Washington Post publisher Will Lewis said Saturday that he’s stepping down, ending a troubled tenure three days after the newspaper said that it was laying off one-third of its staff.
Lewis announced his departure in a two-paragraph email to the newspaper's staff, saying that after two years of transformation, “now is the right time for me to step aside.” The Post's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, was appointed temporary publisher.
Neither Lewis nor the newspaper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos participated in the meeting with staff members announcing the layoffs on Wednesday. While anticipated, the cutbacks were deeper than expected, resulting in the shutdown of the Post's renowned sports section, the elimination of its photography staff and sharp reductions in personnel responsible for coverage of metropolitan Washington and overseas.
They came on top of widespread talent defections in recent years at the newspaper, which lost tens of thousands of subscribers following Bezos' order late in the 2024 presidential campaign pulling back from a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, and a subsequent reorienting of its opinion section in a more conservative direction.
Martin Baron, the Post’s first editor under Bezos, condemned his former boss this week for attempting to curry favor with President Donald Trump and called what has happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
The British-born Lewis was a former top executive at The Wall Street Journal before taking over at The Post in January 2024. His tenure has been rocky from the start, marked by layoffs and a failed reorganization plan that led to the departure of former top editor Sally Buzbee.
His initial choice to take over for Buzbee, Robert Winnett, withdrew from the job after ethical questions were raised about both he and Lewis' actions while working in England. They include paying for information that produced major stories, actions that would be considered unethical in American journalism. The current executive editor, Matt Murray, took over shortly thereafter.
Lewis didn't endear himself to Washington Post journalists with blunt talk about their work, at one point saying in a staff meeting that they needed to make changes because not enough people were reading their work.
This week's layoffs have led to some calls for Bezos to either increase his investment in The Post or sell it to someone who will take a more active role. Lewis, in his note, praised Bezos: “The institution could not have had a better owner,” he said.
“During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news to millions of customers each day,” Lewis said.
The Washington Post Guild, the union representing staff members, called Lewis' exit long overdue.
“His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution,” the Guild said in a statement. “But it’s not too late to save The Post. Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”
Bezos did not mention Lewis in a statement saying D'Onofrio and his team are positioned to lead The Post into “an exciting and thriving next chapter.”
“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos said. “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”
D'Onofrio, who joined the paper last June after jobs at the digital ad management company Raptive, Google, Zagat and Major League Baseball, said in a note to staff that "we are ending a hard week of change with more change.
“This is a challenging time across all media organizations, and The Post is unfortunately no exception,” he wrote. “I've had the privilege of helping chart the course of disrupters and cultural stalwarts alike. All faced economic headwinds in changing industry landscapes, and we rose to meet those moments. I have no doubt we will do just that, together.”
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.
Protesters outside of the Washington Post office demonstrate following a mass layoff, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Protesters outside of the Washington Post office demonstrate following a mass layoff, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
A protester holds a cutout of Jeff Bezos' face outside of the Washington Post office following a mass layoff, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident.
The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.
President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he wasn’t certain who was to blame, and then said he would accept the results of the Pentagon’s investigation. The issue took on added urgency on Wednesday after the New York Times first reported that a preliminary investigation found that the U.S. was responsible.
U.S. Central Command relied on target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the person familiar with the preliminary finding.
The agency did not respond to a request for comment.
The preliminary finding prompted immediate calls for more information from the Pentagon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the investigation is still ongoing.”
Both the U.S. official and the person familiar with the matter spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Dozens of Democratic senators demanded answers from the Trump administration on Wednesday as a growing body of evidence suggested that the U.S. was likely responsible for a strike at an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children.
The letter from more than 45 senators pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether the U.S. was culpable for the strike and what previous analysis of the building had been done. The senators also raised concerns about the Pentagon hollowing-out a congressionally mandated office set up specifically to reduce civilian casualties.
“Under this administration, budgetary and personnel cuts at the Department have robbed military commands of crucial resources to prevent and respond to civilian casualties,” the senators wrote. Those include cuts at U.S. Central Command, whose forces are leading the military campaign against Iran, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was signed into law in 2022 as part of a Pentagon ambition to reduce death tolls from strikes.
The revelation could threaten to erode public support in the U.S. effort against Iran at a time when Trump, who as a candidate railed against American involvement in “stupid” overseas wars, faces persistent questions about the purpose and of the conflict and what would bring it to an end.
One former Pentagon official said the Feb. 28 strike that hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which is located near a neighboring base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth’s emphasis on lethality over legality.
There are several indications that the strike on the school may have been avoidable.
It happened Saturday morning, the start of the Iranian school week, when the building was full of young children. Satellite analysis by the AP shows that the school, as well as other targets struck the same day, had characteristics visible from the air that could have identified them as civilian sites before they were struck.
The AP reported last week that satellite images, expert analysis, a U.S. official and public information released by the U.S. military all suggested it was likely a U.S. strike. That evidence grew stronger on Monday, as new footage emerged showing what experts identified as a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile slamming into the military compound as smoke was already rising from the area where the school was located.
Publicly available satellite imagery shows the school building was part of the military compound until about 2017, when a new wall was added to separate the two. A watchtower on the property was also removed. Around the same time, the imagery shows the walls surrounding the building were painted with murals in vibrant colors, primarily blue and pink, so bright they're visible from space
The school was clearly labeled as such in online maps and has an easily-accessible website full of information about students, teachers and administrators.
International law governing warfare bars strikes on structures, vehicles and people that are not military objectives and combatants. Civilian homes, schools, medical facilities and cultural sites are generally off limits for military strikes. The proximity of a school to a valid military target does not change its status as a civilian site, said Elise Baker, a senior staff lawyer at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank.
If the U.S. is found responsible, said Sen. Tim Kaine during a briefing with journalists on Wednesday: “It’s either we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules or we made a mistake.”
“If we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules and we no longer provide the same level of protection for civilians, that would be tragic,” Kaine said.
Some Republicans, too, are sounding alarms.
Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters that an investigation needs to “get to the bottom of it,” and then “admit if you know whose fault it is.”
If the U.S. was behind it, Cramer said, the military must “do everything you can to eliminate those mistakes going forward.”
He added: “But you also can’t undo it.”
Congress directed the Pentagon to create the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in late 2022 as part of the wide-ranging annual defense authorization bill, which passed both chambers with broad bipartisan support. The bill said the center was to “institutionalize and advance knowledge, practices, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.”
The measure put into law an initiative that had already been started by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier that year. The 36-step action plan was “ambitious and necessary,” Austin said at the time.
In April 2023, that office had a full-time director hired by the Army and an initial core staff of 30 civilians, according to a 2024 Pentagon report that said that the workforce was expected to grow.
Wes Bryant began working there in 2024 as the Branch Chief of Civil Harm Assessments. One of the things the office was discussing was updating the “no strike list,” he said, a series of civilian targets in other countries that the Pentagon keeps. When he was working at the Pentagon, it was well known that the list was out-of-date, he said. But under Hegseth, the office's size was slashed and the work on updating the no-strike lists stopped, he said.
“They have no budget. They're just sitting there trying to maintain any semblance of the mission,” he said.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, the spokesman for U.S. Central Command, denied reports that the military command only had a single person assigned to the mission but would not offer any further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Konstantin Toropin and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.
The arm of a deceased person is seen protruding from the rubble as rescue workers and residents search in the aftermath a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
