Leavitt Erupts When Asked if U.S. Bombed Girls’ School in Iran

Karoline Leavitt gave a characteristically petulant response when asked whether the U.S. was involved in an airstrike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed up to 168 people, mostly young children.

Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran, was struck Sunday amid the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign on the country. As the Iranian school week lasts from Saturday to Thursday, the building was full of students, and “dozens of seven to 12 year-old girls” were killed in the explosion, The Guardian reported. Unesco described the bombing as a “grave violation” of international law.

Leavitt was asked whether the U.S. had been responsible for the attack.

“Uh, not that we know of, Sean, and the Department of War is investigating this matter,” she replied. “And I would just tell you strongly, the United States of America does not target civilians, unlike the rogue Iranian regime, that … uses propaganda quite effectively. And unfortunately, many people in this room have fallen for that propaganda.”

Leavitt refusing to give a firm answer and instead asserting that the federal government is investigating would seem to contradict her statement that the U.S. does not target civilians. If the investigation reveals that the U.S. were responsible, then we would, in fact, have targeted civilians. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the U.S. “would not deliberately target a school.” But unintentionally killing civilians can still be a war crime.

Despite Leavitt’s claims of Iranian propaganda, the bombing was well documented by on-the-ground reporters and civilian cell phone video.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared unable to answer a repeated question during her briefing Wednesday: Is Iran a regime-change war or not?

As President Donald Trump and his administration give shifting explanations of the U.S. decision to join Israel in bombing Iran over the last five days, Leavitt was asked what he really believes.

“You said the Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed. Can you explicitly state then whether or not regime change is a goal of President Trump?” AFP reporter Danny Kemp asked.

“The goals of this operation have been made clear, and the president has said them in his speech,” Leavitt replied. “The stated military options of Operation Epic Fury are as follows: eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile threat, destroy their naval capability, disrupt missile and drone production infrastructure, sever their pathway and end their pathway to nuclear weapons.

“Thus far, this operation has been remarkably successful,” she continued, refusing to comment on whether regime change is indeed a goal. “Again, we’re moving towards complete and total control of Iranian airspace.”

Another reporter followed up on Leavitt’s remarks. “Those four objectives that you laid out do not explicitly include regime change. If those objectives were achieved and the Islamic Republic still existed, would that be an acceptable outcome?”

“That’s a hypothetical question that I’m not going to engage in,” Leavitt replied, still refusing to answer the question.

That the White House press secretary can’t—or refuses to—answer whether the U.S. has embarked on another regime-change war in the Middle East is astonishing, given that the U.S. has been bombing Iran for five days now.

In his video message Saturday, Trump appeared to characterize his end goal as regime change, telling Iranians after he bombed their country: “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

On Tuesday, however, Trump appeared to acknowledge that despite the U.S. killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his plan could totally fail, and the Iranian regime could elect another hard-liner to take Khamenei’s place.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was caught in a white lie Wednesday about a toddler detained by ICE.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu showed Noem a picture of a young toddler named Amalia who was detained by ICE, and asked the secretary if Amalia committed a crime. Noem replied, “No, she did not. She is with her family.” 

“The reason she’s with her family is because she almost died in ICE detention until folks brought a lawsuit forcing her release,” Lieu said. 

Noem’s answer ignored the long ordeal that Amalia’s family had to deal with. Her parents, Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto, worried that their 18-month-old daughter might die while being held with them at Texas’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center, known for its unsafe and unsanitary conditions despite the fact that ICE uses the facility to detain families. 

While she was healthy when she arrived at the facility, Amalia quickly became sick with pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV, and other serious respiratory issues and was taken to a children’s hospital in nearby San Antonio, Texas. Days later, she was discharged from the hospital after she showed improvement from intensive oxygen treatment. 

She was then sent back to Dilley, despite doctors warning that she was at high risk of infection, and guards there denied her prescribed medication that she was supposed to take every day. Lawyers filed an emergency petition in federal court to have her released, but it took nine more days in Dilley before she was released.  

Noem thought she could get away with saying that Amalia was safely back with her family, but the full story is that being detained by ICE nearly killed her, and only legal action got her released and able to take the medicine she needed. Noem’s stewardship of DHS and the president’s mass deportations have led to widespread misconduct, abuse of immigrants, and even death in some cases. Little Amalia is one egregious case among many that Noem ignores. 

Given the many scandals that have enveloped this country since President Donald Trump began his second term, it’s easy to forget one of the first: Big Don’s call to gerrymander districts in Republican-held states in order to create more congressional seats for the GOP.

Fortunately for Democrats, the president is so unpopular right now that even new districts specifically drawn for Republicans may swing left.

Veteran political strategist Tom Bonier noted Wednesday that Democratic primary voters exceeded their Republican counterparts in four of the five Texas districts that the state legislature redrew last year.

One of these is District 28, which is located on the southwest tip of Texas, and where Democrats outvoted Republicans four to one.

Four to one! The turnout highlights a Southern, largely Hispanic enthusiasm for Democratic candidates that simply wasn’t there during the last presidential election. In Zapata County, also part of district 28, Bonier found that Democratic primary turnout was 143 percent the number of votes Kamala Harris won in 2024.

“It’s hard to overstate how rare it is to see Dem turnout in a midterm primary election exceeding that of a presidential election,” Bonier wrote.

These voters are also mobilizing despite a pronounced funding gap, which will only inspire more Democratic hope for the region. The GOP spent upward of $80 million on Senate primary advertisements in Texas, more than triple the amount spent by Democrats, the advertising analytics firm AdImpact found.

Only Congress has the authority to declare war—but Republican leadership seems content to let Donald Trump do whatever he wants at whim.

The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to block Trump’s warfare in Iran via a war powers resolution. The bipartisan resolution, introduced by Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and co-sponsored by Republican Senator Rand Paul, would “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.”

But not everyone in Congress is prepared to seize the legislative branch’s constitutionally appointed authority.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday that restricting his Oval Office ally’s military power through the passage of a war powers resolution “would be a terrible, dangerous idea.”

“It would empower our enemies, it would kneecap our own forces, it would take the ability of the U.S. military and the commander in chief away from completing this critical mission to keep everybody safe,” Johnson said.

The Republican House leader added that Iran had attacked three U.S. embassies in the days since U.S. bombs fell on the country.

“Those are sovereign territories of the U.S. They have declared war on us,” Johnson said. “I don’t believe in the semantics.… We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation—Operation Epic Fury—that has two components, as you know.

“Everybody has explained,” Johnson said.

But nobody in Washington has explained the rationale for going to war with Iran with any modicum of clarity, leaving even those in Trump’s Cabinet confused about the intended messaging. State Secretary Marco Rubio, for instance, had to eat his own words Tuesday evening after the president disagreed with his depiction of the war. Rubio had initially suggested to reporters on Monday that Israel had forced Trump’s hand, forcing the U.S. to strike first due to intel that indicated Iran would retaliate with force against American interests if Israel followed through on its plans to attack.

By the next day, Rubio was stuttering in front of cameras that he had never said anything of the sort. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., claimed later that day that Rubio’s point-blank comments had been “taken out of context.”

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.

More than a dozen countries have been roped into the conflict since the U.S. began bombing Iran—including France, the U.K., and Greece—effectively destabilizing the entire region while disrupting global markets and oil production.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces may not be able to keep their defenses up: Military officials have stressed since Sunday that fighting Iran has already drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems.

In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles over the last four days.