The Nightmare on the USS Lincoln

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1:08Ian Prasad Philbrick: Now to our other top story, the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is operating in the Middle East. Over the last few weeks, stories began to circulate about conditions on the USS Lincoln, an aircraft carrier supporting the war in Iran, with some 5 ,000 sailors and Marines on board. Reports from sailors and their families describe appalling conditions, a lack of food and hygiene products, and declining mental health. The Lincoln has been deployed for almost nine months. According to the Military Times, multiple crew members have attempted to go overboard. One sailor succeeded and was in the water for about an hour before being rescued, according to MSNOW.

1:54Families of Lincoln crew members confronted Navy leadership in a town hall a few weeks ago. And apparently during that town hall meeting with Trump's Navy secretary and other top Navy officials, the incident of one of these sailors jumping overboard and remaining in the water for about an hour in what his wife called a suicide attempt came up. And the response from the Navy was, well, we don't really know if he jumped or if this was if he fell. Slate's Ian Prasad-Philbrick has been writing about the Lincoln. On Thursday, news broke that another carrier, the USS George Washington, will replace the Lincoln.

2:32But when President Trump was asked about the ship, he called the deployments not nearly long enough. It's a little hard to hear him, but here's the exchange. Have the deployments gone on too long? No, no, no. Not nearly long enough. Thank you, everybody.

2:51One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is not just what has gone on on board this ship, but also, for lack of a better word, the optics of this. I don't know any member of Congress who, even the most diehard ally of the president, wants to see these headlines about teenage sailors, Marines, who are their constituents. I think that's right. The military remains sort of, if you look at polling of public opinion on trusted institutions, the military is one of the few that is still trusted by the broader public at large. And I think you see that reflected in America's representation in Congress, where a lot of these members, to your point, do not want to see these headlines, even if they are supporters of the president.

3:35The military gets most of the funding it asks for. It gets most of the recognition it asks for. And so I think there is, in some ways, the military remains a third rail that nobody wants to cross in American politics. Today on the show, the service members paying the price for the president's war of choice. I'm Lizzie O 'Leary, in for Mary Harris, and you're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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6:38let's go back to the beginning and tell the story of this aircraft carrier so it leaves port november 21st 2025 it's around thanksgiving it's before the trump war with iran began um what did service members sailors and marines on board the ship think they were going to be doing yeah so aircraft carriers like the Lincoln go on deployments routinely. These are sort of usually six to seven month tours in a part of the world that is pre-designated. So the sailors know where they're going, their families know where they're going, and they know roughly how long they'll be there. So the Lincoln, as you said, left San Diego, which is its home port in November.

7:16It was going to the Pacific. The U.S. maintains a pretty strong carrier presence typically in the Pacific. Typically. Typically. No longer. We'll get to that, I'm sure. And yeah, it was supposed to be there for about six to seven months. And then in January, when the tensions with Iran started to boil over, leading to the war that started the next month that Trump began, the Lincoln was sort of rerouted to the Middle East. So it's been in the Arabian Sea since the beginning of the year. Many of these soldiers have not seen land except for one very brief, very brief stop in Oman at a military base there where they were largely confined to a compound for all of 2026.

7:52Yeah, usually a ship like this would be going to port, what, once a month? Just about. Yeah, that's right. And that, as you can imagine, that's for reprovisioning, taking fresh food on board. It's for repair, right? I mentioned some of the damage, the wear and tear to the actual ship that this long deployment has resulted in. And ports of call are a good way to address some of those things when you're not out on the high seas. And then also for crew rest, right? This is an opportunity for the crew to feel something other than deck plates under their feet, to not just be aboard a ship confined in a pretty narrow, small space or working their jobs, right, which is what they are doing on board a ship like this.

8:28So, yeah, that typically happens about every 30 to 45 days. And that has happened twice in about nine months. So there are some 5 ,000 people on board. We have talked about what appear to be suicide attempts or people overboard. Let's talk about some of the more, I guess, everyday indignities. Members of Congress have mentioned moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks. How does something like that happen? It's a great question. I mean, in this case, I think that we are, again, talking about a ship that's four decades old, right? So there are these, I would say the normal wear and tear is not wild to imagine.

9:08But yeah, I think that part of this does seem to be a result of such a long deployment, right? The food rationing that you're talking about, the water shortages, I think seems to be a product of not having these reprovisioning stops that are as easy to do when you're fighting an active war, right? So these soldiers are engaged in supporting combat operations. Sometimes they've done that for weeks straight and you can't really pull into a port to give your crew rest and to take on fresh vegetables or fresh fruit when you're in that kind of a situation. The other thing that's been disrupted is access to mail, right, which is often a way that service members can communicate with their loved ones, but also how they receive packages, right, which often include basic hygiene products or snacks.

