US fighter jet rolls off aircraft carrier, sinks into ocean, Navy says
Photo by JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images
(MIDDLE EAST) — An F/A-18E fighter jet rolled off the side an aircraft carrier and sank to the bottom of the Red Sea, the Navy announced on Monday.
There was one enlisted crew member aboard the jet and a second enlisted crew member inside the tractor when the incident occurred.
Both personnel were able to jump out in time with only one person sustaining a minor injury, according to officials.
In the extraordinary mishap, the $70 million jet was being towed out of the hanger bay of the USS Harry S. Truman when the crew lost control.
“The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” the Navy wrote in a statement.
“Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway,” the service added.
The USS Harry S. Truman has been operating in the Red Sea since last September when it was deployed to help protect commercial ships against near-constant attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
It’s not clear what contributed to the crew members losing control of the aircraft aboard the carrier, which has previously been targeted by the Houthis. According to a U.S. official, initial field reports suggest a sudden movement of the carrier due to Houthi fire might have been a factor in the incident.
But those reports remained unconfirmed while the investigation plays out.
The Truman carrier was involved in another incident earlier this year when it collided with a merchant ship near the Suez Canal. Its commanding officer was subsequently fired.
The carrier was slated to come home last month, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth extended its deployment while ordering another carrier — the USS Carl Vinson — to the region to bolster military power.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect additional reporting.
(WASHINGTON) — Many Republican senators dismissed the idea of overruling the Senate parliamentarian after she rejected key Medicaid provisions in Trump’s tax and immigration bill Thursday, which dealt a blow to Republicans’ plan to slash costs in the budget package.
This sentiment comes as Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said for months that he was opposed to going against the Senate’s rule enforcer.
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on Thursday denied the GOP plan to cap states’ ability to collect more federal Medicaid funding through health care care provider taxes — a controversial provision that would have funded much of the bill’s tax cuts. Most of the savings in the bill came from the changes in Medicaid.
MacDonough’s ruling means that Senate Republicans will need to retool the provision or scrap it entirely if they want to move forward with attempting to pass the bill using only GOP votes.
The ruling is a major setback for Republican leadership, who are under pressure to expeditiously move it to the Senate floor to meet Trump’s Fourth of July deadline for passage. This ruling will require potentially major reworks of the bill with relatively little time to accomplish them. And no matter how they change it, leaders are likely to frustrate some faction of the Republican conference, which could imperil the bill’s passage.
A number of Republicans said on Thursday morning that they’d work to tweak language in the bill and send it back to MacDonough for review — but would not overrule her. It’s also unlikely that the Senate would move forward with the bill without the provider tax provisions, some said.
The Senate has “no intention of overruling her,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said of MacDonough. “But I think we’ll take another shot.”
Other Republican senators said that this will delay the timeline for passing the bill, which was set to move through the chamber this weekend.
“I think we’ll make another run at it … my guess is that they’ll continue to work,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said.
“Yeah, could push [the timeline] back,” Schmitt said about MacDonough’s ruling. “We’ll see. But we’re committed to being here through the weekend, so I don’t think it changes that overall time frame.”
Republican Sen. Rick Scott said MacDonough’s ruling is “pretty frustrating,” but rejected the idea that the Senate would overrule the parliamentarian.
“What we’ve got to do is work through this process and come up with something that fulfills the Trump agenda — also has fiscal sanity. So I’m going to keep working hard to do that,” Scott said, adding he’s “optimistic” it can be accomplished.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy stated clearly that “we would never overrule the parliamentarian.”
Other Republicans, however, fumed over the parliamentarian and her ruling.
Republican Sen. Tommy Tubberville came out brashly against MacDonough — calling for Thune to fire her “ASAP” and accused her of being partisan. He did not mention overruling her, however.
“The WOKE Senate Parliamentarian, who was appointed by Harry Reid and advised Al Gore, just STRUCK DOWN a provision BANNING illegals from stealing Medicaid from American citizens. This is a perfect example of why Americans hate THE SWAMP,” Tubberville said in a post on X.
“Unelected bureaucrats think they know better than U.S. Congressmen who are elected BY THE PEOPLE. Her job is not to push a woke agenda. THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP,” he added.
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin suggested that MacDonough made her rulings as part of a “political decision.”
“I’m concerned about the parliamentarian’s ability to make these decisions,” Mullin said.
He later added, “If it’s a political decision on [her] part, then that’s not OK.”
The provider tax credit provisions had been emerging as a thorn in leadership’s side even before MacDonough’s ruling.
For days, a small but critical faction of the Senate GOP conference has been raising major flags about the way this cut to states’ Medicaid revenue might kneecap rural hospitals in their states. A number of Republicans in the Senate were threatening to withhold their votes for the package because of these changes to the provider tax, so for that group, MacDonough’s ruling is likely a welcome one.
If changes are made to the Medicaid provision to accommodate MacDonough’s ruling, all eyes will be on a handful of Senate Republicans. Some changes could be deal breakers for those whose vote is critical to moving the bill over the finish line.
Last weekend, MacDonough carefully scrutinized the House-passed bill for possible violations of the Senate’s rules. She has already issued a number of decisions that Democrats are touting as major victories.
