When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he doesn’t want troops to see the funny papers and fired the ombudsman for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, she told him, “I’ll see you in court!”
Stars and Stripes ombudsman Jacqueline Smith claims that she was fired for telling readers of the newspaper serving America’s military that Pete Hegseth doesn’t want the troops to see cartoons and acknowledging that loyal readers of Stars and Stripes were hopping mad about the decision to kill the comics.
Now, she is suing the Pentagon, alleging that the government alleging that her dismissal in April was retaliatory and violated her First Amendment rights.
In a complaint filed in federal court on June 25, 2026, Smith claimed that she was fired 10 days after writing an April 8 opinion column criticizing Pentagon officials for canceling syndicated comics in the paper. Her three-yearterm as ombudsman — a congressionally mandated role — was not set to expire until December 2026, the lawsuit said.
Stars and Stripes is a daily newspaper reporting on matters concerning the members of the military and their communities, with an emphasis on those serving outside the United States.
Susan “Suki” Dardarian and William “Bill” Church, two Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalists on the Stars and Stripes advisory board, filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department on June 3, 2026, alleging that an effort to impose new restrictions on the paper was an act of illegal censorship.
Dardarian is a former editor and senior vice president of the Minnesota Star Tribune, and Church is the executive editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper.
Stars and Stripes publishes a website, as well as a daily print edition on Monday through Friday for U.S. military service members serving overseas.
The newspaper operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it, with First Amendment protection safeguarded by Congress, to which the independent ombudsman regularly reports.
This global edition is also available as a free download in electronic format. The newspaper’s headquarters is in Washington, D.C.
“In a matter of a few months, the DoD has stripped Stars and Stripes of its long-standing editorial independence, ignoring its own regulations and the First Amendment. It fired an ombudsman who challenged that effort, and now it seeks to directly control the news coverage of itself. In doing so, it is threatening the very existence of a treasured and respected journalistic resource for this country’s military community. It was clear to us that this action was the only way to protect Stars and Stripes and preserve its mission and values at such a critical time in our nation’s history,” said Suki Dardarian.
“Stars and Stripes has a distinguished history of serving the military community with courage and credibility. I’m honored to be a military dependent who first read Stripes as a 12-year-old. The changes that have been forced upon Stripes are a disservice to a global military audience that has relied on this First Amendment-protected and Congressionally backed institution for generations,” said Bill Church.
Stars and Stripes has a storied history of editorial independence that is now being threatened by the DoD’s censorship attempt.
During World War I, John J. Pershing, the commander of U.S. forces in Europe, stated that Stars and Stripes would not be subject to interference by military officials, and during World War II, then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly told military commanders to not interfere with the newspaper, emphasizing that “Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ paper, and we won’t interfere.”
The regulations governing Stars and Stripes ensured editorial independence, establishing that “the DoD policy for the Stars and Stripes is that there shall be a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.”
Those regulations also created the position of ombudsman, “[a] highly qualified journalist hired from outside [DoD]” to “independently advise” DoD leadership, Stripes leadership, and Congress on matters of interest to Stripes’ readers. Congress has also repeatedly reaffirmed Stripes’ editorial and operational independence.
In January, DoD rescinded the decades-old regulations that protected Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence, asserting that notice and an opportunity to comment were “unnecessary” and made significant changes to how Stars and Stripes is permitted to operate.
The changes included prohibiting the newspaper from purchasing commercial and syndicated news, feature and opinion content, including comics; extending publication limitations beyond classified information to certain unclassified material and any content deemed to be inconsistent with “good order and discipline of the military”; increasing DoD control over the newspaper’s operations; and stripping the ombudsman of their role as an independent advisor to Congress.
“Unlawfully censoring ‘the soldiers’ paper’ is an insult to the dedicated members of the armed forces and an attack on the freedom of speech – a foundational Constitutional principle for which those brave servicepeople dedicate their lives,” said Paul Wolfson, Senior Legal Advisor at Democracy Forward, whichis representing the journalists.
Here’s the editorial that got Jacqueline Smith fired:
Pete Hegseth doesn’t want you to see cartoons in this newspaper anymore. And loyal readers of Stars and Stripes are hopping mad. You don’t mess with Sunday color comics.
The secretary of defense/war, through a March 9 memorandum and interim policy by Deputy Stephen Feinberg, “prohibited” Stars and Stripes from using “news stories, features, syndicated columns, comic strips and editorial cartoons from commercial news media.” The word “prohibited” was put in boldface for emphasis by the Pentagon, not by me.
