Defense Secretary Jim Mattis approved the recommendation from the services that lifting the ban be delayed. | AP Photo Pentagon delays lifting of transgender troop ban 
 
 The Pentagon announced Friday night that it will delay allowing openly transgender troops to join the military until Jan. 1, 2018. 
 
 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis approved the recommendation from the services that lifting the ban be delayed to allow them time to review the impact on “the readiness and lethality of our forces,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement. 
 
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 The six-month delay will only impact new transgender recruits, not the estimated 15,500 already serving. It follows reports last week that the service leaders requested the delay. 
 
 Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the decision to allow transgender troops to serve openly on June 30, 2016, with an implementation deadline of July 1, 2017. 
 
 Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said allowing transgender troops to serve openly is “ill-conceived and contrary to our goals of increasing troop readiness.” 
 
 “This delay is indicative of a policy that was rushed and never clearly thought out and I am pleased that Secretary Mattis has decided to delay the accession policy,” she said in a statement. 
 
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 Hartzler introduced and then withdrew an amendment to the House’s defense authorization bill in committee this week that would repeal the policy that allows transgender troops to serve openly. While she withdrew the amendment, she said she may bring it up again during debate in the full House in July. 
 
 The move faced immediate blowback from gay-rights advocates. The American Military Partners Association called it “disappointing” that qualified transgender people can’t be open about their identity when enlisting or commissioning. 
 
 “It has been unequivocally proven that allowing qualified transgender people to serve openly strengthens our military and creates a more inclusive and diverse force. The issue has been thoroughly studied and moving forward with this new recruitment policy is imperative in order for the military to be able to recruit the best talent our nation has to offer,” the association’s president Ashley Broadway-Mack said in a statement. 
 
 OutServe-Service Members Legal Defense Network also issued a statement, saying that they still expect the ban on transgender service to be lifted at the end of the six-month delay. 
 
 “We reiterate that the services are prepared for transgender individuals and assert that delays beyond January 2018 will have a negative impact on military readiness---that we cannot tolerate,” the group said in a statement. ||||| Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis speaks at a press conference at the end of the NATO defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, (Photo: Julien Warnand, EPA Images) 
 
 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced late Friday that it will delay until at least 2018 rolling out its policy for acceptance of transgender troops into the ranks. 
 
 The move by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis comes just hours before a July 1 deadline, set in the Obama administration, for the military to recruit transgender enlisted troops and to accept new officers. 
 
 "Secretary Mattis today approved a recommendation by the services to defer accessing transgender applicants into the military until Jan. 1, 2018," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement. "The services will review their accession plans and provide input on the impact to the readiness and lethality of our forces." 
 
 In May, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work had ordered the armed services to advise him of their plans to meet the deadline, or advise him of concerns about how accepting new transgender troops could affect the military's readiness to fight. The Army and Marine Corps both sought delays. 
 
 Transgender troops already in the ranks can continue to serve, under the policy developed last year by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Mattis has made clear that the military's readiness to fight is his top priority. 
 
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 But the lack of a policy to accept new transgender troops already has caused problems. In May, the Air Force and Army were unable to commission transgender cadets from their prestigious military academies because the military lacks an acceptance policy for new transgender troops. 
 
 Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, which studies issues of sexuality in the military, said it would force troops to lie about their identity, as did the former policy that prohibited gay and lesbian troops from serving openly. 
 
 “Secretary Mattis' decision to prolong the enlistment ban will have the effect of requiring applicants to lie in order to join the military, as was the case under ‘Don’t Ask, don’t tell,’ Belkin said. “That makes no sense because, as predicted by all of the research, transgender military service has been a success. “ 
 
 The Rand Corp. found in 2016, in a study commissioned by the Pentagon, that accepting transgender troops would have a negligible impact on military readiness. 
 
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 In an unexpected move Wednesday morning, on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman’s order to desegregate the armed forces, President Donald Trump tweeted that he had decided to bar transgender Americans from serving in uniform. 
 
 Trump’s latest edict surprised the national security establishment, short-circuiting a review of the current transgender policy recently ordered by Defense Secretary James Mattis and coming before the Pentagon’s personnel officials even had confirmation hearings, let alone started their jobs. The way the announcement was made begged the question of whether Trump discussed this issue with the military’s leadership at all. Worse though, on its merits, the order contradicts decades of military leadership on equal opportunity and flies in the face of empirical research showing transgender troops don’t hurt readiness. Quite the contrary: Wednesday’s move will only make it harder to maintain readiness, by slightly shrinking the pool of eligible recruits, removing current service members, and signaling to many others that today’s military is not the kind of employer they want to work for. 
 
