Pentagon reportedly fires publisher and editor of US military news outlet Stars & Stripes

The Pentagon is reported to have fired the publisher and the editor of Stars & Stripes, the US military news outlet that has clashed with the Trump administration and armed forces brass over its partially taxpayer-funded reporting.

Publisher Max Lederer and editor Erik Slavin received termination notices, CBS News reported on Friday. The cause cited was insubordination, and they have been given five days to appeal against their dismissals.

Details of the alleged insubordination have not been revealed. The US defense department, helmed by Trump appointee Pete Hegseth, has not commented.

Leder and Slavin’s dismissals came days after the publication reported on crew conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier that have caused concern among veteran and military health experts.

Pentagon officials had reportedly discussed firing Lederer ahead of his scheduled retirement in September. He has served as publisher of the military daily for 19 years.

“It has become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of value and mission of the Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction of the leadership of the Department of Defense,” Lederer said in a letter to staff, which was posted on X.

The outlet’s reporting on the Lincoln, which is heading for port in San Diego after an extended deployment in the Middle East as part of the war in Iran that the Trump administration started in February alongside Israel, were published on 12 August on the same day as similar reporting in the Navy Times.

Donald Trump subsequently dismissed concerns about conditions on Lincoln in part, with president saying the crew’s deployment had been “not nearly long enough”.

The outlet’s reporting on the Lincoln is not the only issue to have placed Stars and Stripes in conflict with the Trump administration. Heralded as representing “the free thought and free expression of a free people”, it has sometimes had a contentious relationship with its primary sponsor before evidently reaching a boiling point during Trump’s second presidency.

The Trump-led Pentagon has been warring with the press that covers it, restricting access and demanding that journalists not seek confidential sources. That led to reporters turning in their access badges rather than acceding to those demands, setting the stage for an influx of rightwing media voices at the Pentagon and a legal battle.

At one point, the Trump administration’s Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, posted on X a pledge to bring “Stars & Stripes into the 21st century”.

“We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members,” Parnell also said, invoking a term used by the political right to deride progressive social initiatives.

Slavin hinted at tensions with the military brass in July when he said the “foxhole” he would be willing to die in would be over editorial independence from the Pentagon, which provides about 65% of Stars & Stripes’ funding.

“We need to be able to provide independent news to service members,” he said. “If we can’t do that, if we were turned into something other than that, if we were public relations? Yeah, that’s the foxhole.”

Stars & Stripes’ Jacqueline Smith, an ombudsman, or public-facing editor, for the publication, was fired in January after writing a story critical of the Pentagon press restrictions sought by the Trump administration. Smith later sued the Pentagon, alleging that her termination was retaliatory.

The publication reaches about 1.4 million readers daily online and via an overseas print edition. It was first published during the US civil war, which began in 1861.

Stars & Stripes became a daily publication during the first world war on the orders of Gen John Pershing.