Pentagon Fires Stars and Stripes Editor, Publisher and Reporter Amid Widening Press Restrictions

On Friday, August 21, 2026, the Department of Defense issued separation notices to three leaders of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that has served American service members since the Civil War. Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, Publisher Max D. Lederer Jr., and Middle East reporter Lara Korte were all dismissed, capping months of escalating tension between the newspaper's staff and Pentagon leadership over editorial control, and arriving amid a broader, multi-year effort by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to restrict press access to the building and to the U.S. military's current operations.

Slavin said the separation notice he received cited insubordination stemming from a CBS Sunday Morning interview in which he stated that censorship of news for service members would represent a "red line" he was unwilling to cross.

"If we can't do that, if we were turned into something other than that, if we were public relations," he said, describing the compromise he would not accept.

In a statement following his dismissal, Slavin said he was "being fired for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a personal red line," and added that "Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law."

Korte, who appeared in the same CBS segment, was dismissed on similar grounds.

"I'm working for Stars and Stripes — not the Pentagon, not any administration, and not any policymaker," she said, adding that military families and service members "deserve a free and independent press."

Lederer had announced his retirement four days earlier, on August 18, with an effective date of September 30 after more than 30 years with the organization and 19 years as publisher, but the Pentagon terminated him before that date arrived. In his memo to staff, Lederer wrote that

"My philosophy of leadership … differ[s] in fundamental ways from the direction the Department of Defense has for the organization."

He had specifically objected to a Pentagon plan to shift Stars and Stripes toward a digital-only format, telling the newspaper,

"I don't feel that there's a full recognition of the value of multiple platforms versus only a digital platform," and noting the continued need for print products for troops "in a transitional environment."

The Department of Defense did not provide a detailed public rationale for the firings beyond confirming that separation notices had been issued, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment when we asked. In an earlier statement, the Pentagon spokesman pointed to a press release from Navy Capt. William Urban, recently installed as the paper's military deputy, who said the goal was to secure "more eyeballs on our content and more impact" while "maintaining the highest standard of professional journalism with the credibility that comes with editorial independence." All three employees were given five days to appeal their dismissals.

Slavin, Lederer and Korte appear to be, like most Stars and Stripes editorial staff, nonappropriated fund (NAF) employees rather than appropriated-fund civil servants, a status consistent with the newspaper's structure as a nonappropriated fund instrumentality under DoD Instruction 5122.11. NAF employment is excluded from most Title 5 civil-service protections (the Department of Defense's own civilian personnel policy office states that 'unless specifically provided by law, NAF employment is not subject to civil service provisions or restrictions'), meaning NAF employees generally lack the 30-day advance notice and Merit Systems Protection Board appeal rights available to a competitive-service federal employee facing removal.

They do retain a narrower whistleblower-reprisal protection under 10 USC 1587, enforceable through a complaint to the Department of Defense Inspector General, covering reprisal for disclosures involving violations of law or regulation, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or a substantial danger to public health or safety. Whether public remarks defending editorial independence would qualify under any of those categories is untested.

These firings represent the latest chapter in the fraught relationship between the Hegseth Pentagon and the press. In January 2026, the Pentagon announced plans to align Stars and Stripes more closely with Department of Defense communications priorities, part of an effort Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell described publicly as "bringing Stars and Stripes into the 21st century."

Parnell added, “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

In April 2026, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, the newspaper's ombudsman, after Smith publicly objected that the modernization plans were "contrary to the news organization's mission." In March 2026, the Pentagon issued a memo restricting the newspaper's use of wire service content, requiring that material be "consistent with good order and discipline."

Underlying much of the friction was press reporting, including Stars and Stripes' reporting, on declining morale and poor living conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that had been involved in strikes on Iran and had been at sea for more than 250 days; coverage that President Trump publicly called “fake” and Secretary Hegseth called "completely misrepresented."

Pentagon Rulemaking and Congressional Response

Congress has not been silent on the editorial independence of the Stars and Stripes. A committee report during the FY1990–91 National Defense Authorization Act process suggested DoD establish the role of “Ombudsman” as part of the DoD and to produce an annual report to the House Armed Services Committee “on the free flow of information to the Armed Forces via Stripes.”

