2025 Predictions!

Something’s going on, just look around
Fear is on the rise and there’s blood all over the ground
Let’s all just blindfold the poor, we must remind them what’s in store
We got’em now, just break’em down a little bit more

Feed the Machine, Poor Man’s Poison

Table of Contents

• Prediction #1: School Vouchers, Everywhere

• Prediction #2: Wither Accountability

• Prediction #3: Topeka Blitzkrieg

• Prediction #4: Bad Tax Policy, Everywhere

• Prediction #5: Focus on Young Male Culture

• Prediction #6: AI Employees

• Prediction #7: Economy Good for Business, Bad for …

• Prediction #8: School Board Assault

• The 2025 Legislative Session Begins Today!

  • Pre-filed House Bills (as of January 12, 2025)

  • Pre-filed Senate Bills (as of January 12, 2025)

Welcome to 2025–a tidal wave of change. We’ve had premonitions about this new season for over a decade now (Citizens United? Tea Party? Trump?), hints of a narrative where truth erodes from the constant ratatat of the growing influence of money.

The cynic in me would perhaps say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ or “that’s capitalism!” But that was then. There’s no denying how difficult it’s becoming to advocate for issues or beliefs without a flow of dollars to give it life. I expect this will be doubly true in 2025; in just the past few weeks, there’s no shortage of headlines to support such a forecast:

• Meta eliminated its fact-checking program, which means it’s even easier to saturate people’s daily news feeds with a well-funded worldview.

• AI vendors like OpenAI and NVIDIA are making ridiculous amounts of money, with no end in sight; these are the tools that make mass-customized messages of influence possible (and also already causing large enterprises like Salesforce to announce they’re not hiring any engineers this year).

• Technology companies are donating millions of dollars to the Trump inauguration. It’s the most money ever raised for an inauguration. Amazon, Meta, Google, Uber, Microsoft, OpenAI, Toyota, Ripple. This is just the starting gun for pay-to-play.

It would be easy to look at the world and convince yourself that it’s just business as usual. But if you’ll stay with me for a moment, I hope to persuade you (through a series of predictions for 2025) that business is far from normal.

Prediction #1: School Vouchers, Everywhere

I (and many others) spoke to this issue quite a bit during the election cycle, and now we get to see if we were right. Analysts expect to see state action on private school vouchers in up to 12 states this year–including Kansas. Topeka Republicans have previously tried to push vouchers through more than once, and the Kansas Catholic Conference is pushing hard (again), starting with a school voucher rally. I won’t go so far as to predict how vouchers will be implemented, but there’s enough of a state budget surplus and cash reserve for something to get through a veto override.

Prediction #2: Wither Accountability

In an era where financial clout defines the narrative, traditional mechanisms of accountability are eroding. (In the traditional media, you might call that “erosion of norms.”) The dissolution of fact-checking programs by major platforms like Meta exemplifies this trend. Without independent verification, misinformation proliferates unchecked, allowing those with resources to birth their versions of truth.

Anyone who’s used social media over the past decade has seen these changes firsthand and probably already knows the different personalities and dynamics of Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. It’s hard to hold anyone accountable in these ecosystems; most of the time, the best anyone can do is block an offender to remove them from their personal feed. These limited guardrails will break down further in 2025.