How Ukraine Brought the War to Russia

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“Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian targets have shifted the war’s balance, potentially leading to its end. This escalation, previously employed by Russia, has garnered attention and support, including from Donald Trump.

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Long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian soil have shifted the balance of the conflict—will they be enough to end it?

By Joshua YaffaJuly 15, 2026

In recent weeks, Donald Trump—whose attitude toward Ukraine and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been notoriously fickle, when not outright hostile—has appeared to warm to Ukraine’s chances in the war with Russia. On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, he met with Zelensky and later spoke of him in flattering terms, declaring “We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe.” Trump has a history of favoring those he perceives as winners, and his change in attitude regarding Ukraine seems driven by the country’s newfound ability to strike targets deep inside Russia—“an escalation that can help lead to an end,” Trump said. In Ankara, Zelensky, the inveterate entertainer, riffed on a question from Trump, who asked if Zelensky would consider travelling to Moscow for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That would be dangerous, Zelensky said. “There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there.”

Those drones have marked a new phase in the war, defined by the centrality of long-range strikes. Russia has been doing this since the start of the war, terrorizing Ukrainian cities with aerial assaults that have killed thousands of civilians and crippled much of the country’s energy grid for months on end. In June, it launched multiple waves of drones and missiles targeting residential blocks in Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities. On July 1st, in Russia’s deadliest attack to date this year on Kyiv, more than thirty people were killed. Five days later, another attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region left at least twenty-eight people dead.“

 

Trump’s War on Journalists

“The recent subpoenas of reporters make clear that the President is trying to threaten the press. Few protections are in place to stop him.

By Ruth MarcusJuly 18, 2026

For years now, in office and out, Donald Trump has been unabashed about his desire to see reporters behind bars. The President’s fantasies can, at times, take on a lurid tone. Campaigning for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterms, Trump assailed the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs, the landmark abortion case, and outlined his preferred approach to identifying the source: “The reporter goes to jail. When the reporter learns that he’s going to be married in two days to a certain prisoner that’s extremely strong, tough, and mean, he will say, he or she, ‘I think I’m going to give you the information. Here’s the leaker, get me the hell out of here.’ ” This April, after it was reported that a crew member was missing from an American fighter jet that had been shot down in Iran, Trump vowed that the person who had spoken to the press would be quickly outed: “We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Give it up or go to jail.’ ”

No one went to jail, but Trump has seized on another opportunity to threaten journalists. Earlier this month, the Times reported that he was forced to ditch his new Air Force One, given to him by the Qataris, for part of the ride home from the NATO summit in Turkey; the plane allegedly lacked anti-missile capabilities. (Trump had claimed that he was taking a last spin in the previous Air Force One “for old time’s sake.”) According to the Times, a senior F.B.I. official asked the newspaper to hold the story, citing national security. The Times declined to comply. Two days later, three journalists received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Manhattan. The Times later reported that the White House had instructed the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel, to oversee an investigation into the leak, and that Patel had spent the day the subpoenas were issued holed up at the White House—not the ordinary locus for a law-enforcement operation. The Times, in a sealed filing that it sought to have publicly released, moved to quash the subpoenas, saying that they were “brought in bad faith to punish The Times for its coverage.”

 

Judge orders pause on Paramount-Warner merger after challenge from 12 states

“$81bn merger halted for at least two weeks after US states sued to block deal, saying it would ‘extinguish competition’

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, one of Paramount’s biggest box office hits. Photograph: Album/Alamy

A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery to halt their $81bn merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week – alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the US.

The states’ top prosecutors called on Warner and Paramount to not close the transaction until after a court had time to “fully evaluate” their claims. And when the companies refused, they filed for a temporary restraining order – which is what district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted on Monday. That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.

“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, said in a statement following Monday’s order. “History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people.”

A Warner-Paramount tie-up would bring together two of the five last legacy studios in Hollywood – as well as host of TV networks, titles filling streaming libraries and news operations. That would include Warner’s HBO Max, fan favorites such as Harry Potter and even CNN coming under the same roof of Paramount-owned CBS, movies including Top Gun and the Paramount+ streaming service.

Paramount did not immediately comment on Monday’s order. But the company, which was bought out by Skydance just last year, has vowed to “vigorously defend” its Warner acquisition. Paramount previously called the states’ complaint “wrong on both the facts and the law”, maintaining that a merger would instead strengthen competition against bigger entertainment rivals. And it touted regulatory greenlights the deal has received elsewhere, including from the Trump administration last month.

The temporary restraining order granted on Monday halts the deal from progressing for at least 14 days, although the pause could be extended for up to 28 days. The court has set 3 August as a date for a hearing on the states’ preliminary injunction motion, although that schedule could also be pushed back“

 

U.S. Sought Phone Records of Times Journalists and Their Relatives

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“The Trump administration sought phone records of New York Times journalists and their relatives to identify sources for articles about the security of President Trump’s new Air Force One. The Justice Department issued subpoenas to phone service providers and to compel reporters to testify before a grand jury. The New York Times is challenging these actions, arguing they violate media guidelines and aim to intimidate journalists.

​

The government is aggressively seeking the confidential sources of Times reporters who wrote about the president’s new Air Force One. The Times has asked a judge to quash the subpoenas.

July 20, 2026, 11:59 a.m. ET

The New York Times building at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.Lucia Vazquez for The New York Times

The Trump administration sought the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives — including one reporter’s mother — in its effort to unmask the confidential sources who had provided information for articles about the security capabilities of President Trump’s new Air Force One jet.

The Justice Department told The Times late last week that it had issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers seeking several journalists’ phone and text messaging records. That effort was in addition to the subpoenas issued on July 10 that sought to compel reporters to testify before a federal grand jury.

The government’s actions amount to an extraordinarily aggressive and unorthodox attempt by the Trump administration to unearth the confidential sources of independent journalists whose reporting had angered the president.

The additional subpoenas — which also sought information about calls and messages on the phones of two of the reporters’ spouses — were described in a motion filed on Saturday by lawyers for The Times, which is seeking to quash the requests. The motion was unsealed on Monday morning by Judge Arun Subramanian of U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The White House referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for The Times declined to comment beyond the motion filed by its lawyers.

The government began a leak investigation into The Times’s coverage days after the news outlet reported earlier this month that federal officials harbored significant concerns about the security capabilities of Mr. Trump’s new, Qatari-donated Air Force One jet. Mr. Trump was enraged by that reporting, and the White House directed the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, to oversee the investigation.

The president had flown on the Qatari-built jet to Turkey, touting its gilded interior to reporters, but then departed on the older Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service. (Asked on Sunday about the security issues, Mr. Trump said that the new jet would be “maxed out” in “about a month or so.”)

All the subpoenas have been paused until Judge Subramanian rules on The Times’s motion to quash. A hearing is scheduled on the matter for Thursday in Manhattan.

In its motion on Saturday, The Times said that the Justice Department had violated its own guidelines for media subpoenas when it waited a week to notify The Times about the phone record requests, calling the delay “deeply concerning.”

The news outlet also laid out a series of events that it said amounted to a “bad-faith effort to intimidate the journalists and chill their ability to report on the administration.”

The Times said that two of the government’s subpoenas sought phone records dating back to Jan. 1, many months before The Times reported on the Air Force One security concerns. “That time frame strongly suggests that the department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the July 8 and 9 articles, but instead to forage for information about the journalists’ source relationships more broadly,” the newspaper wrote.

The Times also raised concerns about the government’s attempt to extract the phone records of its journalists’ relatives. The news outlet said that one reporter’s mother was a mental health professional, and another reporter’s spouse was employed in a senior role at a major law firm.

