A U.S. fighter jet in the Middle East was shot down by Iran, according to a breaking news report from Axios on Friday, the first such instance since the Trump administration launched Operation Epic Fury alongside Israel in late February.
“An American fighter jet was shot down by Iranian fire,” reads a statement from Axios’ Barak Ravid, issued on social media moments after his report was published. “A search is underway to locate the two crew members, according to a source familiar with the details.”
Neither the White House or the U.S. military responded to Axios’ request for comment on the alleged downed aircraft, which according to photos and videos viewed by Axios, is believed to be an F-15 fighter jet.
מטוס קרב אמריקני הופל מאש איראנית. חיפוש מתנהל כדי לאתר את שני אנשי הצוות, כך לפי מקור שמעורה בפרטים. קראו את הכתבה שלי ב-@axioshttps://t.co/8CR6n5WqJA — Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 3, 2026
President Donald Trump officially dubbed Vice President JD Vance as his administration’s new “fraud czar” in an announcement on Friday, with his first assignment being to “primarily” target Democratic-controlled states.
“Vice President JD Vance is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States. It is massive and pervasive, and the job he will be doing, in conjunction with many great people within the Trump Administration, will be a major factor in how great the future of our Country will be,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
“We will call him the ‘FRAUD CZAR,’ and his focus will be ‘EVERYWHERE,’ but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a ‘free for all’ in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money.”
Trump first established a new task force within his administration charged with combating fraud on March 16 via executive order, naming Vance as chairman of the task force at the time. The president’s announcement on Friday issued Vance the honorary title of “fraud czar,” along with details of his first assignment.
“The numbers are so large that, if successful, we would literally be able to balance our American Budget,” Trump continued, speaking to the alleged fraud occurring in Democratic-controlled states. “Raids have already started in L.A. Good Luck JD!”
Moments after President Donald Trumpfired Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was elevated to her position and named acting attorney general, a promotion that was immediately met with a fierce warning from one Republican lawmaker.
“Congratulations AG Blanche,” wrote Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Thursday night in a social media post on X. “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 (EFTA).”
Massie’s warning to Blanche – who represented Trump in court following his indictment on 37 felony counts over his alleged mishandling of classified documents – comes after last year’s passage of the EFTA, which requires the Justice Department (DOJ) to publish all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein with limited redactions. Instead, the DOJ had admittedly withheld millions of files related to Epstein from the public.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers sought to hold Bondi criminally liable for allegedly violating the EFTA, including by holding her in contempt of Congress and issuing her a fine “every day” that her agency refused to publish its remaining files on Epstein. With Bondi now out as the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official, those threats have now been passed over to Blanche.
Recent comments by Blanche suggest that like Bondi, he may continue to stonewall efforts to publish the DOJ’s remaining files on Epstein. Last month, he appeared on “The Katie Miller Podcast” – the right-wing political talk show launched by the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – where he dismissed claims that Epstein may have worked on behalf of foreign intelligence, and in spite of evidence suggesting otherwise.
In his interview with Miller, Blanche also dismissed the idea that Epstein had a “client list” – a colloquial term often used to describe a list of potential co-conspirators of Epstein, or individuals he or his accomplices had potentially trafficked children or young women to – going as far as to say he didn’t "know what a client list is.”
Congratulations AG Blanche. 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. https://t.co/LOcytrTXJV — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 3, 2026
President Donald Trump’s firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi – just weeks after ousting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – was likely the beginning of many high-profile dismissals, Trump biographer Michael Wolff predicted on Thursday, who went on to name who he believed would be in Trump’s crosshairs next.
“This is now a set of dominoes,” Wolff said, speaking on The Daily Beast’s “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast, as reported by the Beast Thursday.
Next in line for dismissal, Wolff predicted, would be Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, followed shortly thereafter by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and eventually, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
His prediction was made in part on information from those in Trump’s orbit, telling the Beast last week that he was aware of phone calls made by the president asking about whether people believed RFK Jr. was “crazy.” As to why Trump has only now kicked off what may be a wave of high-profile firings, Wolff argued that it was, in part, a manifestation of the president’s frustrations over the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which has failed to achieve its objectives and has proven unpopular with Americans.
