Pentagon Wants Editorial Control Over Stars and Stripes - Longtime Publisher Is Leaving
After decades at Stars and Stripes, Max D. Lederer Jr. is drawing the consequences from the Pentagon's new direction and leaving.
His retirement as publisher will take effect at the end of September, but his explanation leaves little room for misunderstanding.
His view of leadership and of the value and mission of the newspaper, he said, differs fundamentally from what the leadership of the Department of Defense has in mind for it.
That means Stars and Stripes is losing the second major figure within just a few months who stood for the newspaper's editorial independence. Less than four months ago, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, whose job as ombudsman was specifically to protect that independence. Smith later wrote openly that no one should be surprised that the very person Congress had tasked with protecting Stars and Stripes' editorial independence was removed.
Stars and Stripes receives about half of its funding from the Department of Defense, and its employees are considered department employees, but editorially the newspaper is supposed to operate independently.
That separation is coming under growing pressure under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Back in January, his spokesman Sean Parnell announced that Stars and Stripes would be returned to its original mission and would in the future report more closely in line with the Pentagon's ideas. The newspaper, he said, should focus on service members, warfare, weapons systems, physical fitness and military issues. Politically progressive topics, reporting from Washington and articles republished from investigative newsrooms were supposed to disappear under the department's plans. This is no ordinary modernization of a military newspaper, because at the same time the Pentagon has sharply tightened its treatment of independent journalists.
The fact that European media largely stood by during an open attack on press freedom at the Pentagon was pretty weak. Almost all major American and English-language news and investigative outlets rejected the new rules and turned in their press badges. Anyone who defends press freedom only as long as someone else pays the price apparently does not take that fundamental right particularly seriously.
Last year, new access restrictions were imposed on journalists at the Pentagon, prompting numerous media outlets, almost all of them American and English-language, to turn in their badges and leave the building. This summer, the department even declared its press office a classified area and now requires journalists inside the Pentagon to be accompanied by an escort. The policy is being challenged in court, although an appeals court allowed the Pentagon in July to keep enforcing it for the time being. Smith had already written in April that the leadership of the Defense Department was trying to silence her and had been placing more and more restrictions on the press for nearly a year. Her warning about Stars and Stripes was unequivocal: The newspaper must not be placed under the control of military leadership.
That this issue is anything but theoretical is clear from the newspaper's own reporting on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Stars and Stripes recently reported extensively on conditions aboard the ship, the long deployment and concerns about the sailors' mental health. President Donald Trump, by contrast, had downplayed the concerns of their families.
Lederer also opposed another part of the planned changes, namely the broad shift of the printed newspaper to digital. He warned that this could leave service members with worse access to information and that the Pentagon did not adequately recognize the value of different ways of publishing. On top of that comes an incident Stars and Stripes itself has not yet been able to confirm, but one that is causing additional concern inside the newspaper. According to the account, the Pentagon installed a new deputy under Lederer in recent weeks without informing him beforehand.
Rufus Friday, chairman of the Stars and Stripes advisory board, therefore wrote to leading members of Congress and warned that the move threatened editorial independence. That very independence is explicitly part of the newspaper's mission. Stars and Stripes itself says that no one outside its own editorial chain of command may interfere with its work and that the principles of the First Amendment apply to the newspaper. Since World War II, the paper has continuously reported for American service members, especially those stationed outside the United States. Now the Pentagon wants to decide what kind of reporting those service members are supposed to receive, while the people whose job it was to prevent exactly that kind of political control are leaving. Lederer does not even know whether Hegseth's department will keep him in office until September 30 or appoint an acting successor before then.
Kremlin Bot Network Targets Sweden for the First Time - Just Before the Election
The Kremlin-linked bot network "Matryoshka" has launched its first known campaign against Sweden, and the timing is hardly accidental. Less than a month before the parliamentary election, the accounts are spreading fake videos on X that look like reports from major European media outlets. They claim Swedish politicians are connected to pedophiles and financial criminals, announce alleged election fraud and invent supposed attacks on opposition politicians. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is being pulled into the campaign as well.