The Times also wrote that, in one instance, the Justice Department served a subpoena for phone records after the newspaper had already filed a motion to quash the subpoenas that sought reporters’ grand jury testimony. The matter of the grand jury subpoenas had already been assigned to Judge Subramanian. But in that instance, the Justice Department asked a different federal judge to formally prevent one phone company from informing The Times about the record request.

“This sequence of events and the timing of the government’s disclosures are deeply troubling for obvious reasons,” The Times wrote in its motion. “They raise pressing questions about the conduct of this purported national security investigation and confirm the absence of any regularity in the department’s use of the grand jury in this case. They also highlight why this court’s intervention is urgently required.”

Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.“

Scientists Compared Black American DNA to European DNA — The Results Shocked Everyone

 

Scientists Compared Black American DNA to European DNA — The Results Shocked Everyone 

Janai Norman on Her GMA Departure and Why She's Speaking Out Now | The Joy Reid Show

 

Jamelle Bouie July 18, 2026 Ketanji Brown Jackson Knows What 1776 Meant

 

Jamelle Bouie

July 18, 2026

Ketanji Brown Jackson Knows What 1776 Meant

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“You’re reading the Jamelle Bouie newsletter.  Historical context for present-day events.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a long essay on the revolutionary meaning of the Declaration of Independence and how it was given life by the Black Americans, free and enslaved, who wielded its language of equality against bondage and racial discrimination. Unexpectedly, the piece made for good reading alongside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurrence in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case that was decided just before the Fourth of July.

In Trump v. Barbara, a 6-3 majority of the court struck down President Trump’s 2025 executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for certain categories of immigrants. But of that majority, only five justices held that the executive order was also unconstitutional, rather than simply unlawful.

The principal dissent was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued that the citizenship clause was a narrow remedy meant exclusively for the formerly enslaved. The 14th Amendment does not, in his view, cover undocumented immigrants or, potentially, anyone that the president deems to be unlawfully on American soil.

Writing primarily in response to Thomas, Jackson challenges this interpretation of the 14th Amendment, showing readers that the authors of the citizenship clause were informed by decades of work performed by Black Americans. Speaking through hundreds of “colored conventions” — which we have discussed before — Black Americans both claimed their “native-born” citizenship and articulated visions of a broad, egalitarian citizenship, based on birth and open to all:

Delegates to the Colored Conventions drew upon their own experiences to successfully argue for a new Constitution — one that protected fundamental human rights, including an individual’s “‘right to own his body and mind’” and “the right of personal security and protection against injuries to our bodies or good name.”

You should read Jackson’s concurrence as a complement to my essay because we are each telling different parts of the same story: the struggle of Black Americans to realize their freedom and, in the process, forge the path to a freer, more equal United States.

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What I Wrote

My column this week was a comment on Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died last weekend:

It is one thing to go with the flow — Graham was a politician, after all — but it is something else entirely to throw caution to the wind and embrace a man you denounced, just months earlier, as inimical to your basic values — a man who was as unfit for the presidency on Jan. 20, 2017, as he was on Jan. 19, 2017. For someone as eager for rank as Graham, the temptation of power — of real influence over the new administration — was too much to resist. When it came time to choose between his career and his values, Graham chose Trump, and it would define the rest of his life.

Also, on this week’s episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we watched Michael Bay’s 1998 disaster thriller “Armageddon.”

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Now Reading

Brenda Wineapple on America’s centennial for The New York Review of Books.

Adom Getachew on how 20th-century anticolonial figures wielded the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence for their own struggles, in Dissent magazine.

In Jewish Currents, 23 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank reflect on their lives and futures.

Adam Serwer on the “colorblind” Supreme Court for The Atlantic.

Zohran Mamdani on Nelson Mandela for The Guardian.

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Photo of the Week

A Catholic mission in San Antonio.

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Now Eating: Lablabi (Tunisian Chickpea Soup)

Recipe from NYT Cooking.

