March 14, 2025

Will Trump Reshape the American Military

By: Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend

Last month, the Trump administration carried out a large-scale firing of senior military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of Naval operations, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, and the top military lawyers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. While expected, these moves were nonetheless largely unprecedented, upending longstanding bipartisan and civil-military norms around the continuity of military leadership across political transitions to a new administration. Kori Schake and Erica Frantz join Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend on this week’s episode to shed light on what the Trump administration’s dismissals of military leaders might mean for the state of U.S. civil-military relations, the health of U.S. democracy, and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy,

Kori Schake is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  

Erica Frantz is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University and a co-author of The Origins of Elected Strongmen.  

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