While Trump hinted at an ICE de-escalation, federal agents were told they have broader power to arrest without a warrant

Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.

The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.

The shift comes as the administration has deployed thousands of masked immigration agents into cities nationwide. A week before the memo, it came to light that Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of the agency, had issued guidance in May saying agents could enter homes with only an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. And the day before the memo, Mr. Trump said he would “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, after agents fatally shot two people in the crackdown there.

The memo, addressed to all ICE personnel and signed on Wednesday by Mr. Lyons, centers on a federal law that empowers agents to make warrantless arrests of people they believe are undocumented immigrants, if they are “likely to escape” before an arrest warrant can be obtained.

ICE has long interpreted that standard to mean situations in which agents believe someone is a “flight risk,” and unlikely to comply with future immigration obligations like appearing for hearings, according to the memo. But Mr. Lyons criticized that construction as “unreasoned” and “incorrect,” changing the agency’s interpretation of it to instead mean situations in which agents believe someone is unlikely to remain at the scene.

“An alien is ‘likely to escape’ if an immigration officer determines he or she is unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained,” Mr. Lyons wrote.

The Times shared a description of the memo’s contents with several former senior ICE officials from the Biden administration. Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE, called the new definition “an extremely broad interpretation of the term ‘escape.’”

“It would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” she added.

Mr. Lyons’s memo explicitly portrays the revised interpretation of “likely to escape” as a change from how ICE had “previously applied the phrase.” But Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said that “this is not new.”

“This is simply a reminder to officers,” she wrote in a statement, to keep “detailed records on their arrests.”

The Trump administration has pushed ICE to significantly increase arrests per day as part of its mass deportation campaign. The agency has carried out more indiscriminate sweeps — like rounding up people in Home Depot parking lots looking for work — rather than targeted operations in which agents set out, warrant in hand, to arrest specific people.

Such roundup operations could still involve administrative warrants if supervisors on the scene quickly fill out the paperwork, known as a Form I-200. The change lowers the standard for arrests even without a supervisor’s approval.

Mr. Lyons’s memo lists factors agents can consider when deciding whether the standard has been met, including whether someone obeys commands or tries to evade them; has access to a car or other means to leave; has identification or work authorization documents agents suspect are fraudulent; or provides “unverifiable or suspected false information.”

The memo tells agents who make warrantless arrests to fill out a form afterward that documents the factors they considered in determining that someone was “likely to escape.” That includes situations in which agents set out to arrest a particular person and then take others in the vicinity into custody. Mr. Lyons called that group “collateral aliens.”

“If an immigration officer encounters and arrests multiple collateral aliens, his or her analysis as to the likelihood of escape must be specific to each alien arrested,” the memo said. “That one collateral alien is likely to escape does not necessarily mean another collateral alien is also likely to escape.”

But this kind of assessment requirement only goes so far: The memo stresses that “particular factors may be common to multiple aliens arrested at the same time.”

During the first Trump administration, a class-action lawsuit claimed that agents had been illegally profiling in traffic stops as a pretext for warrantless arrests. In 2022, the Biden administration agreed to a settlement that included a three-year nationwide policy. Plaintiffs last year accused the second Trump administration of violating the agreement, prompting litigation.

The policy standard in the 2022 settlement included factors that resembled Mr. Lyons’s list. But it also included “ties to the community (such as a family, home or employment) or lack thereof, or other specific circumstances that weigh in favor or against a reasonable belief that the subject is likely to abscond.”

But Mr. Lyons’s memo noted that when agents encounter people they suspect are in the country illegally, the agents are not likely to be able to know much about them. “This on-the-spot determination as to the likelihood of escape is often made with limited information about the subject’s identity, background or place of residence and no corroboration of any self-serving statements made by the subject,” he wrote.

Scott Shuchart, a former head of policy at ICE during the Biden administration, said the memo would open the door to more frequent warrantless arrests.

“This memo bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval,” he said. The memo, he warned, said that “even that supervisor’s note can almost always be sidestepped so long as the officer can say anything remotely plausible about the person being arrested possibly leaving the area.”

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No death penalty for Mangione

A Manhattan federal judge ruled that prosecutors would not be able to seek the death penalty at the trial of Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive in 2024.

The judge, Margaret Garnett of Federal District Court, said the case would still proceed to trial on other counts, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in the killing of the executive, Brian Thompson.

Judge Garnett said in her opinion that two stalking charges against Mr. Mangione, one of which carried a maximum sentence of death, did not meet the legal definition of a crime of violence, and had to be dismissed.

“Consequently," the judge wrote, “the chief practical effect of the legal infirmities” of the two counts and the court’s decision that they must be dismissed “is solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment.”

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Former Illinois deputy sentenced to 20 years for killing woman who called 911

A former Illinois sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to 20 years in prison for fatally shooting Sonya Massey, a Black woman who had dialed 911 to report a possible prowler outside her Springfield home, reported The Associated Press.

