Nominates retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan \u201cRazin\u201d Caine to be the next chairman
\nWASHINGTON: President Donald Trump abruptly fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign led by his defense secretary to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.
\nThe 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.
\n\u201cI want to thank General Charles \u2018CQ\u2019 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,\u201d Trump posted on social media.
\nBrown\u2019s public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration\u2019s wars against \u201cwokeism\u201d 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\u2019s priorities.
\nTrump said he\u2019s nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan \u201cRazin\u201d Caine to be the next chairman. Caine is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, and was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA, according to his military biography.<\/p>\n
Trump credited Caine for being \u201cinstrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite being highly qualified and respected to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the previous administration, General Caine was passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden. But not anymore!\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Caine\u2019s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon\u2019s most classified special access programs.
\nHowever, he has not had key assignments identified in law as prerequisites for the job, including serving as either the vice chairman, as a combatant commander or a service chief. That requirement could be waived if the \u201cpresident determines such action is necessary in the national interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
More firings<\/strong><\/p>\n 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. In his Truth Social post, Trump signaled that more firings in key posts are to be expected.<\/p>\n \u201cI have also directed Secretary (Pete) Hegseth to solicit nominations for five additional high level positions, which will be announced soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Trump has asserted his executive authority in a much stronger way in his second term, removing most officials from the Biden administration even though many of those positions are meant to carry over from one administration to the next. Nominates retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan \u201cRazin\u201d Caine to be the next chairman WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump abruptly fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign led by his defense secretary to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77463,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77441\/revisions\/77463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFranchetti 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.
\nA surface warfare officer, Franchetti has commanded at all levels, heading US 6th Fleet and US 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.
\nSlife led Air Force Special Operations Command prior to becoming the service\u2019s vice chief of staff and had deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\nThe chairman role was established in 1949 as an adviser 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.
\nTrump 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.
\nSen. Roger Wicker, GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, didn\u2019t mention Caine\u2019s name in a statement Friday.
\n\u201cI thank Chairman Brown for his decades of honorable service to our nation,\u201d Wicker said. \u201cI 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.\u201d
\nBrown\u2019s future was called into question during the confirmation hearing for Hegseth last month. Asked if he would fire Brown, Hegseth responded, \u201cEvery single senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy, standards, lethality and commitment to lawful orders they will be given.\u201d
\nHegseth had previously taken aim at Brown. \u201cFirst of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,\u201d 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.
\n\u201cWas it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We\u2019ll never know, but always doubt \u2014 which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn\u2019t really much matter,\u201d Hegseth wrote.
\nAs he walked into the Pentagon on his first day as defense chief on Jan. 27, Hegseth was asked directly if he planned to fire Brown.
\n\u201cI\u2019m standing with him right now,\u201d said Hegseth, patting Brown on the back. \u201cLook forward to working with him.\u201d
\nBrown, who spent Friday visiting troops at the US-Mexico border, drew attention to himself for speaking out about the death of George Floyd in 2020. While he knew it was risky, he said, discussions with his wife and sons about the killing convinced him he needed to say something.
\nAs protests roiled the nation, Brown posted a video message to the Air Force titled, \u201cHere\u2019s What I\u2019m Thinking About.\u201d He described the pressures that came with being one of the few Black men in his unit. He recalled pushing himself \u201cto perform error-free\u201d as a pilot and officer his whole life, but still facing bias. He said he\u2019d been questioned about his credentials, even when he wore the same flight suit and wings as every other pilot.
\nBrown\u2019s path to the chairmanship was troubled \u2014 he was among the more than 260 senior military officers whose nominations were stalled for months by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. But when the Senate vote was finally taken in September 2023, Brown easily was confirmed by a vote of 89-8.
\nIt had been 30 years since Colin Powell became the first Black chairman, serving from 1989 to 1993. But while African Americans made up 17.2 percent of the 1.3 million active-duty service members, only 9 percent of officers were Black, according to a 2021 Defense Department report.
\nBrown\u2019s service as chairman made history in that this was the first time that both the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Joint Chiefs chairman were Black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"