Senate Republicans grilled Gen. Charles Q. Brown over racial politics and transgenderism throughout the U.S. military during a committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Brown, who serves as Air Force chief of staff, was nominated by President Joe Biden to replace Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May.
Among the more contentious issues raised during Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was an August 2022 Air Force memo Brown signed, directing the Air Force Academy and Air Education and Training Command to “develop a diversity and inclusion outreach plan” aimed at “achieving a force more representative of our Nation.” When pressed on the memo by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Brown claimed the recruiting targets stratified by race and sex in the memo are based “on application goals, not the make-up of the force,” and that “those numbers are based on the demographics of the nation.”
As The Federalist previously reported, Brown has a documented history of supporting the same so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology wreaking havoc on the U.S. military. DEI initiatives employ a divisive and poisonous ideology dismissive of merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual attraction.
While participating in a virtual discussion hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2020, for instance, Brown indicated that “[a]t the higher level of the Air Force, diversity ha[d] moved to the forefront of personnel decisions such as promotions and hiring.” During the same event, the Air Force general
