Pentagon agrees to pause firing of Stripes staffers until court can weigh in

The Pentagon agreed Friday to keep three Stars and Stripes employees on administrative leave for another week to allow the court to weigh in on their lawsuit alleging wrongful termination.

Erik Slavin, the editor in chief; Lara Korte, the paper’s Middle East reporter; and Max D. Lederer Jr., the publisher, filed the 45-page lawsuit the day prior against chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and another public affairs official, Andrew Brey.

The lawsuit alleges their firings violated their right to free speech and were issued in retaliation for the news outlet’s unflattering coverage of conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

David Seide, an attorney on the case with the Government Accountability Project, said Judge Trevor McFadden asked Pentagon attorneys in a hearing Friday if the Defense Department could extend each staffer’s firing, which was set to occur two days later, so that he could fully understand the case. The Pentagon agreed to keep them on administrative leave for another week.

The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 4 in Washington, where attorneys will argue before McFadden about imposing a temporary restraining order to halt the firings.

“The extension maintains the status quo,” Seide said.

Stars and Stripes operates as a commercial news outlet but is owned by the Defense Department, which also provides some of its funding. Its employees are federal workers paid through nonappropriated funds, a status that impacts access to some federal worker protections.

Slavin, Korte and Lederer received separation notices Aug. 21 charging them with insubordination. Paperwork for Slavin and Korte cited a CBS News interview that was broadcast in July. Each discussed the First Amendment principles that guided their work at the newspaper, which has been in continuous circulation since World War II.

Defense Department attorneys wrote in a court filing Friday that the comments were “designed to undermine the government agency that employs them.”

Slavin began at Stars and Stripes in 2005 as a reporter and was named its top editor in September 2025. Korte began reporting for the organization in 2024.

Lederer, who spent 30 years with the paper, had announced his retirement Aug. 18. He was fired because he had refused a request from his leadership to fire Korte and Slavin, according to the lawsuit. He was also cited for insubordination for personal comments he made in a note to staff announcing his resignation regarding fundamental differences about the future direction of the organization.

The demand on Lederer to fire Slavin and Korte came Aug. 12, the day after Stars and Stripes published an article about deteriorating conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier on a historic deployment of more than 250 days without a port call amid an ongoing war with Iran. The story was reported by Alison Bath.

In a declaration filed Friday in court, David O’Connor, director of policy and executive services for Parnell’s office, wrote that he had begun preparing administrative materials for the separation notices as early as July 22, in an attempt to counter the narrative that the notices were related to the Lincoln coverage.

Lederer chose not to deliver the notices to Slavin and Korte. Instead, he chose to retire.

The Pentagon in March outlined an overhaul effort for Stars and Stripes that barred it from using some news wire services and running comics and other syndicated features.

It also stated that content must be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase borrowed from the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, the publication’s ombudsman, a role charged by Congress with safeguarding the newspaper’s editorial independence.

These changes are what initiated media interest and led to Slavin and Korte participating in an interview with the CBS News program “Sunday Morning.”