# Stars and Stripes ***Stars and Stripes*** is the newspaper of the U.S. armed forces. It is funded in part by the [[Department of Defense]] and distributed to service members worldwide, but operates under statutory and regulatory protections for **editorial independence** — the unusual arrangement of a government-funded paper that is supposed to be free to report on the government funding it. That arrangement is what makes the paper a useful instrument for this knowledge base. Pressure on *Stars and Stripes* is legible in a way that pressure on a commercial outlet is not, because the independence it is losing was written down. ## The 2026 firings and lawsuit In **January 2026** the Pentagon moved to strip the paper's editorial-independence protections. In late **August 2026**, three of its senior figures were terminated: | Person | Role | Circumstance | |---|---|---| | Erik Slavin | Editor-in-chief | Fired; termination notice cited insubordination | | Lara Korte | Middle East reporter | Fired; termination notice cited insubordination | | Max Lederer | Publisher, ~30 years at the paper | Had announced retirement days earlier; terminated immediately after refusing a Pentagon demand that he fire Slavin and Korte | The stated "insubordination" traced to interviews Slavin and Korte gave to *CBS Sunday Morning* for a July 2026 segment, in which Korte said she worked for *Stars and Stripes* — "not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker." The proximate trigger was reporting. Pentagon leadership demanded the firings **one day after** the paper published a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the aircraft carrier **USS Abraham Lincoln** during its extended Middle East deployment in the [[Iran War 2026]]. On **August 27, 2026**, the three filed a 45-page complaint in federal district court against Secretary of Defense [[Pete Hegseth]], the [[Department of Defense]], Pentagon spokesperson [[Sean Parnell]], and Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Andrew Brey. They allege they were fired for "speaking up as private citizens in support of the press's freedom to cover military operations," and in retaliation for the *Abraham Lincoln* story — a "blatant violation" of the [[First Amendment]] amounting to "extraordinary censorship efforts" by the department. The suit seeks to halt the terminations and asks for an immediate restraining order. > [!note] Why this sits with the influencer story > The firings are one half of a pair. In the same window, the Pentagon was reported to have hired conservative veterans with large social media followings into civilian roles as [[Special Government Employee]] appointees to amplify Hegseth's positions. Read together, the two stories describe a single move: reducing the independent military press while standing up a paid, government-employed substitute for it. ## See Also - [[Pete Hegseth]] - [[Sean Parnell]] - [[Special Government Employee]] - [[Department of Defense]] - [[First Amendment]] - [[Iran War 2026 Timeline]]