The Washington Post
Trump ousts Joint Chiefs chairman, other leaders in major Pentagon shake-up
The Navy’s top admiral and a senior Air Force general also were dismissed as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moves to align the military with Trump’s agenda.
Updated
February 21, 2025 at 10:05 p.m. ESTyesterday at 10:05 p.m. EST
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is greeted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. at the Pentagon on Jan. 27. (Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By Missy Ryan and Dan Lamothe
The Trump administration abruptly dismissed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior officers on Friday night, as the Pentagon moves to bring the military’s leadership in line with its “America First” agenda.
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In a post on social media, President Donald Trump said he would replace Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and would take the unusual step of tapping a little-known, retired three-star officer, Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, as the next chairman.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a statement distributed shortly after Trump’s post, said he would dismiss five other senior officers, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations, and Gen. James Slife, a top Air Force officer.
“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth informed Brown, who was in Texas on Friday for a visit to the southwest border, that he was being removed before Trump’s announcement, said a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the leadership shake-up. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Christopher Grady, is expected to serve as interim chairman until Caine can be confirmed.
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Brown, a veteran pilot and battlefield commander whom Trump nominated during his first term in office to become the Air Force’s first African American chief of staff, was roughly 16 months into what was expected to be a four-year term. He was elevated to the military’s top position by President Joe Biden in 2023, making him the second Black man to hold the chairman’s job. Gen. Colin Powell was the first.
The dismissals comes as Trump’s campaign to whittle down the federal workforce triggers court challenges and chaos for government workers, and his shifts on foreign policy, including an embrace of Russia’s narrative about the war in Ukraine, stoke confusion and anxiety among U.S. allies.
The firings appear to represent the most significant move yet in the administration’s emerging campaign to purge the Pentagon of what Hegseth has decried as “woke” policies and personnel and, despite the military’s role as a nonpartisan institution spanning administrations of both parties, to reshape its highest ranks.
In the weeks after he arrived at the Pentagon following a controversial confirmation process, Hegseth has moved quickly to dismantle diversity initiatives, which he has called “racist” and “illegal.”
At a Pentagon town hall this month, Hegseth said diversity initiatives have “served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting” the military. “The single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” he said.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti speaks with lawmakers during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2023. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Before being tapped by Trump, Hegseth attacked senior officers by name, including Brown, whom he said was overly focused on diversity issues. He also criticized Franchetti, suggesting she was selected for the leadership post because of her gender.
The administration had previously fired another uniformed leader, Adm. Coast Guard Linda Fagan, for alleged leadership failures. The Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
In his post on Truth Social, Trump called Brown “a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader.”
“I wish a great future for him and his family,” the president said.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thanked Brown for his service. “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,” he said in a statement.
But top Democrats decried the move. Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the dismissals appeared to mark an attempt to “purge talented officers for politically charged reasons, which would undermine the professionalism of our military and send a chilling message through the ranks.”
Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, labeled the moves a “Friday Night Massacre” that would weaken national security.
“All of this continues to play into the hands of Vladimir Putin and others working to exploit the weakness Trump continues to broadcast and undermine the military, our government, our national security interests, and democracy worldwide,” Smith said, referring to the Russian president.
Trump extolled Caine, a pilot who served in various Special Operations roles and at the CIA, as a “national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine. (U.S. Air Force)
Caine’s selection bucks numerous norms. As a three-star general, he would vault numerous higher-ranking officers, including every current member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And unlike all of them, he has not commanded large formations of U.S. troops. He did not respond to requests for comment by email and social media.
Caine is the first three-star general to be selected for a position typically held by four-star officers, said Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps general who has informally advised numerous defense secretaries.
No chairman has taken the job without previously serving as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1997, when President Bill Clinton selected Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the top officer in U.S. Special Operations Command. All of the other chairmen since have either served as the top officer in a branch of service, or as the Joint Chiefs vice chairman.
But Caine is not the first retired general to go on to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy named Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor as chairman after recalling him to active duty the previous year to lead an investigation of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion on Cuba. Taylor had served as the top officer in the Army before retiring in 1959.
Caine also served in a part-time status in the National Guard from 2009 to 2016, according to his official biography, working as an entrepreneur and investor during that time.
When he returned to active duty in 2016, he became a general and served in several Special Operations roles, including as deputy commanding general of a joint task force in Iraq during the campaign against the Islamic State.
From September 2019 to September 2021, he served as a two-star general and served as the director of special-access programs at the Pentagon, working with highly classified material and as an adviser to the defense secretary. He was promoted again in 2021, becoming the associate director for military affairs at the CIA.
Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University, said Trump has the right to replace leaders he wants. But if there is a “good cause to replace them,” Feaver said, “he should explain that to build trust with the men and women who have pledged to put their lives in danger to follow his lawful orders.”
Feaver, who has advised military leaders on civil-military affairs, said the statements from Trump and Hegseth suggested that there were no merit-based causes.
“Removing them in this way will not make the military more lethal, but it could make the problem of politicization of the military that much harder to manage,” Feaver said.
Hegseth’s statement did not specify why Slife and Franchetti, along with the judge advocates general for the Navy, Army and Air Force, would be replaced.
Slife has served as the Air Force’s No. 2 officer since December 2023, and he had a series of jobs in Special Operations from 2017 to 2022. But he ran afoul of many Trump supporters after decrying the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, saying in a written message to airmen that it would be naive to think that institutional racism and unconscious bias do not affect us all.
“We can’t ignore it,” Slife wrote then. “We have to face it. And to face it, we have to talk about it.”
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The comments overwhelmingly criticize the Trump administration's decision to replace senior military leaders, particularly focusing on the perceived racial and gender motivations behind these changes. Many commenters express concern that highly qualified individuals, such as... Show more
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By Missy Ryan
Missy Ryan writes about national security and defense for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2014 and has written about the Pentagon and the State Department. She has reported from Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
By Dan Lamothe
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than 15 years, traveling extensively, embedding with five branches of service and covering combat in Afghanistan.follow on X@
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