International
U.S. special forces executed a high-stakes raid in Iran on Sunday to rescue an injured pilot stranded in the mountains.
When an F-15E Strike Eagle jet was shot down over southwestern Iran, the two U.S. military personnel on board were ejected. U.S. forces rescued the pilot that day, but the weapons operator remained stranded deep in the war zone for two days.
Iranian citizens spotted U.S. aircraft flying low over the area on Saturday, presumably searching for the lost airman.
Iran placed a bounty of £50,000 ($66,100) for the capture of the missing U.S. airman, alive or dead.
Armed with only a handgun and his SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), the airman managed to reach high ground and establish communications undetected.
According to statements from the Trump administration, he hid in a mountain crevice and limited his beacon use for fear it would be intercepted by adversaries.
A senior Trump administration official said the CIA discovered the airman’s exact location and informed the Pentagon so the rescue operation could begin.
Special forces approached the stranded officer aboard several aircraft while launching strikes to keep Iranian troops out of the area. Navy SEALs were airdropped to recover the stranded airman.
The rescue mission involved 155 aircraft according to a statement from President Donald Trump.
Trump announced the airman was severely injured but treated his own wounds and successfully evaded capture.
“We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge,” Trump said. “We wanted to have them think he was in a different location, because they had a vast military force out there — thousands of people were looking.”
After being recovered, the airman landed in Kuwait for medical treatment. Trump announced he “will be just fine.”
National
President Trump signed a controversial executive order this week affecting voting policies, prompting backlash from Democrats and the U.S. Postal Service.
The executive order, signed Tuesday, requests the creation of lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state. The order further instructs USPS to only send mail-in ballots to voters on these approved lists.
Despite Trump assuring reporters in the Oval Office his order is “legally foolproof,” election experts say it may be unconstitutional.
This follows a previous ruling from federal judges blocking an executive order to penalize states for refusing to alter their voting forms. The judges said the president lacks authority to set voting policy.
The order instructs the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State.”
Democrats have spoken out against the new executive order, indicating intent to take matters to court.
“This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration,” Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona said in a statement. “We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court.”
A Department of Justice official said in court last week that the department plans to share the collected voter data with the Department of Homeland Security to help search for non-citizens.
Local
A crude April Fools’ Day prank by Oklahoma City police officers has prompted officials to place them on leave pending an investigation into their actions.
Officers fabricated a story about a high-speed chase involving a collision with a pedestrian and a baby thrown out a car window, eliciting a multi-agency response to their phony 911 call.
“Delta 13 just advised that they threw a baby out the window,” a dispatcher said during the incident according to audio published by KFOR.
“He supposedly ran over a transient,” another dispatcher reported.
After the offending officers revealed the prank, dispatchers said it was “not funny.”
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the Oklahoma City Fire Department responded to the call, sending a fire engine, rescue ladder trucks, a “blood unit” and a district chief according to KOCO.
“Anytime we have emergency calls that are false, it wastes resources within the 911 center and also the response,” Lance Terry, Oklahoma’s state 911 coordinator told KOCO. “And it also endangers the public.”
Conducting a fake emergency call in Oklahoma is classified as a misdemeanor and can result in up to a $500 fine and jail time.
The incident is still under investigation.
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