Saturday, April 04, 2026
Friday, April 03, 2026
US F-15E jet confirmed shot down over Iran as Tehran releases wreckage images | US-Israel war on Iran | The Guardian
US F-15E jet confirmed shot down over Iran as Tehran releases wreckage images
"Downing of fighter plane – the first shot down over Iran since start of war – prompts frantic US rescue effort
A US F-15E fighter has been shot down over Iran, prompting a frantic US search and rescue effort for its two-strong crew, in the first such incident since the start of the war.
Images of a tail fin and other debris were released by Iranian state media early on Friday accompanied by an initial claim that an advanced US F-35 and been hit by a new air defence system over central Iran and the pilot probably killed.
Aviation experts said the wreckage pictured was in fact from a F-15E from the US air force’s 494th squadron, based at RAF Lakenheath in the UK, though it could not at first be confirmed when and where the pictures were taken.
US officials familiar with the situation later confirmed off the record that an F-15E had been brought down and the Pentagon was scrambling to find the crew. But there was no official comment from the US military about the incident.
Subsequent footage filmed from Iran showed a US C-130 Hercules and HH-60 Pavehawk helicopters flying low and at one point refuelling together, accompanied by fresh Iranian speculation that the plane crew may have ejected and survived.
Justin Bronk, an aviation expert from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said the use of the specialist helicopters “suggested a combat search and rescue mission is underway to locate and extract the two aircrew from the F-15E”.
A social media account claiming to be linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards posted a picture of an ejector seat in a desert landscape, which appeared to be consistent with the ACES II type used in F-15Es. “If genuine it would suggest that at least one of the two aircrew did eject safely,” Bronk added.
The presenter on an Iranian TV channel urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police and promised a reward for anyone who did.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that the pilot of the jet – still incorrectly described as an F-35 – had been taken into custody, contradicting Tehran’s initial claim that the pilot had probably died in the incident.
Overnight, the US Central Command, which is leading the attack on Iran, had denied Iranian claims that another F-35 jet had been downed over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. “All US fighter aircraft are accounted for,” Centcom said at the time.
No US fighter jets have been lost over Iran during the five week long conflict, though three F-15Es were dramatically shot down by a Kuwaiti air defence system in a friendly fire accident on March 1.
An F-35 fighter reportedly had to make an emergency landing at a US airbase in the Middle East after sustaining damage from the ground. A US E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft was destroyed at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia on March 27 in a particular accurate Iranian strike."
White House Seeks $1.5 Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request
White House Seeks $1.5 Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request
“The White House is requesting $1.5 trillion for defense in the 2027 fiscal year, a 40% increase from the current year. This request is accompanied by a call for $73 billion in cuts to domestic programs, including climate, housing, and education. The proposed increase is framed as necessary due to the ongoing war with Iran, but both Democrats and Republicans have expressed concerns about the high level of military spending and the proposed domestic cuts.
The massive, proposed increase would be offset in part by steep cuts to domestic programs, some of which the administration describes as wasteful.
With the United States at war with Iran and embroiled in conflicts around the world, the White House said on Friday it would ask Congress to approve roughly $1.5 trillion for defense in the 2027 fiscal year. If enacted, that amount would set military spending at its highest level in modern history.
The request, which arrived on Friday as part of President Trump’s new budget, would amount to a roughly 40 percent bump from what the U.S. spent on the Pentagon this fiscal year. The administration said it would couple the proposed boost with a call for $73 billion in cuts across many domestic agencies, including the elimination of some climate, housing and education programs.
The White House released a summary of its budget request, with fuller details expected later. Together, the ideas may sum to a fiscal blueprint that could still add trillions of dollars to the brimming federal debt over the next decade, if lawmakers translate the president’s vision into law.
Mr. Trump urged Congress to approve most of the new defense money, more than $1.1 trillion, as part of their yearly work to fund the government, and to enact the remaining $350 billion using the same legislative tactic that allowed Republicans to clinch their tax cuts one year ago. He also asked lawmakers to boost federal funding to aid with border enforcement and mass deportations.
In the days before releasing the initial details of his plan, the president and his aides framed the proposed increase for defense in urgent terms, citing a need to restock munitions and other supplies amid the war with Iran. At one point, Mr. Trump indicated at a private lunch that military spending needed to be a national priority, even at the expense of federal safety-net programs and other government aid.
