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⭐ Donald Trump says Kharg Island ‘being blown to smithereens’ as US and Iran trade fire - ABC News

The month-long lull is over. US forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, where the IRGC was reportedly prepping rockets to seed the Strait of Hormuz with sea mines, and Iran retaliated overnight with ballistic missiles at two US bases in Jordan, which Jordan said it intercepted, plus a drone at the UAE’s Al Minhad base. Trump then posted that Iran’s main oil-export hub, Kharg Island, was “being blown to smithereens,” though the piece notes no other evidence of such an attack and no comment from the White House or Pentagon. The IRGC also claims it downed a US MQ-9 drone over the strait and mined a supertanker, now ablaze. Eighteen US service members have died since the war began Feb. 28.

⭐ Pentagon Hires Conservative Veterans, Influencers Into Unspecified Roles - Military.com

Per a Washington Post report cited by Military.com, the Pentagon quietly hired two conservative commentators — retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness (135,000+ X followers) and retired Army Col. Kurt Schlichter (620,000+) — into the office of personnel-and-readiness undersecretary Anthony Tata, without disclosing the appointments or their assignments. Both have publicly praised Hegseth and the administration, including its war in Iran; Maness has separately called for purging “disloyal” Pentagon employees. The report says they’re classed as “special government employees,” capped at 130 working days a year, with no salary terms disclosed. It lands alongside other shakeups, with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly heading for the exit, the Stars and Stripes firings, and a conservative journalist brought on to review the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

⭐ 82nd Airborne soldiers have Middle East deployment extended out to a year - Military Times

A memo signed Sunday extends the CENTCOM deployment of parts of the 82nd Airborne Division to a full year, covering elements of the division headquarters, its artillery, sustainment and engineer battalions, an air-defense battalion, plus the 1st Brigade Combat Team and Combat Aviation Brigade. The memo, addressed to families, cites “operational requirements”; the division, which serves as the Army’s rapid-response force, first deployed in March as tensions with Iran escalated. It fits a widening pattern of stretched tours in a war now past six months, following the USS Gerald R. Ford’s 326-day run, a post-Vietnam record. Task & Purpose and Stripes first confirmed the memo.

⭐ Senior officers advised Hegseth to keep civilian-protection program. He axed it anyway - Defense One

When Hegseth polled top commanders in early 2025 on cutting the military’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program (betting they’d call it “woke”) every one of them pushed back, with CENTCOM warning that gutting it would make US strikes less accurate. He gutted it anyway, dropping it from nearly 200 people to about two dozen. Since then US strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Yemen and Iran, including more than 100 children in a March airstrike on a school near the Strait of Hormuz. Now, under pressure from Congress and the commanders, the Pentagon is moving to partially revive it. Like Hegseth getting rid of vaccine mandates, only to end up having to put it back in place, this is another Hegseth move that ended up being as short-sighted as everyone warned him it would be, him doing it anyway, only to have to reverse himself.

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⭐ Six Months In, Iran’s Regime Stands, U.S. Goals Remain Unmet - The New York Times

Six months after the U.S. launched the airstrikes against Iran, the regime has survived, effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz, and has strengthened its regional influence, while the Trump administration tries out a new sanctions plan, “Operation Economic Outcast,” announced Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Analysts quoted across the piece call it a strategic defeat with no clearly articulated goal; one puts it that the capacity to hurt Iran is clear, but the path from pain to capitulation is not. Trump has not followed any available offramp to a war that’s deeply unpopular at home, so here we are, today, at war for half a year.

⭐ Fired ‘Stars and Stripes’ Journalists Sue Pentagon, Seeking to Block Their Terminations - Military.com

Former Stars and Stripes Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, Middle East reporter Lara Korte, and publisher Max Lederer filed a 45-page suit Thursday to block their firings by Hegseth, arguing the terminations were retaliation for unflattering coverage of a Navy deployment and part of a broader effort to censor the press. Slavin and Korte were cited for insubordination over a CBS interview in which they defended a free press for service members, and Lederer, a 30-year veteran of the paper who’d already announced his retirement, was cut for refusing a Pentagon demand that he fire the other two. Per the complaint, that demand came the day after Stars and Stripes reported on deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed 270 days without a port call. The paper has been in continuous circulation since World War II and has always been editorially independent. But Hegseth is unable to handle truthful reporting to our troops, thus the rash of firings.

⭐ After Epic Fury, Navy may need an extra $8 billion to be solvent, CNO says - Military Times

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle estimates the Navy needs $6 to 8 billion above its FY26 budget “to be whole and solvent,” after more than 27,000 sailors and two dozen-plus ships supported combat operations against Iran. Ballooning personnel costs, including unplanned bonuses for record in-theater reenlistments, are coming out of his facilities readiness account, the same money that funds his push to move sailors off ships and into actual housing. A Guardian report this week alleged combat spending forced the Navy to raid payroll accounts and backfill them with future-year money, which the Navy denies. Caudle’s closing pitch, and honest to God this is a real quote: “I need my money, OK?” We promise, that’s not a funny quote from Duffel Blog. That’s the next link…

⭐ Congress proposes veterans fight to the death for expanded benefits - Duffel Blog

Happy Friday. We made it. This is a good one from the military version of The Onion, Duffel Blog. And yes, this one is as funny as it sounds. We’ll give you a teaser: “Veteran Highlander.”

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• Six months. The war is now half a year old. It began as what the administration framed as a short campaign. As of today, it has no formal end. A June 17 ceasefire memorandum collapsed, and the U.S. and Iran have traded strikes repeatedly since.

• 18 U.S. service members killed. These are their names, ranks, and branches of service of the fallen:

  • CW3 Robert Marzan, U.S. Army

  • SFC Nicole Amor, U.S. Army

  • SFC Noah Tietjens, U.S. Army

  • SGT Declan Coady, U.S. Army

  • MAJ Jeffrey O’Brien, U.S. Army

  • CPT Cody Khork, U.S. Army

  • SGT Benjamin Pennington, U.S. Army

  • Maj John Klinner, U.S. Air Force

  • Maj Ariana Savino, U.S. Air Force

  • TSgt Ashley Pruitt, U.S. Air Force

  • Capt Seth Koval, U.S. Air National Guard

  • Capt Curtis Angst, U.S. Air National Guard

  • MSgt Tyler Simmons, U.S. Air National Guard

  • CDR Gabriel Edwards, U.S. Navy

  • 1LT Tyler James Feehan, U.S. Army

  • PFC Isabella Gonzales, U.S. Army

  • SGT Angel Rampersad, U.S. Army

  • SGT Michael Swinton, U.S. Army

• 14. The number of deaths the Trump administration currently attributes to Operation Epic Fury. In late July, the Pentagon moved four service members killed after July 7 into a separate category labeled “Overseas Operations,” dropping the official Epic Fury death toll from 18 to 14, four fewer than actually died. A U.S. official accused the Pentagon of “an accounting trick” in its tally of the war’s casualties.

• More than 750 wounded. The number of U.S. service members wounded in the Iran war, per the Pentagon’s own casualty system as of late August. It’s 757 by the most recent count, up from about 380 in early April.

• 418. The number of wounded the administration still attributes to Operation Epic Fury, the figure it presents as the war’s toll. That is well under half of the 757 actually wounded. Because the Pentagon declared Epic Fury “concluded” on July 7 and now logs everyone hurt since under a separate “Overseas Operations” heading, the Epic Fury count stays frozen at 418 while the real number of those wounded in the Iran War climbs with every new casualty.

• ~$3.00 to ~$4.00. The national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline on the first day of the war versus late August, per AAA, which is a rise of roughly a dollar, or about a third. Gas was under $3 in 39 states in February and peaked near $4.50 in June.

