Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Navy's top officer, fired by Hegseth

Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations for the U.S. Navy, has been fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. 

The firing of Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the Navy, came shortly after President Donald Trump announced he had fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump said he's nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan "Razin" Caine to be the next chairman.

Brown, only the second Black chairman of the joint chiefs in U.S. history, publicly supported Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd, making him fodder for the administration's wars against "wokeism" in the military.

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Why was Lisa Franchetti fired? 

What we know:

Franchetti was fired alongside another senior officer, Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of staff of the Air Force. According to FOX News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson, Adm. James W. Kilby has been named acting chief naval officer. 

Franchetti is the second top female military officer to be fired by the Trump administration. Trump fired Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in.

A surface warfare officer, Franchetti has commanded at all levels, heading U.S. 6th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Korea. She was the second woman ever to be promoted to four-star admiral, and she did multiple deployments, including as commander of a naval destroyer and two stints as aircraft carrier strike group commander.

Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti on Thursday, May 23, 2024 -- (Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)

Slife led Air Force Special Operations Command prior to becoming the service's vice chief of staff and had deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

What we don't know:

Hegseth didn’t give a reason for terminating Franchetti and Slife. 

What they're saying:

"The President and Secretary of Defense deserve to have generals they trust and the force deserves to have generals who have credibility with our elected and appointed officials," Slife said Friday. "While I’m disappointed to leave under these circumstances, I wouldn’t want the outcome to be any different."

Why is Trump firing so many top-ranking military officials? 

Dig deeper:

Trump has asserted his executive authority in a much stronger way in his second term, removing most officials from the Biden administration even though many of those positions are meant to carry over from one administration to the next.

The other side:

Congressional Democratic leaders called out the firings as a direct attempt to politicize the military.

"A professional, apolitical military that is subordinate to the civilian government and supportive of the Constitution rather than a political party is essential to the survival of our democracy," Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement late Friday. "For the sake of our troops and the well-being of every American, elected leaders — especially Senate Republicans — must defend that enduring principle against corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.