U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden on Friday refused to block the Pentagon from firing Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte. [1] He held they were dismissed for "pre-approved interviews" as public employees, not as private citizens. [1] Stars and Stripes' editorial independence, he wrote, "is not at stake here." [1] Independence is declared safe in the order that lets the firings proceed. That is the mechanism. It is not a merits holding that the paper is free.
The three sued last Thursday in Washington. [1] The lawsuit says Pentagon officials directed Lederer to fire Slavin and Korte after an August 11 article on deteriorating conditions and mental-health crises aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. [1] Lederer declined. He later announced his retirement, saying the Pentagon had installed a new deputy publisher without his knowledge. [1] McFadden, a Trump appointee, concluded that Slavin and Korte "are being fired for giving pre-approved interviews on their paper’s behalf in which they largely toed the company line." [1] "Whatever else such a scheme may violate, it does not clearly offend the first amendment." [1] Plaintiffs argued termination would chill themselves and others at Stripes. [1] "Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a chill here." [1]
Pentagon-adjacent copy will file personnel. Press X will file Hegseth censorship. The Defense Department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the named defendants. [1] McFadden converts editorial-independence claims into a public-employee speech case. The journalists are unlikely to prove a First Amendment violation, he wrote. [1] An attorney for the journalists called the ruling "disappointing," the Guardian reported, citing CNN. [1] Disappointing is a lawyer's word. It is not reinstatement.
Two other Stripes suits remain live. Pulitzer-winning reporters Susan Dardarian and William Church, advisory-board members, sued the Pentagon in June, accusing the military of illegal censorship. [1] Former ombudsman Jacqueline Smith sued the same month, saying she was fired in retaliation for an opinion column. [1] Friday's order does not close those dockets. Do not write that the paper's independence was upheld on the merits. Do not merge this file with Tunisia. Do not merge it with Thursday's dormant Welker and DHS tracks.
The Pentagon partially funds Stars and Stripes. [1] Funding is not the First Amendment test McFadden applied. He applied the public-employee line to interviews given on the paper's behalf. A newspaper that exists to tell service members what the chain of command would rather they not read is, in this order, a workplace. The Lincoln story is the predicate. The interviews are the firing offense as the court now sees it. The independence claim is the one the judge says is not at stake.
Lederer, Slavin, and Korte asked to be reinstated. [1] Friday's order does not reinstate them. It allows the department "to proceed for now in exerting greater editorial control over the historically independent military news outlet." [1] "For now" is the Guardian's clock. McFadden's clock is the preliminary-injunction standard: likelihood of success, chill, irreparable harm. He found none of those in the First Amendment claim as pleaded. [1] A refused injunction is not a trial verdict. It is permission to fire while the case continues.
The Lincoln article ran August 11. [1] Conditions aboard a carrier in a war the administration still will not call a war are the sort of copy Stripes was built to print. The Pentagon's alleged instruction was to fire the editor and the reporter who put it on the page, then to route around the publisher who would not. [1] McFadden does not decide whether that instruction was wise. He decides that the subsequent interviews, pre-approved and on the paper's behalf, were official speech. Official speech, in this doctrine, is not the private speech the First Amendment protects for public employees. The company line, even when it is a defense of independence, becomes personnel.
A judge takes a wartime press-independence claim and returns it as a staffing dispute. The masthead stays on the building. The people who put the Lincoln in the paper do not. Two companion suits still ask whether that is censorship. Friday's order does not answer them. It lets the firings proceed.
-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin