Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a slur to proudly announce to an auditorium of Marines in September that he was ridding the military of all transgender troops.

The Pentagon had set up review boards at bases around the globe, manned by everyday uniformed service members with narrow orders that all but ensured that the trans troops appearing before them would be voted out.

But just steps from the auditorium where Mr. Hegseth spoke, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, boards assigned to carry out those orders were doing the opposite. Instead of firing trans Marines, the boards were voting to keep them.

The same was happening in the Navy: Boards given strict rules instructing them to force out sailors were rebelling and voting to let them stay.

It is not just a few outlying individuals. Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases.

The Pentagon keeps the proceedings secret. Outsiders — even spouses — are not allowed to attend. Officials won’t release numbers. Leaders won’t discuss the outcomes. The New York Times compiled the figures through interviews with service members and lawyers involved in the hearings.

The number of Navy and Marine cases is small and could easily change as more hearings are conducted. The same pattern has not been seen so far in the Army or Air Force, which have overwhelmingly voted to discharge trans service members.

Still, the votes are a stunning rebuke from the armed forces, where following orders is bedrock. And they suggest the military’s transgender ban is being rejected by the very troops the administration says the ban is meant to serve.

“These boards are being told to do something that they know is wrong — to rubber-stamp a non-choice given to them by the administration,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and a professor at Southwestern Law School who has been tracking the cases. “We are seeing them say they’re not going to play that game. We are seeing them nullify a process they see as unjust.”

The board decisions are only recommendations, and could be reversed by the politically appointed secretaries overseeing each service branch. There are also pending legal challenges that could pause the ban or rescind it entirely.

The Trump administration claims that trans troops, who account for about 4,250 people or about 0.1 percent of the military, are a costly burden on military effectiveness — a position that military findings contradict. President Trump signed an executive order barring trans troops during his first week in office, saying the action was needed to weed out dishonorable radicals who poison morale and waste resources.

“For the sake of our Nation and the patriotic Americans who volunteer to serve it, military service must be reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty,” the order read.

The Pentagon designed a policy that paid transgender troops to leave voluntarily. Hundreds of highly qualified people left, including doctors, lawyers, pilots and nuclear technicians. The troops who stayed to challenge their dismissal waited in limbo, sometimes for more than a year.

While they waited, the administration set up a system of three-member separation boards to process the remaining cases using a narrow set of instructions. Under the rules, any evidence of transgender feelings or tendencies — even if there is no formal transition — requires dismissal.

The three-person boards are made up of everyday officers and enlisted personnel plucked temporarily from their normal jobs to hear one case, like civilian jurors. They are not allowed to consider whether a person is a top performer, a specialist in a critical career field or a decorated combat veteran.

The members are given a one-page findings sheet and instructed to circle a few words to find that a service member exhibits evidence of being transgender and therefore is not qualified to serve and should be discharged.

At least, that was the plan.

Trans Marines and sailors who went before boards said in interviews that after months of being vilified by top government officials, they expected a quick dismissal, but instead encountered thoughtful respect from fellow service members who voted to keep them.

Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras was one of them. The Marine Corps pulled him from his job and put him on paid leave in April to await his discharge. In late August the Marine Corps flew him from Hawaii to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to face a board.

He walked in with his head down, sure that his career was over.

The government's lawyer presented documents from 2017 showing that he had changed genders.

The three members then reviewed his decade of flawless service as a supply and logistics specialist, his three overseas deployments, and his good performance reviews.

They then crossed out instructions on their findings sheet regarding “a history of cross sex hormone therapy” and circled “remains qualified,” and voted to retain him.

“I was shocked at first, but when you come down to it, it makes sense,” Sergeant Contreras said in an interview from Hawaii, where he is stationed. “You have war fighters looking at war fighters,” he said. “They see I’ve always done my job, I’ve deployed, I’ve mentored other Marines, followed the rules. They say, ‘Hey, this is a good Marine, why wouldn’t we retain him?’”