Read also our investigation: “Time to Divide Germany”: The Sender Is Sitting in Moscow
One of the videos is made to look like a Spiegel report and claims that Greece froze financial transactions involving more than 500 companies linked to Merz and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. These companies allegedly laundered money from drug trafficking and financed a pedophile network called "04/09." The video apparently refers to a real international investigation in which more than one hundred suspects were arrested in twelve countries on April 9 of last year. A real police operation is thus turned into a completely fabricated connection to two heads of government. The fake report also quotes former Polish military intelligence chief Radosław Kujawa as supposedly calling the events a "victory for the Swedish and German opposition." Another video uses the logo of Swedish broadcaster SVT and claims that a lobbying organization called Landa, supposedly linked to Germany's CDU, is deliberately spreading false information to discredit Swedish opposition politicians. A third video presents itself as a Euronews report and claims that German hackers breached Sweden's BankID identification system in order to influence the election.
The bots are attacking Sweden precisely where the country is especially vulnerable just weeks before a possible change of government. The Riksdag will be elected on September 13, after which lawmakers will choose the prime minister. The current governing side made up of the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Sweden Democrats is polling well behind the left-wing alliance of Social Democrats, the Left Party, Greens and Centre Party. The gap currently stands at around ten percentage points, 53.9 to 43.9 percent, making a change of government very likely.
Germany is being dragged into the same campaign at the same time. Several regional and local elections are scheduled there in September, and Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has already officially warned of Russian disinformation. In August, accounts from the "Matryoshka" network spread posts on X using the hashtag "TimeToDivideGermany." They promoted a renewed division of Germany into East and West and described such a split as a "historical necessity."
What is now appearing in Sweden for the first time is therefore not some random collection of bizarre internet claims. Fake reports are given the logos of real media outlets, real events are mixed with invented connections and then aimed directly at politicians and parties just before elections. Sweden faces an election on September 13 in which the current government could be voted out according to today's polls. And right now, for the first time, a Russian bot network is appearing to tell Swedes that their politicians are linked to pedophiles and that German hackers want to manipulate their election.
Kennedy Center Promises Court a Pause - Trump's Name Is Still Supposed to Come Back
The Kennedy Center has assured a federal court that it will not put Trump's name back on the facade before September 8 at the earliest. But the Trump-aligned leadership is not backing away from the plan by an inch. In a new court filing, opponents of the move say the board appears determined to get around an earlier court ruling that required Trump's name to be removed after it had already been installed once. The Kennedy Center now merely wants to wait until after Labor Day so the legal arguments can be exchanged. Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sits on the board by virtue of her office, is therefore asking U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper for an earlier ruling.
Her lawyers believe it is likely that those responsible will try to implement at least parts of their resolution immediately after September 8. The board's most recent meeting was actually supposed to focus mainly on the planned renovation and a possible closure of the building. Instead, another vote was held on permanently attaching Donald Trump's name to the building. The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center is to be named after Trump, and the facade is supposed to read: "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump." If the specially created Trump Kennedy Center Fund reaches $100 million, another reference to Trump is supposed to be added.
The court had already ruled in May that the letters spelling Trump's name that had previously been attached to the building were installed illegally and ordered their removal. The administration then failed in its effort to get that ruling overturned. Since then, a tarp has hung over the area where the lettering used to be, and it is supposed to remain there. The Kennedy Center claims the covering is also needed for water testing and repairs to the roof overhang. At the same time, the board approved a complete two-year closure of the building. Major events such as the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize are supposed to take place elsewhere during that period. The National Symphony Orchestra is also spreading its upcoming season across six venues in and around Washington.
The leadership is relying on an analyst from Delta Consulting Group who concluded that a partial closure over four years would be more expensive and create greater safety problems. Beatty's lawyers, however, are questioning how the decision was prepared. Important documents were reportedly provided to board members only two days before the meeting, and some materials apparently even dated from before Cooper's May ruling and still referred to a closure originally scheduled for July 6. Cooper had already described an earlier vote as poorly informed and apparently predetermined. Beatty's lawyers argue that the same problems are now being repeated. The Kennedy Center is therefore back in court because its leadership wants to put Trump's name on a building whose name is legally and historically tied to John F. Kennedy. The first attempt was ruled illegal. Now they are waiting until September - and apparently planning to try again afterward.
