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Trump dismisses concerns about conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln, confirms replacement carrier
As he left Washington, Donald Trump dismissed the reports about the mental health crisis and living conditions on board USS Abraham Lincoln.
When he was asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation, the president said “no, they’re not.”
The vessel has now been on a record-breaking deployment for more than 250 days, but Trump said that it had not been at sea for too long. “Not nearly enough,” he said.
The president also confirmed that the USS Abraham Lincoln would now be replaced by another aircraft carrier. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the USS George Washington would be sent to relieve the Abraham Lincoln, after it was redirected to help with the military operation in Iran.
“That ship is moving right now or very shortly and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump said.
Key events
Trump administration begins bulldozing Big Bend national park for border wall construction
Roque Planas
Bulldozers have begun plowing up ground at the mouth of Big Bend national park’s famed Santa Elena Canyon as part of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar “smart wall” expansion on the US-Mexico border, according to new footage taken by activists who have been monitoring the site.
Tensions have run high since the Trump administration announced plans to erect new border security infrastructure in the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region of south-west Texas, which includes the Lone Star State’s largest and most-visited national park.
Since last week, activists have shared video footage that appeared to show heavy machinery laying the groundwork for new border infrastructure that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not announce and initially denied was happening. By Thursday, photographer Natalie Newman captured video footage of bulldozers plowing earth at the mouth of the Santa Elena Canyon, a frequently visited stretch of the Rio Grande flanked by 1,500ft cliffs.
“It’s just devastating,” said Laiken Jordahl, a public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “They’re bulldozing a brand new road through the most beloved stretch of the park.”
Democratic lawmakers have continued to criticize the Trump administration’s response to reports of distress on the USS Abraham Lincoln
Adam Schiff, the California senator wrote on X: “Listen to what Trump said about servicemembers suffering a lengthy deployment onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln… He said they have not been deployed ‘nearly long enough.’ Easy to say when you spend your time golfing at Mar-a-Lago.”
Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote: “Cadet Bone Spurs thinks he understands what happens on deployments,” making referene to the president’s 1968 medical draft exemption for bone spurs in his heels, which excused him from service during the Vietnam War.
Robert Mackey
On his way to New York earlier on Friday, Donald Trump approached reporters with a copy of a news headline he wanted them to see. Holding up a print-out of the headline, “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, the president waved the print-out around and encouraged the press pool to record and photograph it.
“The headline today is exactly that,” he said proudly. “Did you see it?”
He then read the good news aloud and held up the print-out again, which displayed the headline and the first five lines of the article, for the cameras. “Okay, got it? Everybody have it?” he asked.
What the president did not explain is that the text of the article, published by the Washington Post on Thursday, reported that while the Trump White House “took credit for” the biggest year-over-year drop in drug prices in more than 60 years in July, independent experts “said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs.”
“The Inflation Reduction Act was a signature accomplishment of former president Joe Biden, a sprawling measure enacted in 2022 that aimed to lower prescription drug prices by requiring Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, to begin negotiating the prices it pays drugmakers for an array of popular and costly prescription drugs,” the Post’s report noted. “The first price reductions took effect at the beginning of this year.”
The Post also quoted Richard Frank, a professor emeritus of health economics at Harvard University, expressing doubt Trump’s policies were behind the drop in drug prices.
“If I was a betting guy on what mattered most, it would be probably stuff around the Inflation Reduction Act,” Frank said, adding that Trump’s efforts “wouldn’t be where I’d place my money.”
A federal court in Nevada dismissed the Department of Justice’s case seeking to compel states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls.
The court was the 22nd consecutive court to reject the Trump administration’s campaign to obtain private data in its efforts to find evidence of voter fraud.
The administration has not found any substantial evidence of fraud, and critics and election experts have said the effort to obtain voter information is another attempt to sow distrust in the system.
The DOJ has sued sued 30 states and Washington DC to try to force secretaries of state to hand over the data.
On Friday, US district judge Anne Traum said she was “joining every other court to have addressed the issue so far” in her ruling.
Here’s more background on the administration’s effort, and why even red states are pushing back:
Acting navy chief echoes denials of mental health crisis on US aircraft carrier
The acting secretary of the navy, Hung Cao, again denied poor conditions and a mental health crisis on board USS Abraham Lincoln.
“The USS Abraham Lincoln crushed their deployment and will return home soon as part of a planned rotation,” Cao said in a post on X. “Unfortunately, the media are trying to paint our warriors as victims.”
Here’s more from my colleague Edward Pilkington, who reported on the crisis aboard the aircraft carrier:
Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.
Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.
The families’ worries were expressed directly to navy leadership, represented at the town hall by the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, and other top officials.
A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported.
The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended.
“He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.
The paper quoted another sailor’s wife whose husband was involved in a separate incident onboard the Lincoln in which he prevented a fellow crew member from jumping, grabbing them and bringing them back on deck.
Trump has wrapped up his speech to to law enforcement on Long Island.
He wrapped up with his usual refrains against DEI. As he left the stage, he told Fox News on Iran: “We’re capable of destroying the whole place. If they hit, we would hit back 100 times harder.”
‘Pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States’: Trump continues to tout success over Iran
Trump insisted that his administration is “bringing the prices way down” despite the fact that the latest data says that overall inflation is up 3.4%, compared to a year ago.
He repeated his frequent claims that Iran “is being very badly defeated”, despite the fact that a peace deal remains elusive. “Pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States.”
The president also brushed off the hike in US gas prices while addressing law enforcement officers in Long Island: “So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK … I mean, I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.”
