Three former Stars and Stripes journalists sued the Defense Department, Secretary Pete Hegseth, and two of his top aides Thursday, alleging the Pentagon fired them in retaliation for defending the newspaper’s editorial independence.
Publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte filed the 45-page complaint in federal court in Washington, naming Hegseth, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, and aide Andrew Brey alongside the department. The suit argues the firings violated the First Amendment and federal administrative law, and it asks the court to block the terminations.
The dispute traces back to a July 5 CBS Sunday Morning interview, when Slavin and Korte discussed the principles guiding their work. Korte said she worked for the newspaper, “not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker.” Their termination notices later cited those remarks as insubordination.
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A subsequent performance review Parnell wrote charged senior staff with “open rebellion,” saying fidelity to “the faithful administration of POTUS policies” mattered most. According to the lawsuit, the Pentagon initially treated the CBS comments as personal opinion and took no action.
That changed on August 12, one day after Stars and Stripes published a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including strained mental health and food and water shortages during the carrier’s nine-month deployment. The Pentagon that day ordered Lederer to deliver separation notices to Slavin and Korte, citing their CBS remarks from five and a half weeks earlier. Lederer refused.
Lederer announced his own retirement six days later, telling staff in an email that his “philosophy of leadership” and understanding of the paper’s mission diverged from Hegseth’s direction for the department. The Pentagon later cited that email as grounds for insubordination too, and it formally separated all three last week.
The three said in a joint statement that the lawsuit aims to protect “the rights of service members and their families to a free and independent press,” calling that independence essential to keeping military communities informed.
The firings extend a year-long standoff between Hegseth and the press covering his department. Most major outlets walked out of the Pentagon press pool last fall rather than sign onto new access restrictions, and the Pentagon itself barred Stars and Stripes from one of Hegseth’s press conferences in March, despite the paper being a Defense Department publication.
Read: Pentagon Press Rules Rejected By News Outlets As Access Is Threatened
