It's New Year's Eve 2040 in the land of idiocracy

Columnist Sabrina Haake imagines the future in this satire piece.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2040, in the land of Idiocracy. President Hulk Hogan, in his third term, is starting fresh negotiations with Mexico and Canada to set sea wall levels for the upcoming year. They have held this meeting every year since 2030, when monster hurricanes wiped out coastal populations and broke Florida off at Jacksonville. The rest of the state floated down to Haiti and now exports iguana, mosquitos and militant extremists back to the mainland.

The United States initiated the international seawall treaty in 2031 after former President Trump passed the ‘America Bans Science Under Republican Decree’ (acronym withheld). Trump pitched a seawall spanning the length of the Atlantic coast after the last living physicist convinced him that a partial wall in the ocean would do no good. Water is liquid, she explained to him slowly, loudly and with visual aids, it will just go around.

Panama was delighted with the seawall, as Trump had already stolen the canal in a Christmas Day rant and bankrupted it, but the Medellin drug cartels felt differently. Forced to stop testing fentanyl on homeless people after access to their US consumer base was blocked, they sued, and a Texas jury awarded them compensatory damages.

The global climate pivot

Around 2030, world leaders admitted that the Paris Treaty goals for reducing carbon emissions would never be met, causing developed nations to pivot away from climate change toward regional mitigation pacts instead.

After the US Army Corps of Engineers successfully erected the first 25-foot sea wall around Miami, political tensions started to rise. Real estate developers struggled to sell beach views that were only murals painted on steel, while obnoxious, virtue signaling NGOs fought for habitable land for the climate displaced.

Political jockeying between left and right continued for decades. President Hogan finally set aside interior swamp land for ten million climate refugees deported to Central America under Trump, provided they agreed to pick fruit and clean the houses of coastal elites for free on their return.

In 2035, the U.N. officially reneged on its commitment to compensate developing countries for climate damage they did not cause but are paying for. In 2039, Lachlan Koch, now running Fox News, bought the constantly-whining countries, sued their spokespeople for defamation, and deported them to work farms in a sealed plea agreement.

Trump’s paper bag immigration law

Pakistan, losing one-third of its land to flooding in 2022, sunk completely in 2030. Geographically unfortunate, it was bordered by Iran to the west and Afghanistan to the north, forcing Pakistani women swimming to safety to choose between the 5th Century or the 7th Century for relocation purposes.

Pakistanis were banned from the US when the architects of Project 2025 coaxed their paper-bag fever dreams into law. Today’s paper bag immigration law allows anyone with skin tone lighter than a paper bag to apply to immigrate to the US; those with darker skin must remain in their shit-hole countries. Niger, Somalia, Bangladesh, Chad, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, and the Sudan soon followed Pakistan in becoming uninhabitable from median temperatures of 131 Fahrenheit; Republicans continued to outlaw birth control in those nations nonetheless.

After state-forced births caused populations to explode throughout Africa and the Sub-Sahara, Republican governors started marketing free factory apprenticeships to young immigrants otherwise blocked by the paper bag law. Today, African immigrants traveling solo between the ages of 5 and 12 are granted expedited entry to the US and free transportation to factory and field destinations, where they are guaranteed food, shelter, and doors-locked-from-the-outside security for the duration of their stay.

Russia, China champion climate change

Russia began stealing its next-door neighbors early in the 21st century. During Trump’s second term, NATO collapsed when Secretary of State DeSantis conditioned US membership on school prayer in all EU member states, allowing Russia to annex Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Poland, and Germany.

Climate change was a gift to Russia, motivating Putin’s pact with Trump to accelerate the earth’s warming. Putin and Trump’s calculus-that both would profit from warm water ports and resorts along newly balmy coasts- paid off. Their sun-drenched joint-ventures along the coast of Siberia now rival old world tourist destinations in Italy and France.

Today, China remains the only country in the world untouched by climate change. In the early 21st century, China amassed the world’s largest DNA database, and perfected facial recognition technologies to guarantee its ruleinto perpetuity. In 2030, Chinese authorities began implanting tracking devices into the right cheek of every newborn. The new surveillance allowed authorities to read patterns of electrical brain activity including emotional and cognitive responses, which were then electronically manipulated by Beijing. By 2035, no one in China remembered what pandas were, or that China’s 28,000 rivers used to have water in them.

Tired of all the libs crying about the right to clean air, in 2025, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. took chlorine out of the nation’s water supply and replaced it with Ketamine. “Fear,” psilocybin-enhanced Elon Musk bellowed from behind the curtain, was “a waste of energy.” On this New Year’s Eve, 2040, the US joins China’s success in eradicating all fear of climate change. No one remembers manatees, sequoias, or the Colorado River, and working women are finally home where they belong, their pink hats turned into aprons.

NOW READ: Merrick Garland's last task and the explosive evidence that could save America

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.