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8 Sailors In Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide During Lengthy Deployment: Acting Navy Secretary

Eight sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln's carrier strike group attempted suicide during a deployment that ran 286 days at sea, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has told Congress, weeks after the administration waved off reports of deteriorating conditions aboard the carrier.

The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) aircraft carrier departs Laem Chabang Port in Si Racha, Thailand, on on Sept. 6, 2026. Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty Images

In a Sept. 22 letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cao said the attempts occurred across the strike group since the Lincoln deployed in November 2025, including the carrier's crew, its air wing, the escorting destroyers and embarked squadrons. None of the attempts was fatal. The Lincoln operated in the Middle East from January, supported U.S. forces through the war with Iran, and was relieved last month by the USS George Washington.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in August that conditions aboard had been "completely misrepresented." That came after reports of rising suicide risk, food rationing, and broken laundry and toilet facilities. U.S. Central Command also called reports of a spike in suicidal thoughts false, along with a report that seven sailors had died in a fight aboard the carrier.

As The Epoch Times notes further, Gillibrand accused the Trump administration of failing to take care of service members.

"What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members," Gillibrand said in a statement on Sept. 24.

"Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect."

Cao's letter to Gillibrand came in response to a letter that Gillibrand and a group of 14 other lawmakers sent to Hegseth last month demanding answers on the conditions of the Lincoln.

The sailors assigned to the Lincoln strike group "demonstrated exceptional resolve under demanding conditions," Cao said.

"Operational decisions to extend deployments are never made lightly; they are driven by dynamic global security environments and absolute necessity of protecting U.S. national security interests and our personnel and our allies abroad," he wrote.

Cao told Gillibrand that the Lincoln was deployed with five chaplains, three behavioral health technicians, one clinical social worker, one psychologist, one embedded integrated prevention counselor, and one expeditionary facility dog.

The acting Navy secretary also noted that a sailor assigned to the air wing went overboard in early August but was quickly recovered, received medical treatment, and was transferred off ship for additional care. In addition, another sailor had previously attempted to go overboard in March but was stopped by other sailors, Cao said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the Trump administration for not reporting the number of suicide attempts sooner.

"There has been no administration that is less transparent," he told reporters on Sept. 24.

Warner said that while U.S. sailors will "do their job," they typically expect a six-month deployment.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Pentagon and the Navy for comment and did not receive a response before publication time.

Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 17:20

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New Mexico's "Free" Childcare Program Is Another Costly Disaster

Authored by Paul Gessing via The Pacific Research Institute,

National media outlets which rarely report on any news from New Mexico were eager to report on the big news this past November that the Land of Enchantment had become the first state to have a "free" universal childcare program.

Other states may head down the same path, but before they do they need to know exactly what was done in New Mexico, why so many other similar programs created in New Mexico have failed over the years, and what unique circumstances have enabled the state's politicians to create a massive new entitlement program without legislative approval.

Many progressives see these programs as a way to help the urban poor in particular, but they often crowd out private alternatives and leave lower-income residents with fewer childcare options. They deplete budgets that would provide necessary public services, and keep states from embracing policies that improve their overall economies and business climate.

For starters, this childcare program came out of left field. In New Mexico's 2025 legislative session, the hot topic for my organization, the Rio Grande Foundation, and the business community was stopping an onerous paid family leave program. We won that battle.

No lawmaker introduced a single bill that year in the state's Democratic-controlled Legislature for taxpayer-funded daycare, but in September 2025 Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham outlined her own plans for a brand-new taxpayer-funded entitlement program: universal free childcare. According to legislative analysts, the program is estimated to cost $850 million annually to start.

The governor changed New Mexico's childcare program from one that covered families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($132,000 in 2026) to a universal benefit. The Legislature finally ratified the program in the following year's 2026 session, but the big political problem was having the governor unilaterally create a new government entitlement. That creates a dangerous precedent.

As an aside, the reason New Mexico can pay for this program - at least for now - is the unprecedented oil and gas boom in Southeastern New Mexico's Permian Basin, which it shares with Texas. The boom, which has lasted nearly a decade, has not done much for New Mexico's economy because lawmakers have either spent the largesse on universal pre-K, K-12, free college, and now free daycare - or they have stuffed it into the state's massive sovereign wealth fund, valued at $75 billion and growing fast.

Politics aside, the measure raises serious policy questions. Will this improve New Mexico's dismal outcomes for children? The state routinely ranks at the very bottom in terms of child outcomes nationally. Yet no evidence has been presented to that effect by the governor or legislators when they finally did get around to debating the program.

Barring improved conditions for children, will it lead to an increase in women in the workforce? So far, that is hard to see as New Mexico's already dismal workforce participation rate has actually dropped from 57.6% in November 2026 when free childcare started, to 56.9% as of June 2026.

Minnesota may have received the biggest national headlines with its "learning centers," but, unlike New Mexico's childcare program, Minnesota's program is not free to the user. It is also limited to low-income families and only 22,000 children participate. New Mexico's program is free to all participants, and it already serves 33,000 children before it became universal.

