Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York condemned the Pentagon’s handling of its Iran war casualty figures, saying the removal of fallen service members from the official count dishonored their service and the military as a whole.
“Erasing fallen U.S. servicemembers from the Iran war’s casualty count, because their deaths are a politically inconvenient truth, is absolutely shameful and a new low even for this Trump administration,” Meeks wrote on X. “This is an insult to those who lost their lives, and all our armed services.”
Meeks, the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, linked a Guardian report detailing an updated Pentagon casualty database showing the war’s combined toll now stands at 18 troops killed and 624 wounded since fighting began Feb. 28, after the department added more than 140 additional wounded service members to its figures over the weekend.
The Defense Casualty Analysis System, the Pentagon’s official public casualty tracker, introduced a new category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7,” separate from the war’s original designation, Operation Epic Fury. Under the new breakdown, Operation Epic Fury’s toll stands at 14 killed and more than 400 wounded, with the remaining four deaths and additional wounded now counted separately under the new category.
The separation reflects the administration’s position that the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock on unauthorized hostilities, codified at 50 U.S.C. § 1544, restarted with the collapse of an April ceasefire, treating fighting since July 7 as a distinct phase of the conflict rather than a continuation of the war that began in February. The Guardian reported that the shift became apparent when the Pentagon’s public list of the war’s fallen did not include the four soldiers killed during the fighting that resumed in July, even though their names had already appeared in a Pentagon press release announcing the formal transfer of their remains.
Rep. Thomas Massie criticized the recategorization in similar terms after the figures were first altered. “Let me explain this absurd ruse: the Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire,” Massie wrote on X. “The reality: by going more than 90 days without congressional authorization, Hegseth is breaking the law and must be held accountable.”
Meeks has separately taken direct action against the administration’s handling of the war’s legal authorization. He introduced a resolution that would require House Speaker Mike Johnson to “initiate or intervene in litigation” enforcing H. Con. Res. 86, the war powers measure Meeks originally introduced in April, which directs the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran absent a declaration of war or specific congressional authorization. The House passed the measure June 3, and it was agreed to by both chambers of Congress on June 23, though as a concurrent resolution it does not carry the force of law. “The power to declare war rests unequivocally with Congress, yet Speaker Johnson and the vast majority of Republicans have allowed President Trump to trample over the Constitution and wage a war that has not been authorized by Congress,” Meeks said in his office’s official announcement of the new resolution.
Meeks told reporters he intends to force a floor vote on that measure once the House returns from its August recess. “I’m gonna force a vote on that so that we can now go to the courts and sue the administration for not following the will of Congress,” Meeks said, according to C-SPAN footage of his remarks.
The Pentagon’s acting press secretary, Joel Valdez, has attributed the earlier fluctuation in the public casualty figures to “temporary data disruptions” and “site anomalies,” while three military officials told The New York Times the change instead reflected a deliberate decision to exclude the four most recent deaths from the main war tally because they occurred after the April ceasefire declaration.
Lawmakers from both parties have challenged the administration’s interpretation of the War Powers Act timeline, with the dispute over whether the fighting should be treated as one continuous war or two separate ones carrying direct legal significance for how long the administration can continue military operations without additional congressional authorization.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has issued a direct public response to Meeks’ statement.