“I don’t think he can recover here,” Wolff said. “Also, he is going very shortly into his formal lame duck period. Plus, we are approaching the midterms, which are going to be a catastrophe.”
The Beast reached out to the White House about Wolff’s predictions, which in turn lashed out at the biographer as a “lying sack of s---" and a “fraud.”
“He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” reads a White House statement issued to the Beast.
A viral clip posted to X on Thursday showed Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback blowing up at a Black voter and telling him he should be "lynched" for asking about the allegations of inappropriate behavior with teenagers.
The clip was posted by the account @JustinUSA, who describes himself as a "normal Republican."
"So, Mr. Fishback, what's with you smashing a 16 or 17 year old? Can you answer about what's going on with that?" asked the voter.
He appeared to be referencing Keniah Fort, a former employee of Fishback's nonprofit Incubate Debate. who alleged Fishback started up a relationship with her when he was 27 and she was 17. Fort claimed they ultimately lived together for a time before a breakup, and he allegedly engaged in cyberstalking against her. Fishback has denied all of these allegations.
"She said it in court, before you ran for office!" the voter said. Fishback then replied that the judge dismissed all allegations.
"Hey, hey, hey, why is he not answering the question, bro?" said the voter, who then asked him what intimate positions he and Fort had engaged in.
"I don't want you ever speaking about women in our state like that ever again," said Fishback.
"I mean, I don't want you ever smashing girls, teenage girls, in our state ever again," the voter shot back. "So promise me, never smash a minor again?"
"Why haven't I been arrested?" said Fishback. "Why haven't I been arrested? You should be lynched!"
Fishback, who trails President Donald Trump's endorsed candidate of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) in all recent polls, is notorious for drawing massive crowds of younger Republicans to his rallies — and for his long history of inflammatory and racially-charged statements. He has said Donalds, who is Black, would "turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto," and has also vowed to shoot anyone who poses a threat to his campaign workers.
A CNN analyst was doubtful that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom President Donald Trump selected to replace now ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as acting attorney general, would last long in the job.
Senior justice correspondent Evan Perez described how Blanche, who served as Trump's personal attorney and has represented him in various legal matters, including criminal cases, has had a good relationship with the president — for now — while serving as a key legal adviser on matters involving the Justice Department and potential investigations into Trump's political opponents.
"I think that that has helped save him so far, right from some of the, some of the anger of the president," Perez said. "But I think in the end, I think the president is very unhappy with how the department has done what he wants them to do. And some of that is Todd Blanche, or at least a lot of some of the blame goes to Todd Blanche as well. And so we don't know how long he'll last after this, depending on who the president appoints."
Perez also described how unusual it was that Blanche recently spoke at CPAC in suburban Dallas, Texas, bragging at the conservative political event about removing DOJ employees "who were simply doing their jobs."
"These are people, FBI agents, these are prosecutors who were doing their jobs," Perez said. "They were carrying out court orders that were issued by judges."
The analyst said he was stunned by Blanche's comments and what his remarks could mean for potential future litigation.
"There is absolutely nothing I've ever heard from a political leader at the Justice Department that really rivals something like this because, and by the way, the other thing that's going to happen is that every single person that's suing the department and the government over their firings now has that soundbite to use in their lawsuits."
It's unclear how long Blanche could be in the new role.
"But I'll say this on Blanche's tenure, if I were him, I would not be too comfortable in how long I'm going to be around because the same dissatisfaction that the president has with Pam Bondi's job performance is really also applies to Todd Blanche, because he is the person who runs the department day to day," Perez said.
"A lot of the grumbling behind the scenes about the performance of the department in carrying out the president's retribution agenda has also been about Todd Blanche because people say inside, they say that that's where things go to die, that things have been moving very slowly, that he has not been willing to move things quickly enough," Perez added. "Now, in Todd Blanche's defense, I would say that he understands the reality of how things work, right? That you can't just like go indict people. You need to try to have evidence. You need to figure out where you can best bring cases. And then there's some evidence that's just not there."
President Donald Trump has reportedly told Attorney General Pam Bondi that she will soon be out of a job.
Semafor White House correspondent Shelby Talcott first reported that Bondi had been informed that her time as Attorney General was coming to an end.
"The president has informed Pam Bondi that her time as AG is nearing an end, multiple sources tell me," Talcott reported on Thursday. "Formal announcement hasn't yet come aka all the normal caveats that he could change his mind apply; he's been speaking with advisors on a possible replacement in recent days (as others have reported this week) and Bondi is aware of that as well."
Trump was reportedly considering EPA chief Lee Zeldin for the job of attorney general.
"Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person, and she is doing a good job," the president told Semafor on Thursday morning.
Donald Trump’s unprecedented appearance at the Supreme Court encompassed both a request that his seat be moved and the reported inability of the president to hold still while lawyers made their case before the nation’s highest court.
Appearing on MS NOW with host Jonathan Lemire, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero stated the president sat right in front of him, so he had a ringside seat to watch the president react to arguments over his attempt to override the 14th Amendment on birthright citizenship.
Romero, who was beaming over how well it went for the ACLU after conservative justices battered Solicitor General John Sauer with questions about Trump’s executive order, pointed out that he would not be overly surprised if the court comes down 9-0 (”if we’re really lucky”) against Trump.
That led him to report on what he saw from Trump in the crowded courtroom.
“Could you see him from your vantage point? If so, what was he like?” MS NOW’s Lemire asked.
“He was six feet in front of me... he was literally right in front of me,” he recalled. “I was one row behind him, the Secret Service and then the president, so I could watch him entirely throughout the argument. Some of the press reports also got it wrong. Some of the press reports said that he left after the government had its case; the president sat through at least 10 to 15 minutes of our argument.”
“I could see him fidgeting in the chair. I literally could see him, he was literally in my line of vision,” he added. “And when our legal director, Cecillia Wang, made her opening statements, and then when she began to answer questions from the justices, you could see he started getting restless. His shoulders slumped a little bit.”
“I think he was there, clearly to intimidate the justices,” he added. “When they first had him, they sat him on the very end of the front row. And then the Commerce Secretary, Mr. [Howard] Lutnick got up and told the security guards that Mr. Trump would like to be seated more centrally in the courtroom. So they moved him literally right in front of us.”
“And then it was clear that he was endeavoring to put his thumb on the scale. He was endeavoring to glower at the justices to kind of intimidate them, almost defy them to rule against him,” he continued. “And what was remarkable, and this really is a testament that our system of checks and balances is working, that it's a coequal branch of government. Donald Trump is a guest in the Supreme Court. This is Chief Justice Roberts’ house. And there was not a mention, they did not miss a beat when he walked in, the courtroom got quiet. When he walked out, no one missed a beat.”
This comes after a disastrous day of oral argument for Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship to only the children of citizens or lawful permanent residents — an extreme and unprecedented change not only unauthorized by Congress but explicitly contradicting the definition of citizenship laid out in the 14th Amendment, and over a century of precedent from federal courts establishing all persons born in the United States have citizenship.
If the order is allowed to go into effect, potentially millions of people born in the United States to undocumented immigrants, or even to legal residents who don't have permanent status, would be ineligible for federal documents like passports that affirm citizenship.
The administration was raked over the coals by a majority of the justices, including conservatives like Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump's own appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The president personally attended oral argument, the first time this has ever been done by a president in U.S. history. But he stormed out early after it became clear the case wasn't going in his favor.
Donald Trump’s obsession with getting his $400 million ballroom built is not shared by Congressional Republicans, who are reportedly keeping an arm's distance from his court battles.
According to Politico's Hailey Fuchs and Riley Rogerson, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction on the highly controversial ballroom until Congress explicitly authorizes the project. The ruling has shifted responsibility directly to Republicans, who are now responding with deafening silence.
Trump unilaterally demolished the historic East Wing and charged ahead with replacing it with a lavishly expensive ballroom for entertaining wealthy donors. But the courts said not so fast — Congress must approve it first.
Some Trump allies are offering performative support while also making it crystal clear they won't lift a finger to help.
"Nobody raised hell when Roosevelt or Truman renovated the White House (at taxpayer expense)," said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), through his spokesperson, while calling the ruling "stupid" — then immediately declined to take any action.
Conservative judicial activist Mike Davis, close to the White House, is openly frustrated with GOP cowardice.
"Are they just going to let the ballroom just sit there in disarray … they're just going to let the construction zone be a f------- disaster for the next three years? Like, come on."
Most Republican committee chairs are completely absent. Those with direct jurisdiction over White House property matters are remaining silent on whether they'll push legislation to authorize the project. Doing so would expose them to Democratic attacks — the party has already framed the ballroom as proof Trump cares more about entertaining elites than reducing costs for ordinary Americans.
Democrats have the ability to block things in the Senate and have vowed to block any ballroom authorization bill from reaching Trump's desk. They've previously attempted to explicitly ban appropriations for the project.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has defended the ballroom in the past, comparing it to renovations undertaken by Obama and earlier presidents. But Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) refused to comment Wednesday on whether they'd push legislation now.
Privately, Republicans have decided this isn't their problem — at least not yet. They're overwhelmed with other urgent matters: ending the DHS shutdown, reauthorizing controversial spy powers, and meeting Trump's deadline for GOP-only immigration enforcement legislation.
The ballroom was supposed to be completed by 2028, just before Trump's term ends. If the courts don't intervene and Congress doesn't act, that timeline is now in serious jeopardy.
It may have lasted only a few minutes, but a withering exchange between Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Trump's own solicitor general likely sealed the fate of the president's bid to gut birthright citizenship, according to a new analysis.
Slate legal analyst Marc Joseph Stern pointed to a single moment during Wednesday's Supreme Court arguments as the turning point that effectively ended Trump's case. And it came from one of his own nominees.
Barrett zeroed in on Solicitor General John Sauer's central argument that children don't receive birthright citizenship if their parents lack "domicile" in the United States. She asked a simple but devastating question about what happens to the children of enslaved people who were forcibly brought to America against their will.
Enslaved people, Barrett noted, hardly had "intent to remain" in a country they were dragged to in chains. Under Sauer's own theory, their children wouldn't qualify for citizenship either — completely obliterating his argument that the entire point of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children.
"She made very clear that she viewed the children of slaves through the lens of unlawful immigration," said fellow analyst Evan Bernick. "She thought that the situation of enslaved people’s children was not something that could be settled on the basis of any domicile requirement. Because if we think about domicile as 'presence with intent to remain,' well, enslaved people didn’t intend to remain anywhere! They were taken. They were forced into a place. So domicile can’t be the rule, because then you can’t unproblematically grant citizenship to the children of formerly enslaved people."
Sauer had no answer.
"So this felt like the moment that Sauer completely lost the case, because he had to admit that his chief theory cannot be squared with what he himself acknowledges the 14th Amendment was ratified to do," said Stern.
In a nearly 500-word rant, President Donald Trump unveiled a plan Wednesday to steamroll his agenda through Congress, issuing lawmakers a strict deadline and warning Democrats that his plan was essentially foolproof.
Trump’s proposal was that Republican lawmakers eliminate the Senate filibuster, a Senate rule that allows members to block a bill that receives less than 60 votes. By doing so, Congress could potentially pass a spending bill that fully funds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has remained unfunded since February due to disputes over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“We are going forward to fund our incredible ICE Agents and Border Patrol through a process that doesn’t need Radical Left Democrat votes, and bypasses the Senate Filibuster (which should be repealed, IMMEDIATELY!), working in close conjunction with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us. We will not allow them to hurt the families of these Great Patriots by defunding them.”
Airports nationwide have been understaffed for weeks as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – an agency under DHS – remains unfunded. Trump was presented with a proposal last month to fund most of DHS – including TSA but excluding ICE and CBP – but rejected it.
President Donald Trump reportedly left a Supreme Court hearing early after conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and John Roberts seemed skeptical of ending birthright citizenship.
Shortly following Solicitor General John Sauer's arguments against birthright citizenship, Trump was seen leaving the court, according to NBC News and a pool report.
During oral arguments, Roberts suggested that the U.S. Constitution protected the notion of birthright citizenship.
"We're in a new world where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a US citizen," Sauer argued.
"It's a new world. It's the same Constitution," Roberts said.
With arguments still underway, President Trump left the Supreme Court and is heading back to the White House. — Gabe Gutierrez (@gabegutierrez) April 1, 2026
