Senate Democrat slams White House, connecting horrific school bombing to a terrifying budget decision
Over 170 lives lost — because of a calculation error?
Senator Andy Kim (D-N.J.) is directly connecting recent budget cuts by the Trump administration to a horrific missile strike on an elementary school in Iran. According to The Hill, Kim, who previously served on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, told CNN that the February 28 strike, which killed over 170 people — most of whom were children — may have been a direct consequence of these funding reductions.
The strike hit Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school located near an Iranian base in Minab. Health officials reported the death toll climbed past 165, with most victims under the age of 12, and nearly 100 others wounded. Photos of small coffins and rows of fresh graves quickly spread, becoming a devastating symbol of the conflict. Military officials are now investigating whether the strike relied on old data, which could explain such a terrible miscalculation.
Kim specifically pointed to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, accusing him of gutting the Civilian Protection Center. This Defense Department program was originally established to reduce civilian casualties during military operations. “The problem, though, is Secretary Hegseth decided to gut this office last year and has dramatically reduced the staff, not implementing the budget that is necessary,” Kim said. He believes this may have been a key factor in the school bombing.
Kim didn’t mince words, placing the blame squarely on the Trump administration
“This fault lies directly on President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” he said. “They are clearly the ones who gave the orders in terms of how they should go about the risk analysis. Without this type of office, it shows just how much this administration has deprioritized the protection of civilians.” He added that the US is now “facing one of the worst losses of civilian life at the hands of Americans in decades.”
ProPublica previously reported that the Defense Department’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response action plan has seen its budget cut by a staggering 90%. Secretary Hegseth, speaking at a Pentagon briefing on March 2, emphasized a different approach.
He claimed US forces were “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history” with “maximum authorities.” Hegseth famously declared, “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority, a decision that defense analysts say is part of a broader shift towards more aggression and less accountability within the Trump administration.
This devastating strike has, predictably, become a major source of concern among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, crossing party lines. Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) openly called the strike a “mistake” during a CNN interview on Tuesday. “I mean, we’re investigating but I’m not going to hide behind that,” Kennedy said. “I think that it was a terrible, terrible mistake.”
While President Trump told reporters on March 7 that the strike was “done by Iran” without providing any evidence, the facts on the ground tell a different story. Hegseth, standing next to the president aboard Air Force One, simply said the matter was under investigation. However, the next day, open-source research outfit Bellingcat authenticated a video showing a Tomahawk missile strike next to the school in Minab.
Iranian state media later displayed fragments of a U.S.-made Tomahawk, as identified by Bellingcat and others, at the site. It’s important to note that the United States is the only party to the conflict known to possess Tomahawks, making the administration’s claims difficult to reconcile with the evidence. U.N. human rights experts have since called for an investigation into whether the attack violated international law.
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