NJ Republicans stick with Trump as admirals condemn treatment of sailors in Iran war

Van Drew, Smith and Kean have largely supported the president as two former Navy flag officers accuse Congress of failing service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

New Jersey’s three Republican members of Congress are heading into the November election closely associated with President Donald Trump as two retired Navy admirals running for Congress elsewhere are delivering a starkly different message: The administration’s conduct of the Iran war is hurting American sailors, military families and national security.

Reps. Jeff Van Drew, Chris Smith and Tom Kean Jr. have generally supported Trump’s administration and major elements of the Republican agenda during his second term.

Van Drew, in particular, has emerged as one of Trump’s strongest allies in New Jersey since abandoning the Democratic Party during Trump’s first presidency.

Their continued allegiance to the blundering warmonger comes as retired Rear Adm. Nancy Lacore and retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, veterans with nearly seven decades of combined Navy service, accuse the administration and Congress of failing sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln after an extended deployment supporting U.S. military operations against Iran.

“This ill-conceived and unnecessary war is having terrible consequences for our national security and taking a serious toll on our sailors, Marines, and military families. The damage to morale, readiness, and recruitment could last for years,” Lacore and Laubacher said in a joint statement.

“Members of the military understand service and sacrifice. We are prepared to do hard things. But when we send Americans into harm’s way, we owe them a clear mission. The Department of Defense has failed to provide that.”

Their criticism focuses not simply on the decision to wage war but on its consequences for the people ordered to carry it out.

“The Lincoln has remained deployed months beyond its planned return, leaving sailors and their families in limbo while reports emerge of food shortages, water contamination, and deteriorating morale and mental health,” said the retired admirals, both Democratic congressional candidates in their respective home states.

The accusations present an uncomfortable question for members of Congress who have supported the administration: What responsibility does Congress bear for conditions confronting the sailors carrying out the president’s military policy?

Admirals describe the human cost

Lacore, a 35-year Navy veteran running for Congress in South Carolina, and Laubacher, a 34-year Navy veteran running in Colorado, drew on their own deployments to describe the psychological consequences of repeatedly postponing a ship’s return home.

“I’m glad these sailors and families may finally get some relief,” Laubacher said. “But it should never have taken military families speaking out and mounting media attention to force action. They should not have to wage a public campaign to get our leaders to do the right thing.”

Laubacher recalled her own yearlong deployment to Afghanistan.

“When you’re deployed, you measure time in milestones and holidays,” she said. “During my year in Afghanistan, every holiday was a reminder that by the next one, I would be home. These sailors have watched those milestones come and go. Parents are missing the start of school. Families are missing homecomings.”

Lacore described experiencing an unexpected extension while serving in the same region.

“On my first deployment, we were operating in that same region as the USS Abraham Lincoln,” Lacore said. “Just like those Sailors, when we left our home port on deployment, we knew when we were supposed to come home. We had an end date, and we were counting down to it. Then something changed in the region, and just as we thought we were heading home, our ship turned around and went back to the Gulf. I still remember how mentally crushing it was to realize the date you’ve been holding onto is gone.”

“The Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln haven’t experienced that once,” Lacore added. “They’ve experienced that uncertainty repeatedly. Every extension challenges morale on the ship and adds to the anxiety at home.”

Their criticism is particularly striking because it comes from officers who spent most of their adult lives inside the military institution they are now accusing civilian leaders of misusing.

If elected, Lacore and Laubacher would make history as the first women who attained flag or general officer rank in the U.S. military to serve in Congress.

Congress faces questions

The retired admirals placed responsibility not only on the Pentagon but also squarely on lawmakers who have allowed the conflict to continue.

“This is a failure of leadership at the Pentagon and in Congress,” they said.

They accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of failing to provide adequate leadership and Congress of failing “to demand accountability or a clear path forward.”

Their statement specifically criticized Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina for their actions on congressional attempts to halt the war.

The same issue raises questions for New Jersey’s congressional delegation.

The state’s three Republican House members — Van Drew in the 2nd Congressional District, Smith in the 4th and Kean in the 7th — have remained part of a Republican House conference that has largely sustained Trump’s second-term agenda.

But their relationships with Trump are not identical.

