The Pentagon has ordered the military newspaper Stars and Stripes to shut down by the end of September.
Col. Paul Haverstick Jr. is the author of a memo that states the “last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30,” according to USA Today. The memo also discusses “dissolv[ing] the Stars and Stripes” by Sept. 15, which is in less than two weeks, and references a “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”
The paper, which was founded the year the Civil War began in 1861, is currently printed at 14 sites around the world and delivered daily to troops, including those stationed in remote locations.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
Earlier this year, Pentagon proposed cutting all of the newspaper’s $15 million annual subsidy for the 2021 fiscal year, but Congress has not approved it. The House approved funding for Stars and Stripes, while the Senate version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act does not have funding for it. A joint version of the legislation is expected to be ironed out this fall.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper defended the proposal to pull funds for Stars and Stripes, noting that the military could use that money to prioritize different programs.
“We trimmed the support for Stars and Stripes because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues,” he said during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels in February.
Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of 15 lawmakers sent a letter to Esper about the newspaper.
“Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nation’s freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom,” the senators said in the letter, according to Military.com. “Therefore, we respectfully request that you rescind your decision to discontinue support for Stars and Stripes and that you reinstate the funding necessary for it to continue operations.”
Among those who signed the letter were combat veteran Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, and four Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham, an ardent Trump backer in the Senate with a military background, signed a separate letter arguing that shutting down Stars and Stripes before the Senate acts on national security spending is “premature.”