Ingredients

For crispy chickpeas

• 1 ¾ cup cooked chickpeas, or 1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

• 1 teaspoon za’atar, plus more to taste

For soup

• 1 ½ cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and drained

• ¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 ½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

• ½ loaf hearty rustic bread (about 8 ounces)

• 1 cup chopped onion, from 1 medium onion

• 6 garlic cloves, minced or finely grated

• 1 tablespoon ground cumin, plus more for serving

• 1 tablespoon tomato paste

• 1 tablespoon harissa paste, plus more for serving

• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest, for serving

• ½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, for serving

Directions

Prepare the crispy chickpeas: Transfer chickpeas to a rimmed baking sheet lined with a clean dish towel or paper towels. Cover with another towel (or paper towels), rubbing gently to dry. Remove top towel and let air-dry for at least 30 minutes and preferably 1 hour.

As chickpeas dry, start preparing the soup: In a Dutch oven or heavy stockpot, combine soaked chickpeas, 5 cups water, 1 tablespoon olive oil, bay leaves and ½ teaspoon salt over high heat. Bring to a boil for 2 to 3 minutes, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook until chickpeas are tender, about 1 to 2 hours.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. While chickpeas are cooking, cut bread into thick slices, then tear slices into bite-size pieces. Place bread in one layer on large rimmed baking sheet and toast until crisp and light brown, about 10 minutes. Let cool on pan and set aside.

Finish the crunchy chickpeas: Raise oven temperature to 425 degrees. Remove the towels from baking sheet with the chickpeas, and toss the chickpeas with 2 teaspoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt and za’atar until well coated. Roast until golden and crispy, about 13 to 18 minutes, tossing halfway through. When chickpeas are still hot, sprinkle lightly more salt. Taste and add more salt or za’atar, or both, if you’d like.

When the chickpeas for the soup are tender, discard bay leaves. Using a slotted spoon, transfer 2 cups of chickpeas, ½ cup of chickpea cooking liquid and ¼ cup olive oil to a blender or food processor, and purée until smooth.

In a large skillet over medium-high, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil until shimmering. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon cumin and tomato paste and cook, stirring, until fragrant, 1 minute. Add a splash of the chickpea cooking liquid to the pan, and bring to a simmer to deglaze, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Turn off heat.

Add chickpea purée and onion mixture to soup, along with harissa and lemon juice, and stir well. Add a little water if soup seems too thick, and more salt, if needed.

To serve, divide toasted bread pieces among soup bowls, then ladle in soup. Garnish with lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, more cumin and some of the crispy chickpeas — you’ll have leftovers. Serve hot, with more harissa on the side.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.“

 

They Were Charged With Assaulting ICE Agents. The Cases Are Crumbling.

“The Trump administration has lost or abandoned hundreds of criminal cases against protesters and immigrants, a Times investigation found.

July 18, 2026

U.S. Immigration Crackdown

Jaime Diaz, an undocumented immigrant, was charged with assaulting a Border Patrol officer in Laredo, Texas. But video footage shows it was the officer who punched Mr. Diaz.

In its nationwide immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has charged hundreds of people with assaulting or impeding federal agents. President Trump has branded them “insurrectionists,” “animals” and “thugs,” part of a broader effort by his administration to cast protesters and immigrants as violent criminals.

But a close examination of those cases reveals that in its rush to meet White House demands for deportations, federal law enforcement has engaged in extensive misconduct — ranging from attacking protesters to destroying evidence and misrepresenting facts in court.

The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them.

The record is abysmal by the typical standards of federal prosecutions: The Justice Department seldom loses criminal cases, with more than 90 percent of defendants pleading guilty or being convicted at trial.

The Times obtained court filings for every assault case and reviewed hearing transcripts, interviewed witnesses and federal officials and watched videos of dozens of encounters that led to criminal charges. The review, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that the administration’s use of the law has often been less about protecting federal agents than about providing legal cover to cow protesters and immigrants into submission.

