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Defense officials are getting anxious about the possibility of the incoming Trump administration firing Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, due to perceptions that he is out of step with the president-elect on the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion programs.
The Trump administration’s DOD transition team — led by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie — has yet to officially set foot in the Pentagon since the election was called, owing to the transition team’s refusal so far to accept assistance from the federal government. But concern is beginning to bubble up that Brown, who spoke publicly about the challenges of rising through the military as a Black man as Donald Trump urged the Defense Department to crack down on the George Floyd protests in 2020, could be swept out by a president-elect who has promised to make the Pentagon less “woke.”
The chair’s four-year term normally is staggered so they serve the end of one administration and the beginning of another.
For Brown, that two-year mark arrives in September 2025, well into Trump’s first year back in office. There is no rule, however, prohibiting Trump from dismissing him sooner. Any such move would be extraordinary, though not unprecedented.
“There is some anxiety,” said one current DOD official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. “I think they are immediately worried,” the official said of Brown’s team.
“He’s a DEI/woke champion,” a second DOD official said. “Can imagine he’ll be gone quite quickly.”
Two people close to the Trump transition team mentioned that Brown has long been a target of congressional Republicans who accused the Pentagon of conducting social experiments with diversity programs, to the detriment of traditional military tasks.
Both people said there is no hard plan to keep or dismiss Brown, but that Pentagon officials up and down the chain of command are being evaluated.
Another person familiar with the Trump transition team’s thinking said they believe that “C.Q. Brown, he’s going to be an obstacle in all sorts of ways and it’s just not worth it.”
Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Trump’s team did not directly address Brown’s future at the Pentagon, but did not deny they are considering making changes. “The American people re-elected President Trump because they trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world. When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary action to do just that,” the Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt wrote in an email to POLITICO.
Many of those Republicans, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has emerged as a close Trump adviser, and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is the vice president-elect, were among the 11 Republican senators to vote “no” on Brown’s confirmation as chair in September 2023.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who was in the mix for defense secretary but took himself out of consideration, abstained from the vote but has been a major critic of the Pentagon programs to install more diversity training and pay for service members to travel out of state for abortion care.
After the race was decided Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin quickly sent out a memo to all personnel saying the Pentagon will carry out a “calm, orderly, and professional transition to the incoming Trump administration.”
Brown was actually nominated by Trump to become the first Black Air Force chief of staff in early 2020. While still awaiting Senate confirmation for that job, Brown began to speak up about racial injustice in the military, after Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers sparked nationwide protests, culminating in the U.S. Park Police’s attack on peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square.
“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 in an emotional video released after then-Gen. Mark Milley and then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper apologized for their roles in Trump’s photo-op in the square adjoining the White House. “I’m thinking about wearing the same flight suit with the same wings on my chest as my peers and then being questioned by another military member, are you a pilot?”
Brown was confirmed unanimously by the Senate days later and sworn in as the Air Force’s top officer in August 2020. Trump called Brown a “Patriot and Great Leader” in a tweet just before his confirmation. But when Brown became President Joe Biden’s choice to succeed Milley in the military’s top job, Brown got snarled in a monthslong hold by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on military promotions over the DOD abortion care policy. And Republicans criticized the changes he made as the Air Force chief, including diversifying promotion boards and changing evaluation criteria.
Now, people in Trump’s orbit see Brown as a potential threat to the president-elect’s plan to do away with diversity and inclusion programs at the Pentagon that are seen as “woke” by the incoming administration.
Since Brown is a top military adviser to the president and is not in the chain of command, Pentagon officials also outlined another possible scenario where the Air Force general could simply be isolated or not used for advice in a Trump administration. “You can just not include him as much,” a third DOD official told POLITICO.
Dismissing or not re-appointing the chair, the military’s top officer, is not entirely without historical precedent. Taking over the presidency in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower dismissed the chiefs or allowed them to retire. But of the last five U.S. military chiefs, only one, Gen. Peter Pace, has not been chosen to stay on for an entire four-year term.
For now, at least, the mood in the Pentagon has been to keep calm and carry on.
“After the election in the building there was a lot of shrugging and moving on, and what’s the next day hold,” the third DOD official said. “As opposed to other transitions I’ve witnessed there seems to be a lot less trepidation in the building.”