Sean Grayson, who is white, was convicted in October of second-degree murder in a police brutality case that prompted protests over systemic racism and led to a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry. Grayson, 31, testified at trial that he feared Massey was about to scald him with a pot of steaming hot water that she had removed from the stove.

Grayson, who has been incarcerated since he was charged, received the maximum possible sentence.

He apologized in court, saying he wished he could bring Massey back and spare her family the pain he caused. His attorney sought a sentence of six years, noting that Grayson has late stage colon cancer that has spread to his liver and lungs.

“I made a lot of mistakes that night. There were points when I should’ve acted, and I didn’t. I froze,” Grayson said. “I made terrible decisions that night. I’m sorry.”

‘It rocked the country’

Massey’s parents and two teenage children, who lobbied for the maximum sentence, said their lives had changed dramatically since her death. Her children said they had to grow up without a mother, while Massey’s mother said she lived in fear.

“I cry every day,” Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, said.

“I’m afraid to call the police in fear that I might end up like Sonya,” she told the court.

State’s Attorney John Milhiser argued that Massey would still be alive if someone else from the sheriff’s department had responded to her 911 call.

“Sonya Massey’s death rocked her family, but it rocked the community, it rocked the country,” State’s Attorney John Milhiser said. “We have to do whatever we can to ensure it never happens again.”

The family reacted with a loud cheer — “Yes!” — after Judge Ryan Cadagin read the sentence. He admonished them for the outburst.

“Twenty years is not enough, but they did what they could do,” Massey’s 16-year-old daughter Summer told reporters after the hearing.

With a day shaved off his sentence for every day of good behavior, plus credit for nearly 19 months already spent behind bars, Grayson could be released in just under 8 1/2 years.

The day of the shooting

In the early morning hours of July 6, 2024, Massey — a 36-year-old single mother who struggled with mental health issues — summoned emergency responders because she feared there was a prowler outside her Springfield home.

According to body camera footage, Grayson and sheriff’s Deputy Dawson Farley, who was not charged, searched outside Massey’s home before meeting her at her door. Massey appeared confused and repeatedly said, “Please, God.”

The deputies entered her house, Grayson noticed the pot on the stove and ordered Farley to move it. Instead, Massey went to the stove, retrieved the pot and teased Grayson for moving away from “the hot, steaming water.”

From this moment, the exchange quickly escalated.

Massey said: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

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Texas carries out first execution of 2026

 The 1st Execution of 2026

A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was the first person executed in the U.S. this year, reported NBC News.

Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39, and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.

Thompson, 55, was pronounced dead on January 28, 2026 at 6:50 p.m. Central Time  following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. 

In his final words, Thompson asked the families of his victims to find it in their hearts to forgive him, adding, "that you can begin to heal and move past this."

"There are no winners in this situation," he said after a spiritual adviser prayed over him for about 3 minutes and shortly before a lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered. He said his execution "creates more victims and traumatizes more people 28 years later."

"I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry for what happened, and I want to tell all of y'all, I love you and that keep Jesus in your life, keep Jesus first," he added.

As the injection began taking effect, Thompson gasped loudly, then took about a dozen breaths that evolved into three snores. Then all movement ceased and he was pronounced dead 22 minutes later.

"He's in hell," one of the witnesses, Dennis Cain — whose son was killed — said after Thompson was declared dead by a physician.

Thompson is the first person put to death this year in the United States. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state, though Florida had the most executions in 2025, with 19.  

Prosecutors say Thompson and Hayslip had been romantically involved for a year but split after Thompson "became increasingly possessive, jealous and abusive."

According to court records, Hayslip and Cain were dating when Thompson came to Hayslip's apartment and began arguing with Cain around 3 a.m. the night of the killings. Police were called and told Thompson to leave the apartment complex. Thompson returned three hours later and shot both Hayslip and Cain, who died at the scene. Hayslip died in a hospital a week later.

"The Hayslip and Cain families have waited over twenty-five years for justice to occur," prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney's office said in court filings.

Texas death row inmate Charles Victor ThompsonTexas Department of Criminal Justice via AP

Thompson's attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution, arguing Thompson wasn't allowed to refute or confront the prosecution's evidence that concluded Hayslip died from a gunshot wound to the face. Thompson's attorneys have argued Hayslip actually died from flawed medical care she received after the shooting that resulted in severe brain damage sustained from oxygen deprivation following a failed intubation.

About an hour before the scheduled 6 p.m. execution, the U.S. Supreme Court — without explanation — issued a brief order rejecting Thompson's final appeal. On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had denied Thompson's request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Thompson's request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.

"If he had been able to raise a reasonable doubt as to the cause of Ms. Hayslip's death, he would not be guilty of capital murder," Thompson's attorneys said in court filings with the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors said a jury has already rejected the claim and concluded under state law that Thompson is responsible for Hayslip's death because it "would not have occurred but for his conduct."

