Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wants to remain on the job until his four-year term ends in September 2027. However, that will be up to President Trump, who has complained about senior leaders in the Pentagon that he says are overly focused on diversity and inclusion issues at the expense of combat readiness.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to sack woke officers. His newly confirmed defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was more specific during a November podcast to promote his new book, “The War on Warriors.” Simply, he called for Gen. Brown’s ouster.
“First off, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (and) obviously you’ve got to bring in a new secretary of defense,” Mr. Hegseth said on “The Shawn Ryan Show” before he was picked for the position. “Any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s—t has got to go.”
Although the chairman is more reserved than his sometimes mercurial predecessor, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, supporters insist Gen. Brown, known as “C.Q.” inside the Pentagon, is a warfighter to his core with significant high-level military experience in the Middle East, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
“That’s particularly valuable right now as we see this Axis of Aggressors emerging — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea working together,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
“You have to have someone who has a working knowledge, particularly of … the leading adversaries: how they’re working together and how we need to employ and deploy our forces between those different combatant commands,” Mr. Bowman said.
Mr. Trump, who nominated Gen. Brown to be Air Force chief of staff in 2020, seems to be warming to the idea of keeping him in his current position. At the Army-Navy football game in December, they spent about 20 minutes talking in a luxury box at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland.
Gen. Brown congratulated Mr. Trump on his election victory, making it clear he was ready to work with the president and his new administration. Mr. Trump told someone traveling with him that the conversation went well and that Gen. Brown was “doing a good job” as JCS chairman, NBC News reported.
Mr. Trump isn’t afraid to rid himself of high-ranking military officers that he believes are out of step with his administration’s goals. One of his early moves following his inauguration was firing Adm. Linda Fagan, commandant of the Coast Guard and the first woman to lead a military service. She was among the first to fall in the purge of diversity, equity and inclusion advocates in government.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the principal military adviser to the president and the defense secretary. Although legally not a link in the military chain of command, the chairman assists in carrying out command functions and wields significant influence among those in uniform.
The four-year term is normally staggered, with the JCS chairman serving in the final years of one administration and the beginning of another. No rule would prohibit Mr. Trump from dismissing him sooner, however.
While serving as commander of Pacific Air Forces in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, which sparked protests across the U.S., Gen. Brown released an emotional video where he discussed the challenges he faced as a Black man in the 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,” he said. “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?’”
Gen. Brown was confirmed 98-0 to be Air Force chief of staff, but he didn’t receive such unanimity when the Senate considered him for chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Among the 11 Republicans who voted no in September 2023 were now Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In August 2022, Gen. Brown co-signed a memo that set out goals for recruiting Air Force and Space Force officers broken down by race, ethnicity and gender. During his confirmation hearing for JCS chairman, Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, said the memo was an indication of the Biden administration’s “obsession” with injecting race-based politics into the military.
“We ended up in a place where a general in the Air Force is advocating for racial quotas, whether it be by applicants or the number of officers or maybe the total unit. I think that’s the wrong approach,” Mr. Schmitt said.
The memo identified the goals as aspirational and said they wouldn’t be used in any manner that undermines merit-based recruiting and selection processes. Gen. Brown said the percentage goals listed in the memo matched the demographics of the nation.
Beyond his more than 40 years of public service, Gen. Brown’s willingness to be candid about challenges the military faces — from recruiting headaches to balancing demands from combatant commanders — is another reason he should remain on the job, Mr. Bowman said.
“That’s not the kind of language you typically hear from an officer whose number one priority is getting a promotion,” he said. “Too often, we have people saying ‘everything’s fine’ and not speaking the cold hard truth about how we have real problems that need to be addressed.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.