Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., is introducing legislation Thursday that would require the Pentagon to maintain a single, cumulative casualty count for the ongoing conflict with Iran, seeking to prevent the military from reclassifying dead and wounded service members under new operational labels.
The proposed bill comes after the Pentagon began altering how it publicly reports casualties from the Iran war, shifting them into a broader category called "Overseas Operations" instead of maintaining a distinct tally for the conflict. This change could obscure the human cost of the war, according to critics.
Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both legs and sustained other injuries during the Iraq War, expressed concern over the transparency of casualty reporting. "I don't have the confidence in the Pentagon, and Hegseth in particular, being honest with the American people," she told ABC News.
The Pentagon's accounting adjustment, which went into effect following a reported shift on July 7, encompasses U.S. military deaths and injuries across the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility. This broad region includes the Middle East, Egypt, and parts of Central and South Asia, effectively separating these figures from earlier casualty tallies specific to the Iran conflict.
Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez had previously attributed the changes to technical issues. The Defense Casualty Analysis System is the official public record for war casualties, compiled from reports submitted by military branches.
Critics argue that separating distinct phases of a war makes it harder to track the cumulative human toll. As of Thursday morning, 18 U.S. troops had been killed and at least 689 wounded since the war began in February. Duckworth's bill would mandate the consolidation of all casualty records for the Iran war into a single count and require notification of next-of-kin for any corrections.
The accounting shift appears linked to the Trump administration's designation of Operation Epic Fury, the war's initial name, as concluded in May. The subsequent resumption of daily fighting on July 7 was framed as a new phase, a move some experts believe is intended to circumvent the 60-day limit on waging war without congressional approval stipulated by the War Powers Resolution.
"I think commentators, other journalists, are right to say that the reason that we're seeing this division between Operation Epic Fury and Overseas Operations is because of that legal fiction to get around the clear constraints of the War Powers Resolution," said Katherine Yon Ebright, a war powers expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Scott Anderson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted that U.S. troops have been engaged in hostilities or situations with imminent hostilities near Iran since February 28, which is the relevant condition under the War Powers Resolution.
Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are also investigating the changes to the Defense Department's casualty database. They have requested a comprehensive record of all modifications and a response from the Pentagon by August 18.
Representatives Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Suhas Subramanyam, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that "This timing raises the grave possibility that DoD created the new category to support an illegal attempt to defy the War Powers Act to continue a war."
The Pentagon has provided limited information regarding U.S. troops killed or wounded in the conflict, with few details on the locations or circumstances of casualties. The military has largely avoided regular press briefings and sustained questioning from reporters concerning the campaign, a departure from the typical public scrutiny afforded to significant military operations.
Duckworth stated, "The Trump administration has broken so many norms of acceptable behavior. We would never have had to introduce legislation like this under any previous president, because it just simply would not be done."
The bill is co-signed by a number of Democratic senators, including John Hickenlooper, Chris Van Hollen, Gary Peters, Mazie Hirono, Ruben Gallego, Michael Bennet, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, John Fetterman, Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, Mark Kelly, Andy Kim, Tammy Baldwin, Angela Alsobrooks, and Brian Schatz.