It looks like the USA Today story alleging that Mattis had broken with Trump and put a freeze on his transgender ban is totally false, according to the left-wing site Vox:
VOX – Despite media reports to the contrary, Secretary of Defense James Mattis didn’t freeze President Trump’s ban on transgender troops. Instead, Mattis is doing exactly what Trump told him to do: Prepare a plan to implement a deeply controversial order that many in the military and on Capitol Hill oppose.
“The department will carry out the president’s policy direction,” Mattis said in a statement last night. “I will establish a panel of experts serving within the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to provide advice and recommendations on the implementation of the president’s direction.”
And once the panel gives Mattis its recommendations, he’ll talk to the president about how to turn them into practice.
Some reports took the secretary’s comments to mean he single-handedly stopped the ban until further notice. USA Today, for instance, ran a piece headlined “Mattis freezes transgender policy; allows troops to continue serving, pending study.”
But that’s not true. The president’s August 25 ban memo allowed trans service members to stay in the military up to March 23, 2018, when the ban goes into effect. “No action may be taken against such individuals,” the administration memo reads, until Mattis and the Homeland Security secretary figure out how to address transgender people already serving in the military.
And Mattis has until February 21, 2018, to figure out how best to implement the plan. Mattis had previously signaled that he needed more time to complete the review of the effects transgender service members have on the military’s ability to fight wars.
Well there you go. More fake news by an incompetent news media.
They are just making Trump’s point for him nowadays.