U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) accused the Trump administration on Sunday of abandoning efforts to protect civilians in combat zones, posting on X that the Pentagon under President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has slashed programs designed to limit civilian deaths during military operations. The post came five days after the Pentagon formally acknowledged that U.S. military operations killed more than 150 civilians and injured over 240 others in 2025, with the entirety of the confirmed toll tied to three airstrikes carried out in Yemen.
Crow, a former Army Ranger who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote on X at 11:08 a.m. on August 16, 2026:
“My years in combat taught me that protecting civilians is essential to any mission. We should be doing everything we can to prevent innocent people from being killed. Yet under Trump & Hegseth, the Pentagon has cut critical efforts to reduce civilian deaths.”
The congressman’s post linked to a CBS News report published August 11 detailing the Pentagon’s newly released tally of civilian casualties from 2025, which found that strikes carried out during Operation Rough Rider — the U.S. air campaign against Yemen’s Houthi militia — killed 153 civilians and injured 243 more. The report, submitted to Congress and obtained by CBS News, determined it was “more likely than not” that five civilians died in an April 6 strike near Sanaa, 80 were killed on April 17 near Ras Isa Port, and 68 more were killed on April 28 near Saada.
Notably, the Pentagon’s tally did not include any deaths from U.S. strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which the report said numbered roughly 120 last year and 95 so far this year. The Trump administration has said the boat strikes, which began in September 2025, target cartels the administration has designated as terrorist organizations, though legal experts have said the strikes may amount to illegal extrajudicial killings because U.S. forces are barred from intentionally targeting civilians outside the legal standards governing the use of military force.
Congressionally Mandated Report Shows Sharp Rise From Recent Years
Congress has required the Pentagon to submit annual civilian casualty reports, known as “1057 reports,” since the 2018 defense policy bill. Nearly 500 civilians were killed in U.S. operations in 2017, the first year such reporting was mandated, but that number fell sharply after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, dropping to just one civilian death in 2023 and two in 2024. The figure climbed back into the triple digits with 2025’s report amid the Houthi campaign. The Pentagon’s opening statement in this year’s report asserted that “the U.S. military is steadfastly committed to limiting harm to civilians, and DoW has a strong record of compliance with the law of war.”
Civilian Protection Center Loses More Than 75 Percent Of Its Staff
The casualty figures arrived alongside a separate report from the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, released in late July, which documented steep staffing and budget cuts even as the office continued hosting workshops, war-gaming exercises and after-action studies of operations including the Yemen campaign. Staffing at the center dropped to just nine full-time employees — seven civilians and two service members — by the end of fiscal year 2025, down from a staff of 40 civilian, military and contractor personnel. U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said cuts to the center and the Pentagon’s broader civilian harm mitigation program amounted to roughly a 90 percent reduction in personnel since March 2025.
Hegseth Has Championed “Maximum Lethality, Not Tepid Legality”
The cuts have unfolded alongside a broader shift in rhetoric from Hegseth, who has repeatedly told service members and reporters that the Pentagon, since renamed the Department of War under a Trump executive order, would pursue “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” Speaking at the Oval Office in September 2025 as Trump signed the name-change order, Hegseth said the department would “go on offense, not just on defense,” adding, “violent effect, not politically correct… We’re gonna raise up warriors, not just defenders.” Hegseth has also fired the Army, Navy and Air Force’s top military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, whom he has previously disparaged as “jagoffs.” Testifying before Congress this year, Hegseth said, “the United States military never targets civilians, and puts constructs in place to ensure that [to] the maximum extent possible, we do not harm or hit civilians.”
Pentagon Has Sought To Eliminate The Center Entirely
During Hegseth’s tenure, the Pentagon has moved to dissolve the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence outright, arguing in documents submitted to Congress that its functions duplicate those of the department’s separate Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program. The Trump administration’s 2026 budget request went further, describing the broader civilian harm program’s cuts as a “disestablishment of the program” and proposing to reduce personnel funding by more than $2 million and mission support funding by more than $9.5 million.
The Center’s Origins Trace To A 2022 Pentagon Reform Effort
The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence grew out of a Pentagon action plan released in August 2022 following a series of botched airstrikes in earlier conflicts. That plan stated that “protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield,” and it called for standardized data collection, dedicated civilian-harm-mitigation positions, and the creation of the center itself. Congress later codified the center into law through the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which also required the Pentagon to publish an annual public report on its work — the same report released this past July documenting the center’s staffing collapse.
