Pentagon fires Stars and Stripes editor amid editorial independence row

Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper that has accompanied American service members through every major conflict since the Civil War, now finds itself at the center of a quieter but no less consequential battle — one fought not with weapons, but with termination notices. The Pentagon fired editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte after Slavin publicly defended the paper's legally mandated editorial independence, a principle the Trump administration has been steadily eroding through personnel changes, content directives, and the appointment of a military spokesperson as deputy pu