Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III cleared out "several hundred" volunteer seats on the Pentagon's 42-plus civilian advisory boards-every seat he has the power to appoint, according to spokespeople. He blamed the unprecedented purge on "the scale of recent changes" to board seats made in the final weeks of the Trump administration, according to Department of Defense spokesperson Susan Gough. Austin "was concerned by the scale of recent changes to department advisory committees," Gough explained in an email to Air Force Magazine. "For example, recent nominations affected half the membership of each the Defense Policy Board and Defense Business Board." She did not specify what problems Austin thought the changes might present, nor did she detail how many last-minute appointments the Trump administration tried to make in its final days or weeks.
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