The successive DoD administrative rules defined the Stripes as a “DoD-authorized, multi-platform, global source of independent news and information organization serving the U.S. military community.” DoD Directive 5122.11, “Stars and Stripes (S&S) Newspapers and Business Operations,” was first issued October 5, 1993, and the rule in the Federal Register (Code of Federal Regulations, CFR) defined the Stripes as an independent news agency (32 CFR 246), codified seven months later in April 1994. In January 2026, after first proposing to update 32 CFR 246, the DoD removed it entirely from the Federal Register, stating that:

“The regulation is unnecessary and may be removed from the Code of Federal Regulations because it does not have an impact or burden to the public.”

The rule's public page now reads 'PART 246—[REMOVED],' at the bottom with an effective date of January 15, 2026.

DoD Instruction 5122.11 was reissued and updated on August 21, 2026, and is now available on the Department's public issuances site. It largely contains the same language previously included in the now rescinded federal regulation with three notable differences. First, the Ombudsman’s role has been narrowed slightly. Rather than presumably producing reports independently and sending directly to Congress and the Department of Defense, the process now routes through the chain of command to Congress. Second, Section 3.1.a.(2)(e) bars content with "a direct, material, and immediate negative impact on military readiness." This restriction essentially gives Pentagon leaders a veto on what is published, and potentially undermines the independence language in earlier sections. Third, and finally, it adds a restriction on publishing Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Information categorized as CUI superseded the “For Official Use Only” and “Sensitive But Unclassified" categories in 2020, implementing a 2010 Executive Order by President Obama.

Members of Congress have responded to the Pentagon’s assertion of editorial control over Stars and Stripes by introducing legislation in the Senate Armed Services Committee to make the paper’s editorial independence statute instead of tradition. In May 2026, Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), senior minority members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced a bill (S.4614) aimed at preserving the independence of Stars and Stripes in statute instead of relying on Federal regulations.

In her statement, Sen Shaheen said, “For more than a century and a half, Stars and Stripes has told the story of our nation’s military with accuracy and integrity. Our legislation makes clear that Stars and Stripes’ independence is not negotiable—nor can it be intimidated into only reporting stories that Secretary Hegseth approves of.”

Sen Blumenthal added, “Stars and Stripes must be free from political influence and interference. Servicemembers, veterans, and their families across the globe have relied on this newspaper to provide honest, credible reporting on the issues facing them without ideological or political narratives for more than a century.”

The Senate bill is still in committee and not likely to be passed as a stand-alone bill. However, the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that has passed Senate Armed Services Committee markup and been referred to the floor contains the same language as the proposed stand-alone bill, so the bill is not dead yet. The language reasserting the independence of the Stars and Stripes does not appear in the House version of the NDAA, so that path to passing both chambers is still uphill.

A Broader Pattern of Restrictions on Press Outlets

The dismissal of Stars and Stripes' leadership is the latest chapter in a much larger campaign by Hegseth to more tightly control press access to the Pentagon and to the military's current operations. In January 2025, major outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico were evicted from their long-held workspaces inside the Pentagon and replaced with outlets more favorable to the administration.

In May 2025, a new order barred journalists from moving freely through most of the building, citing national security, as had been the practice for decades. That was followed in September 2025 by a 17-page memo requiring reporters to acknowledge that Department of Defense information,

"...must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official … even if it is unclassified" before they could report it — and warning that reporters found to be soliciting unapproved information, even unclassified information, could have their credentials revoked as "a security or safety risk."

Hegseth defended the policy directly, posting that "the 'press' does not run the Pentagon — the people do," and that "the press is no longer allowed to roam the halls." The Pentagon Press Association, in a formal statement, called the policy something that "conveys an unprecedented message of intimidation" to Department of Defense personnel who might otherwise speak with reporters, and warned that the plan to relocate news organizations away from their dedicated workspaces would further isolate the press corps from official spokespeople. The association's statement placed the moment in historical context:

"Every political administration going back to Eisenhower — including the first Trump administration — has allowed the same level of access." It concluded, "The American people deserve to know how their military is being run."

