U.S. Navy Loses $60 Million Jet as Pressure Increases on Hegseth

The U.S. Navy lost a $60 million fighter jet in the Red Sea Monday in another setback for Secretary Defense Pete Hegseth. 

The F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, currently stationed in the area part of the U.S.’s military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The rebels have targeted U.S., Israeli, and other international shipping operations over Israel’s bombardment and aid cutoff to Gaza. 

The Houthis claimed to have launched a missile and a drone at the aircraft carrier on Monday,  and a U.S. official told CNN that the aircraft carrier made a hard turn to evade fire. The turn contributed to the jet falling off of the ship. One Navy sailor had a minor injury as a result of the move. 

 “The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” a statement from the Navy said. “Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway.”

Hegseth and his boss President Trump have bragged about U.S. military operations against the Houthis, and one U.S. airstrike in Yemen was the subject of at least two private group chats Hegseth created that are the center of the “Signalgate” scandal.  Trump continues to publicly support the former Fox News host as Pentagon chief, despite reports that he has begun the search for Hegseth’s successor. 

Meanwhile, Hegseth and his team are consumed with looking for leakers in the department, spending at least half of their time turning the DoD upside down. The department has been losing employees in the past few weeks, and not just because of mass layoffs.  All of this is creating the image that Hegseth is in over his head and doing a poor job of running the largest military in the world, and perhaps should make an exit.

In an unsurprising development, President Trump is still far from achieving his promise of “the largest deportation operation in American history” after his first 100 days in office.

Scripps News reported Monday that there has not been a notable increase in deportations since Trump took office, which deeply contradicts the images (such as Kristi Noem in military cosplay) and narratives (like deciding every South American immigrant with tattoos is a Tren de Aragua member) that the Trump administration has been pushing.

“Frankly, I was shocked,” said Sue Long, co-founder of the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which records immigration statistics. “[Deportations are] lower,” Long said. “Their daily average is simply 10 percent lower.” These numbers are lower than former President Joe Biden’s deportation rate, even as Trump portrayed him as some wanton open borderist during his campaign.

The White House insists that lower border crossing numbers are driving deportations down. And yet border czar Tom Homan still believes that he needs more resources and more deportations.

The leader of Canada’s Conservative Party is begging Donald Trump to stop weighing in on the country’s politics as it holds elections Monday, posting in English and French on X that Trump “should stay out of our election.”

“The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box,” Pierre Poilievre wrote. “Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state.”

The post was in response to Trump’s Truth Social post earlier in the day where he once again provoked Canada by bringing up statehood and basically told Canadians to elect him, “the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half.”

“No more artificially drawn line from many years ago,” Trump added. “Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!”

Leaving aside Trump’s attitude toward America’s northern border with Canada versus its southern one with Mexico, the president is continuing to try to bully Canada even after his rhetoric caused a sea change in public opinion there. Prior to January, Canada’s Liberal Party, analogous to the U.S. Democrats, was set for resounding losses in the country’s next election.

Then Trump was sworn into office and started calling Canada the fifty-first state, instituting high tariffs, and generally attacking the country. The result was the heavily favored Conservatives losing their large polling advantage, and Poilievre, a right-wing politician who modeled himself on Trump, has seen his chances for the prime ministership plummet.

As a result, Poilievre has tried to criticize Trump to capitalize on the patriotic fervor that the president has inspired in Canada. But the fact that his rhetoric and style mirror one of the most unpopular men, if not the most unpopular man, in Canada will not do Poilievre any favors when the polls close.

A MAGA talking head is the latest new recruit to the White House briefing room.

Rogan O’Handley, a.k.a. “DC Draino,” made his first appearance in the new media seat in the coveted federal space Monday, asking a question of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that was more Trumpian propaganda regarding the potential death of habeas corpus than independent inquiry.

“In [Donald] Trump’s first 99 days, we’ve seen a coordinated assault on the rule of law by radical judges,” O’Handley said. “These judges are providing more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for American citizens who peacefully protested on January 6.”

That is, of course, not true. Family members and friends of the deportees accused of being members of the violent Venezuelan gang claimed their loved ones had never been a part of Tren de Aragua. Further still, some of the men forced to board the planes had no criminal record—something that would not have slipped under the radar had they had their time in front of a judge.

And of course, January 6 was by no means peaceful.

O’Handley then went on to quote White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who claimed that it would be “ridiculous” to offer “full trials” for the 15 million immigrants who had crossed the border, presuming that they would all be kicked out of the country.

Last week, Miller claimed that it would take “centuries” to remove immigrants from the country if the Trump administration were to abide by the Constitution in executing its mass deportation program.

On Instagram, O’Handley insisted that his voice in the White House briefing room had tried to “provide solutions for doing mass deportations” rather than “complain.”

The White House opened up its briefing room to “new media” in January, a category that encompasses professional journalists as well as podcasters, influencers, and other news-related content creators. In Trump’s second term, these special few are allowed the first opportunity to speak during each biweekly session, during which Leavitt will typically answer 15 to 20 questions.

