Military’s independent newspaper captured by MAGA

Donald Trump is escalating his MAGA takeover of the United States military. One of the great strengths of American democracy is that the country’s military is nonpartisan, a trait that ensures officers and service members alike obey the Constitution and serve civilian authority. The president rejects this foundational principle. In his mind, America’s military belongs to him, a view taken right out of the authoritarian playbook.

After a spate of firings due to infighting ranging from building Navy ships to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s apparent refusal to promote officers of color and women, along with the purging of the Pentagon’s so-called diversity hires, Trump’s politicization of the armed forces now includes the takeover of Stars and Stripes, the military’s congressionally-authorized independent newspaper. First published 160 years ago during the Civil War, it has been in continuous publication since World War II, with its editorial independence guaranteed by Congress. The act is a preview and warning of far worse things to come.

Toward the end of his first term, Trump tried to zero out funding for Stars and Stripes, but he was forced to back down following public outcry. His administration has taken another approach this time around in the form of firing Jacqueline Smith, the ombudsman responsible for maintaining the newspaper’s editorial independence. Stars and Stripes will still carry its name but little else; it will be transformed into a propaganda mouthpiece for Trump and his MAGA coalition. Firing Smith is part of a systematic campaign by the administration to remove ombudsmen, inspectors general and other leaders responsible for enforcing ethics, oversight and the rule of law.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell described the new direction: “no more ‘woke content,’ and a ‘focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.'”

In an essay last Thursday in Stars and Stripes, Smith described being fired in terms that were impersonal, precise and chilling. “This happened in the coldest way possible: DA Form 3434 stated that my last day as ombudsman for Stars and Stripes is April 28,” she wrote. “No reason is given. But: ‘This action is not grievable.’ No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence.”

Last year, the Washington Post reported that applicants for positions at Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would advance Trump’s policies. Representatives for the publication told the Post that it did not know about the loyalty questions.

D. Earl Stephens served as managing editor of Stars and Stripes from 1998 to 2009. He told me this is “the most significant attack in the paper’s history and benefits Trump, not the troops.” 

Blunt in his assessment, Stephens said, “Stripes delivers news the troops can trust, free from interference from paranoid, self-serving, unscrupulous people like Hegseth and his small-minded, insecure supplicants in the Pentagon. People like Hegseth are exactly why Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence is protected.”

Under the new new editorial regime, Stars and Stripes will likely no longer feature reporting about poor housing on military bases, difficulties accessing medical care, sexual assault and high rates of suicides among veterans. This will mean less information for service members about how to exercise their rights, and to hold the military establishment accountable.

But the thought-crime regime being enforced by the Trump administration and the Pentagon extends far beyond Stars and Stripes. 

The most recent example of this came with Hegseth’s firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan on April 22. A Trump donor and businessman with no military experience, his dismissal came after what the New York Times reported as “months of infighting with senior Pentagon leaders and disagreements over how to revive the Navy’s struggling shipbuilding program.” Loyalty to Trump was not enough to save him.

Phelan joins a growing list of senior officers who have been forced out, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Army Chief of Staff Randy George, who was fired by Hegseth several weeks ago.

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A disproportionate number of the purged officers are Black, brown or women. Hegseth and Trump view them as presumptively unqualified due to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — which, in practice, means they were fired because of the color of their skin and gender. During a speech at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump previewed these moves, accusing the military of being “woke at the top.”

The Washington Post reported that George, a white man, was sacked because he was angry that Hegseth would not promote Black and female colonels to the rank of general. Dozens of other senior personnel and officials across the military and national security apparatus have also been forced out. Ultimately, loyalty to MAGA — and being the “right” gender and skin color — matter to the president and his acolytes more than professionalism, expertise and leadership skills.

These moves follow Hegseth’s February announcement that beginning in 2027, the Pentagon will no longer allow military personnel to attend Ivy League and other elite institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a video posted on social media, the secretary declared that such universities and colleges “have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain” that had “replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.” In their place, military personnel will be steered toward Hillsdale, Liberty University and other schools judged to be ideologically-aligned with the Pentagon’s goals.

In May 2025, the Pentagon ordered that books and other materials that discuss race, gender and LGBTQ+ identity and other “divisive concepts” should be removed from military service academy libraries and Pentagon schools for review. In practice, this meant award-winning and essential books on the Holocaust, chattel slavery, civil rights, racism and feminism. Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was included in the purge; Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was not.

A growing number of America’s service members are voicing discomfort about the politicization of the military and sharing larger concerns about ethics, morality and conscience — especially since the launch of Trump’s war of choice against Iran in March.

In an under-reported story, the GI Rights hotline, which helps service members understand their rights to discharge and responds to other concerns, has seen a large increase in calls. NPR recently reported that the Center on Conscience and War, which helps run the hotline, has 80 new clients in the month of March alone. This is nearly double the average year’s total.

As reporters Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman noted, those numbers are “a drop in the bucket” compared to the more than 1.3 million people enlisted. But to outside observers and former military officials, they signal “a troubling disquiet within the ranks.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law as part of his plan to remain in power for a third term, suggesting that he could order the military to assist with “election security” during the midterms and future elections to prevent “fraud.” If carried out, this would be an illegal act of voter intimidation against the Democratic Party’s likely voters. 

The president has threatened to order the military to bomb Iranian civilization “back to the stone ages,” an action that would likely constitute a crime against humanity. He and Hegseth have also engaged the military in carrying out de facto summary executions of alleged drug traffickers by striking boats and other craft in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

In a series of historic speeches, including to a group of almost 800 admirals, generals and senior enlisted personnel assembled in September at a Quantico, Virginia, military base Trump proclaimed that the military will be his weapon against domestic “enemies,” calling Democrats “bad people” and “vicious,” and saying the military is trained to fight people like them.

During his speech in Quantico, Trump listed Democratic-led cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as targets that “we’re going to straighten out one by one.” The reaction from the assembled senior officers and enlisted leaders was cold and mostly silent. He then threatened their careers and pensions if they did not obey.

American presidents do not publicly speak or behave this way. But Trump is a sui generis figure, America’s first aspiring dictator-king who sees nothing wrong with politicizing the military against any person or group who dares to oppose him and the MAGA movement.

What is happening at Stars and Stripes is not a mere controversy of the day or week, or a blip in the attention economy and 24-hour news cycle. It represents an attempt by the Trump administration to win the hearts and minds of America’s military personnel as part of a larger authoritarian project.  

Trump and his MAGA forces and agents are trying to destroy America’s democratic and social institutions. The military is not coincidental to this project — it is central to it. Trump is not merely purging officers he does not like. He is working to make loyalty to him and MAGA ideology synonymous with allegiance to America.