Roughly 30 news organizations spanning the ideological spectrum, including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Politico, NPR, Military Times and Defense News, declined to sign the pledge and forfeited their Pentagon press credentials rather than accept the new terms by the October 15, 2025 deadline.

Notably, Fox News, Hegseth’s former employer, and unabashed ally of the administration, Newsmax, were among those declining to sign despite their general standing as networks generally seen as allies of the administration. Only about 15 credentials were ultimately issued under the new policy, largely to fringe outlets such as One America News and The Epoch Times. The New York Times subsequently sued the Department of Defense, and in March 2026, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that the policy violated both the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment's due process protections, ordering the Times' credentials restored. When the Pentagon issued a revised version of the restrictions weeks later, Friedman blocked that version as well, describing the department's effort as a "rather transparent" attempt to route around his order. In June 2026, the Pentagon further barred reporters from its press office entirely, and additional legal challenges over escort requirements followed in the months after.

Court rulings aside, the practical effect on coverage of ongoing military operations has been stark. Reporting on the sustained U.S. campaigns against targets in Yemen, Iran and Syria, as well as the 2026 U.S. intervention in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, has proceeded without embedded journalists. As one review of Pentagon press access found, "No mainstream news organization has reporters embedded with U.S. military units" engaged in those operations; a marked departure from the arrangement the Department of Defense itself built and championed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs placed several hundred journalists directly within combat units. A DoD-commissioned report on that program credited the effort with improving public understanding of troops' experiences and found that favorable coverage of the military rose substantially once embedded reporters began filing from the field and remained in close contact with the troops.

The contrast between that model and the current absence of any embedded coverage is one that working Pentagon reporters have noted directly. As Washington Post defense correspondent Tara Copp has observed, the kind of sustained relationship- and source-building that underpins accountability journalism.

She continued, “Access is critical. The only reason I’ve been able to hang in there and continue to do this type of reporting is because I had that access in the past. A new reporter coming in right now who does not have these relationships, who has not met these people face-to-face, who hasn’t built up that trust, would have a very difficult time.”

How This Compares to Past Restrictions

Tension between the Pentagon and the press over battlefield access is not new, and several past episodes are worth measuring against the current moment. The irony is that every time the Pentagon has attempted to restrict access, the press reports have gotten worse, not better. The most frequently cited precedent is Operation Urgent Fury, the Reagan administration's October 1983 invasion of Grenada, during which journalists were excluded entirely from the island for roughly two and a half days.

It was a blackout so total that networks were reduced to using stock combat footage from Vietnam in their reporting from neighboring islands. The backlash was immediate and bipartisan enough that the Joint Chiefs of Staff convened a panel, chaired by retired Maj. Gen. Winant Sidle, which concluded that media coverage of military operations was "essential" to a democracy and recommended a standing pool system to prevent a repeat. That recommendation produced the Department of Defense National Media Pool in 1984.

The pool system that followed did not resolve the underlying friction. During Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama, pool reporters were flown in too late to witness the opening combat, and journalists who tried to cover the operation independently were detained; equipment failures meant some photographs took four days to reach Washington. According to an Army War College study, during Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991, only around 10 percent of accredited journalists ever reached the front lines, and dispatches and videotape were frequently delayed by days or lost outright. Clearly some of that friction had as much to do with the technology at the time as it had to do with access, but the study concluded that the pool system itself was unable to adequately support the press’ mission to report accurate and timely news.

Major news organizations spent roughly eight months afterward negotiating directly with the Pentagon, and in 1992 the two sides signed an agreement that established "open and independent coverage" as the Department of Defense's primary operating principle going forward, with pools reserved only for situations where no other access was possible. That 1992 principle, in modified form, underwrote the far more expansive embedding program of the 2003 Iraq invasion described above.

Set against that history, the current restrictions differ in both scope and durability. Grenada and Panama involved days-long blackouts tied to a single operation, and the resulting reforms were negotiated in good faith and produced durable, written commitments to broader access. The current policy, by contrast, is not limited to a single operation or a matter of days; it applies continuously to the Pentagon press corps' basic ability to gather unclassified information anywhere within the Department of Defense, is enforced through a signed pledge with credentialing consequences, and coincides with a total absence of embedded coverage of live combat operations rather than merely restrictive pools.

