The Pentagon said Thursday that it is changing the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes so it concentrates on “reporting for our warfighters” and no longer includes “woke distractions.”
That message, in a social media post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's spokesman, is short on specifics and does not mention the news outlet's legacy of independence from government and military leadership. It comes a day after The Washington Post reported that applicants for jobs at Stars and Stripes were being asked what they would do to support President Donald Trump's policies.
Stars and Stripes traces its lineage to the Civil War and has reported news about the military either in its newspaper or online steadily since World War II, largely to an audience of service members stationed overseas. Roughly half of its budget comes from the Pentagon and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.
The outlet's mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”
Congress established that independence in the 1990s after instances of military leadership getting involved in editorial decisions. During Trump's first term in 2020, Defense Secretary Mark Esper tried to eliminate government funding for Stars and Stripes — to effectively shut it down — before he was overruled by the president.
Hegseth's spokesman, Sean Parnell, said on X Thursday that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”
“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”
Parnell did not return a message seeking details. The Daily Wire reported, after speaking a Pentagon spokeswoman, that the plan is to have all Stars and Stripes content written by active-duty service members. Currently, Congress has mandated that the publication's publisher and top editor be civilians, said Max Lederer, its publisher.
The Pentagon also said that half of the outlet's content would be generated by the Defense Department, and that it would no longer publish material from The Associated Press or Reuters news services.
Also Thursday, the Pentagon issued a statement in the Federal Register that it would eliminate some 1990s era directives that governed how Stars and Stripes operates. Lederer said it's not clear what that would mean for the outlet's operations, or whether the Defense Department has the authority to do so without congressional authorization.
The publisher said he believes that Stars and Stripes is valued by the military community precisely because of its independence as a news organization. He said no one at the Pentagon has communicated to him what it wants from Stars and Stripes; he first learned of its intentions from reading Parnell's social media post.
“This will either destroy the value of the organization or significantly reduce its value,” Lederer said.
Jacqueline Smith, the outlet's ombudsman, said Stars and Stripes reports on matters important to service members and their families — not just weapons systems or war strategy — and she's detected nothing “woke” about its reporting.
“I think it's very important that Stars and Stripes maintains its editorial independence, which is the basis of its credibility,” Smith said. A longtime newspaper editor in Connecticut, Smith's role was created by Congress three decades ago and she reports to the House Armed Services Committee.
It's the latest move by the Trump administration to impose restrictions on journalists. Most reporters from legacy news outlets have left the Pentagon rather than to agree to new rules imposed by Hegseth that they feel would give him too much control over what they report and write. The New York Times has sued to overturn the regulations.
Trump has also sought to shut down government-funded outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that report independent news about the world in countries overseas.
Also this week, the administration raided the home of a Washington Post journalist as part of an investigation into a contractor accused of stealing government secrets, a move many journalists interpreted as a form of intimidation.
The Post reported that applicants to Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would advance Trump's executive orders and policy priorities in the role. They were asked to identify one or two orders or initiatives that were significant to them. That raised questions about whether it was appropriate for a journalist to be given what is, in effect, a loyalty test.
Smith said it was the government's Office of Personnel Management — not the newspaper — that was responsible for the question on job applications and said it was consistent with what was being asked of applicants for other government jobs.
But she said it was not something that should be asked of journalists. “The loyalty is to the truth, not the administration,” she said.
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
US soldier Sgt. John Hubbuch of Versailles, Ky., one of the members of NATO led-peacekeeping forces in Bosnia reads Stars and Stripes newspaper on Sunday Feb. 14, 1999. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, File)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for Japanese Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi at the Pentagon, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf/)
FILE - A GI with the U.S. 25th division reads Stars and Stripes newspaper at Cu Chi, South Vietnam on Sept. 10, 1969. (AP Photo/Mark Godfrey)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Rescuers recovered more bodies from the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul on Tuesday after an overnight airstrike killed more than 400 people, according to officials, in a dramatic escalation of a conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is now in its third week.
