The word of the year for 2026? Consequences

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When the calendar rolls over to January, most major English language dictionaries pick a word or phrase to sum up the year that was.

As you might expect, the literal keepers of convention and tradition in this mode aren’t big on risk. Barring a few faceplants like “w00t” (Merriam-Webster, 2007) and “youthquake” (Oxford, 2017), the words tend to be generally accepted terms that dominated the discourse all year. Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster and Macquarie all picked some variation on AI-generated garbage to represent 2025.

It’s mostly harmless fun, a way to get in on the year-in-review frenzy and generate a few headlines. And there are worse things to be than boring. But it’s interesting to imagine if today’s lords and ladies of lexicology had some of the same spunk as the original creators of the dictionary, people who thought they could shape all language by getting some approximation of it written down. What if they closed each year by putting on their trend-forecaster hats and telling us what we’re all going to be saying in the near future?

Luckily, the authors of political newsletters aren’t bound by the same constrictions as dictionary editors. We’re free to analyze, disparage and speculate. With the caveat that the only Oxford I’ve ever seen was full of undergraduates saying “hotty toddy,” I think I have a bead on the word of the year for 2026. It should be “consequences.”

America is home to the richest man on Earth. He spent much of the last year illegally dismantling parts of the federal government at the behest of a corrupt chief executive. That same rich man man created a machine used in recent days to create pornographic images of unconsenting women and reams of child sexual abuse material. If he’s worried about any repercussions as the owner of a sex-crime generator, he hasn’t shown it.

Away from X, conservative content creators can float racist hoaxes about immigrants in Ohio and Minnesota. Overheated videos based on nothing but hearsay and white nationalist nightmares can work their way up to primetime via connections with an extremely online vice president. These hucksters have no fear of blowback when they’re inevitably found to be lying.

Elon Musk and Nick Shirley types move with impunity because everything in the United States currently encourages it. The country is led by a blatant grifter, who skated on felony convictions and several impeachments with the help of a soft-handed legislature and a complicit Supreme Court. That leader carried out a coup in Venezuela over the weekend and didn’t even bother to do the standard hemming and hawing about human rights or democracy. The president moves through life as if he’ll never face a reprimand. For something like 80 years, he’s been right.

If his opponents in the Democratic Party are serious about curbing the outright criminality of Donald Trump and his cronies, they need to think deeply about actual consequences. Legislators campaigning for the midterms should learn from Trump and fill their speeches with talk of locking people up.

Impeachments at the highest levels of the courts should be on the table if justices are accepting bribes. Democratic attorneys general should be licking their lips at the idea of charging Trump’s billionaire backers. If Trump is willing to invade another country and arrest its leader for mocking him, then perp-walking the president and his Cabinet can’t be beyond the pale for Democrats.

Admittedly, this is more of a utopian vision of the world that could be than an actual prediction. Popular Dems like Tim Walz are already trotting out the party’s familiar routine of folding in advance. I’m pulling from the Robert Owen and Charles Fourier “If you speak it, they will come” school, hoping that floating an idea will make it more likely. Imagine it: Trump in handcuffs. Pete Hegseth at the Hague. Right-wing Youtubers forgotten. Musk going through amphetamine withdrawals at a newly reopened Alcatraz.

A better world is possible, but we have to say the word.

What do you think? After a decade of MAGA, are its opponents finally willing to fight dirty? Is there a way out of this mess without stooping to Trump’s level? Sound off in the comments.

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