What a year. 2025 was full of terrible news, along with much-needed silver linings | Opinion
When I was very small, one of my favorite books was “Fortunately,” by Remy Charlip about a boy named Ned. Ned’s story was a simplistic tale about the ups and downs we experience, i.e. he’s invited to a birthday party, but the bash was thousands of miles of away. Fortunately, Ned got on a plane, unfortunately, the plane started to crash, fortunately, he had a parachute, unfortunately, it had a hole. You get the idea.
That memory returned as I was thinking about this past year. In many ways, it felt like the worst in a long time, full of natural disasters, and of course, the first year of the second Trump administration, which unleashed all kinds of hell on Kentucky and the rest of our country. But then those tiny little silver linings peeked out at us as a reminder that, like Ned, we always get some good with the bad.
Here are some of my top picks in 2025.
The federal government shutdown: This perennial political standoff wreaked havoc on our state because in some kind of strange punishment of his own voters, President Donald Trump declined to use emergency funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP or food stamps, going while the government was closed.
The shutdown was also a reminder these kinds of setbacks will be in full force in the next few years, when Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill sets up new restrictions for Medicaid that will certainly hurt people in all kinds of ways, and possibly shut down the lifeline Kentucky’s rural hospitals offer. SNAP will be more difficult to receive, despite the state’s utter reliance on it.
Fortunately, Kentuckians showed up, part infinity. They rallied in all kinds of ways, hosting food drives in schools and sending donations to our network of pantries.
In Lexington, for example, God’s Pantry Big Give Food Drive alone brought in more than 105,000 pounds, only slightly less than the 158,000 pounds of food collected all year in fiscal year 2024.
“When uncertainty strikes, our community never hesitates to respond,” said Michael Halligan, the CEO of God’s Pantry, which serves 500 pantries and meal programs. “The generosity we witnessed this fall is a testament to the compassion and resilience of Central and Eastern Kentucky. This outpouring of support allowed us to continue to nourish families across the region, even during challenging times.”
The University of Kentucky spent 2025 turning from the state’s flagship university to a corporate LLC. Not content with getting rid of the faculty senate in 2024, they then started outsourcing athletics, health care and facilities. This is all clearly the brainchild of Executive Vice President of Everything Eric Monday, who is somehow overseeing academics and health care, or whatever is left of them, but still has time to fly out to Oregon on a private plane to pick up the new football coach and raid whatever accounts necessary to pay out a $38 million parachute to the old one. Also, all the gobbledy-gook surrounding our corporate partners in acronyms don’t appear to be getting us any new players.
Fortunately, Craig Skinner and the amazing UK women’s volleyball team used this year to remind us of the fantastic amateur athletics in which women show men what success looks like without multimillion-dollar NIL deals, overpaid coaches or drama, except for the kind that comes from a team making it to the national championship.
Fayette County Public School officials and board members took the amazing vote of confidence Kentucky gave public education by rejecting Amendment 2, and proceeded to turn our great school district into a well-deserved punching bag. Forced and unforced errors in finance led to a secret attempt to pass a payroll tax, which went as well as could be expected. Just a summer from hell, as I called it, that dripped into fall and winter. And who could forget the proposal to censor school board members after a vote? That also went as well as expected. Now the district needs to “rightsize” its finances and facilities, which means redistricting, which is sure to erase any hopes of peace.
Fortunately, more parents are attending school board meetings and paying attention to their schools than ever before. Parent involvement is key: Come because you’re mad, keep coming because you’re interested.
Breathitt County’s free-roaming horses started straying too close to people. The subsequent round up exposed Kentucky’s bad animal protection laws, especially when some of the horses ended up in kill shelters on the way to slaughterhouses in Mexico.
Fortunately, a group of horse lovers in the Horse Capital of the World finalized a long-desired sanctuary in Eastern Kentucky where at least some of these horses can end up. The Appalachian Horse Center in Perry County will house wild horses, while trying to find them new homes. At the same time, it will serve as an equine vocational program where students can learn horse-related skills that might help them with employment.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is definitely making us sicker with his unscientific views on vaccinations (come on down, measles, polio and hepatitis B!), and those views have naturally permeated all the way to Kentucky. We’re getting some dumb legislation banning fluoride, dumb ideas about chem trails and dubious information on vaccines.
Fortunately, a MAHA adherent, Kentucky State Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, is bringing up some good ideas, like how we can all eat more nutritiously and ingest fewer chemicals. She’s also a proponent of free-standing birthing centers, something Kentucky could certainly use. Let’s hope her MAHA task force can stick to facts, not conspiracies. (And senator, please no more votes for water pollution!)
Finally, the first year of Trump’s unhinged, gold-plated presidency, with his North Korean-style Dear Leader logos, as he sends troops into American cities to terrorize the documented and undocumented alike, has been a nightmare for everyone not in his death cult. This column doesn’t have room to list all the abominations perpetrated thus far.
Fortunately, there’s more than a few silver linings.
Two of the only people to stand up to Trump are from Kentucky: U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. In standing up for Epstein’s victims, Massie showed other Republicans how to be brave, creating the first fissures in the slavish devotion shown by most Republicans.
The right-wingers who were sure the Trump Supreme Court would let Kim Davis’ lawsuit overturn gay marriage were instead turned back, and now our least favorite county clerk is facing a big bill.
Most of all, Trump’s dictator-lite behavior unleashed a huge democracy movement, and in Kentucky, it was beautiful to see. All of the organized protests in Lexington and around the state have turned into joyful street parties, with inflatable costumes, funny signs, and a sense that we — the people who believe in free assembly, free speech and No Kings — are not alone.
We’re going to need all those good vibes, because 2026 is already here.
This story was originally published December 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
