Zaidane is the president and CEO of Millennial Action Project.
February is Black History Month — a time where we celebrate the accomplishments and triumphs of the Black community throughout American history. It is also a call to action, asking all Americans to be a part of the conversation about the pursuit of freedom and racial equity. These conversations can be challenging — as we know, in the United States, partisan and racial divides are complex.
However, bridging these divides is the only way to achieve meaningful and sustainable progress.
Take it from one of our young leaders in Arkansas:
“I’m the youngest African-American female elected in the General Arkansas Assembly. I have to work across the partisan and racial lines to get things done. … It’s my mission every year to see who I have nothing in common with. … I work on a bill with them, and [the bill] is going to be something meaningful.” — Rep. Jamie Scott
In December, Scott was the recipient of the Millennial Action Project’s Rising Star Award, presented each year to two young state legislators who demonstrate outstanding achievements in building bridges within their legislature. Scott, a Democrat in a super-majority Republican General Assembly, was nominated by Republican Rep. Aaron Pilkington for her tenacious approach to inclusive proble- solving. Together, Scott and Pilkington lead the Arkansas Future Caucus, which convenes young legislators to find consensus and take action on issues that disproportionately impact younger generations.
Too often in policymaking, it can seem like a win-or-lose situation, yet it's this “scarcity mindset” that often leads to winner-take-all results.
Scott, through her tremendous leadership, has modeled a new style of politics — one that rejects the scarcity mindset and embraces a mindset of abundance. In practice, Scott centers communities of color in her solutions, and works with people across racial and partisan divides to ensure that they can cocreate better outcomes for all. What a diversity of leaders within the MAP network, like Scott, have shown us is that collaborative policymaking can be a win-win.
Scott’s attitude demonstrates that by working with unlikely allies — even members with whom you seemingly have nothing in common — you can create winning strategies to benefit all communities. This type of bridge-building gives other legislators a framework for more inclusive policymaking as well. It sets the example that there should be no fear in working together; rather, there are shared wins that come with collaboration.
Watch this in action:
The Millennial Action Project's Rising Star Awards (2021)www.youtube.com
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.