Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content; Stars and Stripes, January 15, 2026

COREY DICKSTEIN, Stars and Stripes; Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content

[Kip Currier: Forward this Stars and Stripes article about Pete Hegseth's plans for the military newspaper to as many as possible. It's valuable perspective to hear from Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and members of Congress.]

[Excerpt]

"The Pentagon said on social media Thursday it would take over editorial content decision-making for Stars and Stripes in a statement from the Defense Department’s top spokesman.

“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,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top public affairs official and a close adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote in a 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.”

The statement appears to challenge the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes, which while a part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity has long retained independence from editorial oversight from the Pentagon under a congressional mandate that it be governed by First Amendment principles.

The move was met with pushback from several Democratic senators, who accused the Pentagon of tampering with the newspaper’s reporting.

Stars and Stripes, which is dedicated to serving U.S. government personnel overseas, seeks to emulate the best practices of commercial news organizations in the United States. It is governed by Department of Defense Directive 5122.11. The directive states, among other key provisions, that “there shall be a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.”

Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, in a note to Stars and Stripes’ editorial staff across the globe Thursday, said the military deserves independent news.

“The people who risk their lives in defense of the Constitution have earned the right to the press freedoms of the First Amendment,” Slavin wrote. “We will not compromise on serving them with accurate and balanced coverage, holding military officials to account when called for.”

Stars and Stripes first appeared during the Civil War, and it has been continuously published since World War II. It is staffed by civilian and active-duty U.S. military reporters and editors who produce daily newspapers for American troops around the world and a website, stripes.com, which is updated with news 24 hours a day, seven days a week...

Parnell’s post came a day after a Washington Post report revealed that applicants for positions at Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would support President Donald Trump’s policies. The questionnaire appears on the USAJobs portal, the official website for federal hiring. Stars and Stripes was unaware of the questions until the Post inquired about them, organization leaders said.

The Pentagon statement comes several years after the Defense Department attempted to shut down Stars in Stripes in 2020, during Trump’s first administration."

Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’; The Hill, January 15, 2026

ELLEN MITCHELL , The Hill; Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’

[Kip Currier: It's unfortunate but not surprising to see that Pete Hegseth, given his actions to date, is taking "editorial control" of the Stars and Stripes newspaper that was started by Union soldiers on November 9, 1861, in the midst of the Civil War.]

[Excerpt]

"The Pentagon announced Thursday it would take editorial control of independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to refocus coverage on “warfighting” and remove “woke distractions.”

The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” top Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a 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.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted Parnell’s statement.

Part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity, Stars and Stripes has been editorially independent from Defense Department officials since a congressional mandate in the 1990s. The outlet’s mission statement states that it is “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.” 

In some form since the Civil War, Stars and Stripes has consistently reported on the military since World War II to an audience mostly of service members stationed overseas."

Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month; Ars Technica, January 13, 2026

 BENJ EDWARDS , Ars Technica; Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month

"On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he plans to integrate Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks later this month. During remarks at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas reported by The Guardian, Hegseth said the integration would place “the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”

The announcement comes weeks after Grok drew international backlash for generating sexualized images of women and children, although the Department of Defense has not released official documentation confirming Hegseth’s announced timeline or implementation details."

New York Times Sues Pentagon Over First Amendment Rights; The New York Times, December 4, 2025

 Erik Wemple, The New York Times ; New York Times Sues Pentagon Over First Amendment Rights

"The New York Times accused the Pentagon in a lawsuit on Thursday of infringing on the constitutional rights of journalists by imposing a set of new restrictions on reporting about the military.

In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, The Times argued that the Defense Department’s new policy violated the First Amendment and “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done — ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”

The rules, which went into effect in October, are a stark departure from the previous ones, in both length and scope. They require reporters to sign a 21-page form that sets restrictions on journalistic activities, including requests for story tips and inquiries to Pentagon sources. Reporters who don’t comply could lose their press passes, and the Pentagon has accorded itself “unbridled discretion” to enforce the policy as it sees fit, according to the lawsuit."