So far, some of the occupants of the “new media” chair have included content creators from Breitbart, the right-wing video platform Rumble, BreakingPoints, the Daily Wire, former Newsmax host Mark Halperin, and the right-wing substack Washington Reporter.

The Trump administration announced in March that it would be conducting a total shakeup of the briefing room’s seating chart, bumping heads with the White House Correspondents’ Association—an independent group that has traditionally overseen seat assignments—as the Trump administration attempts to control who gets their questions answered.

In the wake of Pete Hegseth’s massive Signal scandal, the former Fox News co-host’s Pentagon has become a place more concerned with P.R. than directing America’s military.

Speaking with Megyn Kelly, another former Fox News host, on her podcast Sunday, ex-Hegseth aide Colin Carroll attested that the secretary and his team have been “consumed” by the rampant leaks escaping the Department of Defense. Carroll claimed that Hegseth and his team likely spend upward of half their time trying to rein the gossip in.

“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50 percent of it is probably a leak investigation,” Carroll said.

Carroll had served as chief of staff to deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg before he was fired earlier this month amid an ongoing leak probe.

“That’s a bad thing for America. It’s a bad thing for the president’s objectives,” Carroll continued. “And in order to combat that image, it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go work out with the troops.’”

Carroll further argued that Hegseth’s recent obsession with filming his early morning workouts with troops was an effort to counteract numerous reports of Hegseth’s excessive drinking—accusations that nearly kept him from securing his gig fronting America’s military. (In a highly unusual move, Vice President JD Vance joined the vote in January to break a 50–50 tie on Hegseth’s confirmation, ushering the former Fox & Friends co-anchor toward Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Three Republicans—Senators Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins—broke party lines by voting against Hegseth’s confirmation.)

“While that is important—and it’s a thing to do to get out there and helps recruiting and helps morale—if you’re taking a half-day trip to the Naval Academy at the same time the budget is due, and we really need some support here.… Come on, you gotta weigh priorities,” Carroll told Kelly.

Hegseth’s tenure leading the Pentagon has been plagued by a trove of terrible decisions—as well as subsequent damning leaks to the press, exposing the defense secretary’s poor planning.

In March, Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen. The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t even accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

The people responsible for conducting Trump’s mass firings at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau are now firing themselves, according to a court filing first flagged by Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

Two weeks ago the CFPB, under the Department of Government Efficiency’s direction, fired nearly 1,500 employees, leaving only about 200 people employed there. Now, as the remaining workers stay up day and night to manage the transition, they’ve begun including themselves in the firings.

“We are three positions off, but we are reconciling it,” read an email from CFPB COO Adam Martinez. “My team doing all of the number/name crunching are running on low fuel and have not slept for a couple of days. They also happen to be RIFing themselves.”

“RIFing” refers to “reduction in force,” a government term for layoffs.

This happening at the CFPB—which is supposed to be the American consumer’s strongest ally—is a dire sign for the already struggling agency. Aside from being gutted by DOGE, the agency will also no longer focus on key issues like protecting consumers making digital payments, people with medical debt, or those using peer-to-peer payday-lending platforms.

Donald Trump is definitely losing the reins on negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Trump told reporters Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had requested additional military aid during their meeting ahead of Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome.

“[Zelenskiy] told me that he needs more weapons, but he’s been saying that for three years,” Trump said on the tarmac at Morristown Airport before boarding Air Force One to head back to Washington.

“He needs more weapons, and we’re gonna see what happens. I want to see what happens with respect to Russia—because Russia, I’ve been surprised and disappointed, very disappointed that they did the bombing of those places after discussions,” the president said, referring to Russia’s surprise attack on Kyiv late Wednesday that killed at least 12 Ukrainians amid collapsing peace deal negotiations.

Trump said that he wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stop shooting, sit down, and sign a deal.” The U.S. president’s statements follow increasingly concerned public messages to the authoritarian leader, including one musing that Trump may have been strung along by the war-bent despot.

But Ukraine’s not the only one that is refusing to budge on its demands. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outlined the country’s list of requirements to end the war in a new interview Monday, and it’s the same exact things they’ve been asking for since 2022.

Lavrov said that Russia requires full control of five Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea. Lavrov also insisted that Ukraine must be demilitarized and banned from entering NATO. Kyiv would need to introduce legislation to restore the state of Russian language, culture, and religious institutions, as well.

Lavrov also said that Russia wanted to lift a ban on Kyiv’s ability to directly negotiate with Moscow.

Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, said that Russia was sending Trump a clear message. “Lavrov basically tells Trump to get lost,” Trofimov wrote in a post on X Monday. Trofimov said that Lavrov had advocated a “denazification” that would require a regime change in Ukraine.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted that China isn’t budging in the face of President Trump’s ill-advised tariffs.

