Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on Sunday described President Trump's threat to report NBC News's Kristen Welker as "dangerous." Trump signaled the "Meet the Press" host could face an…
Page B1From§Eachthe matinee edition — 31 August 2026
Pentagon fires Stars and Stripes journalists; White House threatens NBC's Kristen Welker, FCC commissioner calls it 'dangerous'.
As it ran on the front
OBITUARY
A free press unafraid of the men it covers, institution, age approximately two hundred and thirty-five, died this week after a long illness nobody in charge would name.…
…(cont) Born alongside the republic itself, the norm was never much to look at — cranky, inconvenient, always asking follow-up questions nobody wanted answered twice. It made its living asking the government to explain itself, out loud, on the record, and for a good long while the government mostly went along with the arrangement, if only because refusing looked worse than answering.
It is survived by a lawyer representing the Stars and Stripes journalists whose firings are now the subject of a lawsuit against the Defense Secretary, and by one Democratic FCC commissioner, who called a threat against NBC anchor Kristen Welker "dangerous" — on the record, which counts as a eulogy these days.
It was preceded in death by the presumption that a reporter's job security has nothing to do with whether her questions were comfortable, and by the older, quieter assumption that a uniformed newspaper covering the troops was the last outlet anybody would bother leaning on.
The cause was not sudden. This was hogwash dressed up as personnel policy for a good while before anybody wrote it down: a military paper's reporters gone, a network anchor put on notice, both inside the same stretch of days, both defended by the people who did it as nothing you need to worry about. That is, frankly, a shit way to run an institution built entirely on the idea that somebody keeps asking.
The family has requested no tribute segments. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you call your representative and ask, on the record, whether a press that only asks comfortable questions is a press at all — and that you write down the answer, because nobody in charge is going to.
“First they let the military paper's reporters go, then they lean on the network anchor — that's not two headlines, that's the same guy testing how far the leash goes before somebody yanks it back. Nobody's yanked it back yet.”
“Personnel decisions at a military newspaper are an internal matter, full stop, and calling a private conversation with a network anchor a 'threat' is — well, the commissioner used the word 'dangerous,' not me, I'm just saying context matters, and also I didn't see the transcript, so.”
The receipts
Three fired Stars and Stripes journalists are suing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and two other top Pentagon officials. Amy Powell with Lawyers for Good Government joins CBS News with more on the lawsuit.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.