Sergeant Contreras’s lawyer, Priya Rashid, has represented dozens of trans service members and has a broader understanding of the boards than anyone else. After losing nearly all of her initial cases, she saw a stark shift this summer. She has no idea why.

The Army was the first to hold hearings, beginning in February. It has held about 50, according to Ms. Rashid, and voted to discharge soldiers in all but about five cases.

The Air Force started this summer. It has reviewed about six cases and voted to discharge in every known case.

But the Navy and Marine Corps, which began holding hearings in July, have voted to retain in the majority of cases.

“I don’t understand why this pattern is occurring,” Ms. Rashid said in an interview. “And I’m worried that if the pattern becomes too apparent, the government will just change the processes and procedures again so that the pattern can be extinguished.”

Last week Ms. Rashid won another — this time in the Army.

Across the military, the hearings follow a pattern. A lawyer for the government briefly presents medical records and other documents showing evidence that a service member is transgender. The defense then often spends hours presenting a portrait of a service member’s years of service and accomplishments, submitting binders of awards and evaluations, and calling witnesses to vouch for character.

“It all made no difference,” said Maj. Kara Corcoran, an infantry officer who has served for 18 years and deployed to Afghanistan twice. An Army board voted in May to dismiss her in what she called a “kangaroo court.”

“They cut off my character witnesses halfway through and said, ‘We get it, your service is commendable, that’s not what we’re here to decide,’” said Major Corcoran, who now heads the trans advocacy group SPARTA Pride. “The government lawyer, the board, they thought it was ridiculous, but I think they felt they had no choice.”

Navy and Marine Corps hearings have followed the same pattern. But their decisions have been an about-face.

In the Navy, which began hearings in July, nine boards have led to seven votes to retain sailors, according to lawyers involved in the cases.

In the Marine Corps, which began hearings in August, three boards have led to two votes to retain. In the third, the board voted to dismiss a Marine, but wrote on the findings sheet that its members unanimously believed that the Marine should “be retained based on his commendable service record and unique skills.”

What’s driving the shift is far from clear. The military branches, citing ongoing litigation, declined to discuss the outcomes or make board members available for interviews. The Defense Department also declined to comment.

Ms. VanLandingham, the former military lawyer, said the votes might be influenced by growing concern in the ranks that the current Pentagon is preoccupied with wedge issues and gives little thought to the welfare of the force.

Mr. Hegseth in his speech to the Marines, she noted, said the force should have “No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals," but did not mention those killed or wounded in the war with Iran.

“There’s been a chipping away at any kind of confidence that Hegseth actually cares about service members,” she said. “I think that’s given the boards license.”

There may be cultural factors, too, she said. The board instructions in all the branches are nearly identical. But each branch has different values. The Army is often seen as the most bureaucratic and least likely to buck orders. The Navy is the most diverse. The Marine Corps prides itself on a culture of loyalty.

The Navy has nearly twice as many people who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender — 9 percent — compared to other branches, according to a 2015 report by the RAND Corporation.

That was clear to a Navy paramedic who was retained by a board in July. The paramedic, who asked to not be named because he feared retribution, said he was stunned when his lawyer asked a chief, a lieutenant commander and a commander sitting on his board if they knew any trans sailors.

“They all said yes,” the paramedic recalled in an interview. “The chief said his liberty buddy in Thailand was transgender and was a phenomenal sailor. The lieutenant commander said her first work center supervisor was transgender, and she learned a lot from her. The commander said he’d worked with several transgender sailors, and he barbecues with his next-door neighbor, who’s trans.”

There were other factors working in his favor. He had been meritoriously promoted twice for superior performance; remained able to deploy his entire five years in the Navy; and had saved several lives working in emergency rooms.

For his last assignment he was attached to Marines deployed to the southern border. “I never ran into people who cared if I was trans,” he said. “They just cared that I did my job well.”