9:46Deodorant. Deodorant, right. Other things that we take for granted in daily life, but are of limited nature on board a ship. And then I think you should also imagine yourself being in a job sometimes for a week straight, not having any days off, right? If you are supporting continuous combat operations. I think the Navy has said that Abraham Lincoln has launched or landed 10 ,000 planes in the course of the war. One argument that you hear as pushback to all of this is like, look, this is a deployment at war. They are unpleasant and they are long, but they are a part of military life. Evaluate that idea for me.

10:22Yeah, I mean, I think it comes from a genuine place of accurate. It's accurate in some ways. Right. And I think the family members who met with the Navy, for example, whose friends and loved ones are aboard the Lincoln would agree. I think they would say and they have said like we understand that long deployments are part of what these sailors, Marines have signed up for. We understand it means that they are taking time away from their families. And sometimes wars do break out or presidents declare them. And that can mean that these operations are extended. I mean, I think the complaint here is not so much that this is unprecedented, but that is it's very atypical, right, for a ship to be out this long, going on nine months, as you said, without ports of call.

11:02And I think they're really the effort is really just to raise awareness of what's going on. A lot of these stories have come from spouses of members who are deployed on board the Lincoln. They're receiving text messages from their loved ones saying, I feel hopeless and I've gone to my chain of command. In one case of a sailor who did go overboard, I tried to go to my chain of command. I tried to go to the military chaplain or the mental health professionals, and it just really didn't help. And so I think what was really being asked is for some acknowledgement that this is a problem and then some proactive recognition that they want to fix it.

11:35And maybe the recalling of the Lincoln and the replacement with the George Washington is evidence of that. But I would say until this weekend, we haven't seen very much proof that the Navy and the Secretary of Defense and the president were taking this as seriously as many of these family members wanted them to. I was struck listening to Mike Mullen, former chair of the Joint Chiefs, talking to Martha Raddatz on ABC, saying he believed the truth of what was happening on this aircraft carrier was probably somewhere in the middle. And I think that is, you know, a very senior commander kind of trying to make sense of what has happened here.

12:11But I guess one question I have is, is it just this ship? Because we have heard reports that the USS Gerald R. Ford had this 11-month deployment, a fire in the laundry area. There seem to be a lot of stories about very difficult living conditions and long deployments in the Navy. I think that's right. Right. And I think if you think about the way that this war, which began in February, in which the president said would last four or five weeks, is now dragging into a six month. I think you could imagine how that might those kinds of stories might start to burble up from other other vessels, too.

12:45You mentioned the Ford. The Ford had been deployed in other parts of the world. It had been supporting U.S. operations in Venezuela. In Venezuela, right. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Another theater that we all talk about now. And then it was rerouted into the Middle East. So it spent most of its deployment not supporting U.S. operations in Iran. But even then, you're right, it did have this wear and tear. There were reports, the Wall Street Journal did a great story about mental health conditions aboard the ship, members of the Navy who were considering leaving because this was such a toll on their mental health to be at sea for so long.

13:14One of the things that really struck me reading what the loved ones of these sailors were saying, that they were being told by their loved ones who were aboard the Lincoln, is like, we just want to know when we're leaving, right? We just want an end date. And I do think psychologically, I get that. That can be very helpful to know. I just have to make it X number of days, X number of weeks. with the war, there is no such thing. Right. And I think that's part of the challenge here is that these soldiers and sailors, whether they're on the Lincoln or not, are involved in a U.S. military operation that really has no clear end date.

13:49It was started with very vague goals, sometimes contradictory goals, allegedly has the goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but is really a conflict that the president really seems to want to wash his hands of right now. But of course, Iran has a say over that, too. And there are reports today that Iran may want to be escalating the fight, because they know it's quite unpopular for this president, right? Drives up gas prices, and they are as aware as all of us are of the fact that the U.S. will hold midterm elections in November. So that's part of the challenge, too, is I think there is no clear end date for many of these sailors, for many of these soldiers, and also for this war in general.

14:26After the break, how this story is reverberating in Washington.

14:41So the USS George Washington will now be in the Middle East to maintain the Trump administration's blockade on Iran. One of the things that is interesting here is that the administration has talked about maintaining a military presence in Asia. But putting these carriers in the Middle East basically eliminates that that presence in Asia. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the tactical imperative is here. I think that's right. Yeah. And it's and it's even at the level, I think, of broader strategy. right? For a decade plus in Washington, we have been hearing about the pivot to Asia, right?

15:22Yes. This was a phrase that was developed in the Obama administration referring to this idea that the future of the world, the future of challenges to U.S. security from China, the future of conflicts potentially over Taiwan, for example, were in Asia rather than in the Middle East. And so there was this effort in the Obama administration to devise a way to sort of redirect U.S. attention further east. And I think we all know that that That really was more of an aspiration than something that really happened. I'd say the Biden administration made made steps. Right. The president spoke quite a bit about challenges from China.

