Editor's weekly digest: Pushback pushback

Pushback.

The word sounds so harmless. Just a nudge, given to someone encroaching on your personal space. It sounds deserved, push-back, as if you were pushed and had to respond by applying your own pressure. Innocent, almost.

The word has become the euphemism of choice to refer to actions taken by border authorities to actively deny people from entering a country — or even forcefully returning them to the country they came from.

It's a euphemism, one that like many terms us...