On Fox News Monday morning, Brian Kilmeade asked Bessent about progress on talks between the two countries over trade.

“Do you plan on calling your counterpart [in China]?” Kilmeade queried. Bessent’s response showed that he hadn’t planned on it.

“We will see what happens with China, uh, that it’s important, I think it’s unsustainable from the Chinese side, so, uh, maybe they’ll call me one day,” replied Bessent.

Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry said Monday that President Xi Jinping and Trump have not spoken recently and that there hasn’t been any progress on a trade deal between the two countries, contradicting Trump’s words in Time magazine on Friday that Xi had called him as part of tariff negotiations.

“As far as I know, the two heads of state have not called each other recently,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the ministry, to Reuters. “I would like to reiterate that China and the U.S. have not conducted consultations or negotiations on the tariffs issue.”

Trump has levied tariffs of 145 percent against China, inciting a trade war between the two countries as China retaliated with tariffs of its own. Trump toned down some of his anti-China rhetoric last week and even claimed that the two countries were working on a deal, only to be immediately corrected by Beijing then as well. It seems China knows that it has all of the leverage with U.S. markets sliding, and will dig in until Trump backs down.

Top GOP pollsters are seeing the forest for the trees in Donald Trump’s tanking approval rating.

Speaking with CNN on Sunday, Republican pollster and communications strategist Frank Luntz described the drop-off as “a significant change.”

An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published Sunday found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—while 55 percent of Americans said they disapprove of the job he’s doing in office. That’s the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began, roughly 80 years ago.

“The president was upholding some reasonably high numbers—January, February, and early March. And over the tariff situation, it became more and more negative,” Luntz told CNN.

“The agenda still has a majority support,” Luntz continued. “But the way that it’s being articulated is costing the president right now.”

Trump’s whiplash tariff proposals turned the stock market—and Americans’ retirement savings—into a rollercoaster of losses. Still, Trump’s base is weathering the storm. The falling numbers are not stemming from his supporters, per Luntz, but rather a large chunk of the population who helped him secure the White House in November but would otherwise identify as nonpartisan.

“His own numbers, with his own people, have withstood all these pressures,” Luntz said. “It’s those who didn’t like him, now have really turned against him, and among independents, swing voters, people who are not ideological or partisan, those are the people who are saying, ‘I don’t like what’s happening right now.’”

“It’s not his own voters—and what the president and the administration will argue is that he’s just as popular today as he was with the people who voted for him. But in the end, we’re all of America, not just those who supported him.”

The pollster warned that Trump needs to change his messaging strategy on key issues or face the long-term consequences of his sinking popularity.

Donald Trump has completely gutted the Department of Justice section charged with securing elections, The Guardian reported Monday.

In January, there were seven top career managers overseeing the voting section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which is charged with enforcing federal laws protecting voter registration. As of this week, all of them are gone.

Last week, five of them were reassigned to the complaint adjudication office, which handles employee complaints, alongside Tamar Hagler, who had served as the chief of the voting section office, and another career attorney. Of the two remaining managers, one was reassigned to an antisemitism task force, and the other retired.

These removals are part of a wider reshuffling in the Justice Department, as experienced career officials are reassigned to low-level duties, shifted toward the priorities of the Trump administration, or elect to take buyouts.

Trump appointees at the DOJ also instructed career employees in the voting section to dismiss all remaining active cases, but did not provide a rationale for their dismissal and did not meet with the attorneys. The section’s final active case was dismissed last Monday.

“This is what you do when you don’t really know what the section does and just want to create chaos in the simplest way possible that doesn’t involve you reading anything,” one former voting section attorney told The Guardian. “It is extremely clear that the intent is to get absolutely nothing done. And the effect will be that absolutely nothing gets done.”

The moves come just weeks after Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed to lead the civil rights division. A staunch Trump ally, Dhillon defended several election deniers in court and was widely expected to go after civil rights and diversity achievements.

Trump’s demolition of the DOJ’s voting section represents a victory for election deniers and far-right groups.

Cleta Mitchell, a far-right activist with the ear of the president, called for “every lawyer in the Voting Section” to be “terminated” in a post on X after Trump was elected in November.

“They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning. These are leftwing activists who have come from and should return to their leftwing organizations,” she wrote.

The American Accountability Foundation, a dark-money witch-hunting cadre, sent a letter to then–attorney general nominee Pam Bondi in December specifically asking her to gut the DOJ’s voting section.

“These people are woke radical leftists and donors who have no place in the Department of Justice,” the group wrote in the letter signed by Thomas Jones, AAF’s president. “In order to restore the American people’s trust in election integrity and a neutral civil service, they must be fired and replaced with America-first attorneys who will execute on the agenda the American People voted for in November.”

The Trump administration’s meddling at the Department of Justice is part of a wider scheme to undermine any election he is likely to lose. A federal judge ruled Thursday to block parts of Trump’s executive order last month attempting to overhaul elections and voting processes.