“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things, they can do it on a state basis,” he said, adding the focus had to be “military protection.”
But Democrats and Republicans have expressed a shared unease recently about raising military spending to the extent that Mr. Trump has suggested, fretting that the administration has failed to keep them updated about the status of the Iran war, now in its fifth week.
Nor have lawmakers responded favorably to some of the president’s proposed cuts for agencies and programs that serve American families and businesses. Only months ago, Democrats and Republicans approved spending packages for the current fiscal year that rejected some of the same domestic cuts, which Mr. Trump endorsed as part of his 2026 submission.
This fiscal year, the White House said it would cut domestic spending by $73 billion, or about 10 percent. The administration also said it would ask Congress for a series of boosts to federal law enforcement, including more than $40 billion for the Justice Department, a 13 percent increase.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.“
As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S.
As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S.
The Trump administration’s changes to the H-1B visa program, including a $100,000 fee and a weighted lottery system prioritizing higher salaries, are causing skilled foreign workers to reconsider their careers in the U.S. Despite the upheaval, companies are still filing H-1B visas, particularly for highly qualified candidates.
The pathway to building a career in the United States for many highly educated and skilled foreign workers was once clear: Earn a degree from an American university or college, and then be recruited by a company willing to sponsor one of the 85,000 H-1B visas awarded annually to fill specialized roles and grant work status for up to six years.
Now that reliable route is shifting as the Trump administration has made fundamental changes to the way the visas are granted.
The New York Times spoke to three international workers caught in the middle: an Indian woman who, after receiving her master’s degree in biotechnology from Northwestern University, struggled to find a company that would sponsor her for temporary employment; a Chinese-Mongolian marketing analyst in New York who was laid off and is now hustling to find an employer to sponsor her visa; and a Taiwanese software engineer in Seattle who dealt with anxiety because of shifting immigration policies amid widespread tech layoffs.
The H-1B program allows U.S. companies in major industries like technology and medicine to submit visa applications for foreign candidates, who are then entered into a lottery system. Though the visa program has been around since 1990, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began using a random selection process in 2013 to handle the surplus of applications. Since then, demand has continued to soar.
Last September, the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applicants, stirring confusion around the program. Then in late February, another hurdle was introduced: The Department of Homeland Security turned this game of chance into one that prioritizes higher salaries.
Now, if there are more H-1B applicants than spots available, U.S.C.I.S. will conduct a weighted lottery system based on new criteria: wage levels that are calculated with government employment and wage data, which include factors like job title and location. This new process gives applications tied to higher wages an advantage in the lottery system.
The D.H.S. says the new rule is meant to better protect job opportunities for Americans and to deter companies from filing H-1B petitions for low-skilled, low-paid positions, a practice the Trump administration says has led to the abuse of the program.
“There’s definitely a panic level that we hadn’t seen in the past with clients,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration lawyer who has over 30 years of experience representing both employers and employees in sectors like I.T. and engineering.
“H-1Bs are not a cheap way of doing things,” he said. “You have to pay all the filing fees and legal fees, and you’re also paying a prevailing wage that’s set by the Department of Labor.”
These changes have impelled some foreign workers to rethink their careers in the United States. Those we spoke to said that it felt nearly impossible to find U.S. employers over the last year that would sponsor their H-1B visas for roles in biotechnology and marketing analytics.
Despite the upheaval in the H1-B program, as well as the struggling job market, Mr. Maiona said his firm hadn’t seen a decline in companies filing H-1B visas this year; but he noted that there had been a decrease in employers filing H-1B petitions for entry-level roles. “If you’re making a piece of software and the best qualified person is an H-1B, I’ll say 99 percent of the time the company is going to hire that person with the best qualifications,” he said.“
Pam Bondi broke the DOJ to please Trump. It wasn’t enough to save her.
Pam Bondi broke the DOJ to please Trump. It wasn’t enough to save her.
“Pam Bondi, Trump’s former Attorney General, was fired for failing to prosecute Trump’s political enemies despite her efforts to align the DOJ with his authoritarian vision. Her tenure saw a focus on targeting Trump’s adversaries, but the resulting prosecutions were weak and often unsuccessful. Bondi’s actions damaged the DOJ’s reputation and led to a mass exodus of career attorneys, leaving her successor with significant challenges.
