows that Americans still value democracy, freedom and are willing to resist—at all levels, in all places and at all ages. When Americans do that they might just all be winners.
What will this mean in the coming year?
That is something which it will take an entirely different essay to examine. But that the examination will be made at the beginning of 2026 is one prophecy almost certain to come true.
Linda Winner takes her lone stand for democracy in Okeechobee, Fla., on “No Kings” day, Oct 18, 2025. (Photo: WGCU/Eileen Kelley)
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg