Iran Shoots Down U.S. Fighter Jet, Tells People to Hunt Missing Pilot

A U.S. fighter jet was reportedly shot down by Iran on Friday. Iran is offering a “precious prize” to anyone who captures the pilot alive.

Iranian state media reported, and U.S. officials have anonymously confirmed to various outlets, that an American F-15 fighter jet was shot down over southern Iran. If confirmed by the U.S. military, this would be the first time Iran shot down a fighter jet over the country since the war began five weeks ago.

The Trump administration has thus far refused to publicly comment on the news.

There are conflicting reports as to whether the pilot of the jet was able to successfully eject before the crash. But just in case they did, Iranian state media is encouraging anyone who can to hunt them down.

“If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police, you will receive a precious prize,” an anchor said.

This is yet another nightmare scenario on the thirty-fifth day of a war that Trump has been declaring over for weeks. The image of Iran civilians going after a downed U.S. pilot does not align with the rhetoric of Iran being subdued and defeated like Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have been saying. And while Iran has claimed to have shot U.S. planes down before, it has not gone on live TV to invoke a manhunt for a U.S. soldier.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rampant racism and sexism extend further than we previously knew.

Hegseth has made efforts to block or delay the promotion of more than one dozen female and Black officers across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Marines, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process who spoke with NBC News.

“There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth,” one of the U.S. officials told NBC News.

These leaks come just hours after Hegseth removed General Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, in the midst of Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran. George had recently asked to meet Hegseth to discuss his decision to thwart promotions for female and Black service members, but Hegseth refused, two of the U.S. officials told NBC News. Clearly, military officials aren’t pleased with Hegseth’s decisions.

The apparent reasons to block these promotions varied but seemed to have nothing to do with conduct—more with the identities of the officers and what they represented to Hegseth.

Two officials told NBC News that the officers whose advancement were blocked had been supportive of mask mandates or were Black or female, and therefore attached to the DEI programs Hegseth has spent months railing against. Another officer was denied a promotion due to their affiliation with former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, the officials said.

Hegseth blocked the promotions of three Marines, including two women and one Black man. He held up a list of naval officers who’d been selected to become one-star admirals, sparking concern that some could be removed over race or gender. In the Air Force, female officers and members of racial minority groups were pulled off a list for promotion, among others.

Hegseth’s moves could also prove dangerous, considering the U.S. is in the middle of a war. Preventing senior officers from taking over their new posts could hurt military readiness.

The man tapped to fill Pam Bondi’s shoes isn’t any better at handling the Epstein files than she was.

Hours after Donald Trump named him as Bondi’s temporary successor on Thursday, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche took to Fox News, weaving a bold-faced lie about the celebrity pedophile investigation to the network’s conservative audience.

“The Department of Justice has now released all the files with respect to the Epstein saga,” Blanche said. “[Former] Attorney General Bondi and I appeared in front of Congress voluntarily a couple weeks ago to answer any questions they had. We have made every single congressman—senator—available to come and see any document, redacted or unredacted, that they want.

“To the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche added.

But the notion that the DOJ has released everything it has on the Epstein files just isn’t true.

The agency has released roughly 3.5 million pages of evidence related to Epstein’s crimes, but according to a memo from Blanche’s former office in January, the DOJ’s “collection efforts resulted in more than 6 million pages being identified.” That would suggest the agency has only released about half of the evidence that DOJ employees had already determined to be related to the case.

Failing to provide all of the documentation related to the Epstein files is in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed by Trump into law in November.

Lawmakers were quick to call out the discrepancy in Blanche’s numbers, indicating that the Epstein files are likely to be just as big an issue for the new DOJ chief as for his predecessor.

“This is a lie. About 50 percent of the files have been released and per our subpoena it’s illegal to withhold them,” wrote California Representative Robert Garcia on X, responding to a clip of the interview. “Blanche may think it’s over, but we are just getting started.”

At least one Republican similarly put Blanche to task, reminding the new DOJ head of the looming release deadline.

“Congratulations AG Blanche,” posted Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie. “Now you have 30 days to release the rest of the files before becoming criminally liable for failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

President Trump is seeking the largest military budget in this country’s modern history for 2027, even as a multitude of domestic issues—from health care to housing, to the general cost of living—continue to persist.

The White House on Friday requested $1.5 trillion from Congress, which would amount to a 40 percent increase from what the Pentagon spent this fiscal year. The budget would come at the expense of the social safety net, with the administration estimating at least $73 billion in cuts across domestic programs. This comes just days after Trump told his supporters at a private lunch that “it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

The White House’s budget fact sheets state its intention to “cut woke programs” like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Program, the Community Services Block Grants meant to address poverty, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which supports banks and lenders in underserved parts of the country. The Trump administration claims such programs have been “hijacked by radicals” and “advance critical race theory.”

Trump is asking for a trillion-dollar check for death and destruction while actively shutting down programs that help Americans of all backgrounds, all while so many people can’t afford to buy a home, pay off their student loans, or even break a leg.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump is bragging about committing war crimes in Iran—and promising to commit even more.

The U.S. military executed a double-tap strike on a highway bridge outside of Tehran, according to a U.S. official who spoke anonymously to The New York Times Thursday.

The two strikes reportedly struck the bridge roughly an hour apart, with the second arriving while emergency responders, who are considered protected civilians, were assisting the wounded.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, the U.S. president appeared to celebrate that strike and promise more destruction like it.

“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!” Trump wrote.

The military official claimed the strike site was a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces, but Iran’s deputy governor of Alborz Province, Ghodratollah Seif, flatly denied that characterization, according to the Times.

Seif said that there was “absolutely no military activity” on the bridge. The dead and wounded reportedly included civilians who had been picnicking in a nearby park for the final day of the Persian New Year.

A former State Department lawyer told the Times that the bridge appeared to have been “targeted not to provide any military advantage but in the hopes of coercing Tehran and generating content.”

Of course, extensive destruction not justified by a military necessity is a war crime, and these wouldn’t be the first the U.S. military has committed in Trump’s reckless war.