The newly ousted attorney general bent over backward to defend Trump’s most indefensible policies and attack his enemies to the detriment of the Justice Department.
When Pam Bondi agreed to be attorney general under President Donald Trump, she knew what was being asked of her. Trump made no secret of his desire to transform the Justice Department from an impartial, independent law enforcement agency into a weapon for revenge against his political adversaries. She was to treat Trump’s enemies as targets of the U.S. government.
Bondi showed no hesitation in that regard and hit the ground running once confirmed — but it was not enough for Trump. On Thursday, she became the second member of Trump’s Cabinet to be fired this year. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported Bondi was fired mostly because Trump “grew dissatisfied with her inability to deliver on prosecuting his perceived enemies.”
Notwithstanding Bondi’s multiple glaring errors and own goals, most of the forces working against her were outside of her direct control. Even as she failed in Trump’s main objective for her, in her desperate attempts to make good on the president’s wishes, she still managed to do serious harm to the DOJ. The choices Bondi made in the name of appeasing Trump damaged its reputation, hollowed out its staff, and left her successor even less poised to uphold the nations’ laws fairly and evenly.
For all Trump’s ire about Bondi’s failures to prosecute his perceived enemies, it’s hard to see what more she could have done to slake his thirst for revenge. After all, her hands were tied by a simple fact: There is no law against making the president mad. Bondi still devoted a significant portion of the department’s resources toward finding something, anything, to use against Trump’s political foes in court, especially after Trump publicly admonished her to move faster.
The resulting prosecutions were almost all too weak to hold up in the face of the court’s scrutiny. Some could not even clear the low bar of a grand jury indictment. An ambitious but severely inexperienced prosecutor installed by Bondi got a grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, but those indictments were overturned. Subsequent efforts to pin them with alleged crimes have gone nowhere. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is reportedly under investigation, but there have been few updates in that matter since November.
The attempts from U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro to go after former President Joe Biden and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellhave fared little better. Probes into Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly impeding law enforcement have drawn no charges. In fact, the most successful of the indictments against Trump’s antagonists, a classified documents retention case against his former national security advisor, John Bolton, came from an investigation the Biden administration launched.
There was little else in Bondi’s record at Main Justice to buoy her in the face of this failure in Trump’s eyes. The administration’s disastrous handling of the files surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted child sex abuser, fell squarely on her shoulders. While the scandal surrounding the so-called Epstein files had no good outcome, given how much of it was based on conspiracy theories, Bondi’s fumbling only added fuel to the fire.
Weeks into her tenure, Bondi insisted in a memo to federal lawyers that they “are expected to zealously advance, protect, and defend their client’s interests.” She meant that to be as Trump’s interests, of course, not the federal government’s orAmericans’. But her ironfisted attempts to instill loyalty and devotion for Trump in DOJ lawyers failed spectacularly. We have seen a massive rush to the exits from career DOJ attorneys, and those who have stayed have scrambled to handle an onslaught of cases brought against the administration.
The dearth of Civil Division lawyers willing to defend Trump’s policies is a function of how indefensible those policies are. Federal courts have been flooded with immigration cases, many of which have seen lawyers stammering to explain to judges how the plaintiff’s rights haven’t been violated. The Civil Rights Division, once a jewel of the federal government and a defender of access to the ballot box, has now adopted a mission that includes blocking Americans from the polls.
All of this was done to please Trump and align the DOJ with his authoritarian vision. Bondi’s failure, then, was not a lack of enthusiasm but her inability to bend the justice system past its breaking point. Despite a boost from a pliant majority on the Supreme Court, there were simply too many roadblocks keeping her from persecuting the people on Trump’s list of targets.
With Bondi gone, acting Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will step up until a replacement is confirmed. Early reporting points to Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin as a likely candidate. Zeldin may perform better under the spotlight of a congressional grilling than Bondi and may prove himself to be more creative in stretching the law to attack the people Trump wants to attack. But absent a total rewrite of America’s criminal code to better suit Trump’s wishes, he will have the same problems pleasing Trump that Bondi had.”
Thursday, April 02, 2026
Trump Has Discussed Firing Attorney General Pam Bondi - The New York Times
Trump Has Discussed Firing Attorney General Pam Bondi
"President Trump has not made a final decision, but he has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator.
