Families of Sailors Detail Horrific Conditions as Iran War Drags On

Families are coming forward with reports about poor conditions their relatives are facing on U.S. military ships after the Trump administration tried to downplay initial reports from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

One mother told journalist Jim Acosta that her son, a sailor aboard the USS Tripoli, is dealing with low food and hygiene supplies, losing more than 30 pounds in just four months.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego rebuked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over his dismissal of conditions aboard the Lincoln, saying Thursday that he was communicating with a military spouse who was forwarding her husband’s text messages.

“Stop lying and fix the problem,” Gallego admonished Hegseth.

The Lincoln is experiencing multiple issues, including plumbing problems, disruptions with mail delivery, food shortages, and supply shortages, straining the discipline and mental health of sailors on board the ship to the point that some have tried to jump off. One military wife, whose husband jumped overboard, told MS NOW Thursday that her spouse was in the water for about an hour before he was rescued, and she wasn’t told about the incident until four days later.

“I think that it was handled very poorly because they didn’t inform me and they didn’t want me to know, and they’re just trying to cover this up,” the spouse told the network anonymously. She’s waiting for his return to the U.S. after he was medically evacuated off of the ship, and said she had difficulty staying in regular contact with him, an aircraft mechanic on his first deployment, because the ship’s internet connection is unstable.

One text message she did receive from him states:

“i think the boat is finally getting to me and i really dont think i can keep up my peace act anymore, you are right about it all not being okay, we were supposed to leave 5th fleet on july 15th but then something had to come up and my last hope of being home soon was gone, im really trying to not feel negative or hopeless but between the wifi and not knowing when i will come home and not knowing what is happening back at home, its really getting me, i dont think i can do another deployment after this and i dont even know if i can finish this deployment.”

The parent of another sailor on the Lincoln told MeidasTouch that the toilets backed up on the ship just before their son finished his deployment on board. “Overflowing, there was about half a foot of human waste throughout the floor in the restrooms,” the parent said via text.

And another person, whose brother’s fiancee served aboard the USS George H. W. Bush, told MeidasTouch that that carrier was struggling with supply levels.

“They have virtually no food, water, or soap,” the person said.

Andrew Tate’s lawyer is spamming X with absurd AI-generated images in a last ditch effort to convince the public of the alleged pimp, sex trafficker, and rapist’s innocence. 

Joe McBride, a defense attorney who has represented multiple January 6 insurrectionists, has posted multiple fake pictures of Andrew and Tristan Tate—who are currently in Miami awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom—in prison. They wear orange prison jumpsuits and are often residing in comically disgusting conditions. 

“The conditions Andrew and Tristan Tate are being held in are a disgrace. Small filthy cell. Cockroaches. Shower water to drink. No chair. Lights they cannot control. Food that makes Taco Bell look like a Michelin restaurant. Beds too small for men who are 6’3” and 6’5”,” McBride wrote in one post. “Three days outside since the day they were locked up. This is not punishment after conviction. It is illegal punishment that violates their constitutional and human rights.” 

Prosecutors have contested McBride’s description of conditions, writing that “while FDC Miami is not a ⁠Marriott, the Tates’ conditions of confinement are reasonable, constitutional and within BOP’s discretion.”

Another depicts the brothers in those same orange jumpsuits, meditating while sitting in the lotus position.

And perhaps the strangest one shows McBride and the Tate brothers sitting in some dingy room surrounded by Elon Musk, George Washington, Joe Rogan, and  John F. Kennedy, among others. The words “sovereignty,” “masculinity,” “conquer,” “manosphere,” and “power” are on the walls.

“THE MANOSPHERE BUILT WESTERN SOCIETY. MEN ARE THE WARRIORS, THE FATHERS, THE PRIESTS, THE PRESIDENTS, THE GENERALS, THE BUILDERS. EVERY WAR FOUGHT AND EVERY CATHEDRAL RAISED WAS THE WORK OF A MAN,” McBride wrote in all caps last week. “THE RECORD IS NOT IN DISPUTE. TESTOSTERONE IS NECESSARY. LONG LIVE MEN.”

McBride told Mother Jones’s Anna Merlan that the AI-generated images were actually all part of his plan.

“Strategically, a picture is worth 1,000 words,” he said—a claim that could only be taken seriously if those pictures didn’t look extremely stupid and fake. 

McBride is rallying and having Tate supporters do pushups outside of the Miami Detention Center because he’s trying to cast the brothers as these independent free thinkers who are victims of a politically biased UK government. In reality they are glorified internet pimps who have been hit with seven rape charges, three counts of sex trafficking, three counts of assault with bodily harm, and 19 charges for child and extreme pornography—absolutely abhorrent accusations. 

And Tate wasn’t just some ambiguously right wing, manpsphere poster. He literally ran an online course to “free the modern man from socially induced incarceration” and get followers to recruit women into their “sexual slavery” schemes to obtain their Ph.D.—“Pimping Hoes Degree.” It cost $8,000 per year. 

“You have to fuck them, and they have to love you. It’s essential to the business,” Tate said in one of the courses. “You have to be militant with your fucking pimping.”

“Bang out the machete, boom in her face, then grip her up by the neck,” he said in another clip. “The machete’s on the floor, her panties are all wet, and you go fuck her. That’s how it goes. Slap, slap, grab, choke. Shut up, bitch. Sex.”

The brothers have a pretrial hearing on August 27. 

Donald Trump’s Treasury Department doesn’t want law enforcement to be able to “follow the money.”

The Treasury Department announced Friday that it would destroy the government’s registry on shell company ownership, a database law enforcement uses to investigate money laundering and corruption, The Bulwark reported.