While the Iran War Rages, Trump Takes Journalists on a Tour of His New Helipad
It was one of those scenes where, at some point, you start wondering whether anyone in the White House still notices how absurd all of this has become. While the war against Iran approaches its sixth month, approval ratings are falling and concerns about the economy are growing, Donald Trump took journalists across the White House lawn on Wednesday to show them his new helicopter landing pad. For several minutes, the president raved about the white granite being laid there, its durability and how impressed foreign leaders would be by it. Chinese President Xi Jinping in particular, who is expected next month, would surely appreciate the result.
Trump even told reporters that the stone could withstand pressure of 35,000 pounds per square inch. You could hammer on it all day and would not see a scratch, he assured them, while construction work continued behind him. Along the way, Trump announced that the walkway from the White House diplomatic entrance and parts of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn had also been replaced with white granite. Asphalt simply did not belong at a great house like the White House, he said, reminding the journalists standing there: "One thing I know how to do is build." The fact that his $400 million ballroom is currently the subject of multiple court cases and that an appeals court has prohibited construction from continuing without congressional approval barely interfered with the tour. Trump talked at length about how great that project would be too and said he was convinced the Supreme Court would ultimately allow him to simply keep building. He is now also selling the ballroom as a security project for the White House, pointing to anti-drone technology and other military equipment. His administration had even tried to get $1 billion from Congress for military improvements to the structure, but failed. Trump came up with his own description for it on Wednesday: It would be the "greatest military complex slash ballroom anywhere in the world."
The president also spent plenty of time talking about the grass and extensively praising the manufacturer Scotts-Miracle Gro. The company's former CEO supports Trump, and the company donated $1 million to repair the lawn after it was damaged by Trump's UFC event for his 80th birthday and by construction of the helicopter landing pad. In between, Trump signed the back of a granite stone specially marked "Donald Trump 45-47 President." The front features an eagle that will later become part of the presidential seal on the new landing pad. Some of the construction workers were allowed to sign it too, after which Trump joked about installing the stone upside down so that his own signature would remain visible to future generations. "Nice job, fellas," he told the workers, then asked: "Does anybody know the word media?" Trump told reporters that the plan had actually been to sign the stone privately and simply put it in place, but that he had decided the press needed to see the occasion. He hoped they had enjoyed it.
The president also confirmed that he had temporarily stopped work on the helicopter landing pad because the site had to be regraded to make it flatter. The granite being used had a lifespan of a million years, Trump claimed, would never break, never leak and would never have any problems at all. That would at least be an improvement over his project at the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. There, Trump had also said the work would last a hundred years, before paint and lining began peeling away again just days later.
On Wednesday, that experience seemed forgotten. Instead, Trump practically declared the granite a material for eternity and said nature was stronger than anything humans could produce. "This will be here long after we're gone," he said of his construction projects, "no matter what happens with the world." The sentence could hardly have fit the afternoon better.
A war is raging, courts are dealing with his ballroom, voters are worried about prices and jobs, and with two and a half months to go before the midterm elections, his approval ratings keep falling. Meanwhile, the president stood on the White House lawn explaining to reporters how much pressure his granite could withstand. By the end, it was not even clear whether Trump had held a press conference, conducted a construction tour or simply forgotten what job he now has.
4,500 Soldiers in Washington - and They Play No Role in 98.7 Percent of Criminal Cases
Donald Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops into Washington last summer and declared the deployment a central part of his fight against crime. A year later, around 4,500 soldiers are now stationed in the capital, more than the city's 3,200 police officers. They patrol monuments, subway stations, the area around the baseball stadium and places where tourists can hardly miss them. When it comes to actually fighting crime, however, they show up remarkably rarely.
