U.S. Officials Reveal Chilling Truth of Strike on Iran Girls’ School

U.S. military investigators believe that it’s likely the United States was responsible for the deadly strike that killed more than 175 people, including dozens of children, at a girls’ school in Iran.

Two U.S. officials told Reuters Thursday that the horrific attack at Shajarah Tayyebeh over the weekend was most likely the work of the U.S. military, but they noted that the investigation was still ongoing and did not rule out discovering evidence that could point the blame elsewhere.

The strike on the girls’ primary school is the deadliest single attack of the U.S. and Israel’s military campaign thus far. Among the dead were dozens of young girls between the ages of 7 and 12, according to the public prosecutor in Minab. In a statement Sunday, Unesco condemned the attack on Shajarah Tayyebeh as a grave violation of international law, which prohibits attacks on schools.

An analysis from The New York Times suggested that the school had been struck at the same time as a U.S. strike on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, naval base next door—indicating that the U.S. was likely responsible for both.

It was not immediately clear why the school was targeted. Satellite images from 2013 showed that the school was previously connected to the IRGC naval base. More recent satellite images from 2016 showed that the school had been separated from the naval base by a wall.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the U.S. “would not deliberately target a school.”

While one would like to buy into Rubio’s pearl clutching, it’s worth noting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has openly admitted to setting aside the rules of engagement—who’s to say he doesn’t have the same attitude toward international law?

The Justice Department released FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of beating her after he sexually assaulted her when she was a child.

The interviews took place between August and October 2019. The woman, according to her testimony, was abused by Jeffrey Epstein for years. Her name is redacted across three separate files, but her allegation against the president is clear: Trump punched her on the side of her head after she bit his penis. She was between 13 and 15 years old at the time, she told investigators, when Epstein brought her to a “very tall building with huge rooms” in either New York or New Jersey. That’s where the prolific sex trafficker introduced her to Trump, she recalled.

Trump “didn’t like that I was a boy-girl,” the woman told investigators, referencing a tomboy.

There were other people present in the room, according to the files, but they left at Trump’s request.

She remembered that Trump told her something to the effect of, “Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be.” He then unzipped his pants and put her head “down to his penis.” She “bit the shit out of it,” and Trump “struck her,” saying something to the effect of “Get this little bitch the hell out of here,” according to the interview.

The woman claimed that she bit Trump’s penis at the time “because he disgusted her.”

“He had money, it reeked off of him,” she said.

She noted that Trump appeared jealous of Epstein, though at some point “they ended up on level playing fields.” She recalled that Trump and Epstein would sometimes use the terms “fresh meat,” “untainted,” and “not jaded” when referring to girls.

She told investigators she had two additional interactions with Trump but did not linger on the topic.

The woman claimed Epstein’s associates harassed her for years after the abuse ended, sending her numerous death threats. In one instance, she and her mother were run off a road while driving, forcing her to remain silent.

She also claimed that her mother spent time in prison due to an “embezzlement conviction connected to being blackmailed” by Epstein and a man named “Jim Atkins,” whom she identified as an employee of an Ohio university, “over explicit photographs” that Epstein took of her during the abuse.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the release amounted to “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history.”

“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them—because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” she continued. “As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein files.”

The Department of Justice had previously removed the record of this woman’s FBI interviews from their Epstein database.

Trump is mentioned more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files, according to a New York Times review of the DOJ’s February document dump, which consisted of some three million previously unseen pages. All in all, Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache, according to the Times.

Nonetheless, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s State of the Union that the DOJ reviewed the files last summer and did not find any credible evidence against the president warranting further investigation.

Recent reports indicate that the DOJ has only released a fraction of the Epstein files, potentially holding onto upward of 50 terabytes that the agency has not yet disclosed. The recent releases, which include millions of pages of documents, amount to roughly 300 gigabytes, or 2 percent of the estimated total.

On Thursday, President Trump announced that Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin is his nominee to replace Kristi Noem as Department of Homeland Security secretary. A hardcore MAGA acolyte, Mullin is known for blind, raging loyalty to President Trump and the movement. 

Here are five extreme moments that demonstrate that: 

1. Mullin tried to get into fistfight with union leader in Senate hearing.

In 2023, Mullin questioned Teamsters head Sean O’Brien over his negative tweets about him, in which he called the senator a “clown” and a “fraud.” 

“Sir, this is a time, this is a place, if you want to run your mouth we can be two consenting adults and finish it here,” Mullin said.

“OK, that’s fine. Perfect,” responded International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien.

“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked. “Stand your butt up then.”

“You stand your butt up, big guy,” retorted O’Brien.