Pakistan rejected Afghanistan’s accusation that it targeted the hospital, insisting its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, were aimed at military facilities. It dismissed Afghanistan's claims of hundreds of casualties as propaganda.
The casualties were taken to several hospitals in the area, where crowds gathered to search for their loved ones among the injured and the dead. It wasn't possible to independently confirm the death toll.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.
The overnight strike came hours after Afghan officials said that the two sides exchanged fire along the border, killing four people in Afghanistan.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of providing safe haven for militants who frequently carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially for the Pakistani Taliban, a group separate but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban who took over Afghanistan in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. Kabul denies the charge.
In a late-night post on X, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9 p.m. local time and that large sections of the facility had been destroyed.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said at least 408 people had been killed and 265 injured.
Night-time footage from local television stations showed security forces using flashlights as they carried out casualties while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building.
The Omid hospital was renamed and expanded in size roughly a year ago from the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital as part of government plans to stamp out drug addiction in the country.
The site, near Kabul's international airport, is located beside a former NATO military base, Camp Phoenix, where U.S. forces used to train the Afghan National Army. After the Taliban seized control of the country in 2021, the base was taken over by Afghanistan’s new authorities. It wasn't immediately clear what was now housed on the site of the former base.
A reporter for The Associated Press in an area near the site at the time of the strike said he heard a military jet fly overhead followed by a very powerful explosion.
Pakistan's Information Ministry said in an X post that the Pakistani military had “precisely targeted” Camp Phoenix, which it said was now a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.” However, it said that the hospital was “multiple kilometers” away from the former camp and accused Afghan officials of lying. Google Maps also shows another location, east of Kabul city, also labeled as Camp Phoenix.
“Another important question also lingers, as to why would an alleged drug rehabilitation facility be colocated with lethal ammunition storage site in a military camp? This also remains unanswered,” the Information Ministry wrote.
Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors.” He said those killed were “innocent civilians and addicts.”
“We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he said in a separate post on X.
Rescue team worker Allah Mohammad Farooq said that hundreds had been killed.
“When we arrived here, everyone was buried under the rubble,” he said. “We then used a crane to pull them out. Most of the people were dead, and many are still trapped under the debris.”
A man sitting outside the site broke down in tears as he recounted hearing about the bombing. Haji Najibullah said his son and other relatives were being treated in the hospital.
“We have no information about who is alive and who is buried under the rubble,” he said. “Only God knows who may have survived and who may be injured.”
The U.N. human rights expert in Afghanistan, Richard Bennet, said in an X post that he was “dismayed by fresh reports of #Pakistan airstrikes in #Afghanistan and resulting civilian casualties.” Offering his condolences, he added: “I urge parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint & respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals.”
In Islamabad, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar rejected Afghanistan's accusations that Pakistan had targeted a hospital as “entirely baseless.”
Tarar said the “Afghan Taliban regime is peddling yet another falsehood,” and that Pakistan had only engaged military and militant targets. He said Pakistan had targeted facilities “being directly or indirectly used to plan, facilitate, shelter, train or abet terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.”
Tarar said overnight strikes in Kabul and in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar were “precise, deliberate and professional,” and denied any civilian infrastructure was hit.
“No hospital, no drug rehabilitation center, and no civilian facility was targeted,” he said.
The fighting — the most severe between the two neighbors — began in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan that Kabul said killed civilians. The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October, after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.
Pakistan has declared that it's in “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
On Saturday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said that Afghanistan’s Taliban administration crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that wounded several civilians in Pakistan last week.
Ahmed reported from Islamabad, and Becatoros from Athens, Greece. Habib Rahmani in Kabul and Patrick Quinn in Bangkok, Thailand, contributed.
A body lies entangled in the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital after it was hit by a late-Monday airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Residents and rescue workers inspect the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Residents and volunteers inspect the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
A little girl and a woman watch as rescue workers and officials inspect the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Residents and rescue workers inspect the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Firefighters work at the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Residents and volunteers inspect the site of a late-Monday airstrike at a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
