I love the Atlanta, Buford Highway Asian Food Corridor, stretching from Clairmont Road north past I285 into Duluth Georgia. As I have aged I have become a Vietnamese food junkie.
Monday, July 27, 2026
Pentagon reports more than 600 Iran war casualties in quiet database update
Pentagon reports more than 600 Iran war casualties in quiet database update
“The article describes the Pentagon's update to its official war casualty database, which includes more than 140 wounded service members. The update also introduces a new casualty category for personnel killed and wounded in the renewed fighting since July 7. The article also highlights the controversy surrounding the Trump administration's interpretation of the War Powers Act and its application to the Iran war.
Figures are source of dispute as US defense department days ago reduced record of troops killed and wounded
The Pentagon updated its official war casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded service members. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7”.
According to the updated database, the official toll for the earlier phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Fury, now stands at 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action.
These figures have been the point of contention after the Pentagon previously reduced the totals from 18 deaths and 482 wounded that had been recorded just days earlier.
The dispute comes after the collapse of the ceasefire with Iran and the resumption of near-daily airstrikes beginning on 6 July. Analysts and officials have questioned whether casualties from the renewed fighting should be counted separately from Operation Epic Fury, a move that would be unprecedented.
The Trump administration is seeking to classify the renewed military campaign as separate from Operation Epic Fury, the US military’s official name for the Iran conflict.
The change is tied to the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires the president to end military operations within 60 days unless Congress authorizes an extension. The Trump administration has argued that the April ceasefire with Iran paused the clock on 1 May for the conflict’s initial period. The separate casualty count beginning on 7 July follows that interpretation.
The shift became apparent earlier this week when the Pentagon’s official online list of service members killed in the ongoing Iran war did not includethe four soldiers who died during renewed fighting over the weekend. Their names, however, were included in a Pentagon press release announcing the formal transfer of their remains back to the US on Wednesday.
Combined with the updated Operation Epic Fury totals, the new Pentagon figures show that 18 US troops have been killed and 624 wounded since the US launched its war against Iran on 28 February.
Lawmakers from both parties have challenged the administration’s interpretation of the War Powers Act timeline.
Thomas Massie, a Republican House member from Kentucky, responded to the updated numbers in an X post, writing: “Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire.
“The reality: By going more than 90 days without congressional authorization,” the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “IS BREAKING THE LAW and must be held accountable”.
Pentagon Changes How It Reports Casualties in Iran War
Pentagon Changes How It Reports Casualties in Iran War
The Pentagon changed how it reports casualties in the Iran war, separating numbers into two web pages. This change increased the reported number of wounded service members to 207 since July 7, bringing the total to 624 since the war began. The new system also restored the deaths of four soldiers to the casualty count, raising the total number of killed to 18.
The changes separated the casualty numbers into two separate web pages, potentially making it more difficult to tally the war’s full toll.
Facing criticism that it had minimized the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in the war with Iran, the Pentagon on Sunday changed the way it reports casualties as it announced a higher number of wounded service members this month.
In an unusual new accounting method, casualties since July 7, when the cease-fire began unraveling and fighting escalated, are not listed on a Pentagon website with others since the war began, but rather on a new webpage labeled generically as “overseas operations casualties.” This means that a full accounting of the overall casualties requires adding numbers from separate web pages.
Under the new system, the Defense Casualty Analysis System restored the deaths of four soldiers killed last weekend in the war that had been removed from the website — but in a separate, unexplained category. The change also raised the number of those wounded to 142 more than were previously reported by the Pentagon since July 7.
The official number of soldiers wounded since that date is now listed as 207, for a total of 624 since the war began on Feb. 28. The total number listed as killed is 18.
Last week, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, insisted that the number of U.S. troops injured since July 7 was fewer than 100. The Pentagon had not previously disclosed a number of several Iranian strikes on bases in the region that housed U.S. troops.
“Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” Mr. Parnell said in a statement at the time.
A Pentagon spokesman on Sunday referred questions about the new numbers and system for reporting to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had lowered the number of service members killed in the Iran war to 14 from 18, a move that prompted outrage among many veterans, military families and lawmakers.
The change was made because the four service members killed recently in Jordan and Iraq had died after a cease-fire had been reached between Iran and the United States in April, military officials told The Times on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
The acting press secretary for the Pentagon, Joel Valdez, on Thursday attributed the change to “temporary data disruptions” on the website that he suggested would be fixed quickly.
As of Saturday morning, the Pentagon’s website still listed 14 service members killed as part of Operation Epic Fury, the name the Defense Department has given to the war in Iran.
