The USS Abraham Lincoln will return home to San Diego later today after supporting the Iran war during a record long deployment of 265 uninterrupted days at sea. For months, there have been widespread concerns since reports first emerged of supply shortages and deteriorating mental health onboard. In remarks yesterday, however, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth sought to play down the issues, instead condemning “a few folks in the media” who he accused of trying to “turn” the Lincoln’s deployment “into some sort of symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission”.
While Trump administration officials pushed back against accounts of poor conditions, families and veterans warned that the length and intensity of the deployment were taking a toll on both those serving onboard and their loved ones. As reports of conditions leaked out, the Lincoln soon became a flashpoint in the increasingly contentious debate over the war and, for some, a symbol of the strains and pressures the conflict has placed on the US military and the people serving in it. Hegseth flew out to the carrier on Wednesday to give the crew the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor a unit can receive that is typically reserved for significant achievement in combat.
He said that “what makes the US military and the US Navy and all these sailors different is that you adapt and that you’re resilient and you overcome — you finish the mission nonetheless.” Hegseth told the crew that president Donald Trump “tracked your activities from day one and couldn’t be more proud of what you executed.” The US carrier, with roughly 5,000 sailors and marines onboard, left San Diego in November 2025, initially bound for the Pacific and expected to return in the spring. But after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in late February, the Lincoln was redirected to the Middle East, to support US operations in the region. In remarks in San Antonio, Texas, Donald Trump tried to channel the anti-Muslim racism that helped get him elected in 2016, by skipping straight from a dire warning that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one to the wild, false claim that Barack Obama could have stopped the Ft Hood gunman, Nidal Hasan, but chose not to.
Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack. In fact, US intelligence agencies assessed in 2025 that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003. Trump’s midterm rally speech was disrupted up to a dozen times by protesters.
The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
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