Rep. Mike Levin of California condemned the Pentagon’s decision to remove four fallen service members from its official Iran war casualty count, saying there is no justification for erasing the names of troops killed in service to the country.
“Absolutely despicable,” Levin wrote on X. “There is no acceptable excuse for erasing the names of fallen troops who died in service to our nation.”
Levin, a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies, was responding to journalist Aric Toler’s reporting on the change, which linked a New York Times article detailing how the Pentagon’s public casualty count dropped from 18 to 14 in the span of a day.
According to the Times, three military officials said the change stemmed from an administration decision to remove four service members killed the prior weekend, three in Jordan and one in Iraq, because their deaths occurred after Trump declared a ceasefire with Iran in April. The Pentagon’s acting press secretary, Joel Valdez, offered a conflicting explanation, attributing the change to “temporary data disruptions” that he said would be resolved.
The four removed from the count were 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii; Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas; and Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, all killed in the July 17 Iranian attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan; and Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, killed July 19 during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone at Erbil Air Base in Iraq.
Trump attended a dignified transfer for the four service members at Dover Air Force Base on July 22, calling them “great heroes” and telling reporters beforehand that “all of them said, very strongly, that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon, so we’re going to honor them.” He has continued to publicly cite the higher, 18-person casualty figure even after his own administration’s website reflected the lower count, saying afterward that even one death “is too many, but it’s 18.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell rejected the characterization that the department had manipulated the figures, saying comparisons between casualty counts under the Trump and Biden administrations amounted to “an attempt to politicize the sacrifices of America’s finest warriors in Iran,” and that the Times report was a “non-story.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe during Trump’s first term, told the Times the episode reflected a broader pattern. “The administration seems to have a real hard time being honest about what is going on, not just about casualties, but about the whole war in general,” Hodges said, adding that downplaying deaths during a war indicated “an unwillingness or inability to aggressively learn from mistakes.”
Levin’s subcommittee holds funding jurisdiction over the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects, giving him direct oversight responsibility over programs affecting the same troops and families whose treatment he criticized, according to his office’s official announcement of his committee assignment.
The Pentagon’s public casualty database, the Defense Casualty Analysis System, had not been restored to reflect all 18 confirmed deaths as of the most recent reporting, with the online list of named fallen service members remaining incomplete.
Levin’s statement adds to a wave of Democratic criticism this week over the casualty count change, including from Reps. Jason Crow, Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Thomas Massie, who have separately accused the administration of dishonoring fallen troops and, in Massie’s case, violating the War Powers Resolution’s limits on unauthorized hostilities.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has issued a direct public response to Levin’s statement.