Senator Bernie Sanders was eventually able to de-escalate the situation. “You’re a United States senator, sit down,” boomed Sanders. “This is a hearing. God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress.” Mullin later posted a picture of himself cleaning his guns on X. 

2. He admitted to giving President Trump “cover” from Epstein files scrutiny. 

Last summer, Mullin and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego each put forth a resolution on the Epstein files that they claimed was transparent. While Gallego called for the Justice Department to release all files in full without caveat, Mullin called on the department to release “all credible information” related specifically to Epstein’s sealed legal proceedings. 

“I’m sure this would be handled just like any other thing [the Democrats] have tried to go after like the baseless impeachments. Or the bases—baseless special counsels. Or the unbelievable amount of charges they tried to file against the president,” Mullin said while objecting to Gallego’s resolution. “I’m sure this would be handled the exact same way. What we’re simply wanting to do here, is give [Trump] cover.”

3. He called the the mayor of Washington, D.C., a very racist man (she’s a woman).

During an interview on Fox News last summer, Mullin criticized D.C.’s  “very racist mayor” for making Donald Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the nation’s capital about race.

“And people may get eyebrows when I raise that, but he is the one that brings in race into the conversation, so he’s the one that’s pointing the fingers at it, and when you point one finger you got three pointing back at ya,” Mullin said. “But for him to say that, and flat-out lie to the American people, he knows exactly what’s happening.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is a Black woman, and never said that the takeover was about race.  

4. Mullin called the U.S. operation in Iran a “war”—then took it back and called it a “misspoke.”

“This is war, and we’re taking out the threat,” he said  earlier this week, when asked if more top Iranian officials were at risk from future strikes after the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “And if you’re part of the threat, then you’re a target,” Mullin said.

“You’ll concede this is war?” a reporter clarified. 

“We haven’t declared war,” Mullin said, directly contradicting the first three words he said seconds ago. “That was a misspoke.”

5. Mullin confused who the U.S. president is twice.

Mullin called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the president twice while trying to wax poetic about war on Fox News. 

“War is ugly, it smells bad, and if anybody’s ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and fill it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget, and it’s ugly,” he said. Mullin has never been to war. 

“And fortunately, you have President Hegseth—or I say President Hegseth—Secretary Hegseth, that has got a great relationship with President Trump, and President Hegseth’s been there. He’s done that.”

The U.S. Navy’s attack on an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, on Wednesday was the first time an American submarine has sunk an enemy ship since World War II. But the Dena may not have been armed because it was returning from an international exercise in the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. Navy likely knew it because it was taking part in the same exercise. 

Both the United States and Iran were taking part in the MILAN 2026 exercise, organized by the Indian Navy, on February 15–26, with the U.S. sending a maritime patrol aircraft and Iran sending the Dena. Iranian sailors from the ship paraded on land before India’s president.

The exercise in question required ships not to carry any ammunition. Normally, the Dena carries various missiles and guns, including anti-ship missiles. Because the U.S. also took part, it would have been aware that the Dena was unarmed. Former Indian Foreign Minister Kanwal Sibal accused the attack of being “premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise.” 

“The US has ignored India’s sensitivities as the ship was in these waters because of India’s invitation,” Sibal said in a post on X. The Iranian ambassador to India, Mohammad Fathali, condemned the attack and said the ship was unarmed. 

“We will respond to this assassination very strongly. This ship was unarmed and in a regular maneuver at sea. I think that the United States and the Zionist regime want to disturb and destroy all the international law and international norms,” Fathali said. 

At least 87 sailors were killed in the torpedo attack in international waters in the Indian Ocean, and the Sri Lankan navy responded to the Dena’s distress call and rescued 32 survivors, but 61 members of the crew are still missing. The U.S. didn’t respond to the call, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth crowed about the attack to reporters on Wednesday. 

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said, calling it a “quiet death.” As a result of the attack, an Iranian supply tanker that was also near Sri Lanka, the IRIS Bushehr, has taken refuge in the island country.  

The sinking of the Dena seems to be part of Hegseth’s new policy of ignoring “stupid rules of engagement” and “punching them while they’re down,” and it raises questions of what the Trump administration would say if a country like Iran attacked an American ship it knew was unarmed. 

The House voted 219–212 against a war powers resolution Thursday, refusing to place limits on President Trump’s powers as he continues his war on Iran alongside Israel. Four Democratic representatives voted with Republicans to kill the measure.

The resolution, co-sponsored by GOP Representative Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, would immediately block any U.S. military action without congressional approval under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. While it faced a massive uphill battle to become a law, it was an opportunity for representatives to state plainly whether they support this war.

On Wednesday, the Senate killed a similar measure by a vote of 47–53 after Senator John Fetterman switched sides to vote with Republicans.