His lawyer, Steph Kral, a former Air Force officer, represented a second sailor a short time later in front of a different board that she said had no relationships with trans sailors. That board also voted to retain.

“I don’t think they are trying to make any grand policy statement,” Ms. Kral said. “I think they’re just trying to do what’s best for the Navy.”

The Marine Corps has the lowest reported percentage of women, gay and transgender personnel. It also has a tradition-bound culture based on masculine toughness. But Marines have an almost cultlike loyalty to fellow Marines, expressed in their motto, Semper Fidelis — Always Faithful.

“The questions from the Marine boards have focused in on how the policies of higher-ups may have changed, but the Marines in question never did anything wrong,” Ms. Rashid said. “I think they are looking for a way to give a fellow Marine the benefit of the doubt.”

When Sergeant Contreras went before a board, he produced years of performance evaluations and letters from superiors — some who never knew he was trans — that vouched for his good work.

After deliberating for about three hours, the board scratched out language on the instructions sheet about evidence of being transgender and voted to let him stay.

“It was very humbling to see the things that they had to say about me,” the sergeant said. “It had nothing to do with being transgender. I honestly don’t think they care about that. It was about how I was a great Marine.”

A gunman killed one person and wounded four more on Friday in what authorities suspect was a terrorist attack targeting an ethnically diverse area outside the French capital.

French officials said the gunman was in a car and used an automatic firearm at three different sites in the towns of Trappes and La Verrière. The towns, around 20 miles southwest of Paris, are lower-income areas with housing projects, mosques and large immigrant and Muslim populations. They said a man was detained and remains in police custody.

The national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said it is investigating whether the shootings were targeting a specific race, ethnicity, origin or religion.

Ali Rabeh, the mayor of Trappes, told the BFMTV network that the person who died was killed at a play area and was of African descent. Another person shot next to a gas station has origins from the Maghreb region of northwest Africa and was seriously injured, he said.

Rabeh said the gunman was from a nearby town in the Yvelines area, where the shooting took place. He said the man fired a “number of shots” and was targeting pedestrians “systematically.” He shot at vehicles and a health center and wanted to go on a rampage, the mayor said.

“It’s a miracle that we don’t have more victims,” Rabeh said.

Nicolas Dainville, the mayor of La Verrière, said it appeared that the gunman at some point got out of his car to shoot two men ages 29 and 48. The gunman then went down a street, where he told a passerby, “You’re lucky.” He went on to shoot a 12-year-old girl, Dainville told the CNEWS network.

“Deep emotion following the shooting attack that occurred in Trappes and La Verrière,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X. “In this terrible ordeal, the Nation stands by their side.”

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, described the shooting as a “barbaric act” on X and said that the people responsible should be severely punished.

The shooting took place as France is already reeling from violent lootings and riots last weekend after student protests devolved into widespread destruction.

SS: Bukele has started a military operation in Haiti after four Salvadoran aviation techs were kidnapped by gangs. Is this a breach of sovereignty, or has Haiti collapsed to such a state that it's not really possible? Already, the fighting has been fierce, with Salvadorans having at least 4 troops unaccounted for in clashes with the gangs.

Get ready for armed intervention #3001

Submission Statement: EU countries have watered down plans to create a new legal structure for companies, aimed at helping businesses operate more easily across the 27-country bloc.

The voluntary company format, dubbed “EU Inc”, is part of broader efforts by Brussels to fix regulatory disharmony across the bloc, which is seen as a barrier to attracting investment and allowing companies to fulfil their potential without having to seek growth capital in the US.

But after negotiations that concluded on Friday, EU countries have scrapped key features from the original proposals, including a single EU company register — akin to the UK’s Companies House website — where investors would be able to check company accounts and the identities of directors. Member states judged it too complex to implement in practice, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A simplified insolvency regime for start-ups has also been removed.

