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 that’s part of America’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 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 by the search 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.