President Donald Trump fired several senior U.S. military officers Friday night, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman CQ Brown Jr. and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.
Other top brass dismissed by the Pentagon include U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife and all Judge Advocates General (JAG) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that Trump plans to nominate retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine as the nation’s next Joint Chiefs chairman.
“General Caine embodies the warfighter ethos and is exactly the leader we need to meet the moment,” Hegseth said. “I look forward to working with him.”
No replacements for Franchetti or Slife were announced. Hegseth said he is requesting nominations to fill their roles and military JAGs.
Ranking Democrat reacts
The firing follows days of speculation after a list of officers to be fired, including Brown, was circulated on Capitol Hill. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees were not formally notified prior to the firings, according to AP.
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,” said Wicker. “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.
The ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, saluted Brown, Franchetti, Slife, and the other fired officers for their service. He said the nation owes them a debt of gratitude and said he is “troubled by the nature of these dismissals.”
“America has the strongest, most capable military in the world,” Reed said. “But firing uniformed leaders as a type of political loyalty test, or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our service members require to achieve their missions.”
Reed said the firings appear to be part of a “broader, premeditated campaign by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to purge talented officers for politically charged reasons.” He warned of the “chilling message” such action sends through the ranks and urged his Republican counterparts in the Senate to defend against what he called “corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.”
Janine L. Weisman of Rhode Island Current, the Military Times, and AP contributed to this report