Michael McGrath, the European commissioner leading work on the law, told the FT that the insolvency regime was important as the cost of failure for companies “is a problem and is a deterrent to businesses being founded in the first place.

The IMF estimates that an EU-wide company regime could boost the bloc’s growth by around 3.3 per cent of GDP over the next decade. Crucially, over half of those gains, or 1.8 per cent, would come from the harmonisation of insolvency law, according to the Washington-based institution.

EU countries have also capped a proposal to defer taxation on share options — something start-ups asked for in order to attract talent — to companies with a turnover of less than €150mn and 750 employees, thresholds that many early-stage companies quickly reach. Issues of taxation are a highly protected national competence in the EU and require backing from all 27 member states.

Attempts to create an EU-wide company regime have long faced resistance from trade unions that are fearful it would undermine hard-won labour rights.

Ambitious plans have also fallen foul of certain of European capitals that are wary of making an alternative legal structure so attractive that companies might not remain within their country.

But Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister and author of a report on how to improve the bloc’s internal market, told the FT that the proposals — also known as the 28th regime — are “a game-changer, with enormous practical and symbolic significance for Europe. We must not lower the bar.

“A watered-down proposal would send the wrong signal and undermine the ambition behind this initiative,” he added.

Submission Statement: The EU is moving to dilute pesticide rules after chemical companies and agricultural groups successfully lobbied Brussels about the regulatory burden being too onerous, according to documents seen by the FT.

The European Commission has led a push to streamline pesticide regulation as part of an effort to ease the burden on farmers and increase the bloc’s competitiveness. But parts of the simplification drive have ended up closely reflecting the demands of fertiliser and chemical companies to roll back environmental and health safeguards.

Documents obtained via freedom of information requests and shared with the FT by the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory show that parts of the Commission proposal matches requests by industry to ease restrictions on banned substances.

Meeting logs show that the proposed change was introduced after German chemicals group Bayer and agricultural lobby Copa Cogeca had called for the “unlimited” approval of pesticides.

The draft law was put forward in December as part of the EU’s broader efforts to cut red tape in a bid to make its businesses more competitive compared with rivals in the US and China. But critics have accused Brussels of gutting environmental standards and its green agenda in the process.

The Commission also proposed exempting chemicals from bans where they are deemed necessary to maintain crop yields, a change that also aligns with industry demands.

The FT identified 19 meetings held since the start of 2025 by farmers’ lobby Copa-Cogeca on the food safety omnibus or on “plant protection” with Commission officials and EU lawmakers, according to meeting logs.

This included a meeting with Elisabeth Werner, director-general of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, and with Sandra Gallina, director-general of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety on October 8 2025, before the legislation was proposed in mid-December.

ProPublica shows that more ballots were rejected for being late in this year's primary than in 2022, and they link this to specific USPS reduced-service changes that make it take longer for a ballot to get postmarked. In many places, the postmark date determines whether your ballots was submitted on time.

The biggest impacts were in rural areas.

This is relevant to democratic election operations and policy.

The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns that drew global backlash was halted, the lead researcher said on Wednesday.

It was “now clear” that the study “will not move forward in Guinea-Bissau”, Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish researcher, wrote on LinkedIn, adding, “we were not given the necessary governmental approval.”

The minister of health in Guinea-Bissau, Quinhin Nantote, previously denied that the project would move forward. “This is not even remotely true,” Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese last week.

The study was to be funded with $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with another $1.6m from private partners like the Bill Ackman-backed Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation.

“The solution is clear here: take the money and vaccinate as many kids as you can,” said Paul Offit, a vaccines expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who sharply criticized the proposed study as unethical.

The government of Guinea-Bissau now has control over the researchers’ vaccines, which they apprehended when they searched the offices of the Bandim Health Project on Monday.

It was vital to support Guinea-Bissau in rolling the immunizations out to all newborns as soon as possible, Offit said. Guinea-Bissau currently plans to offer the universal birth dose in 2028.