The president also touted his executive order that directs the justice department to the pursue the death penalty for anyone convicted of killing a law enforcement officer.
However, it’s worth noting that Donald Trump issued pardons for more than 1,500 people involved in the January 6 insurrection, including those who assaulted Capitol police officers.
When he returned to the White House last year, Trump also directed the justice department to dismiss all pending indictments against people related to the Capitol riots.
Fact-checking Trump’s claims about DC crime
At his remarks in Long Island, Donald Trump said that Washington DC is now “one of the safest cities” in the country, claiming that “crime is down 81%”.
However, total crime in the nation’s capital is actually only down by 20% at the point in 2026, compared to last year, according to data compiled by the DC police department.
Digging in further – assault with a dangerous weapon increased by 40% compared to this time last year in Washington DC. And overall violent crime is actually up 4% compared to this point in 2025.
Trump has often taken credit for the crime reduction in DC, after a spike in 2023. But violent crime actually dropped by 29% between 2024 and 2025 – at the end of the Biden administration.
A reminder that Trump addressed law enforcement in Long Island back in 2017, in a now infamous speech.
At the time he talking about his crackdown on foreign gang members to an audience of police officers and the relatives of victims of crime in Brentwood.
The president spoke dismissively of arresting officers who protect suspects’ heads while putting them in police cars.
“And when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon,” he said, “you just see ’em thrown in, rough.”
Trump added: “I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting the head. You know? The way you put the hand over [the head], like ‘don’t hit their head’ and they’ve just killed somebody.”
“I said, ‘You can take the hand away,’ OK?”
Press secretary Karoline Levitt briefed reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New York, saying they expect thousands at today’s event and a heavy law‑enforcement presence. She noted that attorney general Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel will attend.
Levitt declined to get ahead of treasury secretary Scott Bessent, but said the administration has “more tools” to “continue punishing Iran and crippling their economy.”
She also said keeping gas prices low and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon are “equally important” to the president – a shift from Trump’s recent focus on ending Tehran’s nuclear ambitions even if prices at the pump rise temporarily.
“We want to keep gas prices low,” Levitt said. “But also ensuring Iran can never get a nuclear weapon is the president’s priority with respect to the ongoing conflict.”
The national average for a gallon of gas is now just over $4, per AAA – nearly a dollar higher than this time last year.
Richard Luscombe
People detained at an overcrowded federal immigration camp in Mississippi were sickened by a mystery gas leak, then denied medical care when they complained of headaches and other symptoms, it has been alleged.
A lengthy power outage at Adams county detention center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility run by the private operator CoreCivic, also left it without air conditioning for two days this week, according to one detainee who contacted the Guardian through his family.
As a result, he said, people detained there were forced to spend hours outside in near 100F heat in blazing sunshine and with no shade, or left to swelter inside in cramped cells.
Tensions at the center, he said, were rising, and more arguments and physical altercations were taking place between people there, leaving him and others fearful of violence that he said inadequate staffing levels would not be able to handle.
The allegations come as a third person who was held in ICE custody at the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey, run by the GEO Group, another government contractor, was reported to have died; and an inspection report of the Adams county facility in Natchez found 23 violations of use-of-force or restraint standards.
Read the full report here:
Here’s a recap of the day so far
The Trump administration has asked the US supreme court to allow construction of his controversial $400m White House ballroom to proceed after an appeals court ordered work to halt. In a case testing Donald Trump’s presidential authority, the Washington-based US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit ruled last week that the controversial project lacked the necessary approval from US Congress.
It’s worth noting that the appeals court ruling blocks the above-ground construction of the ballroom, but would allow the work on the underground security structure to continue. However, the government argues that “every part” of the project is “an integrated whole geared toward remedying security deficiencies and bringing critical improvements to the White House”. The administration add in its filing to the court: “The entire ballroom structure is designed to shield the military installation beneath it.”
Also today, Trump dismissed the reports about the mental health crisis and living conditions on board USS Abraham Lincoln. When he was asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation, the president said “no, they’re not.”The vessel has now been on a record-breaking deployment for more than 250 days, but Trump said that it had not been at sea for too long. “Not nearly enough,” he said. The president also confirmed that the USS Abraham Lincoln would now be replaced by another aircraft carrier.
A woman was arrested on Friday morning in connection with the vandalization of the second world war memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC, the capital’s federal prosecutor announced. Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, announced mid-morning that a suspect was in custody and the justice department is filing two felony charges against her. The memorial had graffiti scrawled on it and the pool polluted with soapy bubbles. The woman accused appears to have live streamed the incident on Facebook. More here
Trump is now en route to New York, where he’ll deliver remarks on public safety in Long Island at 3pm ET.
The reporters traveling with the president today note that his outgoing press secretary Karoline Leavitt is on board Air Force One today. Trump has yet to announce Leavitt’s replacement.
Trump dismisses concerns about conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln, confirms replacement carrier
As he left Washington, Donald Trump dismissed the reports about the mental health crisis and living conditions on board USS Abraham Lincoln.
When he was asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation, the president said “no, they’re not.”
The vessel has now been on a record-breaking deployment for more than 250 days, but Trump said that it had not been at sea for too long. “Not nearly enough,” he said.
The president also confirmed that the USS Abraham Lincoln would now be replaced by another aircraft carrier. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the USS George Washington would be sent to relieve the Abraham Lincoln, after it was redirected to help with the military operation in Iran.
“That ship is moving right now or very shortly and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump said.
