Searching for some hope in a tough 2025

This is the season when I customarily argue that the year just ending has been the best in human history.

- Nicholas D Kristof

So I dutifully sat at my laptop and tried to write something along the lines of: Sure, democracy is eroding, politics are toxic, wars are raging, America is losing allies, the planet is burning, and young people will never afford homes. But other than that...

I've done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity — and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat.

Maybe the worst calamity to strike an adult is to lose a child. That has become increasingly rare, but in 2025, for the first time in this century, the number of children worldwide dying before the age of five is believed to have risen, by about 200,000, according to the Gates Foundation.

Children are dying in increasing numbers in part because the Trump administration slashed humanitarian aid. I've been reporting around the world on the impact of the aid cuts, and I've seen too many children dying to write a “best year ever” column about 2025.

Yet perhaps because I’ve seen so many children suffering unnecessarily, I feel a need to read something reassuring — and it seems the only way I'll read such a piece is if I write it. So here goes.