President Trump has discussed firing Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days as he grows frustrated with her leadership at the Justice Department and her handling of the Epstein files, according to four people familiar with the conversations.
Mr. Trump has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations by the president.
Mr. Trump has not made a final decision, and Ms. Bondi’s allies pointed to photos of her and the president traveling to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to dispute the notion that the president is planning to fire her.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times. A spokesman for Ms. Bondi referred to Mr. Trump’s statement.
But the president has been souring on Ms. Bondi for months. Among his top complaints is Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes, according to people who have spoken to him recently.
The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Ms. Bondi last month to compel her to testify about the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Her deposition is scheduled for April 14, though she and Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman, have been working together to avoid the deposition, even though it is unclear whether it is legally possible to withdraw a subpoena.
Mr. Trump has also said the Justice Department under Ms. Bondi has not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his political enemies. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a social media post directed at Ms. Bondi in which he grumbled about the lack of indictments.
During his second term, Mr. Trump had been hesitant to oust members of his cabinet after his first term was marred by frequent firings and narratives of staff chaos. Some officials said Mr. Trump’s posture had shifted in recent weeks, buoyed by the smooth process of removing Kristi Noem from her role as secretary of homeland security and the straightforward confirmation process of Markwayne Mullin to replace her.
Mr. Trump has sent mixed signals about Ms. Bondi over the last year. He has complained about her privately, arguing that she has not been effective enough in pursuing his priorities. He has been particularly angry about the Justice Department’s failure to win cases involving his political opponents, including against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
At the same time, Mr. Trump has praised her loyalty in public and speaks with her often.
If Mr. Trump does fire Ms. Bondi, officials said, he has not made a final decision about who should replace her, though he has discussed elevating Mr. Zeldin.
Mr. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who unsuccessfully ran to be his state’s governor, has been one of Mr. Trump’s most reliable foot soldiers. As the administrator of the E.P.A., charged with ensuring the protection of human health and the environment, Mr. Zeldin has made it his mission to promote Mr. Trump’s vision of “energy dominance.”
“He’s our secret weapon,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zeldin in February at a White House event promoting the coal industry, adding, “He’s getting those approvals done in record setting time.”
Representatives for the E.P.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Glenn Thrush, Katie Rogers, Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow contributed reporting.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
Trump Attends Supreme Court Oral Arguments in a Presidential First - The New York Times
Trump Attends Supreme Court Oral Arguments in a Presidential First
President Trump’s presence in the court puts him face to face with justices whom he has tried to bully and intimidate.
President Trump had seen enough.
He spent about an hour listening to the government make its case against birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, making him the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the high court.
His presence, which put him face-to-face with justices whom he has tried to bully and intimidate, only raised the stakes of an already closely watched case about what it means to be an American, an issue that was key to his political rise.
But about 13 minutes into the opposing argument by the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Trump abruptly got up and walked out, trailed by two escorts.
Mr. Trump has made little room for dissent during his second stint in the White House, and it was no different on Wednesday at the court. In all, Mr. Trump spent about an hour in the courtroom’s public gallery, listening as the justices across the ideological spectrum questioned his efforts to strictly limit birthright citizenship.
During oral arguments, spectators are generally expected to remain seated and silent.
Mr. Trump has long attacked judges who defy him, but the president’s relationship with the Supreme Court justices became even more strained after the court’s decision in February to invalidate his tariffs plan, which like immigration is at the heart of his administration’s agenda.
A hush came over the courtroom as Mr. Trump entered the room. He arrived about 10 minutes before the oral arguments began, accompanied by his attorney general, Pam Bondi, as well as the White House counsel, David Warrington.
Wearing a red tie, Mr. Trump sat with his hands clasped in his lap as the arguments delved quickly into a history lesson about the 19th century debate surrounding the 14th Amendment. The president’s seat was at least half a dozen rows behind the lectern, where his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, stands. Mr. Sauer previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney. The justices did not appear to acknowledge Mr. Trump’s presence, instead focusing their attention on the two lawyers presenting the case.
Mr. Trump departed the Supreme Court just as Cecillia Wang, the A.C.L.U. lawyer, and the justices went back and forth on questions central to the case, including whether undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors, such as students or workers on visas, should receive automatic U.S. citizenship.