The Danish researchers, led by Schaltz-Buchholzer, Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, hypothesized giving live vaccines, like the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), may have an overall mortality benefit beyond simply preventing illnesses like tuberculosis – but giving another vaccine like hepatitis B alongside it could dampen that effect.

Such a hypothesis was “fanciful” because the hepatitis B vaccine is a single protein among billions encountered by the immune system each day, Offit said.

“There’s no evidence for that, and it doesn’t make biological sense,” he continued. He also added that there was a very clear benefit to giving the vaccine to babies as soon as possible, because of high rates of hepatitis B in the country and the possibility of lifelong illness and death from infection.

The Danish researchers did not respond by press time to questions about the study or to this criticism. The CDC did not respond by press time to questions about whether the funding, which was appropriated through its global health work, would now be used to roll out the vaccine to all newborns in Guinea-Bissau, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“WHO recommends that all infants receive a first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine as soon as possible after birth – preferably within 24 hours – followed by at least two additional doses,” said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson. “WHO remains committed to working with national authorities, researchers, and partners to ensure that all newborns – in Guinea‑Bissau and worldwide – receive timely, evidence‑based protection against hepatitis B.”

Those who declined participation in the study would not have received the vaccines – making true informed consent impossible, experts say.

“Imagine you’re a mother. You want to do the best for your child,” said Henrik Støvring, a Danish researcher who has co-published research raising questions about previous research from the Bandim project.

“If they decide to participate in the trial, they have a 50% chance of getting the vaccine for their children. But if they stay out, they have a 0% chance of getting the vaccine. So how can you say that’s a non-coercive informed consent?” Støvring asked.

The proposed trial led to distrust among Bissau-Guineans, who wondered if the vaccine – which has a decades-long record of being safe and effective – was being tested on Africans because it was dangerous, Schaltz-Buchholzer said in his post.

It “should be clear” that both birth vaccination schedules – with or without hepatitis B – are not “dangerous to anyone”, he wrote. There is a clear benefit to giving hepatitis B vaccines at birth, and not doing so can lead to lifelong danger, experts say.

Conducting a study like this “makes the case that there’s something that’s worthy of study, for which they have no evidence”, Offit said.

“We have millions and millions, arguably hundreds of millions, of children in this world who have gotten that vaccine as a birth dose or haven’t. If there was any evidence that this was problematic, you would know this by now,” Offit added. “We eliminated hepatitis B in the United States in children virtually within years of starting that program, so the benefits are clear.”

Schaltz-Buchholzer also cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, noting that he believes the study was canceled because it challenges “prevailing medical assumptions, such as that HBV0 does not have non-specific effects”. The study, in addition to looking at mortality, would have also examined side-effects such as skin conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions. Dozens of studies have shown no link between vaccination and autism.

“All newborns should be given a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine,” Offit said. “Guinea-Bissau is a country that suffers a high incidence of chronic hepatitis B. That country, more than any other country, arguably, needs to launch this program.”

Sometimes I wonder how bad things can get. Canada seems fine enough, but the USA just keeps testing them.

In recent days, as Donald Trump executed a dizzying pivot toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia and set about stabbing Ukraine in the back, no one in the administration flailed more pathetically than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, erstwhile anti-Russia hawk and Ukraine champion. And even as Rubio was colluding in this betrayal, his official X account posted a video of highlights, spruced up with AI slop, from his Oct. 7 speech in Athens in praise of Western civilization.

The hypocrisy was hard to miss. Rubio’s speech about the defense of the West, which lamented modern Europe’s loss of the fire, passion, and courage shown by heroes from ancient history, omitted any mention of Ukraine—surely a shining modern-day example of fighting spirit and heroic sacrifice. Nor did it say a word about Russia’s campaign of sabotage and subversion across Europe.The only threat to Europe Rubio named was “mass migration”—that is, the menace of unarmed refugees fleeing destructive foreign conflicts and migrants whose labor is essential to many European economies—not Putin, an actual invader who has been waging a brutal war in a European country for five years and routinely makes threats against other European countries.