In addition to scaling back requirements for shell companies to submit basic information to the federal government, the new rule will also destroy all the data it has already collected.

The Corporate Transparency Act, passed in the final days of Trump’s first administration, legally requires the Treasury Department to maintain this registry. Trump had previously exempted domestic companies and U.S. citizens—99 percent of the entities previously required to report—from data collection under the CTA. The Treasury Department’s latest move has made that decision permanent.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is already selling the decision as a favor to small businesses.

“Today’s action is a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement. “President Trump promised to cut red tape, and this final rule delivers. Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”

Before the CTA was passed, the United States stood at the center of the world of offshore finance, being the primary location where narco-traffickers, arms dealers, and others chose to wash their illicit money clean. Now, Trump wants to bring all that back.

Trump isn’t alone in delivering a massive gift to grifters, cartels, and kleptocrats. Republicans are in on it, too. In April, Trump’s allies on the House Financial Services committee pushed through a measure that would repeal the requirement that U.S. shells divulge their true owners. In May, Senate Republicans introduced similar legislation, aiming to attach it to the broader defense bill set to be passed later this year. Neither bill has passed a full vote.

Since reentering office, Trump has only made it harder for law enforcement to crack down on certain financial crimes. In addition to eliminating the task forces on kleptocrats, pausing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and gutting the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the president has also pardoned dozens of white collar criminals.

Politicians from both parties are crossing the aisle to voice their opposition to President Trump’s bulldozing of Big Bend National Park to make way for more wall along the southern border.

Big Bend is a sprawling, 800,000 acre park within Texas’s Rio Grande Valley that’s been frequented by hikers and campers since it opened in 1944. The park is so beautiful and so significant that even the most pro-border wall conservatives are setting aside their views to defend it.

“I believe in border security 100%,” Terrell County Republican Sheriff and former Border Patrol agent Thaddeus Cleveland said to Fox San Antonio. “Believe in even installation of barriers where they’re needed. But I can tell you that specific area ... even just what they’ve done, unnecessary.”

The Trump administration has been bulldozing to place 17 miles of barriers, surveillance, and sensors along the mouth of the Santa Elena Canyon. The plan was initially “a bold line of wall structure along the floodplain of most of the Rio Grande in the high desert region of Far West Texas,” as laid out in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. But that was shelved after local protest.

Another thing both Democrats and Republicans agree on is that Big Bend’s mountains already function as a natural deterrent for migrants.

“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States,” Republican Senator John Cornyn wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin last week. “Many residents that live and work around the parks are also concerned that a physical wall, which would be accompanied by lighting systems, access roads, and maintenance corridors, would (1) ruin the beauty, landscape, and wildlife of the park, (2) threaten culturally significant Native American sites, (3) disrupt wildlife migration, (4) limit access to the Rio Grande River, and (5) significantly harm the local economy as tourism is a major economic driver for the region.”

“God already built a wall through Big Bend—it’s called the Chisos Mountains,” Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico added. “We don’t need to give billions of our tax dollars to out of state vendors. We don’t need to desecrate this sacred land. We don’t need this useless, disgraceful, corrupt Big Bend border wall.”

“We have an obligation to secure our border, but Big Bend’s rugged, unforgiving terrain already serves as a natural, God-given barrier that deters illegal crossings. The border crossing data already confirms this,” Texas Representative Drew Darby said. “The federal government has immediate access to smart barrier technologies that increase interdiction rates without bulldozing through Texas’ most scenic and irreplaceable landscapes. DHS can and should use these alternative methods and stop the bulldozing now.”

Republicans still seem to have a (Theodore) Rooseveltian sense of justice when it comes to National Parks and lands, which might cause problems for President Trump as he continues to attack America’s defining landscapes, removing protections from over 86 million acres of public lands to free it up for drilling and wall-building.

Donald Trump is once again freaking out about vandals at a national monument. Here’s why you shouldn’t take his outrage seriously.

The president took to Truth Social Friday morning to rave about an incident at the World War II Memorial, which had been covered in red and green graffiti and soapy bubbles.

“Our beautiful World War II Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals,” Trump wrote. “THERE CAN BE NO GREATER INSULT TO THOSE AMERICAN HEROES WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR II. First the Reflecting Pool, now this. We are on their trail! Where do these animals come from???”

Beneath the memorial’s arch, red graffiti spelled out the message “Clean hands dirty $,” and the memorial’s fountains were also filled with soapy bubbles.

Shortly after Trump’s post, U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro announced that one alleged vandal was already in custody, and included photographs of the suspect.

The Friends of the National World War II Memorial said it was “deeply disturbed by the reported vandalism,” and the Interior Department called the incident an “utter disgrace.”

While the recent vandalism is blatantly disrespectful to the memorial’s honorees and their families, Trump’s outrage is entirely disingenuous.

If anyone started a trend of “vandalism,” it was Trump and his hand-picked federal contractors. Not only were they responsible for the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but they left the monument drained and surrounded by chain-link fences. Trump’s federal contractors were also also responsible for cracking the fountain at the German-American Friendship Garden. Where is the president’s outrage about that?

Still, the president has used stories about alleged vandalism to stir up a frenzy of public outrage in order to antagonize his critics and increase surveillance in Washington, D.C. Notably, this high-profile vandalism has taken place more than a year after deploying the National Guard to literally clean up the nation’s capital.

If Trump wants to get personally involved in protecting America’s landmarks, maybe he should turn his attention to the bulldozers at Big Bend National Park—instead, he’s annoyed about graffiti.