• $82 billion. The estimated additional amount Americans have paid to the oil industry in higher motor-fuel costs since the war began, per the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — over $600 per household to date.

• Up to $42 billion. The estimated direct cost of the war to the Department of Defense, as experts estimated in early July, with more than $26 billion of that in munitions alone, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

• At least $3 billion, likely far more. The gap between what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate the war has cost ($37.5 billion, as of his July 21 testimony) and the more thorough outside estimates. CSIS put munitions costs alone at roughly $26 billion back in late June, and CBS News reported the true total runs higher still, because the Pentagon’s figure leaves out expenses like repairing the U.S. bases Iran has damaged.

• Nearly 67%. The share of the U.S. Patriot interceptor stockpile expended in under six months, per CSIS, from an estimated 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 by late July. THAAD interceptors are down about 38 percent.

• Three years. How long CSIS estimates it will take to rebuild the Patriot and THAAD inventories to pre-war levels. New orders placed now would not arrive until 2029.

• $5 million and $12 million. The cost of a single Patriot interceptor and a single THAAD interceptor, respectively, per the FY2027 budget request. Many were fired to bring down Iranian drones costing $20,000 to $50,000 apiece.

• ~100 to a handful. The number of ships that transited the Strait of Hormuz on an average day before the war versus now. Roughly 100 vessels a day passed through in February; recent tracking has traffic running about 95 percent below that baseline, into the single digits on some days, as Iran restricts passage and war-risk insurance prices out the rest.

• 326 days. The length of the USS Gerald R. Ford’s deployment when it returned home on May 16, making it the longest U.S. carrier deployment since the Vietnam War. The USS Abraham Lincoln, on a deployment that stretched past six months, spent more than 200 consecutive days at sea without a port call — its own modern record — with more than 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard.

• 28%. The share of voters who approve of Trump’s handling of the situation with Iran, against 66 percent who disapprove, per Quinnipiac’s late-July poll.

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⭐ Troops Wounded in Iran War Struggle to Get Adequate Healthcare – The War Horse

Blockbuster exclusive investigative story. The War Horse spoke with four Army Reserve soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command, all wounded in the Iranian attack on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, that killed six and injured dozens, all awarded Purple Hearts, and all describing a medical system that then failed them. One critically wounded soldier waited four months to see a neurologist for the first time; when a group arrived at Landstuhl, staff turned them away, telling them that because they hadn’t come in on a formal medevac flight, they weren’t being treated as wounded in action. They got outpatient appointments weeks out instead of beds. Two of them, interviewed separately, reached for the same phrase: “The military sees us as numbers.”

⭐ West Point Climate Professor Says He Was Fired for Refusing to ‘Defy Science’ – The New York Times

Dr. Adam Kalkstein taught science at West Point for 17 years and was the academy’s only climate scientist. Until, he says, he was ordered to strip the human causes of climate change out of his curriculum, refused, and was pushed out. His new lawsuit says the dean stormed off when he wouldn’t resign, and six months later the tenured professor’s contract simply wasn’t renewed. Notably, Kalkstein is a conservative Republican who argues the military needs the real science, not for “social justice,” but to compete with Russia in a melting Arctic and understand the seas its ships operate in. It’s part of Hegseth’s broader push to gut civilian faculty and purge “civilian academic norms” from the academies in the name of “lethality.” Ordering future officers to be taught a lie instead of the truth is the exact opposite of preparing them to win.

⭐ White House silent on Iran-Oman Hormuz plan Tehran says would ban US warships – Fox News

Iran says the shipping framework it’s working out with Oman would bar U.S. warships from the Strait of Hormuz. Asked whether Trump would accept that, the White House went quiet. CENTCOM pushed back hard, with a spokesman insisting “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz” and calling it an international waterway that ships transit “with U.S. military assistance.” But Tehran is now emboldened enough to try to write the U.S. Navy out of one of the most strategic waterways on earth. That’s not exactly the “unconditional surrender” that we were promised would come after only four weeks of war.

⭐ 6 reasons why the military community loved Dolly Parton – We Are The Mighty

The incomparable Dolly Parton died Tuesday at 80, and the military community she spent a lifetime loving is grieving her right back. She played for the troops, funded literacy programs that put books in the hands of military kids, and once climbed up on an M1 Abrams in a sparkling dress and her signature big hair, loving every minute of it. Heck, in 2004 the Tennessee Air National Guard painted her likeness on the nose of a KC-135. “I am very perceptive,” she once said. “I can tell who’s real and who ain’t.” She was as real as they came, and the troops knew it. That’s why, this week, official accounts from across the military are saluting a woman who never wore the uniform but never stopped showing up for the people who did. Rest easy, Dolly. And thank you.

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⭐ Before Hegseth fired him, top general was advised to drop Kid Rock investigation – The Washington Post

Days before Hegseth abruptly fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the Post reports, George was pushed by the service’s No. 2 general to shut down an investigation into an unauthorized Apache helicopter flyby of Kid Rock’s Tennessee estate, a probe George insisted on running by the book to see if safety rules were broken. He refused; Hegseth killed the investigation anyway, cleared the crews himself, and fired George on April 2. The general who leaned on him to quash it, Chris LaNeve, is now could be in line to run the Army, pending confirmation.

⭐ Iran and Oman prep Hormuz deal, U.S. holds off on secondary sanctions – CNBC

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday that the U.S. is the thing standing in the way of reopening the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran and Oman have already settled their shares of the waterway, including who collects the revenue from running it. They added that the strait stays shut until Washington accepts Iran’s terms. Trump’s response, on Glenn Beck’s radio show, was to insist the strait is already open: “A lot of oil is pouring out,” he said, waving off the occasional “drone or a rocket.” He also told Al Jazeera he’s “in no hurry” to negotiate and has “no time schedule at all,” this after saying last week the two sides were done talking. So Iran and Oman are divvying up control of the world’s most important oil chokepoint, complete with tolls, while the president assures a radio audience everything’s fine. A reminder that this war was launched to get the “unconditional surrender of the regime.”

⭐ Judge Allows Postal Service Effort to Restrict Mail Voting, for Now – The New York Times

A federal judge just cleared the way, for now, for Trump’s order letting the Postal Service refuse to deliver mail ballots to anyone not on a state-verified eligibility list, and two dozen states sued Wednesday to stop it, the latest round in the administration’s push to tighten who can vote by mail before November. The stated targets are noncitizens and people purged from the rolls, but no one depends on mail voting more than troops deployed overseas and disabled veterans who can’t get to a polling place, so this could affect them in the end, too. When the White House starts deciding which ballots the Postal Service will and won’t carry, it’s putting a hand on the exact system service members have trusted to make their votes count since the Civil War.

⭐ Marine Corps brings back flu shot mandate for some troops – Military Times

Reality is a stubborn thing. In April, Hegseth scrapped the military’s flu-shot mandate with a video about “medical autonomy,” declaring that making troops get vaccinated “weakens our warfighting capability.” This week the Marine Corps started putting it back, requiring flu shots again for recruits, health-care workers, and Marines who are deploying or on hazardous-response teams, after conceding that influenza “has the potential to significantly impact force health and mission readiness.” That’s not a new discovery. George Washington had the Continental Army inoculated against smallpox in 1777 because a sick army can’t fight, and every serious commander since has known that a vaccine is a readiness tool, not a culture-war prop. The anti-vax crowd is relearning, one outbreak at a time, what Washington figured out before there was a United States. Congrats, guys.

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Conditions were austere by my customary civilian living standards: tents, cots, sleeping bags, latrines, and bomb shelters that we dug and built ourselves with the help of the amazing Seabees. We trained, drilled, and prepared for what was to come.