“There seems to be a pattern of charges being filed without any merit,” said Jimmy L. Arce, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who served on a commission that investigated immigration raids in the city last year. He added that some defendants were “having their speech criminalized by the U.S. attorney’s office.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration dialed back some of its most confrontational tactics, leading to fewer assault charges. But it recently began an aggressive new wave of enforcement, with agents killing two immigrants in Texas and Maine. With hundreds of cases resolved, it is now possible to more fully assess the administration’s conduct and results.

In the half of assault cases that ended in the government’s favor, almost all were guilty pleas. The Times’s analysis of the 213 cases that the government has lost or abandoned found that:

• In dozens of cases, court records and videos show that federal agents were the first to get physical — including shoving, tackling or pepper-spraying defendants. Many defendants successfully argued that the assaults they were accused of were actually acts of self-defense.

• Judges repeatedly chastised prosecutors and immigration agents for misconduct including distorting facts and withholding evidence. Two judges found that agents purposely destroyed evidence, including ordering a defendant to delete cellphone photos.

• Officers charged more than two dozen people who were filming or following agents, often while honking car horns, blowing whistles or shouting warnings like, “La migra is coming!” There was no allegation of physical contact with agents.

• In more than 100 cases, prosecutors did not claim that any agents were injured. In at least seven other cases, officers’ injuries were caused by their or their colleagues’ actions. For example, a judge last fall dismissed assault charges against an immigrant, ruling that the agent involved had been cut by shards of glass from a car window he himself had smashed.

• Sixty-five times, prosecutors abandoned or downgraded charges before hitting a deadline to present evidence to a grand jury or judge. Former prosecutors said that this pattern of rapid retreat was unusual and signaled that the cases should never have been brought.

Dropping charges

The government has lost or abandoned nearly half of the resolved cases in which it accused people of assaulting immigration agents. Normally the Justice Department wins more than 90 percent of its criminal cases.

 (558)Dismissed (191)Acquitted (22)Convicted (4)Pleaded guilty (246)Pending (95)

The Trump administration’s strategy hinges on a once-obscure statute, 18 U.S.C. 111, that makes it a federal crime to assault or forcibly impede a government officer. Punishments range from a fine to 20 years in prison.

For decades, prosecutors used the law sparingly. One exception was when the Biden administration invoked it to charge hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors had a perfect record of winning convictions in those cases, until Mr. Trump returned to office and issued blanket pardons.

As the Trump administration’s efforts to round up undocumented immigrants encountered resistance last year, officials embraced an expansive reading of the assault statute as a way to arrest and prosecute people who got in the way of ICE and Border Patrol agents. The government’s reliance on the statute became so great that agents at times called out “18 U.S.C. 111” as they got into scuffles and made arrests.

Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on specific incidents but said that “it should come as no surprise that there’s an increase in criminal referrals under 18 U.S.C. 111 as there’s been a massive increase in violence and threats against federal law enforcement.”

A Justice Department spokesman, Wyn Hornbuckle, echoed that. “Federal prosecutors are correct to prioritize these prosecutions and hold individuals accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” he said, adding that prosecutors sometimes downgraded or dropped charges based on “mitigating factors identified in a case.” Another Justice Department official said that in some instances prosecutors dropped charges when defendants were deported.

Gregory Bovino, the former Border Patrol “commander at large” who championed the use of smashmouth tactics against protesters and immigrants, was blunter. He said in an interview that too many “worthless” federal prosecutors chickened out by abandoning assault cases. And he thought more protesters and immigrants should have been prosecuted.

“We were being overly judicious in who we charged with 18 U.S.C. 111,” he said.

On occasion, officers were seriously hurt by protesters or immigrants, The Times found. In June last year, Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala, a sex offender in the United States illegally, drove away while a federal agent had an arm inside the car window. The agent — who months later would kill the protester Renee Good in Minnesota — was dragged about 100 yards.

Mr. Muñoz-Guatemala is one of only four people in the Times analysis who was convicted by a jury. The other 22 who faced jury trials were acquitted. Nearly 200 others had the charges dismissed — including two mothers from Charlotte, N.C.

