Readers, January is almost over – and what a miserable year it’s been.
Over at my weekly newsletter, the Carnival of Fools, I’ve taken to ending December with my “Year in Review,” a trawl through the seriocomic destruction of the immediate past. Up until now, space concerns have required it to be divided in half; in a world where film students apparently can no longer sit still long enough to actually watch films, I well understand that nobody has the appetite for a 5,000-word article, no matter how quippy it might be. Imagine being force-fed doughnuts until you burst. (Which reminds me: If you haven’t already subscribed to the Carnival via e-mail for some fool reason, do it now: Allow my prose to infest your inbox like kudzu, every Tuesday!)
Now, as I drag my broken body across the finish line of this first month of 2026, I find myself thinking I may have to retire the Year in Review altogether: There’s going to be too much to cover this year. We have already lived — survived is more like it — through a full twelve months’ worth of news, only compressed into the first 31 days of the year:
- Zohran Mamdani takes office and pledges his heart — and the fates of his residents — to Fully Automated Luxury Socialism.
- Donald Trump orders a military strike upon Venezuela that scoops up Nicolás Maduro and his wife, but keeps the regime in place. He then pronounces himself acting president of Venezuela on Truth Social.
- Tim Walz ends his reelection campaign for governor, in the wake of fallout from the Somali fraud scandal. I confidently think to myself: “Heh, looks like that’s the last we’ll be seeing of ol’ Tim Walz ’round these parts.”
- An ICE officer accidentally kills protester Renee Good, at which point Tim Walz immediately becomes the second most important politician in America.
- A weeklong orgy of blame, protest, and amateur video analysis commences. I confidently think to myself: “Thankfully it’s too cold for anything really violent or terrible to happen on the streets of Minneapolis.”
- The Trump administration subpoenas Jerome Powell, basically for not lowering interest rates.
- Donald Trump runs NATO all the way to the brink in a mad — and ultimately abandoned — attempt to annex Greenland.
- Maria Machado gives away her Nobel Peace Prize to satiate the inflamed ego of President Trump, who then cuts a deal with Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez to keep the Maduro regime in power.
- Paramount releases the earthshakingly bad Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
- Washington, D.C., and much of the Eastern Seaboard is hit with a once-in-a-decade snow-and-ice storm. D.C. remains barely operative
- ICE shoots another protester in Minneapolis, this time under incredibly dubious circumstances. Kristi Noem and her (alleged) paramour Corey Lewandowski are finally cashiered from their leading roles in DHS policy, as Tom Homan steps into the fray and deescalates both rhetorically and substantively.
That was January, folks. The unsummarizable month, the month where everything happened, the month that just kept coming on relentlessly, stalking you with one disaster after another. And the worst part of all is that it’s not over yet. For all I know by the time this is published, the Iranian regime will be in flames. (In the alternate, we may find ourselves hopelessly entangled in a land war in Asia. Every day’s a fun new adventure with President Trump!) I end the month with cold comfort: February will have to be a better month than January was, if only because it’s three days shorter.