The memo ordered Stripes to “immediately” begin implementing the “guidance.”
While Stripes is partially funded by the Defense Department and its staff are DOD employees, Congress mandated decades ago that it must operate with editorial independence from the military for the sake of transparency and credibility.
Stripes leadership discussed how to comply with the unwanted order. Reluctantly, they concluded the comic strips and other purchased syndicated material had to go.
After years of receiving eight pages of Sunday color comics (in the weekend editions on Fridays), readers on March 27 instead found a bleak message: “Due to a recent directive from the Department of Defense, Stars and Stripes is no longer permitted to utilize certain syndicated and third-party content.” Why? “It is the department’s determination that readers can readily access this content through other outlets.”
Tell that to the troops stationed around Iran — go track down eight pages of your favorite comics elsewhere.
In the message, Stripes welcomed feedback from readers. The response was swift, voluminous, and beyond disappointed.
“Seriously?!? The comics were cut? Why? It was the balancing feature of the paper that I so enjoyed. Please bring back this moment of levity.”
“Very unhappy about the changes and your inability to link to syndicated content. In the U.S. it may be easy to find the information elsewhere, but for those deployed just another example of the Administration not caring about the military.”
“The guys/gals in isolated assignments get one paper if lucky. Stars n Stripes is like sunshine on a rainy day. ’74-76 ROK Missile Site. These changes to ‘our paper’ are an insult to the citizen soldier.”
“As a retired Navy veteran, [I] feel the DOD directive smells like censorship. Will keep my subscription for now but if it turns into propaganda/biased news outlet I may reconsider. We fought for the Constitution and freedom. That includes transparency of our government and freedom of the press. As an American, I have a right to decide what I read.”
“I want my Sunday Comics. Why is that an issue? It’s called downtime for a reason.”
Most of the 152 comments I read were anonymous. More come in every day. To be fair, I must note that a few readers welcomed the jettisoning of syndicated material.
“Maybe if you had sources from a variety of outlets rather than primarily AP, a demonstrably political left organization … the Pentagon would not have stepped in. I am not advocating to get rid of the AP but you should have tried a counterpoint. … Not an administration apologist, but your arrogance is typical of what’s led to the current climate in political power. … Even less likely to buy or read a single issue ever again.”
While most of the comments were related to the absence of comics, other readers objected overall to the prohibition against using syndicated material, such as news coverage from The Associated Press and Reuters. From my viewpoint as ombudsman, they rightly see it as censorship, an infringement on Stripes’ editorial independence.
I should note that this column is my opinion; no one at Stripes asked or encouraged me to write it. All of my ombudsman columns are copy edited for grammar and style with no changes to content before publishing.
What is happening with Stripes is within the broader context of the Pentagon attempting to restrict the mainstream media. At first it was by closing off areas of the complex where journalists previously had been able to go unescorted, then it followed last fall with the demand for the press to sign an agreement essentially saying it would not use any information not authorized by the department. That’s when more than two dozen journalists from mainstream media turned in their press badges and walked out. They still cover the news.
The wished-for changes to Stripes were signaled in a Jan. 15 post on X by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman with the title of Assistant to the Secretary of War (Public Affairs) in which he said Stripes would be “custom tailored to our warfighters. It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.”
Actually, Stripes has not wavered from that longtime mission. But the troops are more than instruments of “lethality” — they are thinking people who need unfiltered, unbiased news; many have families who need to know what’s going on with education, health care and, yes, even recreation in their overseas communities.
A reader put it this way: “Perhaps the best part about reading the news is that there is a comic section to lighten the heart. If you want the paper to be read beyond this generation, add the comics back. My kids read the entertainment articles and comics. You’ll lose the next generation if there are no comics.”
And another: “I had four kids (8-14 yrs old) (and two adults) that were SUPER upset today when there were no weekend comics to read in the paper.”
The March 9 memorandum and interim policy I mentioned at the beginning of this column put Parnell’s post into an instruction. My concern is that it erodes Stripes’ editorial independence in many unacceptable ways, the loss of comics one of them. And it charges Parnell with turning the “interim” policy into a permanent one.
One of the readers objecting to the loss of “Beetle Bailey” and “Garfield” and all the other comic strips in Stripes wondered if anyone was reading their comments. Yes, I have read them and so has Stripes leadership as well as the Publisher’s Advisory Board comprised of journalism executives from around the country.
Pentagon leadership, which can do something about it, ought to read them, too.
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