 To think that such an ill-informed and discriminatory stance won’t affect broader perceptions of military service is a shortsighted and costly mistake. 
 
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 The tweetstorm that barred transgender troops stands in stark contrast to the military’s proud civil rights legacy. American military history since the Civil War tells a story of one group after another gaining entrance to the service—and then more prestigious roles within the service, such as assignment to combat units or the opening of the officer corps. Uniformed service represented more than a job or chance to fight for these groups; it meant an opportunity to earn legitimacy as full-fledged citizens, and with it, the ability to vote, work, and raise families alongside the rest of America. 
 
 Unfortunately, the abhorrent tweets by President Trump on Wednesday morning play into false narratives that have long been used to avoid or delay change in the armed forces. From integration of black Americans, to women gaining the right to fly planes and participate in front-line combat, to the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”—false arguments and stereotypes have always been deployed to oppose the change. In each of these cases, history has proved the naysayers wrong and shown the wisdom of broadening the aperture of service. 
 
 In this case, there is solid empirical evidence as to why the transgender ban is wrong. A recent RAND report commissioned by the Department of Defense found that readiness will remain largely unaffected by allowing transgender people to serve while health care cost increases will likely be no more than one-tenth of 1 percent. Several foreign militaries have long been fully integrated and experienced none of the problematic effects Wednesday morning’s announcement suggested. 
 
 Senior military leaders responsible for readiness have echoed these findings. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, recently encouraged the military to fully accept transgender troops. “Thousands of transgender Americans are currently serving in uniform and there is no reason to single out these brave men and women and deny them the medical care that they require,” Mullen told USA Today, citing the harm to discipline and integrity caused by the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law and now the transgender ban. 
 
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 The cost of losing approximately 15,000 active and reserve troops who are currently serving honorably is bad enough but doesn’t begin to reflect the enormous cost the military could face in the loss of future recruits. Though transgender recruits themselves may reflect a small proportion of overall yearly accessions, there is no accounting for the number of other young Americans who will choose not to be a part of an organization that openly discriminates in this way. 
 
 The youngest cohort of Americans—those 18- to 25-year-olds the military targets for recruiting—have many options for employment in an improving economy. Most don’t seriously consider military service, mainly due to a lack of familiarity or influencers in their life who steer them otherwise. For those who are on the margins, particularly women or those who are from geographic areas where the military is less popular, Trump’s transgender ban will be another strike against service. 
 
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 On issues of LGBTQ rights, millennials (who make up the military’s recruiting pool) have shown the highest levels of acceptance of any generations, with a recent Pew survey indicating 74 percent of millennials are supportive of gay marriage. A survey out of the Naval Postgraduate School found in 2013 that 83 percent of millennials believed prior to the DADT repeal that “gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly” with the same survey finding a majority of millennials believed repeal would increase the military’s overall effectiveness. The choice to score political points on the backs of service members does a disservice to the armed forces and will go down in history as an embarrassing and discriminatory mistake. 
 
 All of the evidence indicates that transgender service is a net positive for our armed forces, and in fact, some research shows that transgender Americans are twice as likely to volunteer to serve. To think that such an ill-informed and discriminatory stance won’t affect broader perceptions of military service is a shortsighted and costly mistake.
– The military isn't quite ready to recruit transgender troops. A new policy allowing the Pentagon to do so was supposed to begin on July 1, but defense chief Jim Mattis said Friday night that it would be delayed six months, reports USA Today. A Pentagon statement said Mattis had approved a request by the military's branches to postpone the change in policy so they'd have more time to assess its impact on the "readiness and lethality of our forces." An estimated 15,500 transgender troops are currently serving, per Politico, and Mattis' decision does not affect them. Critics of the move said it would force transgender recruits to lie if they want to join the military, just as Don't Ask, Don't Tell had forced gay recruits to hide their sexual identity. But Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., applauded the move, asserting that the idea of transgender recruitment is “ill-conceived and contrary to our goals of increasing troop readiness.”