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The Defense Department has begun to exert greater control over Stars and Stripes, weeks after a top spokesman accused the independent military newspaper of focusing on "woke distractions."

The Pentagon announced what it calls "modernization" changes this week, in a memo dated March 9 and effective immediately, according to a copy seen by NPR and first reported by Stars and Stripes on Friday. It's the latest effort by the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to apply extraordinary limits on journalists covering the agency.

The memo says that Stars and Stripes will continue to "operate with editorial independence." However, it also says that the newspaper must immediately begin implementing the Defense Department's new interim policies and stop publishing several types of content.

It also declares that the publication's content "must be consistent with good order and discipline," which is a phrase used in military justice.

Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin told NPR on Saturday that this phrase makes him particularly concerned for his staff reporters who are members of the U.S. military, and who thus can be court-martialed for violations of its uniform code of military justice.

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Friday will mark two weeks since a retired Air Force major general who previously oversaw a base associated with UFO lore was last seen in Albuquerque, N.M. 

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) issued a Silver Alert for William “Neil” McCasland the day he went missing.

The retired general was last seen by his wife at their house around 11:10 a.m. on Feb. 27, and she reported him missing around 3:07 p.m., according to an updated timeline shared by the BCSO on Thursday afternoon. The BCSO said they “immediately” launched the investigation into his disappearance.

McCasland’s phone, prescription glasses and “wearable devices” were left behind at the residence, the department said. McCasland’s hiking boots, wallet and .38 caliber revolver are believed to be missing, according to the update.

BCSO investigators discovered a U.S. Air Force sweatshirt just over a mile from his home during the search effort last Saturday, which the agency noted has “not been confirmed” to belong to McCasland.

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The US military said it killed six men on Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged traffickers.

Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the administration began targeting so-called “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in September.

As with most of the military’s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, US Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.

Donald Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the US. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists”.

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The U.S. torpedoing of an Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka this week may have violated the Geneva Conventions by failing to help rescue sailors from the stricken warship, an act that could potentially endanger American service members in this and future wars.

The 312-foot Dena and its 130-member crew, many of them musicians in the Iranian navy band, had just finished participating in an Indian government naval exercise and cultural exchange that the U.S. Navy had also participated in and were on the way home on Wednesday. After clearing Sri Lanka, it was struck by a torpedo fired from a U.S. Navy submarine about 20 miles from the island’s southern tip. The weapon appears to have ruptured the hull from beneath, and the warship quickly sank. The submarine did not attempt to rescue Iranian sailors in the water.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt bragged about how the attack featured the first American use of a torpedo to sink a ship since World War II. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, narrating a video clip of the attack, used the same gloating tone. “An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death,” he intoned.

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For some U.S. military commanders, the emerging war in Iran is part of a biblical plan to bring about the end of the world as we know it, according to complaints filed by over 100 service members.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received a litany of complaints about religious ideology seeping into military orders since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran, independent journalist Jon Larsen first reported.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit group established 21 years ago that focuses on ensuring constitutional protections for service members, spoke with HuffPost by phone Tuesday morning and illuminated some details of the complaints, which have come from more than three dozen military units situated in at least 30 different military installations.

“We started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” Weinstein said.

Weinstein said the “metric promised” in the Bible’s Book of Revelation is horrifying and should worry everyone.
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“They are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon,” Weinstein said. “That’s a lot of blood.”

Part of what makes the accounts so disturbing, Weinstein said, is that service members aren’t able to push back when they’re given orders that blur the line regarding the separation of church and state.

“This is all about time, place and manner,” he said. “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony.”

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After threatening to sever ties with Scouting America and kick the youth group off military bases worldwide, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday gave a six-month reprieve to the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America.

Hegseth made the announcement in a video posted to X, framing it as an ultimatum to Scouting to conform to the Trump administration's anti-DEI agenda. He detailed his many criticisms of the group, saying Scouts had "lost their way" by changing the organization's name and "watering down" what he called "the focus on God as the ruler of the universe."

He accused the Scouts of promoting "an insidious, radical, woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American."

Hegseth also made clear he thinks the organization should go back to being exclusively male. " Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men," he said. "Maybe someday."

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President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to “immediately cease” using Anthropic technology amid an escalating feud between the AI company and the Pentagon.

“THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” he continued. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” he added.  

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced Friday afternoon that the Pentagon would label Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security. The designation bans any contractor, supplier, or partner of the U.S. military from any commercial activity with Anthropic.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities on Friday, beginning academic year 2026-27, arguing the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies” to service members. 

Hegseth, who attended Harvard University for postgraduate studies, said the move would affect institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “others.”

“We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism. We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social platform X.

“We demand universities that invest back into our nation’s prosperity rather than our greatest adversaries,” the Pentagon chief said in the four-minute clip. “It’s common sense.”

Earlier this month, Hegseth announced the Pentagon would cut all academic ties with Harvard starting in the 2026-27 school year, contending the country’s oldest university is “one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.”

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