Life was made more tolerable when we had hot food, showers, and mail call. Letters and care packages took 2-3 weeks to arrive – but they did arrive - and were essential for morale. We did our best to cheer each other up and make life during the deployment tolerable. And occasionally we got a day off from work/drills or a liberty call.

We also understood that we were part of a team involved in an important mission for the U.S. and its allies. The United Nations and the U.S. Congress had voted to go to war to restore the independence of Kuwait, which had been taken over by an Iraqi invasion. We felt that our government and military leadership had given us clear directions, had our back, and would be supportive in any way possible given the constraints of deployment and the coming conflict.

Now we have our sailors and Marines deployed on ships into a war which seems to have been initiated by a President who treats it like a game, thought it would be over in 2 weeks, spends his time fretting over his failed reflecting pool and ballroom, did not get Congressional approval, nor the support of our Allies. The reasons for the conflict are nebulous, the mission unclear, and the stated goals change frequently. There was no vote in Congress and no buy-in from Allies (who were apparently blindsided).

The longer a warship is deployed, the more there accumulates wear and tear on equipment and people both. When in constant operation, gear often begins to break or become inoperable. Accidents become more likely. The USS Gerald Ford previously had a major fire while on station in this conflict during an overly long deployment for this “excursion”, as the President called it.

And the nonstop cycle of 24/7 readiness and operational activities can take a toll on human morale and performance. Accidents happen, injuries can occur, lives can be lost.

Now we are getting reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, inadequate rations, plumbing issues such as clogged toilets and moldy showers, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system. This can lead to a decrement in performance, but it has also led to deteriorating mental health to a point where at least one sailor jumped overboard from the flight deck. 8 plus months without a break or a port call for liberty – on high alert 24/7 – is very wearing.

Currently, our Commander in Chief shows immense disregard for those on this extended and dangerous deployment. The President, who was about to depart the Washington area for an event in New York, was asked recently whether he was concerned about the crew’s mental health and whether he thought the deployment had gone on too long. “No. No. No,” he said. “Not nearly long enough.”

Speaking at an event in Garden City, N.Y., recently, Mr. Trump continued to defend the war and boast about its progress. “Pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” he told the crowd, referring to a critical maritime route for global oil supplies that Iran effectively blocked over the course of the war. And still controls- now and most likely well into the future. Sort of like a “Special Military Operation” in another conflict zone that another tyrant says “he is winning.”

Makes me want to swear like a sailor.

That the President and Secretary of Defense seemingly don’t care about the people they send to war, downplaying the concerns of families about deterioration of shipboard conditions, and then lie to everyone about the current situation – which only makes it worse.

I see and understand how this stressful deployment that lacks support from leadership will seriously worsen the conditions of the ship itself, the physical condition of its people, and effect their mental health status. We will likely see more accidents and more mental health “incidents” because of the length of the deployment, the deteriorating living conditions, and lack of a leadership team that seems to not care about those it sends into harm’s way.

Dr. Michael Baker is retired from a 40-year career in general, vascular and trauma surgery. He also served 30 years in the uniform of his country and retired with the rank of Rear Admiral. He teaches advanced trauma life support (ATLS) in the United States around the world and has had five tours in Ukraine teaching ATLS to physicians in that war-torn nation.

_{Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.}

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⭐ Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless – The New York Times

The Army is trying to fight a new kind of war, one dominated by cheap, deadly drones, and doing it with no one at the wheel. The Times reports that Hegseth’s serial purge, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and the head of Army training and transformation, has gutted the senior ranks responsible for modernizing the force at the worst possible moment. It’s the same Pentagon that just disbanded the Army’s experimental drone battalion, the one unit built to absorb the lessons of Ukraine and Iran. America is falling behind on modern warfare, but Hegseth just keeps firing the people who understand what we need to do.

⭐ The Iran war is already on November ballots – Politico

The war has become a campaign issue, and it’s breaking against the people who started it. Democrats now run about two-thirds of the ads mentioning gas prices, a near-total flip from 2024, most tying the pump straight to the war. VoteVets is at the center of it, posting anti-administration messages this week on more than 1,000 billboards around military bases telling veterans the fight “means higher prices for you.” Iran “has had a massive impact on the global economy,” retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton told Politico. “This is not a war that we had to embark upon, it is a war of choice… And the Republican Party owns this war.”

⭐ Navy families evacuated from Bahrain face ‘uncharted territory’ amid bureaucratic confusion – Stars and Stripes

Months after the Navy rushed 1,300 family members out of Bahrain under Iranian missile fire, officials have told them they can’t return for the foreseeable future and should just pick a new duty station and start over. What was meant to be a brief displacement has become a half-year of hotels, short-term rentals, and repeated moves, with some families reporting tens of thousands in out-of-pocket costs. “We literally have been making this up as we go, because nothing is conceived to go on this length of time,” the head of Naval Forces Central Command admitted on a town-hall call. “Making it up as we go” seems to be the entire theme behind Trump’s war in Iran.

⭐ There’s no shortcut to replenish US munitions stockpiles – Defense One

For anyone hoping cheap drones and low-cost bombs will quickly refill what this war drained: the experts say no. Industry can build affordable munitions, but that doesn’t fix the near-term hole in the high-end interceptors and long-range precision weapons burned through fighting Iran. “It could impact a 2027 endgame. And it certainly will impact being ready in 2028, 2029 for Russia or China to do something,” analyst Mark Montgomery warned. The Iran war will have security implications for years, and our troops will be less safe because of it.

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⭐ House Democrats demand Trump administration provide full accounting of Iran war costs – NBC News

As the war nears the six-month mark, nearly 50 House Democrats, led by VoteVets-backed Reps. Derek Tran, Jason Crow and Maggie Goodlander, sent Trump and Hegseth a letter demanding the real numbers. “What was billed as a two-week operation is now a full-scale war that has lasted for over 150 days, cost over $37 billion, and claimed the lives of 18 servicemembers,” they wrote. NBC has separately reported the Pentagon’s own internal estimate runs $80–100 billion once you count repairing bombed bases, replacing lost aircraft, and refilling the stockpiles. Their other point is one everyone is feeling: “Gas, groceries, and everyday goods have all gotten more expensive, with no end in sight,” with regular gas back to about $4.09 a gallon. Trump’s answer this month, in between planning his gold-encrusted ballroom and gold and marble arch to himself, was that Americans should be willing “to pay a tiny, little bit more.”

⭐ ICE detained an Army sergeant’s wife. His family is still waiting for answers – Military Times

Sgt. Hedar Turcios Juárez, stationed at Fort Bliss, was driving home with his wife and their 6-year-old daughter when unmarked vehicles boxed in the family’s car in, and ICE took his wife, Cristy Villafranca Trejo, all in front of their terrified little girl. The couple has been legally married since 2022 and she’s listed as his dependent in the Army’s own personnel system. The family was days from a military move to Oklahoma. Her appeal has since been denied, meaning she could be deported to Honduras, a country he fears for her safety in. The Associated Press now estimates 50-plus spouses and parents of active-duty troops have been detained.

⭐ Father of Navy sailor deployed aboard USS Abraham Lincoln detained by ICE – Military.com

If you thought ICE was done… wrong. Joshua Aviles has spent more than nine months at sea on the USS Abraham Lincoln, working 12-hour shifts for 250-plus days. This weekend, while he was still at sea, Border Patrol detained his father, Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, 48, during a traffic stop in Key West on his way to drop his car at the mechanic. His wife says he’s a handyman with a valid work permit who’s lived here nearly 20 years; a stepdaughter says there’s no arrest history. “I’ve been deployed for over nine months… fighting for a country that has given me everything,” Joshua wrote. “I just got a call that my dad was taken by ICE… I’m coming home, Dad.” DHS’s response was “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass.” No, but refraining from detaining the family of a deployed servicemember without urgent cause, affecting readiness, should be common sense.

