Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California condemned the Pentagon’s decision to remove four fallen service members from its official Iran war casualty count, saying the administration was failing Gold Star families out of personal vanity.
“This is despicable,” Kamlager-Dove wrote on X. “Our servicemembers’ families are mourning, and the Trump Administration can’t even properly honor their service because of Trump and Hegseth’s fragile egos. We need transparency about the casualties from this reckless war. Our Gold Star Families deserve better.”
Kamlager-Dove, the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia and Whip of the Congressional Black Caucus, 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 a single 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, gave a conflicting account, 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, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine attended a dignified transfer for the four service members at Dover Air Force Base on July 22, according to the Defense Department’s official account of the ceremony. Sens. Thom Tillis and Chris Coons also attended. Trump told reporters beforehand that his message to the grieving families was “we love you, we love your child,” calling the dignified transfer “one of the hardest things to do” as president.
Trump has continued to publicly cite the higher, 18-person casualty figure even after his own administration’s website reflected the lower count, saying at the time 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, writing in a statement that the New York Times report was among the “worst instances of the Fake News media manufacturing lies” and that comparing casualty figures across administrations amounted to “an attempt to politicize the sacrifices of America’s finest warriors in Iran.”
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.
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.
Kamlager-Dove has criticized the war’s legal basis since its earliest days, saying in June 2025 that Trump “bombed Iran without Congressional authorization, without clear evidence that Iran is imminently close to having a nuclear weapon, without properly notifying both parties in Congress, and with no clear plan for what comes next.”
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has issued a direct public response to Kamlager-Dove’s statement.