Van Drew is the most closely identified with the president, and he shares the tyrant’s disdain for the truth. Van Drew made the false and dangerous claim that an “Iranian mothership” was responsible for drones sighted in the airspace of New Jersey.

A longtime Democratic state legislator, Van Drew won election to Congress as a Democrat in 2018 before switching parties during Trump’s first impeachment. Trump welcomed the conversion, and Van Drew subsequently became one of the president’s most reliable New Jersey allies.

“At a time of heightened tensions in which war hawks are openly calling for the U.S. to attack Iran, spreading misinformation to scare Americans into fearing a so-called Iranian threat is profoundly reckless, and we are glad the Congressman corrected the record,” said Ryan Costello, speaking for the Iranian-American community. “Regrettably, fear-mongering about supposed security threats, particularly Iran, is all too common from our elected officials and the war industry in Washington and contributes both to the securitization of U.S. policy and xenophobia against Iranian Americans.”

“Unfortunately, Congressman Van Drew’s initial false statement was broadcast to an audience of millions while his retraction was buried in a Friday news dump posted to his website. It is imperative that Americans who do not want a new military adventure in the Middle East scrutinize policymakers and elected officials’ claims and hold them accountable to the facts,” said Costello.

Smith presents a more complicated record.

The state’s longest-serving member of Congress, first elected in 1980, has supported Republican presidents on many of the most consequential military and national security decisions of the past four decades.

Smith voted for the 2001 USA Patriot Act and the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, helping authorize two defining elements of President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 national security program.

But Smith has also broken with his party on significant occasions. He supported establishing an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and he voted to strip Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments following controversy over her conspiracy theories.

Kean, meanwhile, has generally supported the Republican congressional agenda but spent months AWOL from Washington this year while hospitalized after a nervous breakdown. His absence became publicly controversial because he tried to hide that he was being treated for mental illness and subsequently broke a promise to make a full disclosure.

His Democratic opponent, former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, has made military service and leadership central themes of her challenge.

“I led missions in some of the most challenging environments on earth,” Bennett has said of her 15 years in the military. “We served not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans who were there to serve our nation and get the mission done.”

Bennett, a former Republican, is one of several Democratic nominees who quit the GOP, aiming to connect with disillusioned voters and other Republicans who have grown weary of Trump.

From foreign policy to conditions aboard ship

The Lincoln controversy threatens to move debate over the Iran war away from abstractions about geopolitics and toward conditions experienced by the Americans ordered to fight it.

Aircraft carriers operate with crews numbering in the thousands, and extending a deployment affects not only sailors aboard ship but spouses, children and other family members whose lives are structured around an expected return.

Lacore and Laubacher argue that those consequences have received insufficient attention in Washington.

Their statement also challenges a familiar political assumption: that support for military personnel necessarily requires support for the military policy they have been ordered to execute.

The retired admirals argue precisely the opposite — that protecting service members requires lawmakers to question the decisions that send them into danger and keep them deployed.

That distinction could become increasingly significant if the Iran conflict remains an issue through the November election.

Three Republicans face voters

All three New Jersey Republicans are seeking reelection this fall.

Van Drew faces Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock in the 2nd District.

Smith, seeking a 24th term after more than four decades in Congress, faces Democrat Rachel Peace in the heavily Republican 4th District.

Kean faces Bennett in the 7th District, widely regarded as the most competitive of New Jersey’s three Republican-held seats.

The political terrain is different in each district, and neither Smith nor Kean has embraced Trump’s political persona as completely as Van Drew.

But all three must defend their records as members of a Republican-controlled Congress at a time when the administration’s foreign policy is producing consequences that military veterans themselves are increasingly willing to criticize publicly.

Lacore and Laubacher’s indictment goes beyond partisan disagreement over Trump.

It asks whether civilian leaders have fulfilled one of their most basic obligations: ensuring that Americans ordered into harm’s way have a defined mission, adequate support, and political leaders willing to take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions.

“Our sailors, Marines, and military families deserve leaders who understand that decisions made in Washington have real consequences for the people we ask to defend this country,” the retired admirals said.

For New Jersey’s Republican members of Congress, that argument puts a different question alongside the usual midterm disputes over taxes, immigration, and the economy.