This review, called the Byrd Bath — named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, who helped institute the rules governing budget reconciliation packages, is still underway in the Senate.
Any provision that MacDonough rules out of order with the Senate’s rules will have to be stripped or else the legislation will be subject to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Republicans need to avoid this, or they won’t be able to pass the bill.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s meeting with advisers in the Situation Room was underway on Tuesday afternoon, a White House official confirmed, as Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes.
The meeting came hours after Trump arrived back in Washington after leaving the G7 summit in Canada early, citing tensions in the Middle East and instructing his national security team on Monday night to be ready in the Situation Room upon his arrival.
Trump early on Tuesday denied having had contact with leaders in Iran, saying he hadn’t reached out about a potential ceasefire and that he was “not too much in the mood” to negotiate with Iran.
“I’ve been negotiating. I told them to do the deal,” Trump said. “They should have done the deal. The cities have been blown to pieces, lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. I told them do the deal, so I don’t know. I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate.”
He also seemed to dismiss a recent assessment from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who had said Iran wasn’t working on a nuclear weapon. Trump said on Tuesday he thought Iran was “very close” to having such a weapon.
Trump in a post on his Truth Social network also said that he hadn’t reached out to Iran “in any way, shape or form,” calling reports that he had done so “fabricated.”
“If they want to talk, they know how to reach me,” Trump said in a post early on Tuesday. “They should have taken the deal that was on the table — Would have save a lot of lives!!!”
Israel on Friday began an attack on Iran, launching a series of aerial strikes that Israeli officials described as a preemptive strike. Israeli leaders and Trump have separately called for Tehran to put an end to efforts to create nuclear weapons.
Diplomats from the United States and Iran held a series of talks in Muscat, Oman, beginning in April, with the sixth round due to begin last Sunday. Those talks were cancelled as the conflict between Israel and Iran began.
Trump was asked on Tuesday about Gabbard’s testimony in March in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she said Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
When pressed about Gabbard’s comments, Trump dismissed them.
“I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,” Trump said.
Trump has not ruled out American participation in the conflict, although the U.S. has remained on the sidelines so far. Trump has issued, however, a stern warning to Iran on Tuesday over U.S. troops and assets in the region, instructing Tehran “not to touch our troops.”
“We’ll come down so hard if they do anything to our people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Save Our Schools campaign is launching a comprehensive investigation into the Trump administration’s effort to close the Department of Education.
“I’m opening this investigation to hear directly from students, parents, teachers, and borrowers who are being hurt by Trump’s dangerous agenda,” Warren wrote in a statement obtained first by ABC News.
“Their stories matter — and they are why I’m in this fight,” she said.
Warren said since Trump’s move to effectively abolish the agency, Americans have told her how public education has shaped and strengthened their lives. She sent a letter to a dozen education and civil rights groups, seeking answers to how abolishing the department will impact millions of students and families.
The letters went out to the NAACP, NEA, AFT and several other groups. In them, Warren called Trump’s plan to close the department and ostensibly return education power and decision to the states a “reckless crusade.”
“I request your assistance in understanding whether the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department will jeopardize students’ access to affordable, accessible, and high-quality public education,” Warren wrote in the series of letters.
Warren asks for details on how students and families will be affected by any cuts to funding or services if the Education Department is abolished or its functions are transferred to other federal agencies. The groups have until May 22 to respond.
The Massachusetts Democrat and former public school teacher outlines what she calls the Education Department’s key functions in each letter, including protecting the civil rights of students, providing funding for students with disabilities, funding research that helps educators and students, and distributing federal financial aid for students to attain higher education.
“School districts are already preparing for potential funding delays or cuts caused by the dismantling of the Department, with states sounding the alarm about the impact of these funding disruptions on programs like free school lunches for low-income students,” Warren wrote.
But Education Secretary Linda McMahon previously told ABC News “none of the funding will stop” for mandatory programs, arguing that more funding could go to the states if the department is eliminated. It would also take 60 “yes” votes in the Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster and completely dismantle the agency Congress created.
National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues decried the president and McMahon’s mission to shutter the agency, calling it a “constitutional crisis on almost every front.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the administration is “deliberately dismantling the basic functions of our democracy, one piece at a time.”
Warren’s comprehensive investigation also comes on the heels of roughly 2,000 employees at the education department officially being separated from the agency. The Education Department was slashed nearly in half, including hundreds of Federal Student Aid (FSA) employees whose jobs Warren stressed are critically important to students in need. In addition, Warren said downsizing the agency will have “dire consequences” for the country’s more than 40 million student loan borrowers.
Launched in April, her Save Our Schools campaign vowed to fight back against the administration’s executive order entitled improving education outcomes by empowering parents, states and communities.
Through a combination of federal investigations, oversight, storytelling, and lawsuits, Warren said she will work with the community, including lawmakers in Congress, to do everything she possibly can to defend public education.
“The federal government has invested in our public schools,” Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News.
“Taking that away from our kids so that a handful of billionaires can be even richer is just plain ugly and I will fight it with everything I’ve got.”
