Families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln said the carrier’s long deployment left crew members missing graduations and weddings, while Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said the media was mischaracterizing service members as victims. The human cost showed up in a family group chat in early May, when a senior Navy machinist aboard the Lincoln asked her sister and mother whether they’d taken time off to be at her son’s graduation at Morehouse. She wrote, "Graduation is in 12 days. Sadly, I may not even get to see pics of my boy on one of the most important days of his life," and added, "This was one of my biggest fears, not to be here for him at a time like this." That’s the reality behind the polished language of readiness and lethality: people on the bottom trying to hold together family life while the machinery of war keeps rolling.
Who Pays for the Deployment
Tameka Kyles, the older sister of the machinist aboard the Lincoln, said her sister joined the military to provide a better life for her son. Kyles and another family member who spoke with USA TODAY both requested anonymity for their loved ones for fear of reprisal. That fear says plenty. Even the people closest to the sailors had to weigh whether speaking out might bring consequences from the same institution that controls their relatives’ lives.
Kyles said the Lincoln was scheduled to return in May, and the graduation was later that same month. In the weeks before that group chat message, President Donald Trump had said multiple times the conflict with Iran appeared to be winding down. Instead, her sister and thousands of other service members have remained on board for three additional months. On August 20, the United States Central Command announced the USS George Washington had arrived in the Arabian Sea to take the next turn as an aircraft carrier in the Iran war. Several media outlets reported the same day that the Lincoln was heading back to San Diego. The ship’s movement came after months of uncertainty for the crew and their families, who were left waiting while officials talked about strategy from far away.
What Life Aboard Looked Like
USA TODAY reported in April on conditions aboard the Lincoln and the USS Tripoli, also deployed to the Middle East. A photo shared with a USA TODAY reporter showed a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a slab of gray processed meat from a meal on the Lincoln. That image landed like a blunt answer to all the talk about support for warfighters. The crew was supposed to be sustained by a vast military apparatus; instead, families were looking at food that barely passed for food.
The change in warships came after a fresh barrage of reporting about diminishing food supplies, a lack of hygiene products and declining mental health for service members who had been on board the Lincoln since November 2025. Outlets including Stars and Stripes and Military Times reported that crew members were struggling with their mental health and some had attempted to jump off the ship. The crew still faced weeks on the water after spending more than 200 days without a port visit. It's one of the longest stretches for personnel on a modern aircraft carrier. Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump both pushed back on accounts of substandard conditions on the carrier, calling the reports overblown or outright false.
Parents, siblings and spouses expressed frustration with the administration’s remarks on social media and to media outlets. Kyles said she was especially upset when Trump stated on August 14 that families were not concerned about their relatives, adding that in his view the deployment had not gone on nearly long enough. "How about you bring your family out there?" Kyles suggested, recalling her immediate response to the president’s seemingly flippant remark. "How about you go out there and try and then tell us how it feels?" The White House did not respond specifically to questions about the president’s remarks or conditions families mentioned on the ship. However, Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said the president had restored "a focus on readiness, lethality, and supporting our warfighters at the Pentagon," after years of failure by the Biden administration. "The President cares about our troops more than anyone, and he is ensuring our brave servicemembers have all the resources they need to be successful as the United States Military continues to economically strangle the Iranian regime," Kelly told USA TODAY.
The Family Life the State Interrupted
Cristi McGarey’s family often worried about the impact of what had felt like an unending deployment on her 22-year-old son. He worked as a cook on the Lincoln and now works in the aircraft carrier's shipping department. He surprised her during his freshman year of college when he told her he wanted to quit school and join the Navy. They are not a military family, but he argued it would give him money to pay for his education without racking up student loan debt. She supported his ambitions. During his first deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, he texted and called with regularity and seemed upbeat. But the current deployment felt different almost immediately, she said. For one thing, they could go up to a month or two without any contact as opposed to the weekly calls she was accustomed to on the last deployment. He was frustrated, she said, that the ship hadn’t been to a port without explanation. McGarey said she, too, had been concerned about her son, and the president doesn’t "get to tell me how I feel about that."
McGarey said her son’s sister was getting married in June, and they had assumed, based on what commanding officers originally indicated, he would be back with plenty of time to attend her garden wedding in the mountains of Colorado. But the day came and went, with her son crammed into his quarters on the ship while his older brother and other family members danced at the wedding. His mom recalled they ate red velvet cake, a favorite of her son’s. The bride, a "mother hen" to her younger brother, had hoped until the last moment he might make an appearance. "I think she really thought that I was going to surprise her…" McGarey said. "And it was going to be one of those Facebook moments." It wasn’t.
Kyles said her sister, the senior machinist, had lost about 10 to 15 pounds. The senior machinist also said there were points when she ran out of soap or laundry detergent. Kyles once saw what the food looked like during a video call. What the machinist showed her, she said, looked like "slop," that people wouldn’t feed to a dog. McGarey shared texts in which her son wrote the ship had been without hot water in an apparent attempt, he wrote, to encourage crew members to keep their showers short. When he spoke with her in mid-August, he told her the toilets break down and stay unrepaired for far too long. Kyles also said it took three to four months for packages to reach her sister. McGarey’s son told his mom not to bother sending packages because people weren’t receiving them. Blumenthal told USA TODAY he was concerned about unreliable package delivery, describing mail as an important link between families and their loved ones. "I’ve said to people, 'A stale cookie in a care package is worth its weight in gold,'" he said. "You know someone you loved baked it. As a morale booster, it’s invaluable. And the lack of it is a kind of a sign of abandonment."
McGarey told her son in mid-August that there had been reports of multiple people going overboard, but he pushed back and said it had only been one. Kyles also shared text messages where her sister mentioned that someone had jumped, though she said he was wearing a life vest. After two military trade publications reported that sailors had tried to jump off the ship in early August, U.S. Central Command released an August 13 statement saying that the "one Sailor who fell overboard Aug. 3 was quickly and safely recovered." Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an August 14 statement that members of the "media are trying to paint our warriors as victims." He also said a "small number of mental health cases" were treated, but no one died. Meals were adjusted when "fresh resupply was unavailable," the statement said, and calls home were "limited when the operational threat was too high."
Democratic lawmakers have pressed the federal government since mid-August to provide answers about the conditions aboard the Lincoln. They’re seeking a firm timeline for a return-to-home or return-to-port date for the carrier and requesting a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit the carrier. As the USS George Washington reached the Middle East days ago to take the place of the Lincoln, family members took to social media to praise their loved ones and ask for prayers for what lies ahead. Blumenthal said he didn't think the experience would be much different for service members, and he feared the same conditions might crop up again. "I have yet to be convinced that they have significantly improved the means and routes to supply the George Washington any better than they did with the Lincoln," he said.