Your Daily Four Star

Monday. Six months in, House Democrats want to know what this war has actually cost, while VoteVets tells people across the country on their commutes. ICE took an Army sergeant’s wife, and the father of a sailor still deployed on the USS Lincoln. Day 177 of the “4-week war.” Here’s what you need to know.

As the war nears the six-month mark, nearly 50 House Democrats, led by VoteVets-backed Reps. Derek Tran, Jason Crow and Maggie Goodlander, sent Trump and Hegseth a letter demanding the real numbers. “What was billed as a two-week operation is now a full-scale war that has lasted for over 150 days, cost over $37 billion, and claimed the lives of 18 servicemembers,” they wrote. NBC has separately reported the Pentagon’s own internal estimate runs $80–100 billion once you count repairing bombed bases, replacing lost aircraft, and refilling the stockpiles. Their other point is one everyone is feeling: “Gas, groceries, and everyday goods have all gotten more expensive, with no end in sight,” with regular gas back to about $4.09 a gallon. Trump’s answer this month, in between planning his gold-encrusted ballroom and gold and marble arch to himself, was that Americans should be willing “to pay a tiny, little bit more.”

Sgt. Hedar Turcios Juárez, stationed at Fort Bliss, was driving home with his wife and their 6-year-old daughter when unmarked vehicles boxed in the family’s car in, and ICE took his wife, Cristy Villafranca Trejo, all in front of their terrified little girl. The couple has been legally married since 2022 and she’s listed as his dependent in the Army’s own personnel system. The family was days from a military move to Oklahoma. Her appeal has since been denied, meaning she could be deported to Honduras, a country he fears for her safety in. The Associated Press now estimates 50-plus spouses and parents of active-duty troops have been detained.

If you thought ICE was done… wrong. Joshua Aviles has spent more than nine months at sea on the USS Abraham Lincoln, working 12-hour shifts for 250-plus days. This weekend, while he was still at sea, Border Patrol detained his father, Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, 48, during a traffic stop in Key West on his way to drop his car at the mechanic. His wife says he’s a handyman with a valid work permit who’s lived here nearly 20 years; a stepdaughter says there’s no arrest history. “I’ve been deployed for over nine months… fighting for a country that has given me everything,” Joshua wrote. “I just got a call that my dad was taken by ICE… I’m coming home, Dad.” DHS’s response was “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass.” No, but refraining from detaining the family of a deployed servicemember without urgent cause, affecting readiness, should be common sense.

This one is a banger. VoteVets Action Fund put up nearly 1,000 digital billboards today in the towns around ten major installations — Fayetteville, San Antonio, Virginia Beach, Colorado Springs, West Point and more — the latest piece of a roughly $5 million campaign to pin the Iran war’s cost, at the pump and in blood, on the people who started it. It runs August 24 to September 2. “Trump and Hegseth’s Iran war is costing American lives and driving up the cost of living back home. Veterans and military families are paying for this war twice, and they deserve to know who sent us into it,” said VoteVets senior advisor Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Paul D. Eaton. Taking the message offline and off TV, straight on to the roads around military bases. That’s how it’s done.

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