⭐ ICYMI: VoteVets Action Fund Launches Digital Billboard Campaign Nationwide Targeting Veterans and Military Families – VoteVets

This one is a banger. VoteVets Action Fund put up nearly 1,000 digital billboards today in the towns around ten major installations — Fayetteville, San Antonio, Virginia Beach, Colorado Springs, West Point and more — the latest piece of a roughly $5 million campaign to pin the Iran war’s cost, at the pump and in blood, on the people who started it. It runs August 24 to September 2. “Trump and Hegseth’s Iran war is costing American lives and driving up the cost of living back home. Veterans and military families are paying for this war twice, and they deserve to know who sent us into it,” said VoteVets senior advisor Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Paul D. Eaton. Taking the message offline and off TV, straight on to the roads around military bases. That’s how it’s done.

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“Trump and Hegseth’s Iran war is costing American lives and driving up the cost of living back home. Veterans and military families are paying for this war twice, and they deserve to know who sent us into it. That is why VoteVets Action Fund is taking the message directly to them, in the towns and neighborhoods around our biggest military installations from coast to coast. Trump and Hegseth started this reckless war, and we intend to make sure every one of those families knows it,” said VoteVets senior advisor Major General (Ret.) Paul D. Eaton.

Read The Military Times exclusive HERE.

See our social media HERE and HERE.

THE BILLBOARD:

THE TEN TARGETS:

1. Dayton, OH

2. West Point, NY

3. Fayetteville, NC

4. San Antonio, TX

5. Virginia Beach, VA

6. Tampa, FL

7. Colorado Springs, CO

8. Harrisburg, PA

9. Tomah City, WI

10. Savannah, GA

THE ACCOUNTABILITY CAMPAIGN:

VoteVets Action Fund (VVAF) has been implementing an “accountability campaign” the last several months that is part of our larger effort to hold Washington D.C. policymakers accountable for supporting the Iran War and lay out the real consequences that will impact all Americans as a result. We have spent nearly $5 million to do so.

We have deployed digital, billboards, linear tv, connected TV, Youtube, Meta, etc. to reach a wide swath of citizens and illustrate the costs of war that aren’t just blood and treasure. VoteVets is making Iran an issue when other organizations are shying away from it. Republicans need to be held accountable for their votes to support this needless war that is hurting Americans daily: at the pump, at the store, and more.

Today, August 24th, VVAF launched a nationwide digital billboard campaign – nearly 1K billboards across the country – running for 10 days from 8/24-9/2 – hitting Trump and Hegseth on their Iran War and its direct impact on the cost of living with no end in sight. It is a continuation of the accountability campaign but instead of targeting vulnerable GOP members, we are going where veterans and military families are around our nation’s military installations.

In August, VVAF launched a 225K ad buy to hold Dan Sullivan accountable for supporting the Iran war, as well as a 250K digital audio and radio ad buy.

In July, VVAF launched an almost 2 million ad buy to hold Ashley Hinson accountable for supporting the Iran War as well as a 2 million ad buy holding her accountable for her votes to gut healthcare, rounding out at a total 4 million spend.

In May, VVAF installed signs on Capitol Hill with the cost of gas in each district where Members of Congress voted to extend the Iran war – and drove mobile billboard trucks around the districts of six Republican Congressmembers who support the war.

In April, VVAF ran a $250,000 ad buy targeting Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden over his support for the war as prices at home skyrocketed.

In March, VVAF projected quotes from Donald Trump on the RNC Headquarters building and on “Trump Institute of Peace”, highlighting his hypocrisy in promising to end forever wars.

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⭐ Navy carrier named for Black war hero could be renamed for Trump, sources say – The Guardian

The Navy is moving to strip the name USS Doris Miller off a carrier under construction, and, two sources told CNN, the Navy may put Trump’s on it instead. Miller was the Black mess attendant who manned an anti-aircraft gun, untrained, at Pearl Harbor, dragged wounded sailors to safety, and became the first African American awarded the Navy Cross before dying in the war. Naming a carrier for a sitting president would be unprecedented. The Navy has already stopped using Miller’s name internally, calling the ship only by its hull number. His family wasn’t told. The NAACP called it “a slap in the face to every war hero.” If this has your blood boiling, take a moment to sign the VoteVets petition against it! Sign here!

⭐ Ex-Joint Chiefs Chair, Air Force Chief Gen. CQ Brown Receiving Major Honor – Military.com

For contrast, let’s recall the kind of officer this administration throws away. Gen. Charles Q. “CQ” Brown. A fighter pilot with 3,000-plus hours, first Black chief of the Air Force, 21st chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He was just named the 2026 recipient of the National Aeronautic Association’s Bruce Whitman Trophy for nearly 40 years of service. Trump fired him last year, one of the first purged in the campaign to clear out generals who didn’t fit what he and Hegseth wanted. The aviation world is honoring his career at the same moment the Navy erases another Black hero to make room for Trump’s ego.

⭐ Thousands of soldiers now roam Washington’s streets. They seldom stop crime – Military Times

A Reuters investigation into the D.C. National Guard deployment is damning. The roughly 4,500 National Guard troops Trump ordered into Washington (outnumbering the city’s 3,200 cops) turn up in just 1.3% of criminal cases, often as the victims of assaults, not the ones making arrests. In one report, 15 guardsmen on patrol stood by while police broke up a man stomping a woman outside a nightclub. The cost: about $1.65 million a day, more than the entire city police budget, headed for $1.4 billion by 2029. This was never about crime, and it certainly isn’t the fault of these patriotic Guard Members. It’s a show put on by a reality TV host, who’s dragged some of our nation’s finest troops away from their jobs and their homes for this. It’s time to let them go home.

⭐ Trump strikes deal to buy precision missiles from North Korea – Duffel Blog

The military version of the Onion is barely satire this week. Duffel “reports” Trump has cut a deal to buy thousands of precision missiles from Kim Jong Un to refill the stockpiles the Iran war drained. “Based on my very good relationship,” he explains, praising Kim’s “ADVANCED WEAPONRY.” Pyongyang promises delivery in 60 days, “beating Lockheed Martin by approximately 11 years.” We’re laughing but also kinda not!

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There is a lot of justifiable anxiety these days about robots in the private sector, and the worry I hear most often is that they will cost people their jobs. Among those of us who have fought wars, the calculation runs the other way. If there is a way to send a machine to do a job that would otherwise kill a 19-year-old, you send the machine.

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Which is why I am shaking my head at the Army’s decision to phase out the one unit we had that was learning how to do that.

The Unmanned Assault Battalion, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was stood up last year to absorb what Ukraine has been teaching the rest of the world about drone warfare. It will finish an exercise in September, brief what it learned, and then go back to being an ordinary airborne infantry battalion. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the acting Army chief of staff, calls this “getting back to basics.”

I spent 15 months in Iraq as Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician, responsible for delivering about two million gallons of fuel a day. More than a thousand Americans were killed moving fuel over those supply lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every convoy I did not have to run was possibly a family that didn’t get a dreaded knock on the door later.

That is the case for unmanned systems, and my old boss Gen. Petraeus put it this way back in April: “What we should do is scrap the armored battalions and replace them with a drone battalion.”

Just consider what the past two years have already taught us about the future of warfare:

The Royal United Services Institute found drones accounting for 60 to 70 percent of all Russian equipment destroyed or damaged in Ukraine, at roughly $500 a drone. That’s about one percent the cost of a single guided artillery round.

Iran has fired roughly 4,400 one-way attack drones at American and allied positions since February. Its counterattacks have killed 18 Americans and wounded 687 as of early August.