Upon his return to the White House, Mr. Trump issued a public reaction to the arguments on social media, falsely claiming the United States was “the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” The United States is among at least 30 countries that automatically grant citizenship to anyone born within its borders.
Mr. Trump, who has appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, has often talked about the justices not as independent checks on his power appointed for their expertise, but as loyalists who should support his agenda. Last month, he suggested that Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he nominated during his first term, were “an embarrassment to their families” because they had joined the majority in voting against his tariffs plan.
Legal experts said that Mr. Trump’s presence at the court on Wednesday was a show of power.
“Is there any question? It’s an attempt to intimidate the justices,” said Steven Lubet, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University’s School of Law who focuses on legal ethics. “It’s a challenge to the Supreme Court’s independence.”
Mr. Trump has taken steps throughout his time in office to erode checks on his power and encroach on traditionally independent agencies. He has ousted inspectors general, installed loyalists at the Justice Department and delivered broadsides against judges defying his executive power.
Mr. Trump had mused about attending the Supreme Court’s arguments about tariffs, but ultimately did not make an appearance.
Many people outside the court expressed strong opposition to the president’s presence.
“I think it’s basically kind of a strong-arming tactic, wanting to be there, intimidate them with his presence,” said Michelle McKeithen, one of the people who gathered outside the court during the arguments. “And kind of a statement of: ‘Make a decision while I’m here, looking you dead in your eye — and don’t make the wrong decision.’”
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump continued to express displeasure with the Supreme Court — insisting the justices must prove their intelligence by siding with him on the birthright citizenship issue, which he sees as key to his administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
The president and his top advisers have long contended that so-called birth tourism is a national security threat and incentivizes foreigners to travel to the United States to have babies.
“Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!” he posted on social media earlier this week.
The president appeared to be referring to his argument that the 14th Amendment was intended only to grant citizenship to freed slaves after the Civil War and not to broadly guarantee it to everyone born in the United States, a claim with which even many conservative scholars disagree.
Many other presidents, including John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon, have made appearances in the courtroom. But they all did so as lawyers arguing cases, before or after serving in the White House, according to Clare Cushman, a historian with the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Weeks after Mr. Trump responded to the Supreme Court’s tariff decision by calling the court’s majority a “disgrace to our nation,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to warn about the increasingly harsh rhetoric aimed at justices, calling it “dangerous.”
“It’s got to stop,” he said during an appearance at Rice University.
Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it was fine “in theory” for Mr. Trump to attend the Supreme Court arguments.
But given his previous insults about the justices who voted against him, Ms. Shaw said that “this seems like a way to send the message that justices who vote against his birthright citizenship order are in for more such attacks.”
Aishvarya Kavi and Zach Montague contributed reporting.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States."
(Birthright citizenship—legally called ***jus soli*** (“right of the soil”)—means a child automatically becomes a citizen by being born in a country, regardless of the parents’ citizenship.
There are **two main types**:
* **Unrestricted jus soli** (almost anyone born there gets citizenship)
* **Restricted jus soli** (only under certain conditions, like parents’ legal status)
---
# 🌎 Countries with **Unrestricted Birthright Citizenship**
These countries grant citizenship to **nearly all people born on their soil**:
### Americas (the core region)
* United States
* Canada
* Mexico
### Caribbean & Central America
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Barbados
* Belize
* Dominica
* Grenada
* Jamaica
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Trinidad and Tobago
### South America
* Argentina
* Brazil
* Chile *(with minor exceptions)*
* Peru
* Venezuela
* Uruguay
---
# ⚖️ Countries with **Restricted Birthright Citizenship**
These countries allow birthright citizenship **only if certain conditions are met** (such as a parent being a citizen or permanent resident):
### Europe
* United Kingdom
* Ireland
* France
* Germany
### Africa
* South Africa
* Lesotho
### Asia & Middle East
* Pakistan *(mostly jus soli with exceptions)*
* India *(restricted since 1987/2004 reforms)*
### Oceania
* Australia
* New Zealand
---
# ❗ Important Context
* **Most of the world does NOT have birthright citizenship.**
Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa mainly follow ***jus sanguinis*** (“right of blood”), where citizenship depends on parents’ nationality.
* The **Americas are unique**—they have the strongest tradition of birthright citizenship). ChatGPT