A review of every publicly available charging document filed with the relevant court shows that National Guard troops have been mentioned in only about 1.3 percent of criminal cases since the deployment began. In total, there were 217 cases involving the troops. In only 62 of them did soldiers stop a suspect on their own, while in another 43 they helped police officers make an arrest. In 35 cases, they were merely witnesses to a crime and sometimes simply waited for police to arrive. Particularly striking is where the soldiers are and where they are not. Their deployments are concentrated in wealthier, whiter and significantly safer parts of Washington, as well as downtown and around subway stations. In the neighborhoods where 82 percent of the city's 859 murders over the past five years occurred, court records contain not a single reference to law enforcement activity by the National Guard. Salim Adofo, who works in a low-income part of the city, summed up his experience simply: "I haven't seen them all year."
There are other kinds of deployments, though. Soldiers chased a man who took two slices of pizza and offered two dollars as partial payment. A week later, they stopped someone who threw a rock at a bus. In April, they detained a man over two stolen beef jerky sticks worth about seven dollars. Last month, it took six soldiers to hold a woman who drank a bottle of root beer without paying for it. Groups of 20 or more National Guard troops stood outside subway stations at night and prevented teenagers from going down the escalators because of a curfew.
An attack outside a nightclub showed even more clearly how strange this deployment can be. Three police officers arrived to find a man stomping on a young woman who was already lying on the sidewalk. The officers stopped the attack and arrested him. In the police report, one of them specifically noted that around 15 National Guard troops on routine patrol were in the immediate area. They did not intervene.
Even more serious is the case of Keon Jones, who was killed in April. Soldiers found him unconscious after a fight near the waterfront and called emergency services. They apparently initially thought he was drunk and failed to notice that he had been stabbed so severely that his intestines were spilling out of the wound. Only when police officers arrived was the severity of his injuries recognized. Jones died in the hospital around two hours later. His aunt Evelyn Jones said: "They could have done more to help him."
The soldiers themselves repeatedly become victims as well. In 62 cases, people were accused of pushing, punching or threatening National Guard troops, while nine others spat on them. One man allegedly tried to take a soldier's pistol, while another threatened a group of troops by saying he wanted to shoot them with a bazooka. Two soldiers were even arrested while off duty for violating Washington's gun laws, although the U.S. Attorney's Office later dropped both cases.
Militarily, the deployment sounds bigger than it is legally. The soldiers have been deputized as U.S. Marshals, but their police powers remain limited. The Pentagon describes their work as presence patrols, where the visible presence of armed soldiers is supposed to deter crime. They can detain suspects, but they still have to call the police to make an actual arrest. The administration nevertheless wants to keep this arrangement in place until the end of Trump's presidency in 2029. And it is not cheap. Even before the troop level was doubled this summer, the deployment cost around $1.65 million per day according to government figures. The entire daily budget of Washington's police department was most recently around $1.5 million. Through 2029, the administration expects another $1.4 billion in National Guard costs, without yet saying how many soldiers will even be deployed in the coming years.
Trump claims his measures have reduced crime, beautified the city and improved quality of life. In fact, the number of murders in Washington fell for the third year in a row, although the same thing happened in cities where no National Guard troops were sent. The overall number of serious violent crimes, including assaults, robberies, sex offenses and homicides, was actually around four percent higher between January and mid-August than during the same period last year. A study by the nonpartisan Niskanen Center concluded in May that the deployment reduced car thefts but had no measurable impact on violent crime.
The soldiers have since been given another task. They are guarding the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial, which the Trump administration renovated for millions of dollars before the water turned green and the new lining began coming apart again. Trump initially claimed vandals had sabotaged the pool. Later, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro acknowledged that a government contractor had botched the work.
So Washington now has more soldiers than police officers on its streets, they cost more than the police and are expected to burn through another $1.4 billion by 2029. In the neighborhoods where the overwhelming majority of murders happen, they are practically absent from the criminal court records. Instead, they guard monuments, detain fare evaders, chase stolen beef jerky sticks and stand in large groups outside subway stations. Trump calls it fighting crime. After a year of deployment, the numbers mainly show how little of it reaches serious crime.