In our attempt to stop them, we fired more than 1,700 Patriot interceptors at $3.4 million apiece at drones that cost Iran about $35,000. CSIS estimates we burned through two-thirds of our entire Patriot inventory in under six months. A replacement missile takes three to four years to build.

Now hold on to your hats for this one. The Council on Foreign Relations puts the entire U.S. military drone inventory this year at about 16,000. Ukraine plans to build seven million.

Seven Million.

Now, when it comes to whether to send drones or men, Ukraine had this same fight, and it nearly cost President Zelenskyy his government. In July, he fired Mykhailo Fedorov, the defense minister who built the drone program, and sided with Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Soviet-trained commander who wanted to keep fighting with mass and artillery. Seventy-two percent of Ukrainians opposed the firing. Fedorov’s public trust rating jumped 30 points in two days. There were vocal protests from a country that understood the efficacy of drones, and within a week Zelenskyy reversed himself and fired Syrskyi instead.

We are going the other way. In fact, we’re heading backward.

The battalion’s two forward-thinking champions are gone. Gen. Randy George, then the Army chief of staff, and Gen. Christopher Donahue, then commanding Army forces in Europe and Africa, were fired or pushed into early retirement by Hegseth, clearing the path for Gen. LaNeve, and his “get back to basics” goal.

What was Gen. George’s offense? Reporting says he had objected to the secretary striking two Black officers and two women from an Army promotion list. You see, Hegseth has decided that a strong and diverse force is too “woke,” and that while we turn back the clock in how we fight wars, we should turn back the clock on who wears stars on their shoulders.

Not only that, but we have a president on a bizarre mission to turn back the clock on our ships.

On August 13, the President ordered the Navy to tear the electromagnetic catapult out of the carrier Doris Miller and put 1950s steam back in, a reversal the Navy fought for years and one that will cost billions. Apparently, this might have something to do with him wanting all of our ships to look like they did in World War II.

Money is finite. At the roughly $5,000 apiece the Pentagon pays for its own drones, one of those billions buys 200,000 of them, or about two-thirds of everything the department says it wants built by 2027. We are spending it instead to rip out the launch system that was designed to put light unmanned aircraft in the air off a deck.

It makes no sense. None of this makes any kind of sense. The only way it makes sense is if we want our military to become woefully outdated, ill-prepared, and purged of its best minds.

On the drones, Congress should do three things, and do them before the exercise ends next month:

• First, demand the written analysis behind killing the Unmanned Assault Battalion, if one was ever done.

• Second, require the Army to publish what that battalion learned, so the knowledge outlives the unit.

• Third, confirm no Army chief of staff who cannot explain, under oath, their concrete plan to fight the modern kind of drone war that is already underway.

And on the larger issue, Congress ought to find out what is driving this apparent fixation on turning back the clock to the military of old.

Our past generations of troops were heroic throughout multiple wars. But the world has changed, and war has changed, since then. If we’re going to call upon this military to ever do the same, they deserve a modern military, not the one that their parents and grandparents served in.

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⭐ USS Abraham Lincoln finally heads home from Middle East – MS NOW

It’s finally over. The USS Abraham Lincoln turned for San Diego on Thursday after the USS George Washington arrived to relieve it, ending one of the longest carrier deployments in modern Navy history: about 5,000 sailors and Marines, some 272 days out, more than 240 of them without a single port call. This did not happen because the Pentagon decided the crew had suffered enough. It happened because families spoke to reporters, because outlets kept publishing, and because lawmakers demanded answers. It should never have come to that and investigations need to answer a ton of questions.

⭐ Iran Hits Back at Trump’s Threat of a ‘Crushing’ Economic ‘D-Day’ Campaign – TIME

Trump’s new plan, announced today: an “Economic D-Day!” A “crushing economic operation” to strangle Iran financially now that his envoys have stopped talking to Tehran altogether. Iran fired back Wednesday and Thursday, calling the threat a distraction from Trump’s failure to win the war, with some Iranian lawmakers now openly pushing to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That’s the exact outcome this whole war was supposedly launched to prevent.

⭐ New Drone Unit to Be Phased Out as Hegseth’s Army Pick Makes His Mark – The Wall Street Journal

Even as the Iran war exposes how fast America burns through missiles, and even seeing how Ukraine has kicked Russia all around the place with drones, and even as a cheap Iranian drones hit US bases, the Army is shutting down the one unit it built to master drone warfare. The 173rd Airborne’s 600-soldier experimental drone battalion, will present its findings after fall exercises and then revert to a plain infantry battalion. It’s part of a “back to basics” push by the Hegseth-aligned acting Army chief, reversing an initiative from the predecessor Hegseth fired in April.

⭐ ‘USS Abraham Lincoln heading home after difficult Middle East deployment – Spectrum News

San Diego families are counting the days until the Lincoln docks, but the ones who spoke out during the deployment aren’t celebrating quietly. One sailor’s mother told reporters the Navy needs to “take some accountability for what’s going on with your ships, in your war.” Therapists who work with military families are warning that reintegration after a deployment this long and this traumatic is its own hard road: excitement tangled with anger, kids who have to relearn a parent, sailors who need time and care the system isn’t reliably offering. It’s good they’re coming home, not good their well-being was so neglected.

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Important: If you or a service member or veteran you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and available 24/7: dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255

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⭐ Trump tries a new approach in Iran war: Disengage – CNN

After weeks of insisting a deal was “imminent,” Trump has changed the plan: give up on talking. He’s ordered his envoys to halt conversations with Iran saying, “there are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled.” He’s told allies the strategy is shifting from “hammer Iran ASAP” to “strangle them” over time, with the naval blockade staying “in full force.” He’s still claiming “complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz even as ships keep burning and the deadline for a deal expired with nothing. Six months in and here’s where we are: No answers, no talking, just pretending all is well despite all the evidence to the contrary.

⭐ Navy Vessel Spent Four Days Without Power in South China Sea – Military.com

It’s not just the Lincoln. The destroyer USS Benfold, with about 300 sailors, lost all power for four days in the South China Sea last month after its generators failed, leaving the crew without drinking water, meals, working toilets, or air conditioning until tugboats towed it to the Philippines. The Navy didn’t disclose it for nearly a month, until USNI News broke it. Set it beside the Lincoln’s record deployment and the sailors trying to go overboard, and what are we starting to see? A fleet stretched too thin, ships worn past their limits, and crews left in miserable conditions — and a Pentagon that would rather the public not hear about it. The Navy praised the Benfold crew’s “resilience, grit, and professionalism,” which is true, and also why they deserve better.

⭐ Longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes publication retires amid Pentagon clash over USS Lincoln – Associated Press via the Independent

Speaking of what the Pentagon would rather you not hear: Max Lederer, an Army veteran who has run Stars and Stripes since 2007, is stepping down, saying his understanding of the paper’s “value and mission” differs in “fundamental ways” from where Hegseth’s Pentagon wants to take it. That direction is no mystery. The Defense Department already fired the paper’s congressionally mandated ombudsman in April, installed a Navy public-affairs captain as Lederer’s “deputy,” and issued an overhaul demanding coverage stay consistent with “good order and discipline” while stripping out “woke distractions. A newsroom that answers to the troops and keeps leaders honest is what an independent military paper is for, and exactly what’s now being dismantled by thin-skinned Hegseth.

⭐ GOP Senate hopeful hounded by laughing critics for ‘painful’ fumble – Raw Story

And finally, the caliber of person the GOP wants making important national security votes with lives on the line. Darline Graham — appointed to her late brother Lindsey’s South Carolina seat and running for the full six-year term with Trump’s “complete and total endorsement” — was asked at Tuesday’s debate whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are national security concerns for the United States. Her answer: “National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I support the military.” (In the same debate, she pegged South Carolina’s population at 50 million; it’s 5.6 million.) It would be pure comedy, except this is a job that votes on wars, weapons, and whether to send other people’s kids into them. The sailors on the Benfold and the Lincoln don’t get to say readiness “isn’t their thing.” Neither should anyone auditioning to oversee them.

