Trump bans transgender troops President Trump announced that transgender troops would not be allowed to serve in the military on July 26, reversing the Pentagon’s 2016 decision to lift the ban.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) President Trump said he will ban transgender people from serving in the military in any capacity, a reversal of the Obama administration decision that would have...

So I just saw Dunkirk. For a review of it as a movie, see Jonathan Leaf’s lovely essay over at SCENES. Leaf says: “This is surely the best Hollywood war movie since Master and Commander. It may be an all-time classic.” And that may well be true. The movie immerses you in the concrete details of war, without punishing the...

The story of health care policy this week, this month and for the last decade (at least) has been a tale of partisan folly. But fear not, this isn’t another earnest pundit’s lament for the vital center to emerge, phoenix-like, to form a governing coalition of moderates in both parties. That’s not my bag. After all, I have always argued...

Josh Barro & Democrats’ ‘Hamburger Problem’: Liberal Judgment Guarantees Political Failure Progressives have a problem: They ladle unto every decision, even the most mundane and trifling one, an unattractive glop of gooey political significance. They can’t resist warning the rest of us that we’re abetting the destruction of the planet every time we, say, tuck into a Quarter Pounder. Josh...

Before I address the text of Donald Trump’s speech yesterday in Poland, it’s worth pulling up two quotes from our two previous presidents. These quotes, I think, encapsulate the difference between the ideas Trump articulated yesterday and the core ideas of many of his liberal critics. First, let’s go with Barack Obama, in a speech to the British Parliament on...

Western values, Judeo-Christian at base but also to some degree influenced by Greco-Roman views on philosophy and politics, are under threat from within by a nihilist “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go” mentality. Donald Trump told Poles fighting a version of that mindset that he was with them — and the American left had a freakout....

It’s a strange day when praising the Warsaw uprising, the Solidarity movement, and Pope John Paul II makes you a neo-Nazi, but that day is, apparently, today, following President Trump’s speech to an assemblage of dignitaries, alongside a cheering crowd, in Poland, on his way to the G20 summit. When it comes to that elevated oratory associated with the dignity...

The Republicans’ time-crunched effort to pass a health-care bill is hitting a lot of resistance in the Senate. The Post’s Paige Cunningham explains five key reasons the party is struggling to move their plan forward. The Post’s Paige W. Cunningham explains the key reasons why the party struggles to move a health-care plan forward. (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington...

If you’ve ever wondered what’s wrong with Millennials, it could be what they think about America. Or maybe I should say it’s what we think. I am a Millennial living in our nation’s capital. Washington, D.C. is looking her absolute finest this time of year. Bright red, white and blue blows throughout the streets and there is an air of...

We Americans have a new enemy, and it is ourselves. Half of Democrats and Republicans now see members of the opposing party as not just ill-informed but actually frightening, according to the Pew Research Center. In experiments with thousands of Americans, researchers have found that partisan animosity can now exceed racial hostility: When awarding hypothetical scholarships and cash, we are...