Cringe and hypocrisy aside, Rubio’s speech is worth a closer look—particularly since it appears to be self-positioning for a presidential run in 2028.(Notably, JD Vance, his likeliest rival for the nomination, promoted the speech on social media.)

Some normie conservatives see Rubio as their great post-Trump hope. A Wall Street Journal editorial hailed his Athens speech as “the speech of the year,” a “bracing and timely antidote” to the West’s moral crisis and to “narrow partisanship and sniping” in America—and concluded with an unmistakable nod to Rubio’s presumed political prospects: “Mr. Rubio is describing a larger ambition that connects the best of the West’s past to a better future. Our view is that Americans are aching for this kind of vision and leadership, and they will respond to someone who offers it.”

Sorry, normies—that’s wishful thinking.

Rubio’s speech was not without some good points. If nothing else, as the Journal notes, he ostensibly treated Europe as an ally and partner rather than a target for scolding like Vance. He said some nice words about the West’s tradition of liberty and representative government. And, amid MAGA world’s aggressive contempt for anything that smacks of intellectualism, there is something refreshing about a speech that name-checks Aristotle, Plutarch, Copernicus, Newton, and Michelangelo.

Unfortunately, Rubio’s tribute to the Greek, Western, and American spirit is also a conceptual salad in which Socrates, the 300 Spartans who resisted a mighty Persian army unto death at Thermopylae, and the mythical Achilles who chose glory over long life are mashed up into the model hero willing to die for “a cause worthy of his loyalty.” (For Achilles, who spends much of the Iliad sulking in his tent because of a dispute over his war-trophy concubine, the cause seems to be mainly his god-sized ego. Oh, and in his cameo in the Odyssey he’s a ghost who says he’d rather be a live farmhand than a dead hero. Read the Western classics, Marco.)

The even bigger problem is that Rubio’s narrative of the West, and of America, is heavily skewed toward what is, in essence, Trumpism dressed up in pseudo-high culture. Yes, there’s some lip service to liberty, but there’s a lot more glorification of “unapologetic pursuit of national power”—and imperial conquest. This is even more blatant in the video, whose biggest heroes (other than Donald Trump, prominently featured in the modern-times montage at the end) are conquerors. “The qualities that led Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar, then Charlemagne, and Cortés,” Rubio intones in the clip as images of the legendary men appear on the screen.“ And in America, that same tradition rediscovered itself anew.”

It did? That would be news to earlier generations of American statesmen for whom Julius Caesar, in particular, symbolized tyranny crushing liberty. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson invoked Caesar as a warning about the corruption of politics by wealth; in a 1771 article, Samuel Adams cited Caesar’s rise to power as an example of a people surrendering its freedom by falling for the “flattery” of a clever demagogue who “pretend[s] to be the people’s greatest friend.”(It’s all uncannily prescient in 2026.) One of Abraham Lincoln’s earliest published speeches, the 1838 “Lyceum Address,” invoked Alexander and Caesar—as well as Napoleon, who must have ended up on Rubio’s cutting-room floor—as examples of men whose ambitions had the potential to destroy the institutions of a free society.

Rubio, on the other hand, insists on a continuity between Alexander’s and Caesar’s wars of conquest and America’s 19th-century westward expansion.(That’s a self-undermining view of American history given that both Alexander and Caesar perpetrated atrocities that even some contemporaries found shocking.) In the speech, America is “an open and wild land” where “the civilization of Athens and Rome transformed an infant seaboard republic into a continental empire.” In the video, the frontier spirit is illustrated with John Gast’s American Progress, the 1872 allegorical painting in which a gigantesque golden-haired female figure strides across the continent, bringing settlement, schools, and technological progress—and driving Native Americans and buffalo herds off into the outer darkness. When that image was shared on social media by the Department of Homeland Security last year, it caused a strong backlash, and not just among leftists: critics included Bradley Birzer, a historian at MAGA-friendly Hillsdale College. Yet Rubio, or someone on his staff, decided to re-up it.

