Fired Stars and Stripes Journalists Sue Hegseth and Pentagon, Claim Illegal Retaliation

Three journalists from Stars and Stripes filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and aide Andrew Brey, claiming the Pentagon illegally fired them for defending the paper's editorial independence.

Publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and Middle East reporter Lara Korte were handed separation notices last Friday. The stated reason was insubordination, according to CBS News and Military.com. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says that's a pretext for punishing them over speech and reporting the Pentagon didn't like.

Stars and Stripes has been in continuous circulation since World War II and is owned by the Defense Department, but it has long operated with editorial independence, meaning the government doesn't dictate content. It's federally funded but not federally controlled, at least in theory. Roughly 65% of its $27.4 million FY2026 budget comes from taxpayers, according to Breitbart, which cited sources close to the paper.

In July, Slavin and Korte appeared on "CBS Sunday Morning" and defended that independence on camera. Korte told CBS she works "for Stars and Stripes, not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker." Slavin said censorship of news for service members would be "a red line," according to Fox News.

Five and a half weeks later, on August 11, Stars and Stripes published a report detailing flagging morale, mental health strain, and food and water shortages aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier that had been deployed for nine months. According to the lawsuit, cited by CBS News, Pentagon officials directed Lederer the very next day to begin firing Slavin and Korte over their CBS comments from weeks earlier.

Lederer refused. He'd already announced his retirement, effective September 30, citing "fundamental" differences with Pentagon leadership over the paper's direction, according to an email obtained by the Washington Post and cited by Breitbart. The Pentagon fired him anyway, before his retirement took effect, also citing insubordination.

The plaintiffs' version, laid out by their attorneys at Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, Government Accountability Project and a Yale Law School clinic, points to a specific piece of evidence: a July performance review reportedly written by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell that accused senior Stripes staff of "open rebellion" and stated "the most important element of the performance plan is the faithful administration of POTUS policies." The lawsuit cites that language as proof the Pentagon was demanding political loyalty from a newsroom that's supposed to be independent by law and department policy.

"The Pentagon is trying to punish journalists for defending the established mission of Stars and Stripes," said Taryn Wilgus Null, senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund, in a statement to Military.com. "We are asking the court to stop these unconstitutional terminations."

Breitbart's reporting cites sources close to the situation saying Stars and Stripes "had suffered" under Lederer's 20 years of leadership, and reports that an active-duty Navy captain, William Urban, was installed this month as deputy publisher with a mandate to modernize the outlet. Urban wrote in a public letter that he'd sent Lederer nine reform recommendations on August 16 and asked to meet, but says he got no response before or after Lederer announced his retirement the next day. Breitbart also notes that Sean Parnell had publicly announced in January that Stars and Stripes would be "modernized" to move away from "woke distractions," a stated policy goal that predates this dispute.

Whether Lederer's silence on Urban's memo constitutes insubordination, or whether the firings were retaliation dressed up as an HR complaint, is exactly the factual question a judge will now have to weigh. The Pentagon has not publicly detailed its case beyond the separation notices themselves. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit's allegations, according to the Associated Press.

Both Slavin's and Korte's separation notices cited their CBS interview specifically, not any independent misconduct, according to Military.com's review of the notices. And the timeline is clear: the order to fire them came one day after the Abraham Lincoln story ran, even though the CBS interview was over a month old by then. Whether that sequencing proves retaliatory intent is the core dispute the lawsuit puts in front of a federal judge.

The complaint asks for an emergency temporary restraining order to block the terminations while the case proceeds. No hearing date had been set as of Thursday. The Pentagon has not announced whether it will contest the suit.

Stars and Stripes reaches an average of 1.4 million readers, according to two U.S. officials cited by CBS News, down from its peaks during World War II, the Cold War and Vietnam. Readership decline is one thing everyone in this fight agrees on. What to do about it is not.