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⭐ Ship attack in Hormuz kills crew member while Trump says strait is ‘open and operating’ – CNBC

A projectile tore into a cargo ship’s engine room as it exited the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, killing one crew member. It is at least the fifth such attack since Friday. Trump posted a red-white-and-blue “New U.S.” map of the strait and just after the attacks, declared the strait to be “open and operating… all water mines have been removed or detonated.” The waterway is not open: traffic is down to its lowest since May, roughly 10 crossings a day against a fifth of the world’s oil that used to move through it, and mariners are still dying. Our regular reminder the strait was open before Trump started the war.

⭐ Trump denies talks with Iran amid continued attacks near Strait of Hormuz – Stars and Stripes

And the “deal” everyone keeps promising? Trump declared Tuesday there are “no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled” with Iran, as the 60-day deadline from June’s memorandum expired with nothing to show. Instead of diplomacy, he’s turned to threats. Now he’s making them against Oman, the small U.S. ally that’s been mediating, warning he’ll bomb it if it “gets in the way” of a Hormuz arrangement he doesn’t like.

⭐ Senator presses Hegseth, Caine for commitment to keep US military out of the midterm elections – AP (via The Washington Post)

Sen. Elissa Slotkin — a former CIA officer who did three tours alongside our military in Iraq, and a VoteVets-endorsed candidate since her very first run for Congress — sent letters Tuesday to Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine asking them to confirm that the Pentagon “will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind” this November. It shouldn’t need saying, except that when Slotkin asked Hegseth in April whether he’d follow an order to seize ballots, he brushed it off as a “gotcha hypothetical.” Federal law already bars armed troops at polling places, and it never was much of a question that the military would stay out of elections. Now? Slotkin is demanding it in writing, and she’s quite correct in doing so.

⭐ US Army requests 133,000 GMLRS rockets by 2034 – Military Times

The Army put out a call this week for industry to build Over 133,000 GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) guided rockets by 2034. The math is brutal: they want more than 19,000 a year, but the first new rockets won’t even arrive until February 2030. Current maker Lockheed Martin would have to boost capacity by another 36% on top of its planned ramp-up, thus the call out to other contractors. Why are we so low? Some of our stockpile went to Ukraine, where it is showing great success, but the war in Iran has drained them down even more quickly. Add it to the list of why launching a war of choice against Iran was ill-advised.

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⭐ Trump orders military to ‘substantially reduce’ joint exercises with South Korea – NBC News

Hours before the big annual U.S.–South Korea drill built to deter a nuclear-armed North Korea was set to begin, Trump ordered Hegseth to gut America’s part in it, citing cost, his relationship with Kim Jong Un, and Seoul’s refusal to get stuck in our war with Iran. Retired admirals warn the move lowers coalition readiness and puts U.S. forces at risk for no real benefit, while handing North Korea something it’s wanted for decades.

⭐ Trump threatens to bomb Oman if it ‘gets in the way’ – Washington Post

Meanwhile, Trump’s threatening another war, this time with Oman. He also said Iran should wave the white flag. By the way, the 60-day memorandum of understanding that was supposed to lead to an end to the war has expired, and Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. But, sure, war with Oman sounds exactly like what a person in full control of his faculties would be gunning for right now.

⭐ The Wrong Kind of American – The Atlantic

Gift Link so you can read it all. Julia Curlee is a decorated CIA officer. She served 20 years, for four presidents of both parties, and was trusted with one of the most important intelligence documents the US Government produces – the Presidential Daily Brief. She’s also a trans woman. When almost no one else would, she volunteered to serve the first Trump White House and personally briefed Vice President Mike Pence every morning for a year. This year, Trump’s White House fired her after right-wing influencer Laura Loomer complained. Her point should worry every American: a government that purges its most experienced people for who they are, and fires the analysts who tell it hard truths, is hollowing out the very expertise that keeps the country safe. We’re watching the price of that in the Persian Gulf right now. That’s a war launched on rosy assumptions by leaders who’d shoved aside the people who knew better, and it’s American troops who are paying it, sometimes with their lives. This is where fringe right-wing social engineering got us.

⭐ Former Air Force secretary to join others in lawsuit against White House to regain security clearance – Military Times

And here’s the same issue from another angle. Frank Kendall, Air Force secretary under Biden, is suing the Trump administration after the Pentagon yanked his security clearance. He says he learned about it from a spokesman’s tweet, with no notice and no chance to respond. His alleged “offense?” Warning publicly that the Qatari-gifted Air Force One had “a lot of shortfalls” and posed real safety risks. An analysis that ended up being spot-on! Strip the clearances of everyone who tells you something you don’t want to hear, and eventually the only voices left are the ones who tell you what you do — which is roughly how you end up in a six-month war you called a four-week one.

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Americans hearing that sailors aboard an aircraft carrier are in psychological distress will picture something from the movies. Guadalcanal. Dunkirk. Men under fire, and afterward the ones who carry it home. Movies have their place. But it isn’t what’s happening aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln left San Diego in November on a deployment of about seven months. It has been at sea more than 250 days, upwards of 200 of them without a port call, extended twice, with no return date. A sailor went overboard this month and was recovered. Families in San Diego have spent the past week reading Navy leadership the texts they get from their sons and daughters and spouses, which were heartbreaking, and a picture of sailors who’ve reached their breaking points.

I finished my psychiatric training in 1984 and went to work at the VA hospital in Durham, North Carolina, when posttraumatic stress disorder was only a few years old as a diagnosis and so, as young as I was, I quickly became well-versed in it and its effects. Forty years later, I am still at it, a good deal of that time alongside colleagues in Navy and Army medicine.

What is happening on the Lincoln is complex, from a psychological perspective, so it is important we break a few things down.

Deployment Stress vs. Combat Stress: Related but not the same

One of the first things I learned in this field is that combat stress isn’t the only stress. In fact, sometimes it’s not the stress we should be focusing on.

For example, Civil War soldiers didn’t write home much about shell shock. They were writing about nostalgia — an acute and occasionally fatal homesickness. Part of the Army’s answer was baseball. Regiments organized games to fight the boredom, and when the war ended the men took the game home with them. It’s partly why it’s our national pastime today. The Union military understood a hundred and sixty years ago that being deployed is a mental health issue in its own right, quite apart from being shot at.

The second thing to know is that the human brain does not work the way our intuitions insist. What wore out an airplane crew in WWII was often just the hours in the air rather than fire taken, reconnaissance hours included. Vietnam’s fixed 365-day rotation, designed to spare men the open-ended tours of the previous war, produced soldiers who grew more frightened and stressed as their date to go home came closer, rather than less.

The Lincoln is not in a naval battle. The ship has been a target, which is a stress of its own. But it has not been trading fire with an enemy fleet, and what its crew is going through bears little resemblance to what most people mean by combat stress. It is stress all the same, and there is only so much of it any human being can absorb.

A day consists of continued operations. Alarms, with no way to know in the moment whether an alarm is a drill, so the adrenaline arrives either way. A flight deck is among the most dangerous workplaces on earth, where sustained attention is not a virtue but a requirement and a lapse falls on people you know by name.

Then there are the long stretches of boredom in between. Then a message from home. We learned during the Iraq war that better communication carries an injury of its own, because hearing about a problem you can do nothing about, and that may be happening precisely because you are gone, is no comfort.

