A legal advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, June 3, 2026, charging that recent Pentagon actions targeting Stars and Stripes “erode its longstanding editorial independence and First Amendment protections.” (Reader submitted photo)
Two plaintiffs said in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that recent Pentagon actions targeting Stars and Stripes violate federal law and should be blocked.
The suit, filed in Washington, D.C., alleges the measures “erode [Stripes’] longstanding editorial independence and First Amendment protections.” It was brought by two members of the organization’s publisher advisory board, an external group of journalism professionals that provides guidance.
The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy group that recently won a court order to halt activity on a proposed $1.8 billion federal anti-weaponization fund.
Stars and Stripes is not a party to the lawsuit.
“Unlawfully censoring ‘the soldiers’ paper’ is an insult to the dedicated members of the armed forces and an attack on the freedom of speech — a foundational Constitutional principle for which those brave servicepeople dedicate their lives,” Paul Wolfson, a senior legal adviser at Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
The plaintiffs are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Suki Dardarian, who retired last year as editor and senior vice president at the Minnesota Star Tribune, and Bill Church, executive editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The lawsuit comes after months of Defense Department moves aimed at Stars and Stripes, including barring the publication from reprinting certain commercially available content, eliminating comics and firing its ombudsman in April.
“Stars and Stripes has a long-standing mission to provide independent journalism to the military community, and that independence is fundamental to our credibility and our purpose,” the organization said in a statement. “Our newsroom continues to operate in that spirit while working within the guidance we’ve been given. At the same time, there are still open questions about how that guidance will affect what we are able to provide to our readers over the long term.
“While we are not a party to any legal action, we acknowledge the concerns that have been raised. Our priority remains serving service members and their families with accurate, fact-based reporting wherever they are.”
Democracy Forward’s lawyers point to the Pentagon’s actions on Jan. 15 to remove from the Code of Federal Regulations a section that detailed Stripes’ independence and operations. Pentagon officials removed the decades-old language without seeking public input, which the lawsuit charges violated the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act.
That law requires federal agencies to notify the public in the Federal Register, accept public comments and consider that input before making final rule changes. The law allows for some exemptions to those procedures, including for “internal agency management matters.”
The Pentagon has argued the rules governing Stars and Stripes in the Code of Federal Regulations were “unnecessary” because they were internal and “had no impact or burden to the public.”
The Defense Department was aware of the lawsuit, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman and a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.
“The lawsuit is without merit, and the Department expects to prevail,” he wrote. “The Department remains committed to a Stars and Stripes that is modern, mission-focused, and worthy of the servicemembers it serves.”
The lawsuit asks a judge to rule illegal the removal of the language from the CFR and order the Pentagon to vacate subsequent directives issued to Stars and Stripes that it alleges challenge the organization’s and its staff members’ “First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press [because of] increasing DOD control over Stripes’ operations.”
“Stripes’ historical editorial independence is critical to its core mission of providing unbiased, credible journalism to the U.S. military community, particularly service members and their families stationed overseas,” the lawsuit reads.
Democracy Forward filed more than 150 lawsuits against Trump’s administration in 2025 and dozens more this year, according to the organization. Those lawsuits have challenged myriad policies including the deployment of National Guard forces in U.S. cities, immigration actions and First Amendment issues.
Among those lawsuits, Democracy Forward was involved in efforts to block the Trump administration’s 2025 efforts to dismantle Voice of America and other outlets run by the U.S. Agency for Global Media — federal media agencies with long track records of producing independent journalism. A judge in March ordered VOA journalists reinstated after they had been placed on administrative leave about one year earlier. That case remains open after an appeals court paused the judge’s order later in March.
The Pentagon in January announced via a social media post that it would “modernize” and “refocus” Stars and Stripes, which raised questions among lawmakers and press freedom advocates about whether the Defense Department intended to compromise the news organization’s long-held editorial independence.
“The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters. We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century,” Parnell wrote in the Jan. 15 statement posted to X. “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.”
