Stars and Stripes and lawsuits.

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In January, Stars and Stripes—which receives Pentagon funding but has covered the military, for the military, with editorial independence since the Civil War—found itself in the crosshairs of the Defense Department. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, announced that the DoD would return “Stars & Stripes to its original mission” by modernizing operations, refocusing “its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale,” and concentrating on “ALL THINGS MILITARY,” instead of repurposing “DC gossip columns” and using stories from the Associated Press. On March 9, without consulting Max Lederer, the publisher, or notifying the newsroom, the Pentagon published a memo barring Stripes not only from using wire services and publishing comics, but also from filing Freedom of Information Act requests and reporting “controlled unclassified information,” a label for material the military leadership considers sensitive. The memo also stated that Stars and Stripes’ coverage “must be consistent with good order and discipline”—a phrase borrowed from the Uniform Code of Military Justice that can be broadly interpreted as a loyalty pledge. In a column in April, Jacqueline Smith, the paper’s ombudsman, criticized the new policy. She was promptly fired. (In June, she filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against the DoD, alleging that her dismissal constituted a violation of the First Amendment. The Pentagon has not responded to the complaint.)

Despite the heat, work at Stars and Stripes continued mostly as usual—and recently earned a laurel from CJR. “I’ve never felt pressured to censor myself. I was never told to write a story that I didn’t feel was accurate or newsworthy,” Lara Korte, a reporter based in Germany who has covered the Middle East for Stripes, told me. Korte and Erik Slavin, Stripes’ editor in chief, spoke to CBS for a July 5 report on CBS Sunday Morning. “I’m working for Stars and Stripes. Not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker,” Korte said on the show. “I’m here to cover the military.”

Following the segment, Korte told me, “my bosses complimented my accurate statements and my levelheaded comments.” But in August, the Pentagon appointed William Urban, an active-duty service member and public affairs officer, as a deputy to Lederer—a move that undermined the paper’s independence. On August 20, Lederer, who was not consulted about the appointment, announced that he would retire at the end of September, telling staff members in a memo that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

The next day, Korte, Slavin, and Lederer were fired for insubordination. Korte told me that the termination email she received linked her dismissal directly to her participation in the CBS segment. On Thursday, the three former employees sued the Pentagon in the DC district court, alleging that the terminations violated their First Amendment rights and asking the court to halt their dismissals. The Pentagon did not respond to my questions about the future of Stars and Stripes, but a spokesperson confirmed the firings in an email and referred me to an open letter that Urban wrote to Lederer, in which he said he was “committed to editorially independent journalism that best serves our most important customer, which is our service members, their families, and our greater military community.”

While the Pentagon has been busy dismantling Stars and Stripes, the rest of the press has heard little from the DoD. The last press briefing inside the Pentagon was held on May 5; since then, a ceasefire with Iran has ended, five US service members have been killed and hundreds more injured, Donald Trump left a NATO summit in a catering truck and an unmarked military jet, and sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln tried to jump overboard as their deployment in the Arabian Sea extended to more than two hundred and fifty days. The Pentagon didn’t respond to my questions about the lack of press briefings.

“Frankly, they don’t even think they owe the public any information,” a reporter who works for a trade publication, and asked not to be named because they fear reprisals from the Pentagon, told me. “They’re hiding behind this idea that they can just say, ‘It’s a war, so we don’t have to communicate with you.’ This is often what we hear from public affairs officers.”

“Officials have become less forthcoming, even with basic details. It feels more restrictive even compared to the beginning of the war,” a reporter for a major national media organization, whose employer didn’t give them permission to speak, told me. A few journalists said that getting even basic information from Pentagon sources—about the injuries and deaths of service members, for instance—has become so difficult that they are forced to rely on statements from US Central Command, which is overseeing military operations in the Middle East. “We’re all writing the same stories now,” the national reporter said.

“There’s an overall push to reduce accountability and transparency throughout the department,” the reporter for the trade publication told me. In July, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon withheld information about US military injuries and published conflicting death counts, while the AP wrote that the Navy had changed its policies to restrict previously public information about sailors (the Navy denied that it was restricting access and said the policy change had been “misinterpreted”). In response, Parnell attacked reporters for the Times and the AP on X. Last week, The Intercept reported that Central Command has a secret “blacklist” of journalists to “disregard.” When I asked about that, the Pentagon referred me to CENTCOM, which didn’t respond to my request for comment.

All the while, Pentagon reporters are right where Hegseth wants them: outside the building, separated physically from sources on the inside. That has been the case ever since the press corps’s exodus last October, when journalists refused to sign a pledge that would have curbed routine reporting practices in exchange for building access. For a few months, a handful of right-wing and MAGA-friendly reporters, selected by the Pentagon, could get into the building, but they are now gone, too. In December, the Times sued the Pentagon for alleged violations of the First and Fifth Amendments. A judge ruled in favor of the Times, but the DoD soon enacted an interim press policy that applied new restrictions, such as moving the press area to an annex and requiring escorts for journalists at all times inside the Pentagon. The court granted a motion from the Times to compel compliance with the court order, but the Pentagon has appealed. (In a separate lawsuit, the Times challenged the escort requirements. A district court agreed with the Times, but approved the Pentagon’s motion to stay the court’s ruling while it appeals, meaning the escort requirements remain in place for now.)

The Pentagon’s legal challenges might end soon, however. After a series of extensions, the DoD has filed its appellate brief at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. It is appealing both the lower court’s initial ruling about the October policy and its order compelling compliance. Pentagon lawyers have also argued that the escort policy is not unconstitutional because the Pentagon is a nonpublic forum, where physical access can be restricted as long as those restrictions are “viewpoint neutral.” Though the Times successfully argued that the October policy penalized some news organizations while enabling others that were viewed as friendly to the administration, the escort policy applies to everyone. To Jane Kirtley, a professor emerita at the University of Minnesota and forme