US President Donald Trump has fired Force General CQ Brown as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a wider shake-up of top military leadership.

“I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

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The US president did not provide a reason for dismissing Brown with immediate effect.

The president announced that he would nominate retired former Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking tradition by pulling someone out of retirement to become the top military officer.

But Brown, a former fighter pilot who has held commands in the Middle East and Asia and the second Black officer to take the position, had come under fire previously after his public support for Black Lives Matter in the wake of the police killing of Black man George Floyd, making him fodder for the administration’s fight against “woke culture” and the push for diversity.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had previously suggested that Brown had got the position because he was Black.

Firing ‘massacre’

Along with Brown’s firing, Hegseth announced that Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slife were also being let go.

Franchetti, who has commanded at all naval levels, becomes the second female officer to be fired by the Trump administration.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhao Castro said Democrats are calling the firing of the Pentagon’s top brass a “massacre”.

“In all, the Pentagon is losing six members of its top brass, which is again a break from tradition in a normally non-partisan US military,” Castro explained.

Democratic Senator Jack Reed on the Senate Armed Services Committee condemned the firing of Brown as a “type of political loyalty test”.

“Or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our servicemembers require to achieve their missions,” Reed said.

Since coming into office, Trump has pushed through a series of mass firings within the upper echelons of government. Starting next week, the Pentagon plans to cut 5,400 civilian probationary workers.