Marco Rubio’s Pep Talk for Western Civilization.

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(Photo by Mark Schiefelbein / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood Wednesday on the Pnyx, the hill where Athenians once met to govern themselves, with the Acropolis turning gold behind him. “Here, in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West,” he said: “fierce individuality and relentless ambition,” and “a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.” Glory. You don’t hear that from a podium much anymore. That was his point. The West, Rubio argued, didn’t rise by playing it safe. It was restless, competitive and unembarrassed about winning. Lately, we’ve treated that

Some Days Belong to the Dead, Mr. Mamdani.

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(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Some days aren’t for arguing. They’re for remembering. October 7th is one of them. Three years ago, Hamas crossed into Israel and killed more than 1,100 people: at a music festival, in their kitchens, in their beds. They dragged 251 more into Gaza. Grandmothers. Babies. Kids who’d gone out to dance. On the anniversary, a mayor’s job isn’t complicated. Say that those people mattered. Stand with the New Yorkers still carrying the loss. Then step back and let the day belong to them. Zohran Mamdani couldn’t do it. New York’s mayor gave the victims a few lines, acknowledging the “unthinkable

France Is Burning, and Trump Says He Knows Why.

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(Photo by Basile Dubouis / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images)

Tear gas in Paris. Fires in Lyon. Projectiles in Strasbourg and Rennes. More than 6,100 arrests, most of them children. That was Tuesday in France, the worst day yet in a school protest movement that began in September and has curdled into something uglier. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called it the school system’s “heaviest toll in decades.” He told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had been hurt. His office put the number of injured police at more than 700, according to Reuters. More than half of France’s roughly 3,700 high schools were blockaded or expected to

With a T-Shirt, Jack Smith Shows His Hand.

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Jack Smith went to a concert Saturday night. That should be the least interesting sentence written about anyone this week. For three years he was the most consequential prosecutor in the country. Merrick Garland picked him in November 2022 to decide whether Donald Trump would face federal charges. He decided yes, twice. Whatever you thought of those cases, they all rested on one claim: this was law, not politics. The man bringing the charges had no rooting interest. Then he turned up at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., beer in hand, wearing a black Bruce Springsteen tour shirt with

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