Hegseth Claims Rescued Pilot in Iran Is Like … Jesus?

A boisterous Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth compared one of the rescued fighter pilots downed in Iran to Jesus Christ resurrecting from the dead and emerging from his tomb on Easter Sunday.

Hegseth made an appearance at President Trump’s briefing Monday regarding the two U.S. fighter pilots who were extracted from Iran after being shot down on Friday.

“One downed airman evaded capture for more than a day, scaling rugged ridges while hunted by the enemy. When he was finally able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was simple, and it was powerful. He sent a message: ‘God is good,’” Hegseth said. “In that moment of isolation and danger his faith and fighting spirit shown through.”

“You see, shot down on a Friday, Good Friday. Hidden in a cave. A crevice, all of Saturday. And rescued on Sunday, flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good,” Hegseth continued, laying it on incredibly thick as if writing the script to his dream Taylor Sheridan movie.

The frequency in which Hegseth injects his rabid, militant brand of Christianity into any public event is exhausting. The pilot who went down was not like Jesus Christ. He was sent to the Middle East to either surveil or bomb infrastructure and civilians alike. And it’s hard to understand why the very first message he sent out while trapped in a crevice while being hunted by Iranians was “God is good,” and not “HELP ME!!!” immediately followed by coordinates.

A three-year-old girl’s family alleges she was sexually abused in foster care after being separated from her mother by immigration enforcement, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

After crossing illegally through the U.S.-Mexico border near El Paso, the girl was removed from her mother’s custody and placed in a foster home by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Five months later, the girl was returned to the custody of her father, a legal permanent U.S. resident, and he learned that his daughter had allegedly been abused by another child in the same home.

The young girl’s father had tried repeatedly to reunite with his daughter, but his efforts were stalled as the government told him it couldn’t make an appointment to take his fingerprints. “She was so long in there,” he told the AP. “I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.”

A caregiver in the foster home discovered that the girl’s underwear was on backwards, and the girl told her she’d been abused multiple times, causing bleeding. The girl underwent a forensic exam and an interview, and the findings were reported to law enforcement. The older child who’d committed the abuse was removed from that foster program.

The girl’s father told the AP that he was simply told there had been an “accident.”

“I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation,” the father said.

Lauren Fisher Flores, the attorney representing the young girl, said, “To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable.

“Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”

Fisher Flores said that legal intervention helped prompt the processing of the father’s sponsorship application.

The Trump administration has dramatically increased the burden for families hoping to facilitate the release of children placed in ORR’s custody. Sponsors now face stricter documentation requirements and even risk arrest themselves. In 2025, the average number of days a supposedly “unaccompanied” child spends in ORR’s care jumped to 117 from 30.

The Trump administration has taken thousands of children into custody. At the end of February, there were more than 2,300 children in ORR’s care, and roughly 300 placed in foster care.

Republican Representative Tony Gonzales is again in trouble for pursuing a sexual relationship with one of his staffers.

The San Antonio Express-News reports that Gonzales, when he was first running for Congress in 2020, pestered one of his campaign aides for nude photos and sex. The woman, who asked the Express-News to keep her identity secret, said that she declined Gonzales’s entreaties, even though he asked her for nude photos more than 12 times in three days and met her twice at her home at night to discuss work.

The woman, who worked as the political director for Gonzales’s 2020 congressional campaign but now volunteers for GOP nominee Brandon Herrera, said she approached the newspaper after she heard about his affair with staffer Regina Santos-Aviles in 2024 and its tragic aftermath, sharing the messages with the Express-News. Gonzales had begun the affair after pressing Santos-Aviles for “sexy pics” and describing his favorite sexual positions.

The two would spend time together at another staffer’s cabin in Uvalde, Texas, and one day after Gonzales won his election primary in May that year, Santos-Aviles revealed the affair to the rest of the office. That led to a downward spiral for her, as meetings she set were canceled, Gonzales stopped his regular travels to Uvalde, and her husband became aware of the affair.

Santos-Aviles began taking antidepression medication, and in August, attempted suicide but survived. The next month, though, she set herself on fire and died the next day. Gonzales didn’t attend her funeral. Last month, under pressure from House Republican leadership over the scandal, Gonzales announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection.

“He obviously pursued, pursued, pursued [Santos-Aviles] like he did with me,” the former campaign staffer said to the Express-News. “I never took him serious.… It wasn’t until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”

“This behavior needs to stop,” she added.

Iran will not accept anything short of a complete end to the war.

The country’s leadership rejected a ceasefire Monday by way of Pakistani mediators, despite Donald Trump’s imminent threats to raze the nation to the ground.

Iran’s ideal proposal consists of 10 clauses, which include ending regional conflicts, lifting sanctions, reconstruction of the nation, and securing protocols for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, reported Reuters.

The rejection follows efforts by Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff, who were reportedly on the phone “all night” with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir, a source told Reuters.

Trump set a Tuesday night deadline for Iran to agree to a deal with regard to reopening the Strait of Hormuz to international oil trade, promising practically every form of violent retaliation should the country’s leadership refuse to do so.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump posted to Truth Social on Sunday.

Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he added.

In another post to his social media platform, Trump wrote: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time.”

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the strait funnels approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. Most of that oil is moved toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The price per barrel has exploded due to the strait’s closure, pushing gas over $4 per gallon in most states (in California, gas in some counties has leapt past $7 a gallon). Diesel shot up by 20 cents over the last week alone.

But beyond the dollars and cents, the war has cost the lives of more than 2,000 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded.

President Trump used his Easter Monday speech to boast about his deadly war on Iran while flanked by the first lady and the Easter Bunny.

“So today is a very special day. It’s a day where we celebrate Jesus. It’s a day where we celebrate religion,” Trump said Monday morning at the White House Easter Egg Roll, his voice devoid of enthusiasm. He then went on his usual spiel about how the U.S. is doing better than ever, before pivoting to the war on Iran and the rescue of two downed American fighter jet pilots.

“I just wanna say we have a great military. We have the greatest military, the most powerful military in any place in the world. You saw what happened with Venezuela,” Trump continued, referring to the illegal kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The crowd cheered. “Our warriors are the greatest fighters on earth,” he added.

Then more rambling about eggs, fake news, the Easter decorations, and how we’re “the hottest country in the world.”

Only Trump could turn what’s meant to be a short, sweet speech about Jesus Christ and the meaning of rebirth and resurrection into a speech about himself and the destruction he’s imposing across the globe. Especially while someone in an Easter Bunny costume is standing there like JD Vance at the State of the Union.

Donald Trump is asking for more money to hunt so-called “domestic terrorists” on the left—and it seems like they’re talking about you.

Buried in the FBI’s 2027 budget request to Congress was a request for funding efforts to implement the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), a national security strategy targeting supposed anti-American activity on the left that Trump signed in September, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Sunday. The FBI requested funding for the recently created NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, which brings together personnel from across 10 agencies working “to proactively identify networks and prosecute domestic terrorist and related criminal actors.”

What exactly are they looking for? Well, anything they disagree with.

“Commonly, this violent conduct relates to views associated with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government (USG); extremism on migration, race, and gender. And hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” the budget stated.

According to the FBI, publicly expressing beliefs as banal as a critique of capitalism are now considered precursors for domestic terrorist activity.

Under NSPM-7, the Trump administration aims to target community organizers and protesters on the left. “Domestic terrorists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications,” the budget stated. “They use these platforms to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence.”

The FBI requested $166.1 million and 328 positions, including five attorneys and 130 special agents, for its counterterrorism activities in the coming fiscal year, including plans to “implement National Security Presidential Memorandum / NSPM-7 requirements.”

ICE agents entered a military base in Louisiana last week and detained the newlywed spouse of a U.S. Army staff sergeant.

Annie Ramos, 22, came to the U.S. from Honduras when she was a toddler, and did not have a criminal record. She became engaged to Matthew Blank on New Year’s Day, and the two were married only weeks ago, in late March. Last week, the pair checked in at the Fort Polk, Louisiana, base where Blank works, planning to begin the process that would allow her to move in with him on the base and receive military benefits.

Instead, after they presented Ramos’s Honduran passport, her birth certificate, their marriage license, and Blank’s military identification, base personnel called a supervisor. Then, someone from the base’s criminal investigation division was contacted, who said he would call Homeland Security and ICE. That officer told the couple that Ramos would be detained.

“Our plan was to drive over, bring her to the office to get her military ID and activate her military spouse benefits,” Blank told The New York Times. “She was going to move in after the Easter weekend. Instead, she got ripped away from me.”

When undocumented immigrants marry U.S. citizens, they are supposed to become eligible for permanent residency, and then they can apply for citizenship three years later, even if they were issued a prior deportation order, as Ramos was when she was 22 months old. Ramos and Blank had hired an immigration lawyer before they were married to take care of the situation.

“I knew she didn’t have status,” Blank said. “We were doing everything the right way.”

Ramos was handcuffed, separated from her husband and new parents-in-law, who drove the couple to the base, and taken to a building that Blank said “looked like an interrogation room.” Three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived and told Blank’s mother, Jen Rickling, that they didn’t have a choice before taking Ramos away.

