THE WAR ROOM: Iranian defenses on Friday shot down an American F-15 fighter jet and an A-10 ground support jet that also crashed. This casts doubt on President Trump’s claim that Iran is completely beaten and defenseless.

One pilot from the F-15 was rescued and search teams were looking for the second. Iranian forces were also looking for that second pilot, who could become a bargaining chip if they capture him.

  Iran has released photos of wreckage and an ejection seat. President Trump told  NBC News that the status of the missing airman would not affect efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to end the war.

  The pilot from the A-10 Warthog was recovered by US forces.

  Iran is still hitting Israel and neighboring countries despite Trump’s claim that they are nearly out of weapons. The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said that drones had struck the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery. The Kuwaiti government said Iran had damaged a power and water desalination plant in the country.

  The vital Strait of Hormuz is still closed to oil and gas shipping. Trump posted, “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD???”

MOONSHOT: The crew of the Orion space capsule are sleeping this morning while travelling at a speed of more than one mile a second toward the moon. The astronauts sleep in bags hooked at the corners so they don’t float around.

  One veteran astronaut said sleeping in space is the best sleep he’s ever had … no need for a pillow, no complaints about the mattress, just total body relaxation and sleep.

  This morning they were about 119,000 miles from the moon.

ECON 101: The labor market showed signs of life with 178,000 jobs added to the economy in March … more than expected. That’s a reversal of big job losses in February.

  Healthcare was the leader in job growth with 78,000, followed by construction, 26,000.

  The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3 percent in March from 4.4 percent in part because almost 400,000 people dropped out of the workforce.

  But the economy may soon have bombs dropping on it because of the Iran war. Amazon has already added a fuel surcharge to its deliveries because of high prices.

  Bloomberg Economics  says that  a three-month interruption of maritime commerce would drive oil prices to $170 per barrel. Six months of war would sink the world into recession, according to Oxford Economics.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— Already spending a fortune to fight Iran, President Trump revealed Friday that he will ask for $1.5 trillion in defense spending next year, a forty percent increase that would be paid in part by cutting $73 billion in domestic programs.

— President Trump has been considering further changes in his cabinet in advance of a likely loss of power confirmation power in the midterm elections, The NY Times reports. The Times says cabinet secretaries in the crosshairs are Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who is under investigation for professional misconduct, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

  Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, told the Times, “They continue to have the president’s full confidence.” Damnation with faint praise.

— Among President Trump’s financial dreams are a $152 million restoration of Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay … The Rock … “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”

  Once the home of the notorious Al Capone and Boston’s Whitey Bulger, Alcatraz has not housed inmates for 60 years. It’s been a tourist attraction for 30.

  The Rock has no water supply, no sewage system, and when in use everything including the staff, food, and other supplies had to be brought by boat. It was closed because it was too expensive to run.

— President Trump has signed a new executive order aimed at fixing college sports, this time laying out specific transfer and eligibility rules, limiting how athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness, and threatening schools that violate rules with financial penalties.

  The order’s mandates include limiting athletes to one unrestricted transfer as undergraduates and placing a five-year cap on college eligibility

  The order may not have legal power, but it does threaten withholding of federal funding from schools that do not comply, and that’s a power Trump has and has previously used.

— Trump posted a tirade over a new book written about him by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl. “Third rate news ‘anchor’ Jonathan Karl of ABC Fake News, the worst and most corrupt Network in the business, wrote another made up book about me where his stories and ‘reporting’ bare no relationship to the truth,” Trump wrote.  “A waste of time – Fictitious quotes. Don’t buy the book!”

  Note the presidential spelling of “bear.”

THE SPIN RACK: Two men have been arrested in a drive-by shooting that killed a 7-month-old baby in her stroller inside a New York Bodega. The two young men had been riding down the street on a moped when the one in back fired into a group of people. One bullet pierced the storefront and hit the baby in the head. — The cover of Vice President JD Vance’s new book on his path to becoming a Catholic features a picture of the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in rural southwestern Virginia in a beautiful green hillside setting. Members of the congregation say Vance has never been there.

BELOW THE FOLD: Judicial sanctions are rising against lawyers who use artificial intelligence to prepare briefs that end up citing fictitious cases and precedents. The lawyers prepare the bills themselves.