On August 25, 2017,
President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum banning Military Service by Transgender
Individuals and directing the Pentagon to bar transgender Americans from
military service. However according to a report by The Palm Center the memo has
been mischaracterized in media reports, and has generated considerable
confusion among the public, which is they gathered a group of experts in
military policy to clarify the President’s memo. Their evaluation of the memo shows that it is
inconsistent with both fact and law, and contrary to media reports, it does not
provide the Secretary of Defense with wide discretion. Rather, the memo
mandates discrimination against transgender Americans while affording limited
discretion to the Secretary only with respect to certain details of the
implementation process. Joining me today to talk all about the discrimination
that the President’s memo requires, the limited discretion that the Defense
Secretary is afforded concerning implementation, and the inaccuracies that
inform the President’s analysis is Aaron
Belkin who is the Founding
Director of The Palm Center and a Professor of Political Science at San
Francisco State University.
Since we last spoke
with Mark Joseph Stern of Slate last week a lot has happened, from
the news that President Trump is considering scrapping the DACA program to his
pardoning of the criminally convicted disgraced former Sherriff Joe Arpio. Mark returns to the show today to talk all
about these issues and so much more.
Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 3-6 pm ET on SiriusXM Progress 127 and on the SiriusXM apps. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free thirty-day pass or go to the app store and download SiriusXM for free and listen on your phone.
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