Here is every Democrat in Congress who voted not to rein in Trump:

1. Senator John Fetterman (Pennsylvania)
2. Representative Henry Cuellar (Texas)
3. Representative Greg Landsman (Ohio)
4. Representative Jared Golden (Maine)
5. Representative Juan Vargas (California)

Just two Republicans, Representatives Thomas Massie (the resolution’s co-sponsor) and Warren Davidson, chose to support the resolution, splitting from Trump and the party.

Kristi Noem appeared not to know she’d been fired Thursday afternoon as she spoke before an audience of law enforcement officials.

As Donald Trump announced Noem’s sudden ouster on social media, the Homeland Security secretary was in the midst of delivering the keynote address at the Major Cities Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Law enforcement officials asked questions and offered praise to Noem—but not one asked about her dramatic title change.

At one point, Noem teased Trump’s plan to unveil his “Shield of the Americas” policy on Saturday, where he would be joined by other cabinet secretaries to discuss his plan to combat cartels and drug trafficking. It was unclear whether she was aware that Trump had reassigned her as the program’s “special envoy.”

Fox’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reported on X that Trump had spoken to Noem shortly before posting the announcement to Truth Social.

Still, Noem repeatedly spoke about her upcoming work as DHS secretary as if her schedule had not just been cleared. She promised to meet with New York state sheriffs “real soon” and said she’d “continue to talk” to governors and state legislators about coordinating with federal immigration enforcement. While Noem may be in office until the end of March, her repeated commitments sounded surreal given that she’d just been sacked.

“I hope you have fun, I’m sorry I can’t stick around,” she said at the end of her speech, pausing for a brief photo op and then rushing offstage.

Shortly after she disembarked the stage, Noem released a statement thanking Trump for her new made-up title. “The Western Hemisphere is absolutely critical for U.S. security. In this new role, I will be able to build on the partnerships and national security expertise, I forged over the last 13 months as Secretary of Homeland Security,” she wrote on X.

Noem’s stint as head of DHS truly fell apart this week after she crumbled during back-to-back hearings before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. In addition to repeatedly lying under oath, Noem couldn’t explain away a $220 million border security ad campaign starring herself—that Trump now claims he did not approve.

Reports were already circulating earlier Thursday that Trump had begun reaching out to Republicans in search of a possible replacement for Noem—and Mullin’s name popped up as a top contender.

This story has been updated.

Conservative MAGA ideologue Matt Schlapp has attempted to justify the killing of more than 100 young girls at an elementary school in southern Iran, by claiming they were saved from religious extremism. 

On Piers Morgan Uncensored, Schlapp was part of a panel discussion about the war in Iran and the bombing of the girls’ school that killed an estimated 175 people (nearly all young children). Journalist Peter Beinart argued to host Morgan that the United States and Israel were to blame even if the school was somehow hit by an Iranian missile.

“We know that if the U.S. and Israel had not attacked a country that poses no serious threat to them—Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, America has thousands—that those girls would be alive,” Beinart said. Schlapp immediately jumped in. 

“They’d be alive in a burqa,” Schlapp said, adding “this is … a barbaric society,” before Morgan cut in and asked him to “hang on.”

Later, Schlapp attempted to defend his point. 

“It’s hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children when those women and children, the young girls that you reference, would be … live a life in a barbaric, unequal society behind a burqa, with no ability to make career choices,” Schlapp said, outraging left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur.

“So just kill them?” Uygur said.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying either,” said Schlapp.

“That is what you said,” Uygur replied, before Schlapp went on to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran.

Schlapp is head of the influential American Conservative Union, which organizes the well-known Conservative Political Action Conference with top Republican officials every year. But despite his status (and allegations of sexual misconduct), Schlapp is peddling anti-Muslim bigotry and doesn’t even have his facts right. 

While women in Iran still have to deal with patriarchal laws under a theocratic government that human rights groups have criticized, Iran isn’t such a backwater that it’s preferable for women and young girls to be dead. Women in the country have high rates of education, making up the majority of university graduates. Burqas are mostly worn in Afghanistan and are not even common in Iran, although conservative religious women in the country sometimes opt for the chador, a loose garment that leaves the face and hands open. 

But Schlapp is repeating an unfortunately common trope in the U.S., particularly among conservatives: Muslim and Arab lives are cheap, especially when we are at war with them. To these bigots, Muslim societies are backward and if the U.S. government inflicts something bad on them, it’s their society’s fault. Schlapp and the rest of the people ought to realize that women and girls, as well as every other Iranian civilian, deserve to live full lives instead of being killed in a reckless war.  

