Earlier this year, the Department of Defense announced that it would be taking greater editorial control over Stars and Stripes, the long-running military news organization, which has previously operated with editorial latitude. In a memo in March, the Pentagon said the publication must publish content consistent with “good order and discipline,” a legalistic military phrase. The new rules limited syndication of external stories and content, and instructed the newspaper’s ombudsman to send information intended for Congress to the Department of Defense first.

A Pentagon spokesperson at the time said the paper would retain its editorial independence, but the changes would modernize its practices and “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale.”

In a letter to the Pentagon and the newspaper’s top editorial leadership on Wednesday, first shared with Semafor, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal criticized the new rules, arguing that they violated editorial rules intended to safeguard the paper’s independence and ability to publish, on occasion, unflattering information.

“DoD’s new policy threatens the credibility of Stars and Stripes, and the reliable flow of unbiased news to service members, and contradicts decades of Congressional reforms that guarded against censorship at the paper,” the senators said. “We urge you to immediately rescind DoD’s new policy and restore editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment to Stars and Stripes.”

The letter, signed by Democratic senators Tammy Duckworth, Ruben Gallego, Mazie Hirono, and Mark Kelly included a list of seven questions, including whether the Pentagon had restricted any articles from being published, and what Stars and Stripes articles were determined by the department to be not “consistent with good order and discipline.” The senators asked the department to respond to its questions by April 22.

While Stars and Stripes is largely intended as a news and media resource for soldiers and military families, it has broken numerous stories over several decades that have revealed Pentagon misconduct, mismanagement, and scandal.