15:56And he certainly talked about potential for U.S. military engagement if China were to try to retake Taiwan. This administration, the people in it have spent a lot of time criticizing the Biden administration for not focusing enough on on China. They criticized and Republicans in Congress sometimes withheld votes for funding for the war in Ukraine because it was seen as something that was going to take away U.S. attention and resources from a potential conflict with China or just from a focus on China. And now we see that the last U.S. carrier that was stationed in the Pacific has now been redirected to the Middle East.

16:29This story has both these big strategic questions that we're talking about here, the political optic questions, but then also these really crushing human details. MS Now spoke to the wife of one sailor who apparently jumped overboard, was in the water for an hour before being rescued. He missed the birth of their second child. He's 19 years old. I think these are the kinds of stories that Americans are rightly horrified to hear. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that it is not a surprise to me that we are hearing about these stories in an active war situation, right? To Admiral Mullen's question about whether truth lies somewhere in the middle, these are anecdotes, right?

17:22We are hearing one or two or three stories from a ship of about 5 ,000 sailors. So I do think it makes sense to be circumspect about sort of expanding these individual experiences to the entire crew. But I will say that I do think it's pretty clear that somebody does not try to take their own lives or contemplate doing so if things are not truly dire. And yeah, I think these are not the kind of stories that Americans are typically exposed to when it comes to the military, even though I do think mental health is a concern. I have a family member who is in the military and was stationed on a base in California and told me that there are signs everywhere about suicide prevention.

18:03Right. So this is something that I think the military does take seriously. And it's really striking, too, when you think about Pete Hexas sort of very chest thumping way of talking about our warfighters or our warriors. I was reading an old speech of his from last year where he was very clear that he was talking about equipping soldiers, giving them the proper resources, everything they need to be lethal, right, for lethality. That is his preferred term. But one of the other arguments he was making was that this is really to help soldiers return home safe. And I think there's a lot of Americans who would sympathize with that, right, whether they support this administration or not.

18:38And I think that's why this is so glaring in some ways, is that this is an example where soldiers or their spouses or their family and loved ones are telling you these soldiers need help, these sailors need help. And the response from the administration up until this weekend has been largely to brush it off. Ian, one thing I am struck by is that a lot of the reporting that has come out about what has happened on the Lincoln has been from military times, stars and stripes, serious military journalism organizations. Yeah, I think that's right. Right. And it is striking, in part because there was an effort in the administration to sort of rein in the independence of the historic independence of some of these outlets, Stars and Stripes in particular.

19:18And so it is notable, I think, that these are the organizations that have led the charge in part on reporting on this story. I think in some ways they are arguably sort of the closest to the situation. And I wonder if that's the answer. They are used to covering the armed forces. They know what is unusual and what is typical. And I think that's a tell about the story. And also, I think these outlets and the reporters who work for them are maybe more in touch with the experience as well, right, of being somebody who is deployed. A lot of veterans on the staff. Yeah, or being a spouse of somebody who is deployed.

19:54And I think it is no surprise to me that that is one of the ways that we've gotten most of the information that we've gotten is from the loved ones of sailors who, in some cases, didn't find out for a few days that their loved one was involved in one of these incidents. And I think that is really telling. How does this reverberate in Washington? These are not the kinds of things that members of Congress, senators want to hear about their constituents. Several Democratic senators, including, and this was important to me, those who sit on the Armed Services Committee and, more importantly, on the Appropriations Committee, have called for more answers.

20:33Do you think we're going to get those? I suppose that's a million-dollar question. I think there is a tendency for journalists like myself even to be too cynical about these things, to say we've seen so many stories that would have been administration and ending scandals in another administration out of the headlines within 12 hours. This is a story that I was writing about on Friday that I think is as much of a story on Monday morning. So already it's sort of defied the odds, I think, in terms of the attention is being given. And it is sort of hard to, I suppose it's disappointing to imagine that public attention and public outrage is the only way that things might change here.

21:12But I do think that members of Congress are exercised about this. Some of them are in, as you say, in those key positions in Congress. Some of them are members of the president's own party. Some of them also are members who have served themselves, right, and have a history and a knowledge of what it means to be deployed in service to this country. And so I do think that this is if there is a story that is going to prevail sort of against the undertow of Trump stories that end up sweeping the previous day's news off our radar, it would be this one. Ian Prasad-Filbrick, thank you so much for talking with me.

21:46Thank you so much, Lizzie. Ian Prasad-Filbrick is a politics writer here at Slate. You can sign up for his newsletter at slate.com slash theslatest. All right, that is our show for today. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Dusharm, and Patrick Ford. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer for What Next and What Next TBD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. I am Lizzie O 'Leary. You can find me on Blue Sky, where I'm at Lizzie O 'Reilly. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you soon.

22:32This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Grainger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Grainger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. so his operation runs smoothly no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

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