reporter

Aaron Donald said Friday that he planned to make his season debut for the Rams against the New York Giants on Monday night, but star receiver Puka Nacua’s status is more hazy because of a hip injury.

Donald, 35, rejoined the Rams after ending a two-year retirement. The three-time NFL defensive player of the year did not travel to Australia for the season-opening defeat by the San Francisco 49ers, but he has participated in several 11-on-11 drills this week.

Asked if he would play on Monday, Donald said, “That’s the plan.”

Donald’s plan? Or the Rams’?

“I think that’s all of our plan,” he said. “We have a conversation, we figure it out.”

Donald said he felt as if he had never been away.

“Kind of getting in the groove of things, understanding everything a lot better out there playing a lot more free, a lot more loose and looking more like myself to me,” he said.

Nacua, who was sidelined for a few weeks during the preseason because of a psoas injury, caught five passes for 74 yards against the 49ers and practiced on Thursday. The psoas is involved in hip movement, so it is not clear whether Nacua’s absence was caused by the same injury or a new one.

Nacua was scheduled to speak with reporters on Friday, but did not do so because he did not practice. Coach Sean McVay is scheduled to speak with reporters on Saturday.

Regardless, the Rams are expected to get a boost from Donald, an eight-time All-Pro.

Edge rusher Byron Young played with Donald as a rookie in 2023. Now he will be playing alongside him again.

“He hasn’t missed a beat,” Young said.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani has not played since Wednesday, when he struck out four times and winced noticeably at the plate.

On Saturday, the Dodgers held him out of the lineup for the third consecutive game because of pain in his right biceps.

Manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani’s path back to the field is predicated on how he responds to hitting in the cage, which he planned to do before Saturday night’s game against the Washington Nationals at Dodger Stadium.

“My expectation is that he’s going to hit today in the cage,” Roberts told reporters. “Once he hits and how he comes out of it, that’ll be telling for tomorrow.”

The injured list becomes a consideration if Ohtani is not trending in a positive direction Sunday, Roberts said.

Ohtani falls under the 15-day category for the IL, which covers pitchers and two-way players, as opposed to the 10-day list for position players. The Dodgers can backdate the move up to three days, akin to time served. So a 15-day window would be reduced to 12 days.

Although Roberts said he has not spoken to Ohtani about how he feels physically, the manager said he can get a hint from the player’s demeanor.

“When he doesn’t feel well physically, he gets more short and he’s not the same personality,” Roberts said, adding that Ohtani has seemed looser and more easygoing the past couple of days.

Aug. 21 (UPI) — The Pentagon has fired the publisher, editor-in-chief and Middle East reporter of the venerable military newspaper Stars and Stripes, the publication reported Friday.

Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer Jr. and civilian reporter Lara Korte, who covers the Middle East, have all received termination notices, a Pentagon source confirmed to the newspaper.

Despite being part of the Department of Defense, Stars and Stripes has long maintained editorial independence from the top leaders but it has faced pressure under the administration of President Donald Trump, whose defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly clashed with media covering the Pentagon.

Slavin said he was fired for insubordination after telling CBS News last month that he would regard any attempt by the Pentagon to interfere with Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence as a “red line.”

Asked in an interview if he had any “red lines” in his mind when it came to censorship, Slavin answered, “Yes, I do,” and gave as an example, “Well, don’t run a perfectly accurate story. Run this instead. Here it is.”

On Friday, Slavin issued a statement to the newspaper saying, “I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies.”

During the same interview, Korte said, “I’m working for Stars and Stripes, not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policy maker. I’m here to cover the military community.”

Korte said Friday she was informed that she, too, had been fired for insubordination due to her remarks in the interview.

“I consider it a great privilege to live alongside members of the military and share their stories. It’s a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press,” she said.

Lederer, who announced his retirement on Tuesday, was fired after more than 30 years of working for the paper.

Capt. William Urban, the military deputy to Lederer, didn’t directly address the terminations in an “open letter to stakeholders” published in Stars and Stripes on Friday, but rather spoke of increasing its readership through digital strategies.

“We may never be able to have the same impact for our service members digitally that our paper had during World War II in a vastly different media environment, but I also believe that we can do better — that we must do better for our most important constituency, the men and women who make up the U.S. Armed Forces,” he wrote.

“My vision for the future of Stars and Stripes is simple: More eyeballs on our content and more impact on our service members while maintaining the highest standard of professional journalism with the credibility that comes with editorial independence.”

Stars and Stripes’ independence first appeared to come into the administration’s crosshairs in January when Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Hegseth, said the department was aiming to bring it “into the 21st century.

“We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

The firing of its leadership elicited alarm from journalists.

National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. called the moves “another brazen attempt by the Pentagon to dictate coverage of the military and should be immediately reversed.”

He cited the April firing of the the newspaper’s ombudsman, a role “established and charged by Congress to provide independent oversight and protect the paper’s editorial integrity,” and a March memo that imposed content restrictions and tightened the Pentagon’s oversight of the newsroom.

“Firing a newspaper editor after he publicly defended his newsroom’s editorial independence is deeply troubling, and it should concern every journalist and every member of the U.S. military who depends on independent reporting,” Schoeff added.

“This is an assault on the fundamental principle that journalists must be free to report the news without fear of retaliation from the government officials they cover,” he said. “The Pentagon must reaffirm that principle and make clear that Stars and Stripes journalists will not be punished for doing their jobs.”