In Donald Trump’s second term as president, the government hasn’t hesitated to detain a father trying to visit his baby in the NICU, Afghan refugees who worked with the U.S. military for more than a decade, and even journalists covering ICE. Detaining a military spouse is an egregious step in the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

ICE has already been deployed to military bases to target the family members of military recruits on graduation and visiting days, but coming specifically to arrest a military spouse who was preparing a green card application, as Ramos was, is something else.

It appears that federal immigration authorities have once again lied about an ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

New footage obtained by The New York Times exposes how Immigration and Customs Enforcement lied about one of its agents being beaten with a shovel and broom—and reveals why the agency likely dropped charges against the immigrant they shot.

In January, rideshare delivery driver Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna realized he was being followed by ICE agents. The agents claimed he “recklessly zigzagged through traffic,” while Aljorna claimed the agents were purposefully trying to ram his car. When he arrived home, his roommate and fellow Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was standing outside shoveling snow. When Sosa-Celis dropped the shovel and turned around to run inside he was shot in the leg by the ICE agents. The bullet that hit Sosa-Celis ended up stuck in the house near a children’s playset.

ICE’s version of events? That Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were assaulting them with a broom and a shovel for nearly three minutes, justifying their use of force. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even called it an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” and the men were charged with assault. Now it’s abundantly clear that was a complete lie.

New footage of the incident captured by a city camera at a nearby intersection shows Sosa-Celis throwing the shovel aside as he flees, directly contradicting the agents’ claims. Instead of three minutes, like ICE claimed, the episode lasted about 12 seconds. And yet both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were jailed for weeks afterward.

“There is a snow shovel there, but it doesn’t appear it ever gets used as a weapon,” Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said after reviewing the video. “There is no bludgeoning or anything.… It sounds like an unarmed person got shot running away.”

It’s hard to describe just how despicable this is. Two men were virtually randomly accosted by ICE agents. They shot one in the leg. Then the federal government called them murderers and hit them with heavy charges, all for video footage to invalidate it all.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has been forced to turn down the volume on his white supremacist agenda—but he’s still working behind the scenes.

Miller has overseen Donald Trump’s aggressive law enforcement crackdown on immigrants, urging federal agents to detain 3,000 immigrants every day. Now the ghoulish homeland security adviser has taken a step away from the spotlight after his soft ethnic cleansing left two U.S. citizens dead in Minnesota and sparked a national outcry, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Miller reportedly goaded federal agents to “force confrontations” with anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis before they shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 36-year-old ICU nurse. Miller claimed after the shooting that Pretti was a “would-be assassin.” Eventually, Miller was forced to offer a rare concession: The Customs and Border Protection agents who shot and killed Pretti “may not have been following” protocol, he later admitted.

But it was too late to save face. Miller and the now-ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were forced to cut back on public appearances after becoming the faces of Trump’s increasingly unpopular immigration policies, according to the Times. Miller’s hard-line mass deportation agenda is reportedly falling out of fashion even with the fascists, as mounting leaks have detailed his erratic behavior.

Since facing backlash for promoting violent tactics, Miller has moved to force immigrants out in more subtle ways. In recent calls with immigration officials, Miller asked for information about how immigrants use credit cards, potentially as part of an effort to thwart their ability to open accounts and spend money, officials with knowledge of the discussions told the Times.

In Tennessee and Oklahoma, Miller appears to have helped sprout legislation that would require hospitals, public schools, and other social services to report when undocumented immigrants use their services.

Steve Bannon just got one step closer to overturning his contempt of Congress conviction.

The Supreme Court threw out an appellate court opinion that upheld a conviction against the former Trump adviser Monday, opening a pathway for a trial court to act in the White House’s interest to toss Bannon’s conviction entirely “in the interests of justice.”

Bannon was previously convicted on charges relating to his evasion of a congressional subpoena, after he refused to appear before the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The political tactician originally argued that his testimony was protected, as an extension of Donald Trump’s executive privilege, reported the Associated Press. The House panel contended at the time that was doubtful, considering that Bannon had been out of the federal government for years and was a private citizen by January 6.

Nonetheless, the nine-justice Supreme Court vacated the charges Monday with no explanation and no noted dissents. The only clarification offered was via a brief order, which noted that the Justice Department has moved to drop the indictment against Bannon.

Bannon was at one point at the epicenter of Trump’s universe. He served as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist before the former Apprentice host fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

Despite his fall from grace, Bannon has continued to exert his influence in the far-right sphere. In 2023, the political provocateur assumed he’d continue to wield power under a future Trump administration, promising to slam American broadcasters with “prosecutions and accountability” for reporting that Trump lost the 2020 election.

He went to trial in July 2022 for defying the subpoena, and ultimately served a four-month prison term as a result.

This is story has been updated.