According to Defense officials, the Pentagon is planning to repeal its ban on transgender troops as of July 1.

Top personnel officials plan to meet as early as Monday to finalize details of the plan, and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work could sign off on it by Wednesday, according to a Defense official familiar with the timetable but who spoke on condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Final approval would come from Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and the announcement will be on the eve of the Fourth of July weekend.

Each branch of the military would have a one-year period to implement policies that affect housing, uniforms, and recruiting, one official said.

Last year, Carter announced that the military would lift the ban unless it could be shown that the ban would have an “adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness.”

The Pentagon faced some pushback last year when Senator Mac Thornberry (R-TX), chair of the Armed Services Committee, requested information related to the proposed repeal.

“What would be the projected cost of changing the transgender service policy? To what extent would military barracks, ship berths, gym shower facilities, latrines, and other facilities have to be modified to accommodate personnel in various stages of transition and what would be the projected cost of these modifications?” asked Thornberry.

Last Friday Thornberry released a statement in response to the upcoming announcement:

“If reports are correct, I believe Secretary Carter has put the political agenda of a departing administration ahead of the military’s readiness crisis. The force is exhausted from back to back deployments and spending their home-station time scrambling to get enough equipment and training before they deploy again.  My focus is on helping the troops now — to be the most effective, deployable force possible.

"Consistent with that philosophy, when we learned DOD was looking at new policies on the service of transgender individuals, the Committee posed a number of questions to DOD. In particular, there are readiness challenges that first must be addressed, such as the extent to which such individuals would be medically non-deployable. Almost a year has passed with no answer to our questions from Secretary Carter. Our top priority must be warfighting effectiveness and individual readiness is an essential part of that.”

The New York Times estimates there are fewer than 2,500 transgendered service members.