NEW POLICY: Eight months after tweeting that transgender troops will no longer be allowed to serve “in any capacity,” President Trump sent a memo Friday canceling his call for an all-out ban. The president instead gave Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the green light to implement the secretary’s own proposal detailed in a 44-page study delivered to the White House in February. Mattis’ recommendations bar many transgender people from serving, roll back much of the Obama administration’s two-year-old open service policy, and question a Rand Corp. study former Defense Secretary Ash Carter relied on as the basis. “The realities associated with service by transgender individuals are more complicated than the prior administration or Rand had assumed,” the heavily footnoted Mattis’ study concluded. “Informed by the data collected since the Carter policy took effect, the department is not convinced that these risks could be responsibly dismissed or that even negligible harms should be incurred given the department’s grave responsibility to fight and win the nation’s wars.”

HAPPENING TODAY: The Association of the United States Army is hosting a Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Ala., beginning this morning. The three-day event will include presentations from the top Army leaders, including keynote remarks from Army Secretary Mark Esper, and a Q-and-A with Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville. Full agenda here.

The theme for this year’s event is “Modernizing and Equipping America’s Army for Today and Tomorrow,” and the Army will formally introduce the new U.S. Army Futures Command, according to the event’s organizers.

BOLTON’S IMPACT: Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton doesn’t formally take over for H.R. McMaster as Trump’s national security adviser for two more weeks, but his impending arrival is already casting a long shadow over the West Wing. Bolton is expected to “clean house” of Obama administration holdovers on the National Security Council, as well as dozens of officials suspected of leaking and other acts of disloyalty, according to a report in Foreign Policy.

While conservative columnist and longtime Trump critic George Will blasted Bolton as the “second-most dangerous American” in an acid-penned commentary in the Washington Post, and a New York Times editorial Friday opined, “There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton to lead the country into war,” Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, gave Bolton a qualified vote of confidence yesterday. “John is a very smart, very experienced, very tough guy. He has strong views,” Hadley said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to his time at the U.N. “But he was, I think on balance, an asset for the president and executed the guidance he got for the president. But he is a very capable fellow.”

“I don’t have real concerns,” Hadley said, noting the national security adviser has to be someone who is close to the president and enjoys the confidence of the president. “The president knows him, seems to be comfortable with him and I think feels that John is more in line with the president’s views and the president is the person elected by the American people to set foreign policy. He deserves people around him who think the same way,” Hadley said.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who served under President Barack Obama, was less sanguine. “I am concerned if I believe Mr. Bolton’s rhetoric where he’s talked about preemptive strike or even preemptive war in North Korea. He’s obviously very strongly opposed to the nuclear deal in Iran,” Mullen said, appearing on ABC with Hadley. But he was also willing to reserve judgment. “He also needs to get in there, give him a chance to perform in this job.

“He’s working for the president,” Mullen said. “The president is clearly not going to be working for him. So it’s going to be the president’s views that I think Mr. Bolton will actually in the end execute.”

BOLTON’S FIRST TASK: When he arrives April 9, Bolton will have less than two months to organize the talks between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, assuming the meeting really comes off. “I think the rhetoric out of John Bolton has been a little bit extreme for my taste,” Hadley said, “but we have to make this point, give this to the administration that while they were criticized for too much rattling of the sword with respect to North Korea, it did get China’s attention, it did convince China that the status quo was not sustainable.”

And at the same time, Bolton will have to advise Trump on ripping up the Iran deal, as he promised on the campaign trail. Some reports have suggested Bolton won the job by providing the president with a framework for getting out of the deal, while his current adviser was urging him to stay in. “There’s a lot not to like about the Iran deal but that’s not the question,” Hadley said on ABC. “The question is, is it in the American interest to rip up the Iran deal? And what will be the consequence? And one of the consequences may be both a resumption by Iran of their enrichment program, and it would be alienating our friends and allies. So the hope that the administration has had that our allies will pressure Iran to do something about its ballistic missile program, about its activities in the neighborhood, maybe extend the term of the agreement, that gets harder if they rip up the deal.”

BUT CAN BOLTON GET A CLEARANCE? Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine on Sunday suggested nefarious connections between Bolton and the Russian government could keep him from getting a security clearance, but didn’t offer any proof.

Kaine said on CNN’s “State of the Union” he’s concerned by Bolton’s appearance in a video for a Russian gun rights group in November 2013. NPR reported Thursday Bolton appeared in the video at the request of former National Rifle Association president David Keene.

DEPORTATION DEPLORED: A military veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan but is not a U.S. citizen and was later convicted on felony drug charges has been deported, sparking outrage from Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran herself who was lobbying on his behalf. Miguel Perez, 39, was taken by immigration authorities Friday to Mexico, a country Duckworth said Perez hasn’t called home since he was 8.

“This case is a tragic example of what can happen when national immigration policies are based more in hate than on logic and ICE doesn’t feel accountable to anyone. At the very least, Miguel should have been able to exhaust all of his legal options before being rushed out of the country under a shroud of secrecy.”

AIRSTRIKE IN LIBYA: U.S. forces reported killing two terrorists in an airstrike conducted near Ubari, Libya, Saturday, U.S. Africa Command said in a statement issued Saturday afternoon.

SEND IN JIMMY? Former President Jimmy Carter has offered his services to the Trump administration ahead of a meeting with North Korea this spring. Carter, who is now 93, was instrumental in personally negotiating a breakthrough with Pyongyang in 1994, which led to the so-called “framework agreement” that averted a possible U.S. military strike against North Korea’s nuclear facility at Yongbyon, but which ultimately failed to prevent the North from secretly continuing their nuclear program.

EXPELLING RUSSIANS: Meanwhile the National Security Council is prepared to advise Trump to expel a to-be-determined number of Russian diplomats in the U.S. on Friday, following the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the United Kingdom this month, sources told CNN and Reuters.

NOT GOING ANYWHERE: “There is zero credibility to news reports asserting the U.S. is leaving Incirlik and Al Udeid AB in Turkey and Qatar,’ Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White tweeted yesterday “These reports are unhelpful and feed mistrust and division among regional partners at a time when we need to work together to address shared security concerns.”

THE RUNDOWN

AP: Sources: Trump plans to oust Shulkin as VA secretary

New York Times: Saudis Claim to Intercept 7 Missiles Fired at Cities From Yemen

AP: Videos raise questions over Saudi missile intercept claims

AP: Obama, in Japan, says North Korea’s isolation means less leverage

Defense One: China and Trump May Bury the Liberal International Order

Washington Post: More Iraq veterans deserve the Medal of Honor

Business Insider: Republicans and Democrats raise serious questions about Trump’s national security adviser pick John Bolton

Military.com: Afghan Air Force Must Switch from Mi-17s to Black Hawks

Reuters: Trump considers expelling some Russian diplomats over poison attack: source

New York Times: ‘America First’ Bears a New Threat: Military Force