‘We Need Help Right Now’

Tatyana Reisini and her friend Kristen Roos were cornered. A group of armed men, some wearing masks, had surrounded their car on a dead-end street. The women screamed to a 911 operator for help.

Earlier that November morning, the two young mothers had been on their way to a Christmas market in Charlotte. They saw a car filled with immigration agents pulling into the parking lot of an outdoor shopping mall.

Operation Charlotte’s Web, as the immigration sweep in the city was known, followed a bloody and high-profile operation in Chicago. Ms. Reisini, 36, and Ms. Roos, 33, were wary of what might happen in North Carolina.

Ms. Reisini, an American citizen of Ecuadorean descent, and Ms. Roos had been organizing with other local mothers to be on the lookout for immigration agents. So they steered into the parking lot, stopping about 20 yards from the government vehicles. Other protesters were already gathered. They all began yelling at the agents.

After a few minutes, the agents moved their vehicles in front of and behind Ms. Reisini’s Acura S.U.V., she said. Several agents stepped out. Ms. Roos remembered them shouting at her and Ms. Reisini to leave and “trying to scare us.” The women drove to another part of the parking lot and watched as the agents pinned in another protester’s car.

The agents eventually drove off, and Ms. Reisini and Ms. Roos resumed their trip to the Christmas market, at one point stopping to alert a resident that federal officers were nearby.

Soon the women realized they were being followed by two unmarked cars. They called 911. An operator told them to find the nearest gas or police station, but they didn’t know where one was.

Ma’am, 

are you able to safely get to a nearby police station or … 

I am trying to … 

I’m trying to get to a police station, 

but they’re not — 

they’re literally following me. 

So every time I get to like a  stoplight or something, they — 

they’re trying to get in front of me. 

They’re intimidating us. 

Instead they wound up on the dead-end street. They turned into a driveway in a housing development. The unmarked cars blocked them in.

“We need help right now,” Ms. Reisini exclaimed to the 911 operator. “They’re going to [expletive] hurt us!”

Just then, an agent began smashing the driver’s side window — with the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed toward Ms. Reisini, according to footage recorded by a nearby resident.

The women were terrified; their shrieks can be heard on the 911 recording.

I am in an apartment complex right now. 

It’s, 

it’s 

a — 

they’re breaking open the window! 

“We didn’t do anything,” Ms. Reisini said.

“Yes, you did,” an agent responded. “You impeded. 18 U.S.C. 111. Driving erratic.”

Lawyers said that was a misreading of the statute, which specifies that it applies when people use or threaten force. “It’s not enough to show that they might have been interfering with what was happening,” said Carissa Hessick, a University of North Carolina law professor.

Ms. Reisini and Ms. Roos were led from the car, and their hands were zip-tied behind their backs. One agent noticed a child seat in Ms. Reisini’s car and sarcastically remarked that she must be a “stellar” mother, she recalled.

Ms. Reisini retorted that she was, in fact, a stellar mother, which was why she was protesting against agents who she thought were breaking up families in her community.

The women were taken to the local F.B.I. building, where they spent several hours in confinement and eventually received tickets accusing them of violating 18 U.S.C. 111.

Mr. Bovino, who was running the Charlotte operation, shared a social media post from a far-right account that called the women “liberal terrorists,” and he praised what he called “excellent arrests for assault.” Yet the charges were so weak that the U.S. attorney’s office in Charlotte eventually withdrew them.

Asked about the agent’s use of a rifle muzzle to smash Ms. Reisini’s window, Mr. Bovino said he wasn’t concerned about the risk to the car’s occupants. “I’m more worried about the officer getting hurt or killed or the public getting hurt or killed, not necessarily the suspect,” he said.

Shoved by Bovino

Mr. Bovino’s crackdown soon moved to Minneapolis.

On Jan. 7, hours after Ms. Good was killed, Quentin Williams, a special education assistant at a high school about three miles away, was helping direct students to their rides after school.