On Sunday, the additional category, “overseas operations,” was added. It listed the four additional deaths with a note: “Overseas operations casualties starting July 7, 2026.”
As criticism over the administration’s reporting of casualties rose, a group of Democratic senators sent a letter on Thursday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting a “comprehensive accounting” of the number of service members killed or wounded.
In the week before the recent attacks that killed three soldiers in Jordan, three other strikes by Iran left dozens injured. These casualties were not immediately disclosed by the Pentagon, raising questions about whether the government was meeting its obligation to inform the country about the number of service members who had been either wounded or killed.
The senators wrote: “The American people, Congress, service members and their families are entitled to a full and accurate accounting of the human costs of war. The information currently available to the public suggests that the Department has not consistently provided timely and comprehensive public casualty reporting throughout the conflict.”
President Trump has asserted to lawmakers that the latest escalation in the war is part of a new conflict with Iran and not just the continuation of the one he started with Israel in February. That conflict, he maintained, ended in April when the cease-fire took effect. On July 10, he formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to start the clock again on the war and, presumably, on how they classify the war dead and injured.
The War Powers act of 1973 requires the president to end military operations within 60 days unless authorized by Congress to continue. On Thursday, the House voted a second time to direct Mr. Trump to end the war in Iran or seek explicit authorization to continue it, a sign of the growing and bipartisan discontent with the war.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.”
In Washington, Netanyahu Faces a Delicate Balancing Act
In Washington, Netanyahu Faces a Delicate Balancing Act
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with President Trump, facing electoral challenges and differing interests on the war with Iran. While Trump seeks a peace agreement, Israel prefers continued conflict, fearing a strengthened Iranian regime. The meeting comes amid strained relations, with Trump criticizing Netanyahu and pursuing policies that concern Israel, such as a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is set to meet President Trump on Tuesday, with one eye on Iran and another on the coming elections back home.
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a meeting with President Trump is always an opportunity to showcase their close relationship even if they, at times, disagree.
This time, the stakes are especially high.
Both leaders are facing electoral challenges in the months ahead and are expected to meet at the White House on Tuesday as their interests appear to be diverging sharply on the war with Iran.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is trailing in the opinion polls at home before Israel’s fall vote, is under pressure to show his domestic audience that he still has a close working relationship with Mr. Trump, analysts say, despite their differences. Mr. Trump is heading into U.S. midterm elections in November after an unpopular war that many believe he was dragged into by Israel and that has caused tensions between Israel and Washington.
Both leaders failed to deliver on their war goals of ending Iran’s nuclear program and overthrowing the country’s authoritarian clerical rulers in their joint war against Iran, which began in late February.
“We see that Trump is interested in reaching an agreement,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli military intelligence commander and an Iran specialist at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Israel doesn’t want to hear about an agreement, so there is no alignment of interests,” he said.
Israeli leaders view returning to war as preferable, he said, because any U.S. peace agreement with Iran will strengthen the regime in Tehran that they want to see toppled.
While Israel is focused on potentially existential threats from Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mr. Trump’s focus is on freeing movement through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for oil.
The United States has been going it alone in the latest phase of the fighting against Iran and before that largely left Israel, a partner in the war, out of the peace talks.
If Mr. Trump does expand his attacks on Iran, analysts say, he may still want to keep Israel on the sidelines.
“The irony,” Mr. Citrinowicz said, is that Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Trump that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, “had to be killed” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “Now there is a new Ayatollah Khamenei, and Israel is saying Iran has to be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons again.”
Mr. Netanyahu, whose visit was timed so he could also attend the memorial service for Senator Lindsey Graham, has long championed his close relationship with Mr. Trump in Israeli election campaigns. But the relationship has swung erratically over the past few months, and recently they appeared to be at a low.
Mr. Trump has veered from praising Mr. Netanyahu as a great wartime leader to belittling him, saying, “He’ll do whatever I want him to do.” Mr. Trump confirmed that he had called Mr. Netanyahu “crazy” in a phone call and has called him “a very difficult guy.”
Mr. Netanyahu has maintained a diplomatic silence. But Mr. Trump’s preliminary deal to end the war with Iran last month caused widespread consternation in Israel because of its apparent shortcomings in addressing the country’s security needs.
Mr. Netanyahu’s loyalists responded by vilifying the American president and his top aides.
Then Mr. Trump signed an agreement last week with Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear program, which Israelis fear could lead to a regional arms race. Mr. Trump subsequently declared that the deal would be contingent on Saudi Arabia’s establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, but Israelis remained unconvinced.
