Rep. Jason Crow said Friday that reports of sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln running short of food and basic supplies nine months into a deployment tied to the Iran war demand immediate bipartisan attention. “Sailors on the USS Lincoln are running out of food & basic supplies,” Crow wrote on X. “It’s completely unacceptable.” Crow, a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, made the comments while sharing video of his appearance on MS NOW’s “Deadline White House.”
What Families Are Actually Describing
Crow’s comments responded to MS NOW’s reporting, which spoke with a dozen family members of Lincoln crew members. Families described moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry facilities down for weeks, and periods with no hot water. One mother, Nicole Conrad, said her son reported a meal consisting of half a cup of rice and two tortillas, and described standing in line at the ship’s store for over an hour only to find it lacking basic items like toothpaste, deodorant, and soap. “The morale is not good,” said Bonnie York, whose stepson serves on the Lincoln. “Apparently, the ship’s doctor or therapist said they need to hit port soon or people are going to start, you know, losing their minds.”
How Long the Ship Has Actually Been at Sea
The scale of the deployment underlying these complaints is substantial. According to USNI News’ independently maintained Fleet and Marine Tracker, which monitors the real-time positions of deployed Navy strike groups, the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group has been operating in the Arabian Sea in support of Operation Epic Fury for months. The Lincoln left its home port of San Diego on November 21, and as of early August had been at sea for more than 250 days with only two days in port — a brief stop in Guam in December and a call in Oman on July 7 after 208 continuous days at sea, which MS NOW reported as a modern-day record for a Navy aircraft carrier. The deployment, originally expected to last around seven months, has now been extended twice with no announced return date.
The Navy’s Official Response
Cmdr. Joseph Hontz, spokesperson for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, acknowledged real strain while disputing the most serious characterizations. “They have occasionally run low on certain supplies for brief time periods, but Abraham Lincoln and all ships in theater currently have an adequate supply of food and supplies to sustain operations,” Hontz told MS NOW, adding that fresh fruits and vegetables have been especially difficult to deliver because they spoil during transit. He disputed reports of holes in the flight deck, said any water issues were quickly addressed, and noted that “on a floating city with thousands of sailors and Marines on board, lines for meals and certain services do occasionally build up,” while stating leadership has adjusted meal and store hours by squadron to reduce wait times.
A Second Round of Denials, Following an Earlier One in April
This is not the first time the Pentagon has pushed back on reports about conditions aboard the Lincoln. In April, after USA Today published photos family members said showed inadequate meal portions — including, according to Newsweek’s coverage of the images, a tray showing little more than a tortilla and shredded meat — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote: “The U.S. Navy is correct. More FAKE NEWS from the Pharisee Press. My team confirmed the logistics stats for the Lincoln & Tripoli. Both have 30+ days of Class I supplies (food) on board. NavCent monitors this everyday, for every ship. Our sailors deserve — and receive — the best.” The Navy’s Office of the Chief of Naval Operations issued a parallel statement at the time calling the reports “false” and saying both ships had “sufficient food onboard to serve their crews with healthy options.” A subsequent Snopes review of the photos said it could not independently confirm their authenticity, while noting the Navy’s denial was official and on the record. Families told MS NOW in August that those April denials were wrong and that concerns about nutrition have persisted.
What Crow Said About Republican Silence
In his MS NOW interview, Crow argued that Republican reluctance to publicly criticize the administration on this issue reflects political fear rather than disagreement over the facts. “House Republicans are too scared of Donald Trump to speak up and to criticize Pete Hegseth and this administration,” Crow said. “Every time we have a House Armed Services Committee hearing or an intelligence hearing and we point these issues out… they come back and they accuse us of politicizing it.” He added: “What we need is a few Republicans of character and courage to speak up and say, ‘No, this is not a political issue. This is an objective national security issue, a health, welfare, and fairness issue for our troops.'”
Crow’s Broader Allegation About Reprogrammed Funding
Crow went further than criticizing the deployment conditions themselves, alleging that money Congress specifically appropriated for troop welfare has been redirected elsewhere. “They’re literally stealing money from pots of funding that Congress has allocated for wellness for our troops and their families,” Crow said. “We allocated last year billions of dollars for construction of new barracks and new housing on our bases. This administration stole that money for Trump’s border wall… time and time again, they reprogram, they take money out of those pots that we put into welfare and quality of life for our troops and their families, and they allocate it to contingency operations for their endless war to border operations.”
Another Lawmaker From the Ship’s Home District Weighs In
Crow was not the only member of Congress to respond to the reporting. Rep. Sara Jacobs, who represents the Lincoln’s home port of San Diego and also serves on the House Armed Services Committee, told MS NOW she was concerned about the extended deployment’s mental health toll specifically. “I’m deeply worried about their exhaustion and mental health, because history has shown it can lead to serious consequences, including increased risk of suicide,” Jacobs said. “President Trump needs to end the Iran war now and bring our service members home.”
The Scale of Naval Deployment Behind This
The Lincoln’s strain reflects a broader surge in naval commitment to the Iran war. At its peak, the conflict involved three aircraft carriers in the region simultaneously — the first time that had happened in the Middle East since 2003 — accounting for more than 15,000 of the roughly 50,000 total service members deployed in support of the war effort this year. The USS Gerald R. Ford separately set the record for the longest post-Vietnam carrier deployment at 326 days, after supporting the operation that captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before joining the initial Iran strikes.
Even Veterans Who Supported the War Are Frustrated
Some family members who spoke to MS NOW described real ambivalence about the war itself despite having voted for Trump. Conrad said she voted for Trump but was frustrated by his decision to go to war with Iran: “He put our nose in a war that we shouldn’t be in.” Bonnie York, who lives in Idaho, said she supported Trump specifically because he pledged not to start new wars: “I really hope that going to this war was worth it. Because I don’t feel like it was… I don’t think we’re safer. I think we’ve depleted a lot of things. I think we’ve pushed our military to the edge.”
What the Ships Have Actually Been Doing
The carrier air wings, including the Lincoln’s, have supported strikes on Iranian ballistic missile facilities, air defense systems, and drone production sites, while the strike groups have separately helped enforce a naval blockade — intercepting vessels bound for Iranian ports and disabling those that refuse to comply — and, at points, supported Project Freedom, a defensive operation protecting commercial shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Where This Leaves Things
As of Crow’s Friday post, the Lincoln remained deployed with no announced return date, the Navy maintained that supply shortages have been brief and manageable rather than systemic, and Crow’s central political argument — that Republican lawmakers have avoided treating the deployment conditions as a bipartisan oversight matter — remained, by his own account, unanswered by any Republican colleague willing to break from the administration’s position on the record.