08/11/2026
Families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are going public with their fury over the conditions their relatives are enduring in the ninth month of a deployment that was supposed to last seven months, with no homecoming date in sight.
The Lincoln left San Diego in November when Trump launched his air campaign against Iran in February, promising it would last a “few weeks." Five months later, the ship is still in the fight, its 5,000-plus sailors and Marines having set foot off the vessel for just two days since leaving California. A brief stop in Guam in December was followed by 208 consecutive days at sea before the Lincoln reached Oman on July 7, the longest stretch without a port call for any U.S. carrier in the modern era.
Relatives told MS NOW they fear the exhaustion on board will get someone killed. Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard and who voted for Trump, said she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started "losing their minds." "You've essentially stranded them out there," she said.
Families described toilets out of service, laundry rooms closed for weeks, and long stretches without hot water. Nicole Conrad, also a Trump voter, said her son messaged her about locked showers and a meal that came to two tortillas and a half-cup of rice. "He put our nose in a war that we shouldn't be in," she said of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The complaints come as the Associated Press counted 51 cases of military spouses and parents taken into immigration custody since Trump returned to office. At least six have been deported, and eight remain detained.
Image credits: Center on Conscience & War