He spotted a group of federal agents who had come onto campus while arresting someone. Mr. Williams moved toward a crowd that had gathered to watch. Some were yelling at or filming the agents.

Mr. Bovino ran up and shoved Mr. Williams, videos show. In an ensuing skirmish, agents yanked Mr. Williams by the hair, tackled him and, he said, choked him.

“I could not help but think of George Floyd,” Mr. Williams wrote later that day, memorializing the incident. “I was so scared for my life.”

Mr. Bovino said Mr. Williams was among a group of “rioters and anarchists” who failed to follow orders from law enforcement.

Mr. Williams was arrested, taken to a federal building and released that same day. Agents told him they’d be in touch.

About two weeks later, the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis charged Mr. Williams and 15 others for violating 18 U.S.C. 111. Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, announced the charges on social media, posting photos of Mr. Williams and other shackled defendants, who she said were “resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents.” She cited the statute but left out its language about it applying when people “forcibly” interfere.

In a sworn affidavit, an investigator from the Department of Homeland Security said that an agent at the scene had seen Mr. Williams trying to grab and pick up a Border Patrol agent — a claim that Mr. Williams denied and that was not supported by video of the incident that The Times reviewed.

The U.S. attorney’s office later reduced the charge to a misdemeanor and ultimately dropped the case altogether.

The Times identified numerous other cases in which people were charged with assault even though officers were the ones who appeared to have used physical force first.

One involved Jaime Diaz, an undocumented Honduran man who was arrested last July during a traffic stop in Laredo, Texas. Prosecutors charged him with assault, saying he had struck a Border Patrol officer “two to three times.” But during his trial, body-camera video showed Mr. Diaz, who is slightly built and under five feet tall, being grabbed by the neck, forced to the ground and punched by the much larger officer as he tried to handcuff him.

A federal jury acquitted Mr. Diaz in November. He was then scheduled for deportation.

“In the past, this officer could’ve been prosecuted, based on the body cams,” said his lawyer, Roberto Balli. “And instead we have my client being prosecuted.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in South Texas said that Mr. Diaz elbowed the officer. “The jury did acquit the defendant, but it was a righteous prosecution,” she said.

In more than 20 cases that the government lost or abandoned, protesters and immigrants argued that what the government said was assault was instead self-defense.

In May last year, Josefina Gabriel-Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant, was pulling into her driveway in Biloxi, Miss., when federal agents suddenly approached and ordered her out of the car.

Ms. Gabriel-Lopez, who doesn’t speak English, didn’t immediately comply. An officer reached through the partly opened window to try to unlock the door, and the window closed on her arm. The agents blamed Ms. Gabriel-Lopez, but she said the officer had accidentally shut the window on herself as she pushed buttons inside the car.

After officers wrenched open the car door, Ms. Gabriel-Lopez struggled against an agent who climbed inside and twisted her arm and wrist before dragging her out. Her 18-year-old daughter ran out of the house barefoot and tugged on an agent’s protective vest.

Both women were arrested and charged with assault. When the case went to trial in September, they argued that they had acted in self-defense.

“I wasn’t resisting,” Ms. Gabriel-Lopez told jurors through an interpreter. She added, “I keep telling him it was painful, it was painful. He did not listen to me.”

The jury found the women not guilty. Ms. Gabriel-Lopez, who had entered the United States illegally in 2005, was later deported.

Scolded by the Court

The Times identified more than 30 instances of judges criticizing prosecutors or federal agents for conduct such as destroying or withholding evidence, violating rules about communications with jurors and making false or exaggerated claims, including some disproved by videos.

Judges have denounced the government’s actions as “flagrant,” in “bad faith” and “shocking to the universal sense of justice.”

One case of evidence being destroyed took place last September in San Bernardino, Calif. Federal agents were following a Nicaraguan man, Joseph Blandon-Saavedra, who was driving to work in a Toyota Corolla. At an intersection, the agents boxed him in with their two cars, smashed his window and arrested him.

