Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers

WASHINGTON — President Trump abruptly fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday night, sidelining a history-making fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.

The ouster of Brown, only the second Black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shock waves through the Pentagon. His 16 months in the job had been consumed with the war in Ukraine and the expanded conflict in the Middle East.

“I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump posted on social media.

Brown’s public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration’s wars against what they deem “wokeism” in the military. His ouster is the latest upheaval at the Pentagon, which plans to cut 5,400 civilian probationary workers starting next week and identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities.

Trump says he is nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman. Caine is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, and had most recently served as the associate director for military affairs at the CIA, according to his official military biography.

Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs.

However, he has not had key assignments identified in law as prerequisites for the job, including serving as either the vice chairman, a combatant commander or a service chief. That requirement could be waived if the “president determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”

More Pentagon firings

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a statement praising both Caine and Brown, announced the firings of two additional senior officers: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife.

Franchetti becomes the second top female military officer to be fired by the Trump administration. Trump fired Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in.

A surface warfare officer, Franchetti has commanded at all levels, heading U.S. 6th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Korea. She was the second woman ever to be promoted to four-star admiral, and she did multiple deployments, including as commander of a naval destroyer and two stints as aircraft carrier strike group commander.

Slife led Air Force Special Operations Command before becoming the service’s vice chief of staff and had deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Trump has asserted executive authority and removed most carryover officials from President Biden’s term, even though in typical transitions, many of those positions are meant to carry over independently from one administration to the next.

The chairman role was established in 1949 as an advisor to the president and secretary of defense, as a way to filter all of the views of the service chiefs and more readily provide that information to the White House without the president having to reach out to each individual military branch, according to an Atlantic Council briefing written by retired Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro. The role has no actual command authority.

Trump acted despite support for Brown among key members of Congress and a seemingly friendly meeting with him in mid-December, when the two were seated next to each other for a time at the Army-Navy football game.

The firing follows days of speculation after a list of officers, including Brown, to be fired was circulated on Capitol Hill — but notably was not sent via any formal notification to either of the Republican chairmen of the House or Senate armed services committees.

Sen. Roger Wicker, GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, didn’t mention Caine’s name in a statement Friday.

“I thank Chairman Brown for his decades of honorable service to our nation,” Wicker said. “I am confident Secretary Hegseth and President Trump will select a qualified and capable successor for the critical position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Congressional Democratic leaders called out the firings as a direct attempt to politicize the military.

“A professional, apolitical military that is subordinate to the civilian government and supportive of the Constitution rather than a political party is essential to the survival of our democracy,” Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement late Friday. “For the sake of our troops and the well-being of every American, elected leaders — especially Senate Republicans — must defend that enduring principle against corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.”

Brown risked discussing race

Brown’s future was called into question during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s confirmation hearing for Hegseth last month. Asked if he would fire Brown, Hegseth responded bluntly, “Every single senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy, standards, lethality and commitment to lawful orders they will be given.”

Hegseth had previously taken aim at Brown. “First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said flatly in a podcast in November. And in one of his books, he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.

“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.

As he walked into the Pentagon on his first day as defense chief on Jan. 27, however, Hegseth was asked directly if he planned to fire Brown.

“I’m standing with him right now,” said Hegseth, patting Brown on the back as they headed into the building. “Look forward to working with him.”

A career F-16 fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours and command experience at all levels, Brown is known as a calm but determined leader with a track record for driving institutional change. His selection as chairman was seen as key to propelling the military from two decades of war in the Middle East to a focus on preparing for and deterring potential conflict with China.

Just before his Senate confirmation vote in June 2020 to become chief of the Air Force, Brown gained some attention when he spoke out on the police killing of George Floyd the month before. While he knew it was risky, he said, discussions with his wife and sons about the killing convinced him he needed to say something.

As protests roiled the nation, Brown posted a video message to the Air Force titled, “Here’s What I’m Thinking About.” He described the pressures that came with being one of the few Black men in his unit. He recalled pushing himself “to perform error-free” as a pilot and officer his whole life, but still facing bias. He said he’d been questioned about his credentials, even when he wore the same flight suit and wings as every other pilot.

“I’m thinking about my mentors, and how I rarely had a mentor that looked like me,” Brown said in the video. “I’m thinking about how my nomination provides some hope, but also comes with a heavy burden — I can’t fix centuries of racism in our country, nor can I fix decades of discrimination that may have impacted members of our Air Force.”

Brown was overwhelmingly confirmed as chief of the Air Force with a vote of 98-0 in the Senate. Not long afterward, his name began to surface as the likely successor to Gen. Mark Milley, who was set to retire as chairman.

Brown’s path to the chairmanship was delayed — he was among the more than 260 senior military officers whose nominations were stalled for months by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Tuberville caused ire in the Senate and organizational juggling in the Pentagon when he blocked the confirmations in protest over a department policy that paid for travel when a service member had to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care.

But when the Senate vote was finally taken in September 2023, Brown was confirmed by a vote of 89-8.

As chairman, Brown spent much of his time on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, helping to determine what military aid to send to Kyiv and coordinating support for Israel as it battled Hamas and fought off several significant attacks from Iran.

Born in San Antonio, Brown is from a family of Army soldiers. His grandfather led a segregated Army unit in World War II and his father was an artillery officer and Vietnam War veteran. Brown grew up on several military bases, which helped instill in him a sense of mission.

It had been 30 years since Colin Powell became the first Black chairman, serving from 1989 to 1993. But while Black people made up 17.2% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members, only 9% of officers were Black, according to a 2021 Defense Department report.

Brown’s service as chairman made history in that this was the first time that both the Defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and the Joint Chiefs chairman were Black.

Copp and Baldor write for the Associated Press.