It is also the first such Pentagon press policy, so far as available reporting reflects, to have been challenged in federal court and struck down as unconstitutional; twice, after the Department of Defense attempted to revise and reissue it. The Pentagon Press Association's own framing has not been publicly disputed by the Department of Defense.

The Newspaper Caught in the Middle

Stars and Stripes has occupied an unusual position; published by and partially funded by the Department of Defense, yet protected by tradition and federal regulations as an editorially independent, First Amendment publication for most of its existence. This current dust-up, while more significant in scope and effect, is not the first time that arrangement has produced conflict.

The paper's roots trace to 1861, when Union soldiers occupying a captured newspaper plant in Bloomfield, Missouri, put out four issues under the Stars and Stripes name before the effort lapsed. It was revived on February 8, 1918, in Paris as a weekly serving the American Expeditionary Forces under Gen. John J. Pershing, staffed entirely by soldiers; the WWI-era paper reached roughly 526,000 readers before it ceased publication in June 1919, and counted future notables such as Harold Ross, who went on to found The New Yorker, and sportswriter Grantland Rice among its staff.

The paper's most enduring incarnation began on April 18, 1942, when it relaunched in London as a four-page weekly and rapidly expanded into a daily publication that, at its wartime peak, produced as many as 32 separate editions across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific, with combined circulation exceeding 1.2 million copies. Gen. George C. Marshall wrote in the paper's first World War II edition that "no official control was ever exercised over the matter which went into Stars and Stripes," and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower enforced a strict hands-off policy toward its editorial content throughout the European campaign.

That hands-off tradition was tested most publicly by Gen. George S. Patton's running feud with cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Mauldin, who created his "Willie and Joe" characters while serving with the 45th Division in Sicily in 1943, drew Patton's ire almost immediately. Patton viewed the characters' disheveled appearance and open disdain for the chain of command as an affront to military discipline and demanded Mauldin be fired. Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton deflected the order by asking Patton to put it in writing, which Patton never did. The dispute resurfaced more sharply in early 1945, after Mauldin was cited by military police in Patton's Third Army area for an incomplete uniform, and responded with a cartoon lampooning Third Army's strict grooming regulations and fines. Patton summoned Mauldin for a face-to-face confrontation in late February 1945, at one point demanding,

"What are you trying to do, incite a goddamn mutiny?" and dismissing Willie and Joe as looking "like goddamn bums."

The dispute ultimately reached Eisenhower, who intervened directly and ordered that Mauldin's cartoons not be interfered with; by April 1945, one observer wryly noted that Patton had "lost the battle of Mauldin." Mauldin's wartime cartoons later won him the first of two Pulitzer Prizes.

Stars and Stripes continued publishing after the war as U.S. troops remained stationed in Europe and the Pacific, transitioning from an all-military staff to a mix of civilian journalists and military personnel. That autonomy has been threatened before by budget rather than by direct editorial pressure: federal sequestration forced layoffs and schedule changes in 2013, and in February 2020 the Pentagon moved to eliminate the paper's funding outright, with Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Elaine McCusker arguing that "coming into the modern age, that newspaper is probably not the best way that we communicate any longer."

Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered the paper closed by September 15, 2020, but bipartisan opposition in Congress pushed back, and President Trump reversed the closure order via social media on September 4, 2020, rescinding it entirely by the end of that month.

Today, Stars and Stripes draws roughly half of its approximately $29 million annual budget from taxpayer funds, and the rest from revenue-generating activities like subscriptions, advertising, etc. The paper reaches an estimated 1.4 million readers daily. What distinguishes the current dispute from the 2020 funding fight, and even from the Patton-Mauldin standoff of 1945, is that this time the conflict has produced not a budget line item or a scolding phone call but the outright termination of the paper's top editorial and business leadership over statements made in defense of the same editorial independence that Marshall pledged in 1942 and that Eisenhower twice enforced by intervening personally.

Slavin, Korte and Lederer have five days from their notices to appeal; as of this writing, the Department of Defense has not announced permanent replacements beyond Capt. Urban's interim role, and it remains to be seen whether the newspaper's decades-old ombudsman and independence structures will be reconstituted in any form.