As of August 31, 2026, 18 American service members have been confirmed killed in the war with Iran. 757 have been officially wounded according to the Pentagon's DCAS database, with independent tallies putting the true number above 900. The war began on February 28 without congressional authorization, during active nuclear negotiations, and has now stretched more than six months.
The USS Abraham Lincoln left its home port of San Diego last November. By August, it had been at sea for more than 260 consecutive days, a modern-day record, without a port call. There are five thousand sailors and Marines aboard.
Families began raising alarms in August about the conditions on the ship. Navy Times and multiple other outlets reported food shortages, sewage overflowing into corridors, mold, water contamination, deteriorating laundry facilities, and dwindling hygiene supplies. Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth documenting the concerns in detail, including reports of lost mail and care packages that had been in transit for months.
On August 3, a sailor went overboard. Three US officials confirmed the incident to CNN. The sailor was wearing a life vest and was rescued within an hour, transferred off the ship for care. The Navy described it as a mental health episode. Multiple additional incidents of sailors attempting to jump overboard were reported by Navy Times. A service member told CNN in July that morale was "pretty low" because they hadn't stepped off the ship in months. "It's hard on your mental state," he said. "It takes a toll on you."
On August 14, reporters asked Trump at Joint Base Andrews whether the deployment had gone on too long, given what families and lawmakers were reporting about conditions aboard the ship. He said, "No, no, no. Not nearly long enough."
The wife of an officer serving on the Lincoln told Newsweek the comments were "selfish" and "disconnected from reality." "I don't think that we can lie our way out of what is so glaringly obvious with this ship," Ashley Rogers said. "When you put somebody to sea for 260-plus days without a day off, and you extend that deployment and don't give an end date, the mental health is going to suffer."
The same administration that sent those service members into an unauthorized war has spent the past 18 months systematically cutting the infrastructure built to care for them when they come home.
DOGE fired 2,400 VA employees and removed more than 6,000 veterans from federal jobs. The administration announced plans to eliminate up to 80,000 additional VA positions, nearly one in five of the department's total staff. More than 875 VA contracts were canceled, covering services including chemotherapy treatment, substance abuse recovery research, mental health evaluations, and toxic exposure screenings. Many of those contracts employed veteran-owned businesses.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran who lost both legs in Iraq and still receives her own care through the VA, called it "a middle finger to our veterans" and noted that Trump has fired more veterans than any other president in recent history. Congressman Chris Deluzio, a Navy and Iraq War veteran, said plainly: "They are trying to dismantle and weaken the VA so much that they have an excuse to sell it off to the highest bidder."
The Pentagon's chief spokesman described the majority of the 757 officially wounded as "minor concussions." The military has a long and documented history of minimizing traumatic brain injuries in casualty counts, the same minimization that left thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for years to have their TBIs officially recognized and treated. The VA that was supposed to treat them is now being staffed by fewer people, with fewer contracts, and a growing backlog of claims behind the staff that is no longer there to process them.
As of a March 2026 Rasmussen survey conducted with Veteran Action, 60% of likely military voters approve of Trump's job performance. In the 2024 election, 61% of veteran registered voters supported Trump according to Pew Research. That support is real, and it is rooted in something real: a sense of identity, of patriotism, of a culture the military reinforces in the people it trains, and a belief that Trump represents strength and respect for that culture.
That belief is being exploited by someone whose relationship to military service is worth looking at without blinders.
Trump received five draft deferments during the Vietnam era, four student deferments and a final medical deferment for bone spurs in his heels, confirmed by Selective Service records obtained by The New York Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Snopes. His former lawyer Michael Cohen testified under oath that Trump acknowledged faking the injury. The podiatrist who signed the diagnosis rented office space from Trump's father. The bone spurs, notably, did not prevent Trump from playing tennis and golf throughout the same period.
In 2020, The Atlantic published a multi-source investigation reporting that Trump had referred to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France as "losers" and the 1,800 Marines killed at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed. Trump denied the report. John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff and a retired four-star Marine general, publicly confirmed that Trump used those terms, and described a man who believed that people who serve and sacrifice are fools because "there is nothing in it for them."
This is the man who said 260 days at sea without a port call, with food shortages and sewage overflows and a sailor going overboard in a mental health crisis, was not nearly long enough.
I do not say any of this to tell veterans they are wrong, or stupid, or being manipulated in some simple way. The support for Trump in the military community is not irrational. It is the product of a decades-long cultural alignment between conservative politics and military identity that runs deep and is not easily unwound by facts alone. The same research we have cited throughout this series on motivated reasoning applies here as it applies everywhere else.
The troops in the Iran war did not choose the war. They went where they were sent, as they are trained and obligated to do. They deserve leadership that takes care of them while they are there, and a system that takes care of them when they come back. What they have instead is an administration that cut the VA while sending them into an unauthorized war, called their deployment not long enough when their families were begging for them to come home, and described their injuries as minor.
That is not what honoring them looks like. And the people who actually honor them should be saying so. Say their names. Refuse to let the performance of patriotism stand in for its practice.
Killed March 1, 2026 — Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait (drone attack):
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, Sacramento, California
Sgt. First Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, White Bear Lake, Minnesota
Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, Bellevue, Nebraska
Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, West Des Moines, Iowa
Maj. Jeffrey R. O'Brien, 45, Waukee, Iowa
Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, Winter Haven, Florida
Killed March 8, 2026 — Saudi Arabia (died of injuries from March 1):
Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, Glendale, California
Killed March 12, 2026 — Western Iraq (KC-135 crash):
Maj. John A. "Alex" Klinner, 33, Auburn, Alabama
Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, Covington, Washington
Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, Bardstown, Kentucky
Capt. Seth R. Koval, 38, Mooresville, Indiana
Capt. Curtis J. Angst, 30, Wilmington, Ohio
Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, 28, Columbus, Ohio
Killed July 17-18, 2026 — Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan:
1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, Ewa Beach, Hawaii
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales
Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, Ozone Park, New York
Killed July 19, 2026 — Erbil Air Base, Iraq:
Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, Fayetteville, North Carolina
