We hope you had a fun, safe and happy Christmas or Hanukkah vacation and avoided drunk drivers and hangovers on New Year’s Eve.

We’ll hit the new year running tomorrow when we recap the major stories of the past week and dive back into covering the daily news (and don't worry: despite some changes afoot, the Huckabee Newsletter will continue as always, bringing you the latest reliable news and common sense commentary with a humorous twist.) But on this final holiday of the season, we wanted to offer you a special New Year's message in between all the parades and football games.

It’s become standard rhetoric to call each New Year a time for hope and new beginnings, but in this case, that’s never seemed so true for so many people. There’s a palpable feeling of optimism in the air that America’s, and the world’s, long nightmare may finally be over. For the past few years, it seemed that leftism, anti-Americanism and cultural divisions (and those who profit off them) were on an irreversible ascendance. Those in power were doing everything they could, constitutional or otherwise, to cement that power and crush any opposition.

But then, a funny thing happened. The people decided enough was enough. They refused to be cowed and silenced and shamed any longer. They stood up, fought back, and took their country back. The election results were a stunning rebuke to the arrogant elitists, who still can’t figure out how they could possibly have been rejected by voters. In their cast-iron bubbles, this is a terrible, frightening period of existential dread. To normal people, it’s a combination of a great New Year’s Eve party and Morning In America, part two.

A new Fox News poll found that 57% of Americans are hopeful about Trump’s presidency. When was the last time you heard of a majority of people feeling hopeful about anything? One cable news guest said even his Democrat friends told him that even though they didn't vote for Trump, they were secretly kind of glad he won.

In many ways, it’s really not 2025 yet. The true “new year” won’t arrive until January 20^th, Inauguration Day. Until then, we’ll undoubtedly have to suffer through many more attempts to undermine Trump (and the will of the people), whether by Deep State bureaucrats, Joe Biden himself or his staffers who’ve actually been running the White House for the past four years. Who knows what horrors will be signed between now and the 20^th with them moving Biden’s hand while he holds the pen? Fortunately, it appears that this time around, Trump is onto them and ready to counter their sabotage attempts.

But at least the end is finally in sight. Trump has a lot of work to do, and it won’t be easy. He has four years’ worth of massive destruction to fix, and he’ll have to do it while coping with Republican in-fighting in Congress (he may need you to periodically remind your legislators just whom they work for), Democrat obstructionism (they refuse to admit their failures, even when they’re as obvious as a mountain of garbage), and a renewed anti-Trump media onslaught.

You’d think the media would learn its lesson, having gotten virtually every major story since 2016 wrong and watching their approval and audience ratings collapse like an inflatable Santa when the air pump is unplugged. But egomaniacs never learn from mistakes they refuse to acknowledge. For instance, the Media Research Center found that before the election, 98% of late-night comics’ political jokes were at Trump’s expense. They failed miserably to harm him, and their ratings are swirling down the toilet. Do you think they’ll start being more even-handed now? That’s about as likely as Jimmy Kimmel saying something that’s actually funny.

But there are positive signs that the public’s message is finally starting to sink in, from some major liberal newspapers firing far-left editorial boards to corporations ending DEI programs to movie and TV studios axing plans for more woke bombs. You can only burn so much money before you start to feel the heat.

We are very hopeful that 2025 will be a historic year, the year that Americans of all races and backgrounds come together to take their country back and restore patriotism, national security, the Constitution, meritocracy, common sense and the rule of law. It will take time (to use a sports term, this is a “rebuilding year”), but it’s said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But it also has to be a step in the right direction.

We hope and pray that 2025 will be the year when we finally take those first steps in the right direction, on the journey back to rebuilding the America we love.