President Donald Trump fired top US military officer General Charles "CQ" Brown on Friday, part of a major shake-up of the armed forces' leadership. Brown is most likely to be replaced by Lt-General Dan Caine.
Trump offered no explanation for Brown's dismissal less than two years into his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which followed sweeping layoffs of federal workers and moves to dismantle government institutions just a month into the president's second term.
Brown had been nominated to the top military role by Democratic president Joe Biden and became only the second Black person to hold the position.
Following Trump's announcement on Brown, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was seeking a replacement for Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as the top US Navy officer.
Trump thanked Brown for "his over 40 years of service to our country" in a post on his Truth Social platform, describing him as "a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader."
Brown has commanded a fighter squadron and two fighter wings, as well as US air forces under the Central Command and Indo-Pacific Command. He had served as Joint Chiefs chairman since October 2023.
Following the 2020 murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in Minnesota, Brown -- an experienced fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours, 130 of them in combat -- recorded an emotional video about his personal experiences, including with discrimination in the US military.
"I'm thinking about my Air Force career, where I was often the only African American in my squadron or as a senior officer, the only African American in the room," Brown said.
"I'm thinking about the pressure I felt to perform error-free, especially for supervisors I perceive had expected less from me as an African American."
- Top Navy officer being replaced -
Hegseth had advocated for Brown's firing in a November podcast appearance, saying any top officers "involved in any of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) woke shit has got to go," but told journalists last month that he was "looking forward to working" with the general.
Trump said he was nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine to replace Brown.
He said Caine -- whom he recently described meeting in Iraq during his first term -- is "an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a 'warfighter' with significant interagency and special operations experience."
Caine served in positions including associate director for military affairs at the CIA, as well as in various operational and staff roles, including more than 150 hours in combat as an F-16 pilot, an aircraft in which he logged more than 2,800 hours.
Trump, in his trademark showman style, told a Saudi investor forum in Miami on Wednesday about meeting Caine in Iraq, where he was among a group of "handsome people, everybody's like from a movie set."
According to Trump, Caine told the president that he went by the nickname "Razin."
"I said, wait a minute, your name is Razin Caine? I love you, I've been looking for you for five years ... this is what I want," Trump recounted.
In another major Pentagon shakeup, Hegseth said he was seeking a replacement for Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"I am... requesting nominations for the positions of chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff," Hegseth said in a statement.
"The incumbents in these important roles, Admiral Lisa Franchetti and General James Slife, respectively, have had distinguished careers. We thank them for their service and dedication to our country," he said, without providing an explanation for their departures.
Franchetti had previously served on a series of surface vessels, commanding a guided missile destroyer, a destroyer squadron and two carrier strike groups.
She was deputy commander of US naval forces in Europe and as well as in Africa, and deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting development. She became vice chief of naval operations -- the service's number two position -- in September 2022, and took over the Navy's top job in November 2023.
Pentagon cuts workforce
The US Defence Department will cut its civilian workforce by at least five percent starting next week, the Pentagon said Friday, as President Donald Trump continues slashing the government payroll.
Trump's administration has already begun firing thousands of other federal workers who are on probationary status, and the cuts at the Defense Department -- the largest employer in the United States -- will also focus on recently hired employees.
"We anticipate reducing the department's civilian workforce by 5-8 percent to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president's priorities and restoring readiness in the force," Darin Selnick, who is performing the duties of under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.
"We expect approximately 5,400 probationary workers will be released beginning next week as part of this initial effort, after which we will implement a hiring freeze while we conduct a further analysis of our personnel needs," Selnick said.
The Defense Department employs more than 900,000 civilians, meaning that cuts of five percent would affect a total of more than 45,000 jobs.
A day before the announcement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video message that "it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical."
"Common sense would tell us where we should start, right -- we start with poor performers amongst our probationary employees," Hegseth said.
- Promoting 'best and brightest' -
"When you look at head count, we're going to be thoughtful, but we're also going to be aggressive, up and down the chain, to find the places where we can ensure the best and brightest are promoted based on merit."
Hegseth also said that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would have "broad access" to root out the previous administration's programs from the Pentagon.
DOGE will work to "find the redundancies and identify the last vestiges of Biden priorities -- the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), the woke, the climate change BS -- that's not core to our mission, and we're going to get rid of it all," he said, referring to former president Joe Biden.
Musk -- the world's richest person and Trump's biggest donor -- has led the effort to fire swaths of the federal workforce, sparking various legal challenges.
A US judge on Tuesday declined a request to temporarily block Musk and DOGE from firing federal employees and accessing agency data after 14 Democratic-ruled states filed suit contesting the billionaire's legal authority.
Judge Tanya Chutkan said the plaintiffs had not sufficiently showed that they would suffer "imminent, irreparable harm" unless a temporary restraining order was issued.
And on Thursday, Judge Christopher Cooper denied a union bid to temporarily halt the sacking of federal workers, saying he lacked the jurisdiction to handle the complaint.