Uncertainty Is Its Own Stress

Worse, there’s no idea when it will end.

With this deployment on the Lincoln, there is no end date or light at the end of the tunnel. During the war in Iraq, stop-loss taught us that the damage was not just the additional months deployed, so much as it was the withdrawal of a date already given. A known ending makes a remarkable amount of hardship survivable. An unknown one turns endurance into something else.

We cannot ignore that much of the uncertainty around the end of the war and deployments stems from the lack of a clear mission or exit plan.

Combat operations against Iran were declared over in the spring. What followed is a standoff that cools and reignites with the news cycle, in which these sailors are instruments of negotiation, with no say in the matter. So, they’re forced to remain in a never-ending aggressive posture, to scare the Iranians into negotiating.

For people trained to be capable and decisive, sitting aboard the most powerful machine this country builds while unable to act, unable to leave, unable to say what they are there for, unable to get the alarms to stop, and unable to get a break from knowing that you make a mistake and your shipmates get hurt, or worse takes a severe toll. And yes the military does its best to help train our troops to withstand that rhythm. But our service members are still only human. And training can only go so far.

It’s not just in the military, by the way. We’ve all heard the stories of hospital staff quarantined during SARS jumping out of windows. We’ve heard of the mental health crises experienced by medical professionals during Katrina who had to decide who lived and who died. Even the best-trained professionals in the world have their limits when there is no clear end date to their isolation and the high-stakes pressure.

The More We Find Out, The More Questions I Have

Asked about reports of sailors in crisis, the Navy said it has “not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship.”

I spent several years at VA Central Office working to make measurement a standard part of mental health care, so it may be surprising to hear me say: I don’t know what that sentence measures.

First, who is that information for? Is that sentence for the sailors to make them feel better? For their families in San Diego? For the public or politicians? I would rather be told than left to guess. In psychiatry, when you put out measurements like these, different people and groups can take them in different ways.

In a culture built on not being the one who breaks, where asking for help can cost you a rating or a flight status, low reporting is what you would predict. It isn’t reassurance. It may be the finding that should worry you most. But by putting it out there that there’s been no “increase,” the message to the sailors isn’t one of reassurance. It’s one that says, “If you feel differently, you’re an outlier.” It discourages sailors from seeking help. For the families, it tells them there is something wrong with their loved one, not the situation we’ve forced them into.

Second, reporting is that the USS George Washington will deploy and relief the Lincoln and its sailors. Good. But what happens in between?

The Navy says it will send more mental health professionals to the ship. That is a good thing to do, and I am glad of it. It will not touch the cause. You can no more staff your way out of this than you could send a therapist to a town after a hurricane and call it a response.

The wellbeing of sailors at sea depends less on the clinician than on the command climate and the wellbeing of people around them. There is a reason why morale is taken so seriously in the military.

For all I know, the officers on the ship are doing the best that they can in a trying situation, so it is premature to point fingers. Responsibility may lie at higher levels of authority. This is something that needs a good examination.

Finally, I share the questions of Senator Blumenthal who asked the Department what the military objectives are for the Lincoln’s continued deployment and what metrics the Navy uses to assess fatigue and morale in a crew. The strongest protection in any deployment is a mission the people carrying it out understand and an ending they can count on. The crew of the Lincoln has neither. Civilian leadership set those conditions, and only civilian leadership can change them.

What we are asking of these people, and why, and for how long, is a question for the country to demand an answer to. It is not an area where we can afford to double down on a mistake. I have seen what happens when we do that. I’ve spent my career treating those who have borne the burden of it.

We as a country owe our service members so much better than what we are seeing unfold from the U.S.S. Lincoln.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is available at 988, then press 1, or by text at 838255. You do not need to be enrolled in VA care to use it.

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⭐ Trump says record USS Lincoln deployment ‘not nearly long enough’ – ABC News

Asked at Joint Base Andrews on Friday whether the Lincoln’s deployment (now past 265 days at sea, the longest of the modern era) has run too long, President Trump said, “No, no, not nearly long enough.” Told directly that families of the sailors aboard are frightened about their loved ones’ mental health and living conditions, he simply denied it: “No, they’re not.” This is the same week a sailor went overboard and spent nearly an hour in the water, families described crew members messaging home that they hope they don’t wake up, and the ship’s own spouses filled a town hall to plead for relief. Trump’s response is about what you’d expect from a guy who called those who serve and give up their lives “suckers” and “losers.” If you or a service member or veteran you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and available 24/7: dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.

⭐ Iran rejects Trump’s claim to ‘control’ Hormuz as attacks on shipping continue – Al Jazeera

And the war keeping that carrier at sea only got stranger this week. Trump has taken to claiming the U.S. has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz and now says he’ll declare it U.S. territory. Tehran essentially laughed that off. Ships, meanwhile, keep burning in it. The UAE this week blamed Iran for attacks on two vessels tied to its state oil company mid-transit. But sure, it’s U.S. territory, says the guy who thinks the sailors on U.S.S. Lincoln should stay out there longer.

⭐ My spouse is deployed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. This is what’s really happening – We Are The Mighty

We Are The Mighty spoke with a spouse of a Lincoln sailor who gave their perspective. This spouse says while some food shortages that were dire early in the war have improved, they remain worried: “I have a healthy level of concern around the mental health care that they’re receiving or not receiving now, and then what that looks like when they are back home.” Still, they tell Americans to keep in mind that thousands of sailors have kept showing up, at a combat pace, under conditions almost no one back home can picture, and deserve to be seen for it. Both things are true: this crew is extraordinary, and it is being asked to endure far too much for far too long.

⭐ Hegseth mistakes getting older for declining military standards – Duffel Blog

It’s a hard week to laugh, but the military version of The Onion, Duffel Blog, is still swinging, and this one’s a bullseye. In the satire, defense officials launch a review after realizing Hegseth’s constant warnings that fitness standards are “collapsing” all trace back to one variable: his own age. “The Army lowers standards every four or five years, usually around my birthday,” he explains; at press time he’s ordered the force to restore the exact PT standards from when he was 23, “the last objectively rigorous standards before the military began changing them specifically to embarrass me.”

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Somewhere in the Middle East, sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln are 265 days into a deployment–with clogged toilets, broken water fountains, rationed and rotten food, and an overwhelmed medical staff. Apparently, it is so bad some sailors will do anything to escape.

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Back in April, when asked about the conditions, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “fake news.” If that were the case, then how come 200 family members just showed up to a town hall in San Diego to confront Navy Secretary Hung Cao over the horrific conditions they have all heard about from their loved ones deployed on board?

Their reports are harrowing. One wife told reporters her husband texted her that he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.” Secretary Hegseth said the problems are being misrepresented, but has offered no specific examples of what was misrepresented. The Navy’s official response is that it hasn’t “identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts,” and that sailors have “continuous access to clean water, functional AC and healthy meal options.” In other words, the Pentagon’s PR strategy appears to be gaslighting.

The magnitude of the difference between official information from the Pentagon and firsthand reports from the crew should be troubling. The Department is either being intentionally deceptive or is just that out-of-touch. Either way, this feeds doubt among civilians, military-connected, and the troops themselves, about whether the institution actually cares about the welfare of its members.

Public trust in the armed forces matters a great deal to national security. Confidence in the military is at its lowest point in almost a decade, down 21 points since 2018. Now, as the families told Secretary Cao, the Pentagon has broken their trust. The consequences of that could be dire.

