What do you call this sequence?

• Alvin Brown was confirmed by the Senate to serve on the NTSB through the end of 2026.
• By law, an NTSB member is not supposed to be removable at will. There has to be cause, like serious misconduct or failure to do the job.
• Brown says he was removed anyway, and no reason was given.
• Brown is Black. The other board members at the time were white.
• Brown was the only Democrat Trump removed.
• But the filing says party alone does not explain it, because other white Democrats on the board were left in place.
• In fact, the filing says Trump could have replaced a different Democrat’s seat instead, but did not.
• The filing says this fits a broader pattern:
  approximately 75 percent of Black federal officials leading multimember agencies have been removed from office
  vs approximately 27 percent of white federal officials on multimember agencies.
• It points to another example too: Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who is Black, was removed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced by a white officer who did not meet the usual statutory qualification and could serve only because Trump waived it.
• Then Trump nominated John DeLeeuw to Brown’s seat, and DeLeeuw was sworn in and began serving in that role.
• Brown is now using a legal action that basically asks: what gives this new person the lawful right to hold that office at all?

If all of that is true, then this is not just a dispute over whether one firing was legal.

It is whether Brown was singled out, and whether the replacement was how that decision was made to stick.