Left inset: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin). Main: A tugboat greets the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it arrives at the port in Laem Chabang, Chonburi, Thailand, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026 (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit).
The Department of Defense crackdown on Stars and Stripes journalists currently on "paid administrative leave" is a lawful disciplinary action over unprotected speech made by Pentagon employees "in their official duties" while appearing on CBS News, not "retaliation" over more recent Iran War reporting, the DOJ said Tuesday.
Opposing a motion for a preliminary injunction, the DOJ told U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden that editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and reporter Lara Korte cannot show that notices of "proposed separation" amount to "irreparable harm" because they continue to speak freely and are on paid leave "while the official designated to decide the proposed separations considers the matter."
"[W]hat they face is proposed discipline for past speech, not a restraint on future speech. No one has told them that they may keep their jobs if they change what they say. And, despite alleged restraints, they have kept speaking," the government said, referring to Korte's social media post about the "proposed separation" notice and Slavin's various interviews with "NPR, CNN, and PBS in the days that followed."
As a result, the DOJ submits that McFadden, appointed to the district court in Washington, D.C., during President Donald Trump's first term, cannot issue an injunction.
"The equities and public interest likewise favor denying relief. Defendants have already agreed to hold off on any separation so that the Court has time to rule, and the public interest does not favor converting that brief, voluntary pause into indefinite judicial supervision of a pending federal personnel process," the filing said.
The Aug. 27 complaint named Secretary Pete Hegseth's chief public affairs spokesman Sean Parnell as the lead defendant, claiming that his "attempted January 2026 repeal" of the Stripes Regulations, to move the publication away from "woke distractions," represented a direct threat to Stars and Stripes' decades-long "editorial independence" — all "without notice or opportunity for public comment."
But the complaint alleged the "spark that moved Defendants to act" and assert control over Stars and Stripes was the bombshell Aug. 11 report "USS Abraham Lincoln families press Navy leaders over sailors' mental health" amid more than eight months of deployment at sea for the Iran War.
"It reported that the aircraft carrier's 5,000 Sailors have endured food and water shortages, disrupted mail service, long workdays, and little time off for months on end, and that the long deployment and physical hardships were impacting Sailors' physical and mental health," the complaint said. "The very next day, August 12, 2026, Defendants ordered Plaintiff Max Lederer, Stripes' Publisher, to present Notices of Separation to Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte."
Lederer opted to retire rather than hand Slavin and Korte notices that accused them of "insubordination" for "statements they made five and one-half weeks earlier on CBS Sunday Morning," the filing added.
In response, the DOJ claimed it can "refute" the USS Lincoln report "theory" of retaliation just by looking at the "chronology" of the behind-the-scenes steps the Pentagon took — "five days before" the article ran, in connection with "The battle over Stars and Stripes" segment that aired on CBS on July 5.
The CBS segment featured Slavin and Korte on camera in Stars and Stripes' workspaces defending the civilian employees' independence from Pentagon pressure.
"Don't run a perfectly accurate story, run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon. That would be a red line," Slavin said, according to the complaint.
"I'm working for Stars and Stripes … not for the Pentagon, not for an administration, not for any policymaker. I'm here to cover the military community," Korte added. "I don't feel like I've been stopped from covering any specific story."
The DOJ said the notices of separation were "complete five days before the USS Lincoln article was published, and the decisions they proposed predated it by three weeks," making that "retaliatory" firing "alternative theory" a losing claim.
"The USS Lincoln article was written by another reporter, nothing connects Ms. Korte to it, and Plaintiffs' own brief concedes that she was disciplined 'for her participation in the CBS Sunday Morning piece,'" the DOJ said. "The stated reason has been the same reason each time the Department has spoken, before and after the USS Lincoln article was published."
"A reason documented in July 2026, carried into notices finalized on August 6, 2026, cannot have been a pretext for an article published on August 11, 2026, and a proposal already in motion would have produced the same decision in any event," the Trump administration continued.
The USS Lincoln finally reached port in Thailand on Wednesday.
Days after the Stars and Stripes report ran, along with other reporting that detailed a sailor in crisis went overboard, the president said the deployment was "not nearly long enough."