For anyone who says sailors signed up for this, it’s worth flagging the effect such a sentiment could have on recruitment, retention, and readiness in general. Already, the number of military personnel inquiring about conscientious objection has risen by 1,000% since the start of the Iran war. Who wants to stay in–let alone join–an organization that says contaminated water, broken plumbing, inadequate healthcare, indefinite deployments, and a lack of transparency are all just the price of doing business? When the number of 18-year olds is about to plummet and recruiters admit it has “never been harder to get young people interested in service,” alienating the next generation of potential recruits is a significant threat to our manpower. Iraq and Afghanistan taught us the cost of treating service members like this. Let’s not learn this lesson again, especially while the Trump administration refuses to call it a “war” to circumvent the Constitution.

So what is our leadership doing to take care of its warfighters?

Since the Lincoln deployed, Hegseth has spent his energy on a public fight with the Ivy League over military fellowships, an ultimatum to the Boy Scouts over bathroom policy, personally blocking the promotions of more than a dozen senior officers, and rolling out a mandatory testosterone testing program. But in the Middle East, where 5,000 sailors are on board the USS Lincoln, going without a port call for 200 days, there are showers covered in mold. Sailors shouldn’t have to work in these conditions to prove their warrior ethos.

Perhaps a defense secretary who has built a public identity around the aesthetics of toughness may be a poorly equipped person to recognize when actual human beings have hit an actual human limit. His brand depends on pretending that limit doesn’t exist. But service members are jumping overboard in the hopes of escaping these conditions.

While Secretary Hegseth performs as the warrior character he created, actual warriors are stranded on an aircraft carrier with no end in sight. Perhaps he should stop trying to be such a showman and start showing up for his sailors.

Though the USS Washington may be on its way to relieve Lincoln finally, these sailors have been suffering for far too long. Only time will tell how eager and able they are to sign up for future missions. In the meantime, Secretary Hegseth needs to get serious about doing his job and figure out his priorities. Leadership means looking out for your people, not just looking tough for the cameras or acting tough on Boy Scouts.

Ultimately, Hegseth is the man responsible for overseeing hundreds of thousands of active-duty service members who are counting on him. It’s time he rose to the occasion, or stepped aside.

Julie Roland is a former Navy Lieutenant Commander and helicopter pilot who earned her Juris Doctor in her free time while active duty. She now holds a Master of Laws in Global Business Law from Columbia University, is currently serving as the District Director for New York State Assembly District 73 in Manhattan.

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⭐ Sailor went overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln this month as conditions on the ship prompt lawmakers’ demand for answers – CNN

Three U.S. officials confirmed to CNN that a sailor actually went overboard from the Lincoln on Aug. 3, was in the water for roughly an hour before an air-wing helicopter pulled them out, and was medically evacuated off the ship; the Navy privately calls it a mental health episode. His wife told MS NOW the Navy didn’t notify her for four days. She found out when one of his shipmates messaged her, and says the command “handled it very poorly… they’re just trying to cover this up.” When families packed a town hall at North Island on Aug. 6 and pressed acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, they were told the sailor was back aboard and “fine,” a response that drew jeers. The ship has now been at sea over 250 days, more than 200 without a port call, a record. This is what an “indefinitely extended” deployment (i.e., Forever War) does to human beings.

⭐ Democratic senators demand answers about conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln – CBS News

Democratic leaders in Congress are not going to let anyone off the hook. Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote Hegseth and the acting Navy secretary demanding a formal accounting of “shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns” and mail so backed up that care packages have been lost for months. Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq Veteran, is pushing for a bipartisan oversight visit to the carrier, writing: “Unlike Donald Trump, I’ve seen active duty. The way he’s treating our service members as he carries out this illegal war is not just disgusting; it’s dangerous.” Rep. Seth Moulton, also an Iraq Vet, called the reports “horrific” and said his committee will investigate, adding the obvious: a commander in chief who mocks troops for mental-health struggles and a defense secretary “more focused on testosterone tests than actually keeping our troops alive” is how you get here. Hegseth responded to reporters that the situation has been “misrepresented,” apparently meaning by the families of those on the ship.

⭐ The VA’s Largest Community Care Administrator Has a Mental Health Problem – Health Care un-covered

Mental wounds of war long outlast the wars themselves. As the VA sheds its own mental-health staff (351 psychologists, 717 social workers, and roughly 200 psychiatrist positions cut since January 2025) even as 700,000 more veterans have been rated with service-connected mental-health conditions, it’s leaning ever harder on a private network run largely by UnitedHealth’s Optum. This investigation found Optum bought up 70 behavioral-health companies and partially or completely shut down half of them, steering veterans to telehealth “by default because nothing else is offered.” Worse, the VA made the MISSION Act’s quality training voluntary, so more than 8,000 veterans flagged as active suicide risks were referred to community providers with zero recorded suicide-prevention training. This is a must-read investigation for anyone who cares about the mental health of those who put their lives on the line for us.

⭐ Iran rejects Trump’s claim to ‘control’ Hormuz: What’s the latest in talks? – Al Jazeera

There’s still no deal even though we were told one was a day away. Iran flatly rejected Trump’s boast that Washington has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the waterway stays closed until the U.S. lifts the blockade, drops sanctions and “changes its behavior.” The June 60-day memorandum that was supposed to keep Hormuz open expires next week with nothing to replace it. Six months into the “four-week war” that was going to obliterate Iran’s capabilities and even result in regime change and a free Iran, and we’re now blowing past deadlines to come to an agreement to open a strait that was open before this all started.

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IMPORTANT: If you or a service member or veteran you know is struggling,
the Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and available 24/7:
dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255.

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⭐ Multiple USS Abraham Lincoln sailors have tried to go overboard amid extended deployment, families say – Military Times

This is the human cost of an open-ended war, and it’s hard to read. The USS Abraham Lincoln left home in November on what was meant to be a seven-month deployment; nine months later, after five straight weeks of combat operations off Iran and only a single brief port call, multiple sailors have reportedly tried to go over the side, and families say others are barely holding on. One wife described her husband hauling a shipmate back onto the deck; another said hers messaged that he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.” The Navy says it hasn’t identified any rise in suicidal ideation aboard. The relief carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, is being readied — with no date attached. If you or someone you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and available 24/7: dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.

⭐ Marines must update religious affiliation as service slashes list to 30 options – Military Times

Marines now have until Sept. 30 to re-declare their faith from a list Hegseth’s Pentagon cut from more than 200 options down to 30, 21 of which are Christian denominations. Humanists, Unitarians, and a long tail of minority beliefs simply vanish into a catch-all “other religion” bucket, which matters because those codes are how chaplains plan services for the troops who hold them. The Pentagon calls it streamlining. But the practical effect is that a smaller and more Christian-shaped list of faiths is now what the military recognizes. A reminder that we’ve also covered how religious discrimination complaints no longer will be allowed to be made anonymously in the military. Hegseth’s vision for religion in the military is radically different than what existed when he walked in the door.

⭐ Roughly 250 active duty soldiers are fighting a wildfire in Washington state – Task & Purpose

A reminder that our military aren’t just war fighters: about 250 soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord are on the line of the Modrite Fire in eastern Washington. That fire has burned nearly 58,000 acres since July. The soldiers are organized into hand crews cutting and holding firebreaks alongside civilian wildland crews. It’s one slice of a brutal season that’s seen more than 45,000 wildfires scorch 5.4 million acres and pulled in hundreds of Guard members too.

⭐ U.S. and Iran close to a “peace arrangement or a deal,” Pakistan says – CBS News

Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday the U.S. and Iran are “close to some sort of an arrangement” on the Strait of Hormuz, but a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday there are no talks with Washington on extending the ceasefire because Tehran sees “nothing to extend.” Meanwhile, both sides keep hardening their terms and trading demands for reparations. Trump insists the U.S. now “controls” the strait. Iran says it stays shut until its conditions are met. Six months in, 18 dead, and “close to some sort of arrangement” on a strait that was open before Trump started the war is considered progress.

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