Friday Afternoon News Updates: F-15E Shot Down Over Iran — 4/3/26

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Thursday afternoon. A lot is happening today, so let’s get right into it.

Here are the top stories we’re currently tracking at a high level:

• U.S. F-15E Shot Down Over Iran; Search and Rescue Ongoing

• One Crew Member Rescued Alive; Second Still Missing

• Iran Government Social Media Goes on Full Troll Offensive

• Trump Posts About Stealing Iranian Oil

• Macron Builds New Alliances, Cites U.S. “Unpredictability”

• Trump Drops $1.5 Trillion Military Budget, Nearly Double 2024 Levels

• $152 Million Alcatraz Prison Proposal Buried in Budget Request

• March Jobs Beat Expectations, But February Was Quietly Revised Way Down

• Pam Bondi’s Portrait Tossed in Trash After Firing

Now let me go through it all in greater detail:

Both Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, citing officials with direct knowledge, have confirmed that a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran. Combat search and rescue operations are actively underway. We’re seeing extraordinary footage from deep inside Iranian airspace of F-35 jets and MQ-9 drones supporting U.S. helicopters as they search for the two-person crew.

We recently learned that U.S. Special Forces have located and rescued one of the crew members, the pilot, alive, in southern Iran. He’s in U.S. hands and receiving medical treatment. The search for the Weapons Systems Officer, the second crew member, is still ongoing. Israel has reportedly canceled planned strikes on Iran specifically to avoid hampering that rescue effort.

This is a serious, developing situation, and American lives are on the line right now.

While the rescue mission unfolds, Iran’s government accounts are having what I can only describe as a field day on social media. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, posted: after supposedly defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this no-strategy war has been downgraded from “regime change” to begging anyone to help find their pilots. The Iranian Embassy in South Africa posted a “Wanted” graphic for the missing crew member, saying they want him alive. The Iran Embassy in Thailand posted an AI-generated Lego animation of a pilot being chased by Iranians, captioned “Currently in Iran.”

They also posted a cartoon of Ronald Reagan shaking Trump’s hand with Reagan saying he destroyed the Soviet Union, Trump responding that he destroyed the United States. And they put up photos of the American generals Pete Hegseth has fired, all with X marks through their faces, sarcastically captioned “The regime change happened successfully. MAGA.”

While all of this was unfolding, while American service members were waiting to be found in hostile territory, here’s what Trump was posting on Truth Social:

“With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, and MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD.”

He also posted that the military “hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran” and is looking at bridges and power plants next.

I don’t know what to tell you. Two American crew members are on the ground in Iran right now, one of them still unaccounted for, and Trump is fantasizing publicly about stealing oil and talking about what else he can blow up.

Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency put out a call to Iranian civilians to help capture the pilot and WSO. That’s the environment our service members are evading right now. And the IRGC-linked accounts released images of what appears to be the ejection seat from the downed aircraft, though the veracity of the images is as of now unconfirmed.

Meanwhile, Iranian mediators have rejected talks with U.S. officials in Islamabad, saying that the U.S. demands are unacceptable and a nonstarter.

French President Emmanuel Macron, currently on a state visit to South Korea, said something this week that would have been absolutely unthinkable just a few years ago. He said France’s goal is not to be a vassal of either China or the United States, that Europe can’t depend on China’s dominance, but also cannot afford the unpredictability of the U.S. He called climate change real and science-based, rebuking statements made by Trump. He said he’s working to build a coalition including France, South Korea, Canada, Japan, India, Brazil, Australia — a “third way” for countries that don’t want to align reflexively with either Beijing or Washington.

He also said this about the Iran war: bombing and military operations have never fixed these situations. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Libya. Twenty years later, nothing was delivered. You can’t impose regime change on people.

The fact that French and Korean diplomats are calmly constructing a post-American alliance structure while we’re losing aircraft over the Persian Gulf tells you everything about where Trump has taken this country’s standing in the world.

Meanwhile, Trump’s official budget request is out. He wants $1.5 trillion for the military. For context, the 2024 defense budget was $841 billion. He’s stripping funding from Medicare, Medicaid, hospitals, and every social program people rely on to nearly double the Pentagon’s budget while we are currently losing planes in Iran.

Oh, and tucked in there is $152 million to rebuild Alcatraz as a “state-of-the-art secure prison facility.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke at George Washington University, my alma mater, actually, and told the audience that her advice is to always be the most well-read person in the room. She then added that Trump always is. I’m not joking. She actually said that, unironically.

The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in March, beating expectations of 65,000. Unemployment dropped to 4.3%. But I would take these numbers with a large grain of salt. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, notes: “The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, but not for great reasons. There’s a big drop (almost -400k) in the labor force. The labor force participation rate also fell. It appears people stopped looking for work in March or perhaps more migrants left the workforce (or both).”

And then there is the fact that February’s job numbers were just revised way down. What was initially reported as a loss of 92,000 jobs turned out to actually be a loss of 133,000 jobs, the worst monthly loss since December 2020 (remind me who was president back then?). Given the pattern of downward revisions we keep seeing, March’s numbers are likely to get revised down too. So before anyone starts celebrating, we’ve seen essentially no net job growth this year when you account for the corrections.

Kevin Hassett was on Fox this morning saying everything’s going to be fine, it’s just a little blip, things will get back to normal faster than you’d expect. Economic prosperity, as always, is just around the corner. Along with your DOGE checks. And tariff rebates.

I’ll finish with one other story that may bring a smile to your face. After Bondi was fired from DOJ, her portrait was almost immediately removed and tossed in a trash bin. MS NOW obtained the photo. This is apparently how beloved she was among the career officials who had to work under her.

We’ll keep you updated as the news develops. Stay tuned for a new episode of Meidas Defense, posting soon, as well as Ron Filipkowski’s daily bulletin later today.

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