What goes on behind the scenes between the two leaders, however, has proved to be inscrutable and surprising at times. Mr. Netanyahu has managed to influence Mr. Trump in the past, analysts say, and it can be impossible to know if the pair are at loggerheads or in cahoots.
Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University, said that if the United States resumes a war against Iran, “clearly Trump is not interested in seeming to be doing it in collaboration with Netanyahu because that will look like a repetition of the unsuccessful venture” of a few months ago.
But Israel may end up participating, he said, “because if Iran launches missiles against Israel, Israel will respond.”
There are other issues in the Middle East on which Israel and the Trump administration do not necessarily agree and which are important for Mr. Netanyahu before the Israeli election scheduled for late October.
The administration limited Israeli military actions against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and is pushing Israel to begin to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon and Syria.
The American-brokered cease-fire in Gaza has floundered, and tensions and violence are on the rise in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Washington, Mr. Netanyahu will most likely want to show that he is working in tandem with the United States without being seen as trying to harness the administration “in the service of Israel’s interests,” Mr. Rabinovich said.
“There are no simple solutions when it comes to Iran and no certainty in Israeli politics,” he said.
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.“
Sunday, July 26, 2026
How Trump could undermine the midterms | US midterm elections 2026 | The Guardian
How Trump could undermine the midterms
"When Donald Trump commandeered primetime US television last Friday, he delivered a familiar, but still extraordinary, message. The president argued once again that the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, were illegitimate.
US elections are “vulnerable to being rigged and stolen”, Trump alleged, claiming that “the trust of the American people was lost” when he was defeated.
Historically, incumbent parties underperform in midterm elections and with the president’s popularity sagging – he has an approval rating of just 37% – Republicansappear on course to lose seats in the US Senate and House of Representatives, as well as in state and local elections, in November.
Trump’s latest intervention, in which he accused China of interfering with the 2020 election, is viewed by US voting rights activists as just the latest escalation of a bid by the White House to influence, and potentially alter, the results of the 2026 midterm elections.
“The number one threat facing American elections is the continued lies coming out of the White House,” said the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, the official responsible for overseeing the state’s elections.
The president is fighting to persuade Congress to approve legislation, the Save Act, that would allow the US federal government greater control over elections. Trump has also called for the federal government to take direct control of elections in some states, falsely claiming that his defeats there in 2020 were illegitimate.
There’s just one snag. “We have an election system that is not run by the federal government,” said Ben Berwick, who leads Protect Democracy’s election law and litigation team. “It’s run by states and local jurisdictions.”
The president, he added, “really has no power over elections”. So what can Trump actually do?
Republicans in a handful of states have already scrambled, at Trump’s urging, to redraw their congressional maps in the wake of a landmark decision by the US supreme court – controlled by a conservative supermajority – that effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
Louisiana led the way, tearing up its old map of four Republican and two Democratic districts in favor of a new one, which will probably give Republicans five of the state’s six congressional seats. Such efforts are designed to shift the outcome of future elections.
And with threats to mail-in voting, sowing fears about voting machines, as well as a steady stream of unfounded allegations of election fraud, many fear Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to challenge results that don’t go his way in November.
The memory of the deadly 6 January attack on the US Capitol in 2021, fueled by Trump’s denial of his election defeat, looms large.
“It’s reckless that the president will continue to do what he’s doing, and that the folks around him will continue to let him do what he’s doing, and potentially trigger that sort of behavior that could cost lives,” added Fontes. “This is a powder keg out there, and there’s a lot of folks who just just want to get on with their lives, who just want to get on to solving their own problems.”
Mail-in ballots
Trump has repeatedly tried to restrict voting by mail, and likened it to cheating, despite doing so himself. It is a key focus of his administration’s efforts. In November, the administration could use the US Postal Service (USPS) to “control the flow of mail-in ballots, and potentially not send ballots to certain voters”, Berwick said.
Democratic voters are deemed more likely to cast their ballots by mail than Republicans: about one in four registered Democrats did so in 2024, according to the States United Democracy Center, alongside 1 in 5 registered Republicans.
Eight states and the District of Columbia rely almost exclusively on postal ballots. The USPS, at Trump’s direction, proposed a rule that would require states to turn over their voter roll information to the federal government, which would then tell states which voters were ineligible.
That proposal, enforced by an executive order in March, faces a wall of legal challenges and was ruled unconstitutional by a judge. Cases pursued by the civil rights group NAACP in Washington DC and the League of Women’s Voters in Massachusetts have challenged the plan in court.
Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, said the organization intervened to ensure the bid to restrict mail-in voting was “shut down” in time for state primary elections, taking place in the months ahead of November’s general election. “And so I think that was really important for us,” she said, “just to make sure that voters knew how that was going to work, and make sure that they understood what their rights were, and how they could execute their ballot effectively”.
Voting machines
At polling stations, Trump is also pointing to electronic voting machines, which he suggested in his 16 July TV address could be compromised by foreign actors. “China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files,” he said.
Declassified files from US investigators show that China downloaded publicly-available election data in 2022. Those same investigators concluded that China did not interfere in the election.
Voting rights advocates believe Trump may have been telegraphing his intent to try to block the use of some voting machines in a late-day election gambit, invoking national security as a rationale.
“The thing that maybe worries me the most is what we saw in Fulton county and elsewhere,” Berwick said, referring to an FBI raid in January that resulted in the seizure of 2020 ballots and election material in Georgia. The administration “may try to do something similar in the immediate post-election period under the sort of pretext of investigating ineligible voting, or votes cast by ineligible voters”, he suggested, “in a way that, if done in the immediate post-election period, would be designed to disrupt the ability of states to count votes and certify elections”.
In the meantime, the White House has actively undermined safeguards to the election system. The Election Assistance Commission, a US federal agency designed to help states overcome technical challenges in election administration, which currently has nocommissioners. Trump fired the Democrat members, and allowed the Republicans to resign. More than a third of the staff of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was meanwhile cut by Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”, the cost-cutting drive fleetingly led by Elon Musk, including the entire team looking at cybersecurity threats in elections.
“One cannot help but notice the irony of the administration’s purported interest in securing our election systems, and yet gutting the very agency responsible for that,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of All Voting is Local.
Save Act
The Save Act, which is stalled in Congress, would require voters to present their passport or birth certificate to register to vote, and then to provide photo ID from a narrow list of valid identifications to vote in person. Campaigners argue such restrictions would disproportionately impact Black, Native, elderly and student voters.
The legislation would also sharply constrain voting by mail, too. And it would require states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government.
Absent that legislation – which is constitutionally questionable – federal agencies under Trump may still try to pressure states to purge voter rolls using unreliable or unverified federal data sets. Courts have consistently blocked attempts by the federal government to force unvetted voter purges.
Some states – led by Republican officials – have already turned over voter rolls, when requested by the federal government.
Berwick highlighted the prospect of federal agencies like the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security seeking voter lists from states, “presumably to then send to states lists of voters they believe are ineligible, which are very likely to be inaccurate”.
While far-right figures like Steve Bannon, an ally and former adviser of Trump, have called for the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents or federal law enforcement at voting sites, and the president himself has explicitly raised the prospect, it is considered remote because federal law plainly outlaws the presence of troops or federal agents at polling places.
Voter intimidation has already manifested at early voting sites and drop boxes, said Stewart, of the League of Women Voters, who cited an incident in Arizona where armed contractors confronted voters. “The president in particular is pushing for increased ICE funding,” she said. “So you have to ask: for what?”
Stewart highlighted how her organization successfully sued to stop armed drop-box intimidation in 2022, securing a court order within 24 hours. The incident was a demonstration of “how quickly things like that can happen” she said, “but equally as quickly … how we can shut that down”.
Pins and needles
Trump’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric is itself a threat to the integrity of the 2026 election, said Georgia state senator Saira Draper, a leading voting administration expert, who warned that narrative attacks are designed to undermine outcomes, regardless of who wins.
“By sowing distrust in elections, no matter what the outcome is, he continues on the division, whether his party wins or not into the next term,” said Draper, who suggested that such constant rhetoric turns followers into “foot soldiers for the cause”.
Some of those foot soldiers sit on county boards of elections, which are required to certify elections. And some are running for office, successfully winning the Republican nomination, like Alex Kolodin, who helped lead failed legal efforts to overturn Arizona’s 2020 and 2022 election results, who is now the Republican candidate for Arizonan secretary of state: its top elections official.
After the 2020 election, some Republican elections board members refused to certify fair elections, threatening to disrupt the process. A mass refusal could cast doubt on the results in conservative states that have taken a Democratic turn in a swing year.
“This federal interference led by the president isn’t helping anybody,” said Fontes. “It’s not good for, in my view, any circumstance across the country, and it’s got everybody on pins and needles for no really good reason.
“I mean, what’s the really good reason why folks are afraid, that there’s something wrong with our elections? The only explanation is that Donald Trump can’t get over getting his butt kicked in 2020.”
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