Conservatives Oppose Confirmation of General Charles Q. Brown

July 12, 2023
Washington, D.C.
Signatures updated: 7/19/23

The conservative movement opposes the confirmation of General CQ Brown, Jr. as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the nation’s highest-ranking military officer. Gen. Brown’s track record at the Air Force and his zealous commitment to race-based hiring metrics would jeopardize the unity, lethality and readiness of our armed forces. We urge all senators to oppose his nomination.

Since August 2020, Gen. Brown has served as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Of all the major service branches, the Air Force has leaned the hardest into progressive ideological indoctrination over readiness and merit. Gen. Brown has stated openly that he “purposely built” his office with “diversity” as the core priority, appearing to discriminate against candidates for positions in the Air Force based on their race, religion, and biological sex. [1] Following the death of George Floyd, Gen. Brown released a video in which he seemingly targeted subordinates based on skin color, and adopted the neo-Marxist categorical framing of the oppressed and the oppressors.[2]

Moreover, under Gen. Brown’s leadership, Air Force Academy cadets were told that they may no longer refer to their parents as “mom and dad’ because it was “divisive language.”[3] Gen. Brown also authorized use of Air Force resources to host LGBT pride events, including drag shows for minors.[4]

Further, on August 9, 2022, General Brown and Under Secretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones signed a memorandum outlining specific officer placement goals based on an individual’s sex and race. Specific quotas were assigned to men and women and parsed out based on the individual’s race to determine what percentage of officers should be white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American.[5]

Unsurprisingly, an over-emphasis on ideological indoctrination and racial quotas has led to a decline in Air Force performance. As seen in the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength the Air Force is the weakest of all branches of the U.S. military and was downgraded in 2023 from its previous score of “weak” to “very weak” due to “the deepening of previously assessed issues related to aging aircraft and very poor pilot training and retention” and noted that “the USAF would struggle greatly against a peer competitor.”[6]

Despite promises by Gen. Brown to make Air Force flight proficiency and safety standards a priority, these standards have decreased. The readiness of all variants of F-35 aircraft has cratered below 60 percent, dropping by 11 percentage points in 2022 alone.[7] Additionally, the entire B-2 bomber fleet was grounded from December 2022-May 2023, incapacitating a major component of the Nuclear Triad, after two serious safety incidents within 15 months. Only one such incident had occurred in the thirty years prior to Gen. Brown’s command.[8]

With such a poor record of leadership, confirmation of Gen. Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would jeopardize national security, the lives of service men and women, and the reputation of the U.S. Military. He is the wrong man for the job. In the interest of having the strongest, most united, and superior military force in the world, we call on all senators to oppose his confirmation.

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