Kristi Noem has officially been ousted as homeland security secretary after her disastrous display defending her monthslong mismanagement of the agency overseeing Donald Trump’s horrific deportation scheme.

Trump announced Thursday that Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin would replace Noem beginning at the end of March. Not only does Trump not have the authority to appoint Mullin as permanent secretary, but the MAGA Republican isn’t even eligible to serve as acting secretary according to laws that govern Cabinet-level vacancies.

The president congratulated Noem on her “numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)” and declared that she would be reassigned as special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas,” a made-up international security initiative that has yet to be announced.

Noem’s stint as head of DHS truly fell apart this week after she crumbled during back-to-back hearings before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. In addition to repeatedly lying under oath, Noem couldn’t explain away a $220 million border security ad campaign starring herself—that Trump now claims he did not approve.

The so-called “ICE Barbie” flailed when asked about her semi-public affair with DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski, paying millions to a company that had only existed for a week, and lying that a U.S. citizen shot by federal agents was a domestic terrorist. All in all, it was a calamitous pair of appearances—and they cost her Cabinet position.

“The Shield of the Americas” is a term used by the Trump administration to describe its foreign policy for the Western hemisphere. The administration is slated to host the Shield of the Americas summit with select Latin American leaders in Miami on Friday, and will formally announce the initiative the following day.

Reports were already circulating earlier Thursday that Trump had begun reaching out to Republicans in search of a possible replacement for Noem—and Mullin’s name popped up as a top contender.

Mullin has repeatedly gotten into the news this week for offering flimsy defenses of Trump’s illegal military campaign in Iran. Mullin was called out for referring to the U.S. aerial bombings as a “war,” even though they were not authorized by Congress (he then said that was “a misspoke”). He was also slammed for waxing poetic about the “smell” and “taste” of war, even though he has never served in the military.

Shortly after delivering an awkward keynote to the Major Cities Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Noem released a statement thanking Trump for her new made-up title. “The Western Hemisphere is absolutely critical for U.S. security. In this new role, I will be able to build on the partnerships and national security expertise, I forged over the last 13 months as Secretary of Homeland Security,” she wrote on X.

This story has been updated.

Update: President Trump announced Wednesday that he is nominating Senator Markwayne Mullin as the next DHS secretary.

Donald Trump is upset enough with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that he’s reportedly considering Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma or Senator Steve Daines of Montana as the potential next DHS secretary. 

The National Review reports that the president is floating Mullin’s name in private discussions, after Noem said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday that Trump approved of a $220 million DHS ad campaign heavily featuring her and filmed in part at Mount Rushmore. Mullin told the conservative magazine Wednesday that he hasn’t spoken with the president.

“I haven’t talked to him about the hearing at all, I can’t help you there, I’m sorry,” Mullin said in a hallway in Capitol Hill.

The White House has also contacted Daines’s office, according to NBC News. The senator announced Wednesday that he is not seeking reelection this year. Meanwhile, Fox News contributor and former Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz has told Trump that he is interested in the position, and in joining the administration in general. 

With DHS partially shut down since February 13, Noem is under increased scrutiny from Republicans as well as Democrats. Before she involved the president, Noem’s ad campaign was already receiving criticism over the fact that an eight-day-old company run by the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin got the contract despite not even having a website. 

Noem also had a rough House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, where she was asked about her all-but-confirmed affair with top aide Corey Lewandowski. Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove called out Noem’s “judgment and decision-making” and accused her of a conflict of interest as well as risking national security. Noem’s only response was that bringing up the rumored romance was “garbage” and “offensive.”  

It’s telling that Noem’s mismanagement of DHS and the many illegal actions committed by federal agents under her purview aren’t the reasons why her job is in peril. Democrats have been pushing for her impeachment for those reasons for weeks, but now she might lose her job just because she made Trump mad. 

President Trump has declared that he wants to essentially handpick Iran’s next leader, an extremely bleak yet unsurprising development in this regime-change war.

“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios in an eight-minute phone interview Thursday, emphasizing that Mojtaba Khamenei, the most likely successor to his recently assassinated father, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was “unacceptable.”

“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump said, also mentioning that the younger Khamenei coming to power would bring the U.S. back to war on Iran “in five years.”

This confirms previous reporting that the Trump administration thinks toppling a nearly 50-year regime that seems prepared for a dragged-out war will be some simple plug-and-play situation, and that the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and subsequent deals with his successors in Venezuela can be a direct template for Iran, even though it was a wildly different event.

Trump has previously confirmed that even if Iran did have someone like Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela, they were long dead.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” he said on Sunday. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.” He said the same on Tuesday, as well.

This claim displays the confidence the Trump administration has that the Iranian government will simply capitulate.

This story has been updated.