Pentagon orders Stars and Stripes to drop 'woke distractions,' focus on warfighters

The Pentagon announced Thursday that it is directing Stars and Stripes, the congressionally protected military newspaper, to eliminate what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spokesman called “woke distractions” and refocus content on service members. Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a post on X that the publication would cover “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY,” and that the Defense Department would generate half of its content while ending reprints from the Associated Press and Reuters. The publication’s own publisher said he first learned of the changes by reading Parnell’s social media post, not through any communication from the Pentagon.

The directive puts the Trump administration in direct conflict with editorial independence that Congress codified for Stars and Stripes in the 1990s, and extends the administration’s pattern of restrictions on news organizations covering the federal government.

Parnell said in his post that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said it would be “custom tailored to our warfighters” with a focus on “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”

The Pentagon also said, according to reporting cited in The Daily Wire after a Pentagon spokeswoman was contacted, that the plan calls for all Stars and Stripes content to be written by active-duty service members. Publisher Max Lederer noted that Congress has mandated the publication’s publisher and top editor be civilians — a structural requirement the active-duty-only plan would appear to conflict with.

Lederer said he received no advance notice of the changes from anyone at the Pentagon.

“This will either destroy the value of the organization or significantly reduce its value,” Lederer said.

Congressionally mandated independence

Stars and Stripes traces its lineage to the Civil War and has reported news about the military, largely to service members stationed overseas, steadily since World War II. Roughly half of its budget comes from the Pentagon and its staff are considered Defense Department employees. Its mission statement, however, states that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and describes the publication as unique among Defense Department-connected news organizations in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”

Congress established that editorial independence in the 1990s following instances of military leadership intervening in editorial decisions.

Also Thursday, the Pentagon issued a statement in the Federal Register that it would eliminate certain 1990s-era directives governing how Stars and Stripes operates. Lederer said it was not clear what that action would mean for the publication’s operations, or whether the Defense Department has the authority to take it without congressional authorization.

Jacqueline Smith, the publication’s ombudsman — a position Congress created three decades ago; she reports to the House Armed Services Committee — said Stars and Stripes covers matters important to service members and their families beyond weapons systems and war strategy, and that she had detected nothing “woke” about its reporting.

“I think it’s very important that Stars and Stripes maintains its editorial independence, which is the basis of its credibility,” Smith said.

Job applications and loyalty questions

The announcement came a day after The Washington Post reported that applicants for Stars and Stripes positions were being asked how they would advance President Donald Trump’s executive orders and policy priorities and to identify one or two orders or initiatives significant to them.

Smith said the Office of Personnel Management — not the newspaper — was responsible for the job-application question and that it was consistent with questions being asked of applicants across other government positions. She said the question was nonetheless inappropriate for journalists.

“The loyalty is to the truth, not the administration,” Smith said.

Broader pattern of press restrictions

The Stars and Stripes announcement extends a series of administration actions affecting press coverage of the federal government. Most reporters from legacy news outlets have left the Pentagon rather than agree to new rules imposed by Hegseth that, they said, would give him too much control over what they report and write. The New York Times has sued to overturn those regulations. Also this week, the administration raided the home of a Washington Post journalist as part of an investigation into a contractor accused of stealing government secrets — a move many journalists characterized as intimidation. The Trump administration has also sought to shut down government-funded independent broadcasters including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which report news in countries overseas.

The current directive reaches into a publication that operates, at least in part, inside the Defense Department itself. During Trump’s first term, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper moved to eliminate government funding for Stars and Stripes in 2020 — which would have effectively shut down the publication — before the president overruled him. The new directive leaves the publication in place but would substantially alter the content it produces and the institutional conditions under which it operates.