1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

Pete Hegseth needs to be held accountable for the crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, and I want you to demand it publicly. Multiple sailors have attempted to go overboard during a deployment now past 260 days — one of the longest in modern Navy history. Hegseth's response to every report of broken toilets, moldy showers, and meals of half a cup of rice and two tortillas has been to call it "fake news." That is not leadership. That is negligence. Hegseth himself once declared his job was "warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness." By his own standard, he is failing catastrophically. The Pentagon is spending hundreds of billions on the Iran war while simultaneously raiding maintenance and training budgets to cover costs — the exact funds needed to keep ships and crews functional. The USS Gerald R. Ford set the modern deployment record before Lincoln, plagued by the same failures. This is a pattern, not a fluke. Sen. Blumenthal has already sent a formal inquiry. I want you to add your voice. Call for a congressional investigation into conditions aboard Lincoln, demand a full accounting of war costs, and push for Hegseth's removal if he refuses to answer. Manuel Guevara said he fears "the circumstances of this deployment will get the best of my son." No family should carry that burden because a Defense Secretary would rather dismiss the truth than fix it.