Stars and Stripes was first published by Union soldiers during the Civil War and has been published continuously since World War II.
The news organization is staffed primarily by civilian journalists, who also mentor active-duty U.S. military enlisted members assigned on tours as overseas reporters.
Stripes products include a daily overseas print edition, a weekly U.S. edition, Stripes.com, social media channels, videos and specialty publications focused on news and information for the military community.
The news organization is authorized by the Defense Department. But Stars and Stripes has long retained independence under a congressional mandate grounded in First Amendment principles.
On the same day as Parnell’s social media post, the Pentagon withdrew the language from the Code of Federal Regulations governing Stripes’ independence and operations.
In a March 9 memorandum, the Pentagon affirmed Stars and Stripes’ continued editorial independence while introducing restrictions on content, including limits on paid news wire services, and bans on comics and other contracted syndicated features.
It also barred Stars and Stripes reporters from requesting public records through the Freedom of Information Act in an official capacity, prohibited publishing “controlled unclassified information” and stated that Stripes should publish Defense Department-issued public affairs content at the publisher’s discretion.
The eight-page memo also stated that content must be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase used within a criminal charge under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
A March 12 response to a Stars and Stripes reporter’s query added that Parnell expected “a transition to uniformed staff” overseas, as well as “a transition from print to digital.”
In an April 8 letter to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, six senators asked questions about the Pentagon’s intentions. The letter stated that the March 9 memo, which Feinberg signed, “threatens the credibility of Stars and Stripes, and the reliable flow of unbiased news to service members, and contradicts decades of Congressional reforms that guarded against censorship at the paper.”
In response, Parnell wrote on April 23 that Stripes would continue to “provide unofficial and independent news and information to service members” … “without censorship and propaganda.”
“However, Stripes must still operate as a fiscally sound and efficient business enterprise that is fully accountable to department leadership for transforming itself to best serve today’s U.S. military community,” Parnell wrote.
That same day, Parnell’s office directed the firing of Stars and Stripes ombudsman Jacqueline Smith.
The House Armed Services Committee created the ombudsman position in 1991 to report to Congress on threats to the free flow of news to the armed forces.
The Pentagon’s March 9 memorandum required the ombudsman to send information bound for Congress through the Defense Department Legislative Affairs Office.
“Apparently, the Pentagon also doesn’t want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. They fired me,” Smith wrote in an op-ed published by Stripes shortly after she received notice she was being removed.
Smith said she was given no reason for her firing.
In May, two Democratic senators introduced legislation aimed at protecting “the editorial independence of the Stars and Stripes news organization,” citing in part Smith’s firing.
The proposed law would codify Stripes’ First Amendment protections, according to Sens. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, and Jeanne Shaheen, of New Hampshire.
Stars and Stripes is not the only media outlet that has faced changes under Hegseth’s Pentagon.
Last year, the Pentagon asked all reporters working within the building to sign a pledge that included a demand they not solicit information not authorized for release by the department, including controlled unclassified information.
Dozens of journalists turned in their access badges for the Pentagon instead of signing the agreement. A federal judge found that the Pentagon agreement violated the First and Fifth Amendments following a lawsuit filed by The New York Times. The case remains subject to court action following further Pentagon actions to restrict reporter access.
The lawsuit named as defendants the Department of Defense, Hegseth, Feinberg and Parnell.
The plaintiffs, Dardarian and Church, said they believed the lawsuit was the only way to stop the Pentagon from asserting further editorial control over Stars and Stripes, especially after the removal of the ombudsman, Smith.
“In a matter of a few months, the DOD has stripped Stars and Stripes of its long-standing editorial independence, ignoring its own regulations and the First Amendment,” Dardarian said in a statement. “ … It is threatening the very existence of a treasured and respected journalistic resource for this country’s military community. It was clear to us that this action was the only way to protect Stars and Stripes and preserve its mission and values at such a critical time in our nation’s history.”