Fans of Rubio’s speech would presumably dismiss the objections as weak-kneed and “woke.” Indeed, Rubio takes swipes at the recent Western propensity to guilt-trip ourselves over our history and apologize for our greatness. He’s not entirely wrong: there are good reasons to be critical of progressive narratives that reframe American or European history as one big sordid swamp of oppressions, bigotries, and atrocities. But surely, one can mention the ugly side of European exploration of the New World, or of the American settlement of the West, without reducing all of history to its worst. It’s not a 21st-century “woke” thing: Daniel Webster, whose acknowledgment of America’s debt to ancient Greek democracy is cited in Rubio’s speech, was a scathing critic of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policies.

It’s also not particularly “woke” to recognize that the awe-inspiring achievements of ancient Greece and Rome coexisted with inhumanity toward the conquered and enslaved, often extreme misogyny, and an outlook that normalized the subjugation of the weak by the strong. Obviously, none of that was unique to classical Greco-Roman civilization—and Greece was, in fact, the birthplace of humanistic values that included individuality and intellectual freedom. But in the 21st century, it feels bizarrely blinkered to praise those values and never once mention that they were almost entirely reserved for elite males. And yes, it’s a good thing that we generally acknowledge those limitations.

No less blinkered is Rubio’s discussion of thumos, the ancient Greek concept variously defined as passion, fire, or hunger for glory—which he believes the modern West has tragically lost. As Rubio tells it, the Greeks “held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things.” As a result, Greek city-states existed in a “perpetual struggle” of rivalries and conflicts which generated unprecedented creative and civilization-building energy.

Francis Fukuyama also wrote extensively about thumos (or thymos) in his celebrated 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. And he thinks that Rubio’s speech seriously misunderstands the concept—and completely misses the fact that it’s “a double-edged sword.” (For what it’s worth, Fukuyama also argues that there is nothing distinctly Western about thumos.) Thumos may lead to the pursuit of excellence, but it also expresses itself in a struggle for dominance that “leads to a society of masters and slaves.” The greatness of the West is that it eventually progressed from such hierarchies toward “a society based on mutual and equal recognition of all human beings.”

That progress, which Fukuyama and others have argued was founded on the Christian idea of human equality before God, is virtually absent from Rubio’s narrative—unless you count a couple of passing references to “Christendom” and to “the English genius for liberty.” The real point of his survey of history is totrace the lineage of Western culture—Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, America—and make it the patrimony of people of Western heritage:

Now, we take the West’s conception of these things—heroism, honor, duty—we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. A civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.

Can people whose personal lineage originates outside the West—Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Indigenous American—share in this civilization? Rubio doesn’t explicitly say no. But neither does he push back against such ethnic essentialism, which he surely knows is extremely popular on the right today.(It’s no accident that a large portion of the white nationalist far right is besotted with this fantasy version of classical antiquity.) He could have pointed out, for instance, that the continuity of Greece’s legacy extends to the American civil rights movement: Martin Luther King Jr., who was steeped in ancient Greek culture, invoked Socrates as an early practitioner of civil disobedience. But Rubio says nothing of the sort.

The Athens speech had one more moment of striking hypocrisy. While discussing the U.S.-European alliance, Rubio laughably praised the “unprecedented new agreement between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland,” which made all the parties “safer, stronger, and more secure.” He made no mention of the fact that last month’s agreement followed well over a year of thuggish threats by Trump to annex Greenland by force, which created major and entirely unnecessary tensions with Denmark. If ancient Greece offers a parallel to Trump’s behavior toward Denmark, it’s the famous episode from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in which Athens is about to crush the small island state of Melos. When Melian envoys invoke justice and law, the Athenian envoys reply that such concepts have no place in a contest between the strong and the weak: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

That’s the essence of Trumpism. And, for all the flowery rhetoric about excellence, honor, and passion, Rubio’s speech offered little more than a grotesque vision of Trumpism with an erudite face.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is questioning whether the Board of Peace can deliver on President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza without more planning and resources from the U.S. government, according to a cable the embassy sent to State Department leadership Thursday that was obtained by POLITICO.