Inspector General Found Reforms Eroding Before Hegseth Made A Decision
A Pentagon inspector general report released just weeks before the center’s own annual report concluded that key elements of the Defense Department’s civilian harm mitigation apparatus had already begun eroding due to cuts and inaction. According to that report, senior officials proposed changes to the center and the 2022 action plan shortly after Hegseth took office, but as of April 2026 Hegseth had still not made a final decision. In the interim, civilian harm mitigation experts left their posts, the Army stopped funding its data management platform, and the center lost the bulk of its staff and leadership. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby told the inspector general that a review of the center was due in January 2026 and a review of the department’s civilian casualty policy was due by year’s end; the status of both reviews remains unclear, and the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News.
Democratic Lawmakers, Including Crow, Have Pressed Hegseth For Months
Crow’s Sunday post is the latest in a sustained campaign by the congressman, a co-founder and co-chair of the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus, to press the Trump administration on civilian harm since Operation Epic Fury against Iran began. In March, Crow led 120 House Democrats in a letter demanding answers from Hegseth about the deadliest reported incident of the war: a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Iran that killed at least 175 people, many of them children, and wounded roughly 100 more children and staff, according to Iranian officials and reporting cited in the letter. The lawmakers wrote that they were “particularly disturbed by reports of what appears to be the deadliest attack on civilians thus far.”
Crow Told Pentagon Officials Killing Civilians Undermines Military Trust
Days after that letter, Crow directly questioned Trump administration officials — including Rear Adm. Frank M. Bradley and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Derrick Anderson — during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing about the firings and defunding of offices responsible for mitigating civilian harm. “Nothing sets back years of trust building and relationship building more than an errant strike, than killing civilians,” Crow said at the hearing. “I learned [in combat] that you can actually accomplish the tactical aspect of a mission, but lose the end game if the people you’re fighting with and working with don’t trust you and support you.”
Crow And Colleagues Called DoD’s Response On The School Strike “Unacceptable”
By April, Crow, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) said the Pentagon had failed to adequately answer their questions about the school strike a full month after their initial letter. “Donald Trump started an illegal and reckless war of choice with Iran, and a reported U.S. military strike killed at least 175 civilians at an elementary school, many of them children. One month later, Secretary Hegseth refuses to answer questions from Congress,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. “The American people deserve transparency and accountability. We must do more to protect civilians in combat zones, in accordance with U.S. laws, international commitments, and our values of human dignity.”
A Broader Group Of Ten Democrats Accused Hegseth Of Violating Federal Law
In July, ten Democratic lawmakers, including Crow, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, sent Hegseth a letter alleging his cuts to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program had left the Pentagon unable to meet its congressionally mandated responsibilities. “The Trump administration’s military adventurism overseas, combined with its obvious disregard for civilians, do not make the American people or our service members safer,” the lawmakers wrote, adding that the administration had “potentially in violation of federal law — defunded and impeded civilian protection efforts.” The letter posed 20 questions to Hegseth, including requests for updated staffing and funding figures, with a deadline of July 9.
Pentagon May Be Weighing Partial Reversal Amid Scrutiny
The Atlantic reported earlier this month that the Pentagon is considering restoring as many as half of the roles cut from civilian harm mitigation efforts as it continues to face scrutiny over the war’s civilian toll, particularly the still-unreleased results of its investigation into the girls’ school strike. That investigation, first requested by Crow and dozens of colleagues back in March, could become one of the most significant tests of whether the military’s civilian harm reforms — first put in place after the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — functioned as intended during Operation Epic Fury. [
Background: Independent Trackers Report Even Higher Civilian Tolls
Airwars, an organization that independently tracks civilian harm in conflict zones, reported last year that at least 258 civilians may have been killed during Operation Rough Rider — well above the Pentagon’s confirmed figure of 153. The Pentagon’s report noted that, as of earlier this year, it was still assessing 15 additional incidents in Yemen flagged through reports from nongovernmental organizations, meaning the final confirmed toll could still rise. The military’s assessments for the 2025 report were based on U.S. intelligence, imagery and public reporting rather than site visits or interviews, according to the report obtained by CBS News.
As Operation Epic Fury against Iran continues alongside ongoing strikes tied to Yemen and the Western Hemisphere drug interdiction campaign, Crow’s Sunday post signals that Democratic scrutiny of the Pentagon’s civilian harm record — and of Hegseth’s leadership specifically — is likely to remain a central flashpoint heading into the fall, with the results of the Pentagon’s school-strike investigation still pending.