As America's most beloved and always-right columnist, I am constitutionally required to provide you with my predictions for the new year.
Because I am an infallible prognosticator (see the "always-right" reference in the previous sentence), feel free to bet on the following things happening in 2025. You're welcome, and Happy New Year.
The most certain of all the certain things that will certainly happen in 2025 is this: Donald Trump, as president, will do everything right. He will tell us this repeatedly. His first month in office will be the most historic first month in office ever and nobody will be able to believe his incredible success, according to him.
Any bad thing Trump does will either: A) Be fantastic, actually, according to Trump; or B) Be someone else's fault entirely.
At various points in the year, Trump will tell us about a big, tough guy who approached him with tears in his eyes and told him how amazingly perfect he has been as president. And Trump himself will agree with that assessment.
Opinion: 2024 was a bad year for basic decency in America. You can thank Trump for that.
On or shortly after the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, millions of Americans will simultaneously gasp as they realize JD Vance is actually the vice president and, given Trump's age, could wind up becoming president of the United States. Those gasping weren't paying much attention during the campaign and thought the thing about Vance being VP was just a joke.
The sound waves from the collective gasp will cause mild structural damage to buildings across the country.
Hot off her career-defining Eras Tour, pop icon Taylor Swift will present fans with a sudden and drastic tonal shift, releasing an album of songs that fall into the aggressive subgenre of heavy metal known as "death metal."
The album - "Transcendent Deathfart" - will be hailed by Rolling Stone as "a bold journey into blood-soaked darkness" and Pitchfork will call it "gruesome, entrancing and laser-focused on cannibalism."
The single "Excruciating Punishment Sanctum (Taylor's Version)" will soar to No. 1 on the pop charts, and Swift's cover of Obituary's classic death-metal song "Slowly We Rot" will win a Grammy.
Once Trump puts anti-health non-expert Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, natural selection will make an impressive comeback, weeding out those who listen to Kennedy's advice and start drinking raw milk.
The basic mechanism of evolution will have an absolute field day as Kennedy's anti-vaccine policies open the door for diseases like polio and measles to thin the American herd.
Opinion: America chose Trump in 2024. 2025 will be the year of the Republicans.
New York Jets quarterback and "guy who thinks he's smart but isn't" Aaron Rodgers will retire from the NFL after a final losing season in which the ayahuasca trips he's constantly talking about on podcasts didn't seem to help him be good at football.
Leaving the field will allow Rodgers to reach a higher level of dislikability, as he devotes his full attention to mansplaining why he's right about things he is absolutely not right about.
As Trump's planned tariffs cause prices to skyrocket and his mass deportations harm companies across the country, leading to factory closures and downsizing, Trump fans will continue to cheer for their hero from their homeless encampments.
Though most "Make America Great Again" hats will be burned for warmth, the spirit of the MAGA faithful will be unbowed, and they will fill social media with posts about the patriotic joy of going hungry.
With billionaire Elon Musk effectively running the country, the entire U.S. billionaire community will feel emboldened. This confidence will lead them to abandon any pretense of normalcy and they will openly admit they are harvesting the blood of young people in a quest for eternal life.
No longer needing to be discreet, the extremely wealthy will finally fulfill their dreams of hunting poor people for sport.
The stock market will go up, and people will say it is a strong indicator of great things happening, while others will say it's a mirage and things are actually terrible.
Then the market will go down, and some will cry while others shout, "I told you so!"
Then it will go back up again, and the billionaires - on a break from hunting humans - will chuckle at the middling non-billionaire people worrying about the silly stock market.
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In what most will consider a bit of a relief - thanks to Trump bungling everything up and Rodgers babbling on and all the death metal music - America will be wiped out by Amazon delivery drones.
Appalled by the money Americans keep giving Amazon's billionaire owner for things they don't need, the delivery drones' AI control systems will concur the only logical move is to destroy the current iteration of humanity and let it reboot.