All three vehicles were damaged. Mr. Blandon-Saavedra said the agents had hit his car when they cut him off. But the government said he had rammed them, and prosecutors charged him with two counts of assaulting officers with his sedan.

Mr. Blandon-Saavedra’s lawyers asked that the cars be preserved so their expert could examine them. But agents immediately repaired one of theirs.

The judge dismissed the count tied to the repaired vehicle, calling the agents’ actions part of a “growing pattern of mishandling evidence” that might undermine officers’ assault claims. Prosecutors appealed the dismissal. The count related to the other government vehicle is pending.

In April, a federal judge in Los Angeles threw out assault charges against two protesters, in the middle of a trial, after finding that prosecutors had failed to turn over internal “use-of-force” reports that could have been helpful to the defense. A month later, the government dropped charges against six protesters in Chicago after a judge criticized prosecutors for having mishandled a grand jury, partly by speaking to jurors outside the courtroom.

In Laredo, Ariana Guadalupe Garcia, a 19-year-old American, arrived at a border crossing last July to meet her young niece. Ms. Garcia, who had come from the U.S. side, had clothes for the girl to bring back to a relative in Mexico to sell, a common exchange at border crossings.

But Ms. Garcia found that the girl, who had arrived from Mexico, was being held in an inspection area, and when she tried to speak to her through a window, an officer told her to leave. Ms. Garcia did not immediately obey, prompting several other officers to approach her. After some back-and-forth, the officers began escorting Ms. Garcia away, according to court records.

As they passed through a short stretch of walkway with no working security cameras, Ms. Garcia took at least one photo with her phone. An officer swatted it away. Prosecutors said that Ms. Garcia then hit an officer on the arm and another in the ear, which she denied. She was arrested and later charged with assault.

Afterward, an officer told her to delete the photo she’d just taken, going so far as to watch her permanently erase it from the Recently Deleted folder.

The case against Ms. Garcia began to fall apart when the judge asked how prosecutors intended to prove she had hit anyone — especially since security footage from right before the alleged incident showed no sign of her acting violently toward the four male officers.

The deleted photos were the final straw.

“The government acted in bad faith in destroying the evidence,” the judge wrote, “further demonstrating that Ms. Garcia’s constitutional rights have been violated.”

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Methodology

There is no simple way to identify immigration-related cases brought under 18 U.S.C. 111. We searched online databases — Nexis, CourtListener and Pacer (the federal judiciary’s electronic docket) — for all such cases since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term.

We used an artificial intelligence model to help remove duplicate cases, as well as cases unrelated to immigration enforcement. We checked the model’s work. We also requested records from the Central Violations Bureau, part of the federal judiciary, which processes tickets issued for violations of 18 U.S.C. 111. Our review was exhaustive, but it is possible that we missed cases.

We confined our analysis to 18 U.S.C. 111, though the government has occasionally invoked other laws to prosecute people for assaulting officers.

We created a database of court records, including hearing and trial transcripts, for the cases that were dismissed or ended in acquittals. With help from an A.I. model, we looked for common characteristics, such as courts admonishing the government for misconduct or agents initiating physical force against people they arrested. We reviewed every case the model flagged.

We also interviewed federal prosecutors and other experts and examined historical statistics about federal prosecutions, as reported by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Alan Feuer and Will Houp contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Produced by Alice Fang and Rumsey Taylor.

1. 

   Mike McIntire

   Investigative Reporter

   After stories started to emerge of assault cases against protestors and immigrants falling apart, we decided to find out how widespread this was. My colleagues and I spent months identifying and examining the outcomes of more than 550 such cases, and discovered a trail of misconduct that oftentimes seemed less about protecting federal agents than about providing legal cover to intimidate people into submission.

Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter, has been with The Times since 2003.

Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics.

Alexandra Berzon is an investigative reporter covering American politics and elections for The Times.

Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.“