Friday Night Massacre in the Military

Friday night, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who is black) and the Navy's top admiral (who is female) were fired, along with the most senior Judge Advocates General (JAGS) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an advocate of anti-racism training in the armed forces, has been replaced by Dan “Razin’” Caine. Caine is a retired Air Force lieutenant general, with none of the traditional qualifications for this permission and whose return to active duty from retirement will require a legal exemption. Trump made it clear that Caine possessed the key quality he looks for in all of his top-level appointees: personal loyalty. In announcing the selection he recounted the story of meeting Caine in 2018, when Caine supposedly said, “‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.” Trump claims he then put on a Make America Great Again hat. Laughing, Trump said, “You’re not allowed to do that, but they did it.”

It forces the question: Is Donald Trump trying to turn the military into a political weapon, just like he’s trying, and at least partially succeeding, in doing at the Justice Department?

The Founding Fathers created a military with civilian leadership to minimize the prospect of a takeover by a military strongman. The principle of civilian leadership of the military is so deeply ingrained in Western democracies that it’s a requirement for inclusion in NATO.

I am obviously not an expert in how the military functions, but I am a student of democratic institutions and their vitality, so I look at what happened Friday night through that lens. Civilian control of the military was already in the hands of a former Fox News Host with an admitted drinking problem. Now, competent military leaders are being dismissed for no apparent good reason.

And that’s the heart of it, why dismiss them? Why on a Friday night? Why so many all and once? And why the Judge Advocates General?

Members of the Judge Advocates General Corps, for instance, respond to legal questions about rules of engagement, targeting, intelligence law, and detainee operations. They are military lawyers whose core functions involve military justice and law of war. They offer advice on questions including what constitutes an illegal order, what is a war crime, what is a constitutional violation. Replacing their leadership with Trump loyalists could have serious implications for how the military reacts in a number of situations, including assisting with mass deportations and policing protests, which they are currently prohibited from doing by the Posse Comitatus Act.

Members of the military take an oath to the Constitution, not a loyalty oath to the president. The idea of loyalty to the Constitution is deeply ingrained in the officer corps and among senior enlisted soldiers. But principles can be undercut, and the concern is that is what Trump and Hegseth are putting into motion.

Hegseth is now making good on the opinions that likely got him the job in the first place. On November 7, 2024, in a podcast interview, he said, “First of all, you got to fire the chairman [of the] Joint Chiefs. But any general that was involved—general, admiral, whatever—… in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go.” Hegseth criticized chief of naval operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as the Navy’s top combat officer, in his 2024 book, where he dismissed her as “another inexperienced first.” Hegseth’s baseless insistence that Black people and women can only achieve high rank by scoring what he characterizes as “DEI points” is despicable. And it’s belied by the fact, that Brown and Franchetti both have military experience that far exceeds Hegseth’s. They also have demonstrated commitment to the Constitution and our national security.

There was no legitimate reason for the Friday Night Massacre in the military. It was the slaughter of our integrity, our values, and our security.

We’ve watched the Supreme Court cave to Trump. Congress has folded, at least for now. The press is still trying to appease Trump at the margins to maintain access. But in each of those institutions, there are brave people who continue to try and hold the line until we can get to the point where the country can regain itself. We know that courage can be contagious. Now the question is, what will the military do?

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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