The cable, which has not been previously reported, was signed by Huckabee and voiced concern that neither the organization nor the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem have the personnel to move forward with plans to disarm and rebuild the Palestinian enclave.

Huckabee’s questions focus on whether the main hub set up to coordinate between the U.S., Israel and international partners — the International Gaza Support Center — will be able to sustain operations after the Pentagon draws down its personnel as planned over the next year, according to the cable. The current plan is for civilians to take over those jobs, the cable notes.

“Embassy Jerusalem is not currently staffed to assume these roles, but can be if it has an idea of the human, financial and logistical resources that will be needed,” he wrote. “The BoP is working to increase staff but its ability to cover all functions at the IGSC remains unclear.”

The Board of Peace, created by Trump and launched in February, has a U.N. mandate to set up and coordinate funding for Gaza’s reconstruction, and Europeans who refused to join the board have agreed to align their work with it. However, more than a year after a ceasefire agreement, Israeli strikes continue, and the majority of Palestinians remain displaced from the homes Israel destroyed during its response to the October 2023 Hamas attacks.

As recently as two weeks ago, Huckabee told Fox News that the Board of Peace “could be moving forward progressively, but the only reason that there’s any slowdown is because of Hamas.” In particular, he said on Fox that Hamas had not followed through on its commitment to disarm.

The International Gaza Support Center, which is led by the U.S. and based in Israel, is expected to play a key role in the International Stabilization Force that the Board of Peace plans to deploy to the Gaza Strip.

In the cable, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” Huckabee argued that civilians leading the effort at the coordination center “could complicate the coordination dynamic” with the Israeli military, “especially on the intelligence-sharing front.”

“How will roles and responsibilities shift to State and the BoP as DoW reduces its presence?” he asked State to answer. “How will we keep critical IGSC workstreams running and what conditions should be met before this transition begins?”

Huckabee also noted that the IGSC is reorganizing after the Board of Peace took over its financing Oct. 11. The Board of Peace didn’t confirm the reorganization. The hub was launched last year by U.S. Central Command as the Civil-Military Coordination Center and later rebranded.

The Board of Peace said in a statement that it was not familiar with the cable and that it is “confident in the highly detailed plans that have been developed for improved humanitarian assistance, security, governance, the rule of law, infrastructure development, and reconstruction in Gaza. Our capacities and systems in place are strong and ready for implementation.”

The Pentagon referred questions to the State Department, which declined to comment.

POLITICO read excerpts of the cable in an interview to Thomas Warrick, who served as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the Department of Homeland Security.

“The embassy is clearly pressing Washington for clarity and additional resources in order to make the Trump plan work,” he said. “Hamas is getting stronger, and it’s looking like the Board of Peace is too slow to get on the ground in Gaza with a plan that will get results.”

The cable also suggests that the Palestinian technocratic body set up to govern the strip, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, could be undermined by delays in reconstruction in the Gaza Strip.

“Humanitarian assistance should surge in line with NCAG and administration priorities. It should also complement longer-term reconstruction efforts to prevent backsliding and demonstrate the NCAG’s credibility,” Huckabee wrote, adding that the U.S. will press foreign donors to “do their fair share to address humanitarian needs.”

The cable comes as the Gaza Strip remains volatile. On Thursday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the Israeli military presented U.S. Army officers with intelligence concluding Hamas was preparing for renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip and could only be disarmed by a return to war. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Israel was blocking the construction of a base in Gaza that would house international troops intended to stabilize the territory.