Donald Trump had talked about firing senior military commanders on the campaign trail as far back as last summer. After the election, his transition team reportedly drew up a list of senior officers to be fired. Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, had told a podcast just days before he was named to his position, “First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
Still, the Friday night massacre that befell senior US military leaders, came as a shock. Those fired include Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff James Slife, and the judge advocates general for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Hegseth’s top military assistant, Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short, was relieved on Saturday.
While Trump and Hegseth certainly have the right to assemble a team of military leaders they trust, the circumstances and timing of the purge raise troubling questions about whether the White House is seeking a military that’s motivated not just by the nation’s security, but also by the administration’s political agenda.
And the firing of the three top military lawyers alongside the senior commanders raises concerns that Trump and Hegseth may look to challenge longstanding principles around the laws of war and accountability in the ranks.
Trump had reportedly reconsidered firing Brown after a positive meeting in December, and lawmakers, including some Republicans, had hoped up until recent days that the administration could still be dissuaded from a move that could potentially mark a major shift in the relationship between the executive branch and the military, but to no avail.
Even critics of the decision concede that the president, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was within his legal rights to replace these commanders.
“The president has the right to have military leaders he has confidence in, for whatever reason,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a former White House and Pentagon staffer. “It doesn’t even have to be a good reason.”
Presidents have, of course, relieved military commanders in their posts in the past. Some of the most famous examples include Abraham Lincoln cycling through five Union army commanders during the Civil War and Harry Truman publicly dismissing Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command after he publicly criticized the administration’s policies during the Korean War.
Barack Obama’s sacking of Gen. David McKiernan, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, in 2009, might be the nearest thing to a recent precedent for a president firing a general this early in his term.
Some military officers and defense officials have argued in recent years that presidents should be less deferential to military leaders and more willing to fire them over battlefield failures.
In this case, however, the difference is that these officers don’t appear to have failed in their duties in an appreciable way. Trump praised Brown as an “outstanding leader” this week. It was Trump who elevated him to Air Force chief of staff in 2020, and Brown’s priorities, on paper at least, seem to be in line with the administration’s. Brown has called for “ruthless prioritization,” including cutting established and expensive military programs, to focus on preparing the US for conflict with “near-peer” adversaries like Russia and China, exactly the sort of shift in priorities some of Trump’s top advisers have also called for.
“What got Gen. Brown nominated and confirmed to be chief of staff at the Air Force was his adamance that we were unprepared for war with China and that we needed greater mission focus on lethality,” Schake said.
In theory, this should make him appealing to a secretary of defense who has vowed to “make America lethal again,” but the cardinal sin of Brown and the others appears to have been their perceived association with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, which have been Hegseth’s primary target since he was appointed. “The underlying argument is that you can’t pursue modernization and warfighting while you have DEI,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, an Army veteran and former senior adviser in the secretary of defense’s office.
Brown was the first African American to serve as chair of the Joint Chiefs, and Hegseth had previously written that Brown may only have advanced to his position “because of his skin color” and that he has “made the race card one of his biggest calling cards.”
Hegseth had likewise criticized Franchetti, the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose four-decade career included numerous command posts, as a “DEI hire.” Slife, removed as Air Force vice chief of staff, had been accused of giving preferential treatment to a woman candidate for the Air Force’s selective special operations branch, though he denied this.
“It’s hard for this not to look like they’re firing women and people of color and people who say nice things about women and people of color,” said Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council staffer and Duke University professor who studies civil-military relations. “I don’t think Hegseth would accept that, but since they haven’t provided much background to explain their decision, it’s hard to resist that interpretation.”
The big question about firing the lawyers
In Schake’s view, the firing of the three judge advocates general for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, was the more worrisome move. These top officials, known as TJAGs, oversee the military internal justice system, dealing with both criminal and administrative discipline issues for Hegseth has, in his past writings, denigrated these officials as “jagoffs” and said during his confirmation hearing that his priority would make it a priority that “lawyers aren’t the ones getting in the way” of military effectiveness.
During Trump’s last term, Hegseth advocated for and supported the president’s pardons of two Army officials and a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. Two officers kicked out of the military for bucking the chain of command to publicly criticize military leaders during the Biden administration have also been named to senior Pentagon posts under Trump.
“It’s reaching into the institution to send a signal that they want a different kind of approach to the laws of war,” Schake said. “I think it misunderstands the extent to which it’s advantageous to the United States that our military is widely perceived as a military that doesn’t just follow the orders, it also follows the law.”
Hegseth said that the new TJAGs would be lawyers who “give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks” and described those fired as “insulated officers who perpetuate the status quo,”
This, however, raises questions about what new status quo he is seeking.
“When you’re firing the lawyers it’s because you’re getting ready to do something illegal,” Edmonds said.
Next: a MAGA general?
Brown’s replacement will be Air Force Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine, a highly unusual move since Caine is only a three-star general, not a four-star commander of a combatant command or service branch, as would normally be required for the job of Joint Chiefs chair, and is also retired from active duty. (John F. Kennedy’s decision to recall the retired Maxwell Taylor to duty as his chair might be the closest parallel.)
The chair is supposed to be an apolitical position — this is one reason why it spans presidential administrations — but Trump’s comments about Caine do not suggest that is what he is looking for.
The two met in 2018 in Iraq, when Caine was deputy commander of US Central Command’s Special Operations Component. As Trump recalled it in a 2019 speech, Caine, a general “out of central casting” told the president he could wipe out ISIS “in one week.” Trump also says Caine told him he would “kill for you” while wearing a MAGA hat.
Other officials recall the incident differently and describe Caine as “not a political guy.” Just how political a guy Caine is will likely be the main topic when he faces a Senate confirmation hearing.
By all accounts, Caine — though an untraditional pick for this role — is an accomplished and respected military commander with several high-profile postings under his belt.
The question lawmakers will want to press him on, Feaver says, is “if he is a partisan general who is committed to a partisan agenda for the military.”
Looming over the proceedings will be the question of what Caine and other senior military commanders might do if they receive an unconstitutional order. Mark Milley, Brown’s predecessor as Joint Chiefs chair who has become an outspoken critic of Trump, has said he was concerned throughout his tenure, and particularly during the January 6 insurrection, that the military might be asked to do “something that probably was extrajudicial or unconstitutional.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has appointed a general out of “central casting” to a senior role, or even one with a tough-guy nickname. (Remember “Mad Dog” Mattis?) It’s possible he’s finally found his man in “Razin” Caine, but this president’s standards for loyalty are not easy to meet.
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