Washington (AP) As part of a push to rid the military of leaders who promote diversity and equity in the ranks, President Donald Trump abruptly dismissed Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a renowned commander and a historic fighter pilot.
The Pentagon will undoubtedly be rocked by Brown’s dismissal as chairman, making him just the second Black general to hold the position. The war in Ukraine and the escalating crisis in the Middle East had taken up his 16 months on the job.
For his more than 40 years of service to our nation, including his present position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would like to thank General Charles C.Q. Brown. He is a terrific leader and a gentleman, and I hope he and his family have a bright future. Trump shared content on social media.
According to Trump, Lt. Gen. Dan Razin Caine of the Air Force is his choice to succeed him as chairman. According to his official military biography, Caine is a career F-16 pilot who has been on active duty and in the National Guard. Most recently, he was the associate director for military relations at the CIA.
Combat assignments in Iraq, special operations postings, and jobs within some of the Pentagon’s most secret special access programs are all part of Caine’s military career. It excludes, however, important tasks that were legally specified as obligatory for the position, with the president having the authority to waive them in times of national importance.
According to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, a chairman must have previously served as the vice chairman, a combatant commander, or a service head in order to be eligible; however, if the president deems it necessary for the good of the country, this criterion may be waived.
According to a 1949 briefing by retired Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro for the Atlantic Council, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was created as a consultant to the president and secretary of defense in order to filter all of the opinions of the service chiefs and more easily deliver that information to the White House without the president having to contact each individual branch of the military. There is no real command authority in the post.
In a statement applauding Caine and Brown, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced the dismissal of two more top officers: Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.
Brown had spent Friday evaluating the military’s quick augmentation of troops in response to Trump’s executive order on combating illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump took action in spite of the fact that important members of Congress supported Brown and that he appeared to be amicable with him during a brief encounter at the Army-Navy football game in mid-December. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who assumed the top Pentagon position four weeks ago, had been meeting with Brown on a regular basis.
However, during last month’s Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Hegseth, Brown’s future was questioned. “Every senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy, standards, lethality, and commitment to lawful orders they will be given,” Hegseth said frankly when asked if he would terminate Brown.
Hegseth has supported Trump’s initiative to terminate initiatives that advance inclusion, equity, and diversity within the workforce and to terminate employees who exhibit these principles.
Hegseth had already targeted Brown. In a November podcast, he stated unequivocally that the head of the Joint Chiefs must be fired first. He also questioned whether Brown’s Blackness was a factor in his hiring in one of his novels.
Was it the color of his skin? Or his ability? Although we’ll never know, we’ll always have our doubts, which initially seems unjust to CQ. However, it doesn’t really matter because he has made the race card one of his main selling points, Hegseth wrote.
On January 27, however, Hegseth was asked explicitly if he intended to fire Brown as he entered the Pentagon on his first day as defense chief.
As they entered the building, Hegseth gave Brown a pat on the back and added, “I’m standing with him right now.” Anticipate collaborating with him.
Even though many of those posts are supposed to transfer independently from one administration to the next, Trump has significantly increased his executive authority in his second term and eliminated the majority of carryover officials from President Joe Biden’s tenure.
When Brown voiced his disapproval of the police death of George Floyd the previous month, he garnered some notice just before his Senate confirmation vote to become the Air Force chief in June 2020. He claimed that even though he was aware of the danger, he felt compelled to speak up after talking about the murder with his wife and sons.
Brown shared a video message to the Air Force with the headline, “Here’s What I’m Thinking About,” as protests erupted around the country. Being one of the few Black men in his squad, he talked about the pressures that came with it. He remembered that despite his lifelong efforts to be an error-free pilot and officer, he continued to encounter prejudice. He claimed that although wearing the same flight suit and wings as all the other pilots, he had been asked about his credentials.
In his role as chairman, he promoted the same message he had when he was in charge of the Air Force: the Pentagon needs to adapt more quickly or it would lose wars in the future.
Brown had been the senior air power leader in the Indo-Pacific before taking over as Air Force commander. He has consistently called for a change in the way U.S. warplanes would battle, removing them from big, exposed bases and replacing them with small, scattered units and drone swarms that could independently repel threats from the thousands of islands in the Pacific.
In the video, Brown remarked, “I’m thinking about my mentors and how I rarely had a mentor that looked like me.” I’m considering how my nomination offers some optimism, but it also carries a great burden because I can’t undo decades of prejudice that may have affected members of our Air Force or centuries of racism in our nation.
By a vote of 98 to 0, the Senate emphatically confirmed Brown. Soon after, his name started to come up as the most likely candidate to succeed Gen. Mark Milley, who was about to step down as chairman.
Brown had a difficult journey to the chairmanship; he was one of over 260 senior military officers whose nominations were held up for months by Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican. When Tuberville stopped the confirmations protest over a department policy that covered travel expenses when a service member needed to go out of state for an abortion or other reproductive care, it infuriated the Senate and caused organizational juggling in the Pentagon.
By a vote of 89–8, however, Brown was comfortably confirmed when the Senate finally took up the issue in September 2023.
Colin Powell, who served as the first Black chairman from 1989 to 1993, had been in office for thirty years. However, according to a 2021 Defense Department study, just 9% of officers were Black, despite the fact that 17.2% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members were African Americans.
For the first time, both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, were Black, making Brown’s tenure as chairman historic.
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By Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp, Associated Press
