US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and dismissed five other admirals and generals in a major shake-up of the US military’s top leadership.
The removal of Air Force General CQ Brown, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 2023 after being appointed by former President Joe Biden, was announced by Trump on his social media platform Truth Social.
Brown, the second African-American officer to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in US history, was expected to complete his four-year term in September 2027, RFE/RL reported.
The Pentagon said in a statement that Trump would nominate retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown. A former F-16 fighter pilot, Caine was the assistant director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Pentagon said separately that Trump would replace the leaders of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the military service, and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Jim Slife. Chief Justices for the Army, Navy and Air Force were also fired.
Slife led the Air Force Special Operations Command before becoming deputy chief of staff and was deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The moves were part of a campaign led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to rid the military of the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) program. Hegseth said the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) would take a “broad approach” to root out such programs from the Pentagon.
DOGE will work to “find redundancies and identify the last vestiges of Biden’s priorities” such as DEI programs. It’s “not the core of our mission and we’re going to get rid of all that,” Hegseth said.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tapped by Trump to lead DOGE. Musk’s efforts to drive efficiency have so far resulted in tens of thousands of federal workers being laid off, prompting legal challenges.
The Pentagon is already preparing for mass layoffs of civilian personnel in a dramatic budget overhaul announced by Hegseth earlier this week.
Trump did not explain his decision to fire Brown, but thanked him for “over 40 years of service to our country, including his time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
“He is a fine gentleman and an extraordinary leader, and I wish him and his family a great future,” Trump wrote.
Brown’s public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, has made him a target of the administration’s “wars” against “vocalism” in the military.
Hegseth was skeptical of Brown before he took the helm of the Pentagon, asking in a book he published last year “would Brown have gotten the job if he wasn’t black.”
The Pentagon’s civilian workforce reductions will begin next week. Darin Selnick, who serves as the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement that at least 5 percent of the workforce will be laid off. The layoffs will focus on recent hires, of the roughly 900,000.
“We anticipate reducing the department’s civilian workforce by 5 to 8 percent to drive efficiencies and refocus the department on the president’s priorities and restore force readiness,” Selnick said.
The layoffs of about 5,400 probationary employees will be accompanied by a hiring freeze “while we conduct further analysis of our staffing needs,” Selnick said.
A day before the announcement, Hegseth said in a video message that “it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical.”
