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At least five former US defense secretaries on Thursday condemned President Donald Trump’s firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior officers, calling on Congress to stop any confirmation of their successors.

The ex-defense secretaries, in a scathing letter, also accused Trump of seeking to make the apolitical US military an instrument of partisan politics and using firings, which extend to the top army, navy and air force lawyers, to remove legal constraints on the president’s power.

The letter was written by four defense secretaries who served under Democratic administrations as well as James Mattis, a retired Marine general who served as Trump’s first Pentagon chief from 2017 to 2019.

“President Trump’s actions undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security,” they wrote.

Beyond Mattis, the letter’s signatories – William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel and Lloyd Austin, were said to have served under the Democratic presidential administrations of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Recall that Trump announced the firings late on Friday but his administration has yet to clarify in any detail what caused the unprecedented shakeup, which also included the dismissal of the head of the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female officer to lead a military service.

Air Force General C.Q. Brown was only the second Black officer to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he was said to be less than halfway through his four-year term.

“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military. We, like many Americans – including many troops – are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons,” they wrote.

The White House is yet to comment on the letter.