From an urban-policy perspective, California's similar experiment with free transitional kindergarten (TK), which often serves as a replacement for childcare, might be instructive. "Many advocates hoped the move would ease childcare shortages and close learning gaps between rich and poor," according to a 2025 article in the Hechinger Report. Instead, a UC Berkeley study looking at results in Los Angeles found that more than 150 private childcare centers subsequently shuttered.

These mostly served lower-income residents, whereas the "biggest beneficiaries" of the publicly funded program were children in the city's wealthiest neighborhoods. The best theory is the new program "siphoned 4-year-olds away from community childcare centers and private preschools" and existing "centers lost revenue when children left, and it wasn't easy to pivot to serving younger toddlers or infants," per the article. The taxpayer-funded program destroyed the economics of childcare centers, thus leaving the urban poor with fewer options.

Broadly speaking, these costly state-funded programs put an enormous strain on the state's budget, thus precluding lawmakers from passing tax cuts and economic reforms that are geared towards growing and diversifying New Mexico's economy and funding basic services. Between Nov. 1, 2025 and the end of New Mexico's fiscal year in July, the program was running a deficit of approximately $83 million.

Two whistleblowers have come forward claiming they were retaliated against for calling out these deficits. The Early Childhood Education and Care Department's chief financial officer, Carmel Pacheco-Aragon, filed suit, alleging she was placed on administrative leave after reporting on the shortfall and warning about improper fund transfers without legislative approval.

The department's former budget director, Kimberly Gonzales, filed a subsequent lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated for publicly reporting that the department as a whole was facing a $258 million shortfall, driven by the state's new universal childcare program. Nevertheless, in July New Mexico's Supreme Court ratified the program without so much as a hearing.

While other blue states will undoubtedly look at the idea, I don't expect many of them to follow through with it due to the steep cost. Will New Mexico's program be a beacon for other states to shoot for in the future or yet another costly disaster by one of the most poorly run states in America? My money is on the latter, but only time will tell.

Paul Gessing is president of the Rio Grande Foundation, an Albuquerque-based think tank focused on the importance of individual freedom, limited government and economic opportunity.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 17:00

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California Supreme Court Orders Sheriff To Return 650,000 Seized Redistricting Referendum Ballots

California's Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to hand back roughly 650,000 ballots he seized from last November's Proposition 50 special election, and to halt his criminal investigation into the vote. Proposition 50, approved on Nov. 4, 2025, authorized a Legislature-drawn congressional map favorable to Democrats for 2026 through 2030.

An election worker moves mail-in ballots to be organized for tabulation at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center during California's state primary election in the City of Industry, Calif., on June 2, 2026. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP

Bianco, a Republican who lost this year's gubernatorial primary, opened the probe after a local group, the Riverside Election Integrity Team, compared handwritten precinct intake logs with the certified count and alleged a gap of 45,896 votes. He obtained search warrants and seized the ballots in around 1,000 boxes. Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco says the group misread the data and the actual gap was 103.

Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, writing for a unanimous court, called the seizure "unlawful." In Cervantes v. Bianco and a companion case, Bonta v. Bianco, the court held that state law requires ballots to remain in election officials' custody even during a criminal investigation, and that Bianco must obey Attorney General Rob Bonta's order to pause his probe.

As The Epoch Times notes further, the court ordered the sheriff to return the ballots "forthwith," handle them only as needed to comply with the court's order, take no further action on the November 2025 special election investigation pending Bonta's review, and provide materials Bonta requested in a March 6 letter. The court had stayed the investigation in April.

Bianco's attorney had told the court that as sheriff, Bianco had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint, and that he adhered to the state penal code after the first search warrants were issued in February.

The court disagreed.

Guerrero said a search warrant does not supersede the state's election law.

"If election misconduct is suspected, the Elections Code provides several mechanisms for law enforcement to review and examine ballots without compromising their integrity," she said.

"But those procedures were not followed and the type of seizure that occurred here directly conflicts with the Elections Code's carefully considered and controlling provisions."

Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, which brought one of the lawsuits challenging Bianco's actions, said after the rulings that the ballots are public property.

"They must be protected through the processes the Legislature has established. This ruling provides important clarity for election officials, law enforcement, and voters across California," he said.

Bonta Welcomes Rulings

Bonta hailed the court rulings, saying they "bring important clarity for our constitutional system in California," and that he was "grateful" the court affirmed his authority to supervise county sheriffs.

"Election fraud can and should be investigated. But misuse of criminal investigative tools - without any evidence that a crime was committed - needlessly undermines trust in our elections system and in law enforcement," he said in a statement.

Bianco said he will obey the rulings, but not "the message behind them."

Bianco said the rulings gave the attorney general "unchecked power over any investigation in the state of California."

The rulings fail to address the 45,896-ballot gap between the certified tally and the records obtained from the registrar, he said.

"The Registrar said it was a paperwork error. Bonta said stop looking. I got warrants from a judge and started looking anyway. That is my job," Bianco told The Epoch Times.

Days before the rulings, on Sept. 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are officially certified.

Jill McLaughlin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 16:40

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