Hayslip's family had filed a lawsuit against one of her doctors, alleging medical negligence during her treatment left her brain dead. A jury in 2002 found in favor of the doctor.

Thompson had his death sentence overturned and had a new punishment trial held in November 2005. A jury again ordered him to die by lethal injection.

Shortly after being resentenced, Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail in Houston by walking out the front door virtually unchallenged by deputies. Thompson later told The Associated Press that after meeting with his attorney in a small interview cell, he slipped out of his handcuffs and orange jail jumpsuit and left the room, which was unlocked. Thompson waived an ID badge fashioned out of his prison ID card to get past several deputies.

"I got to smell the trees, feel the wind in my hair, grass under my feet, see the stars at night. It took me straight back to childhood being outside on a summer night," Thompson said about his three days on the run during a 2005 interview with the AP. He was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, some 200 miles away, while trying to arrange for wire transfers of money from overseas so he could make it to Canada.

Thompson was drunk and talking on a pay phone outside a liquor store, authorities said.

Police acting on a tip Sunday found Charles Victor Thompson, 35, standing outside a liquor store in Shreveport, La., said Harris County Sheriff's Lt. John Martin.

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THIEL COLLEGE: Comment No. 1

 Why is there a death Penalty?

CREATORS: America must be vigilant

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
January 27, 2026

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is operating under an ill-advised internal memo suggesting that ICE agents do not need to obtain a search warrant to enter a home while investigating or enforcing illegal immigration. The memo is misguided and an affront to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, added to the Constitution in 1791. In its simplest form, it protects the people from an overzealous government. It was important to the founding fathers over two-and-a-quarter centuries ago and it is important today.

I have written about the origins of the Fourth Amendment, but it bears revisiting. The United Kingdom's greed in the late seventeenth century contributed to the establishment of the Bill of Rights.

In Britain, the prevailing economic philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to look to colonies to enrich the "mother country." To that end, Britain did not want their colonies trading with any other countries. To prevent trade with other nations, the British imposed high "tariffs" on imported goods from countries other than Britain.

In return, American colonists began smuggling goods from other countries into the colonies. In response, Britain began cracking down on smugglers. The British began utilizing writs of assistance. The writs gave customs officials enormous power and discretion.

The writs were general search warrants that did not have an expiration date, did not have to provide a basis for suspicion or any particularity of the place or basis for the search. They let officials enter the homes of colonists at any time for any reason.

The greed led to rebellion and, in no small part, to the revolution that ended with independence for the United States of America.

When it came time to draft a constitution for the new country, the Fourth Amendment was written precisely to prevent the new government from running roughshod over its citizens.

The Fourth Amendment reads:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

It is among the most sacred safeguards of individual liberty embedded in the Constitution.

According to The Associated Press, ICE distributed a memo that provides agents with the authority to forcibly enter homes and arrest immigrants using only a signed administrative warrant if they also have a final order of removal issued by a judge.

The administrative warrant is not signed by a judge. People do not have to open their doors, including the target of an immigration investigation, unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge. That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval.

It has long been the law in this country that, like a soldier, a law enforcement agent does not have to carry out an unlawful or unconstitutional order. Advising ICE agents that they can forcibly enter a home without a warrant signed by a judge is unconstitutional — obeying an unconstitutional order does not absolve an officer of criminal or civil liability.

The Fourth Amendment was how a burgeoning nation prevented tyranny. The colonists tasted despotism and did not like it.

We are now at a point in this nation where a government agency can come into your home any time, day or night, to see who is in your home or to take into custody a person who might be in this country without proper documentation. The colonists didn't like it in 1776, and we don't like it today.

The work of protecting the rights and privileges of the U.S. Constitution never ends. America must be vigilant in protecting the rights of all men and women.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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DOJ says taking a licensed, holstered firearm to a protest is a reason to get shot

Some high-profile gun rights activists and groups bristled  at government officials’ claims that federal agents may have been justified in killing a Minneapolis man during a protest because he was carrying a pistol, according to The New York Times.

The right to bear arms in public has been a mainstay of the gun rights movement.

On Saturday, a Los Angeles federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, became a magnet for outrage when he wrote on social media that “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!”

Gun Owners of America, one of the country’s largest gun advocacy groups, said in its own posting that it condemned his “untoward comments.”

The group said that “federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm. The Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting — a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”

The gun group also accused “the Left” of “antagonizing” immigration agents.

The exchange could point to political fissures between the gun rights movement and President Trump, who is generally seen as an ally. And it already is sparking debate within a movement that has long warned against government overreach.

The National Rifle Association referred to federal agents as “jackbooted government thugs” in a 1995 mailer. But in a statement Saturday night, the N.R.A. put blame for the shooting on Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and other “radical progressive politicians.” It said their “calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence.”

“As there is with any officer-involved shooting, there will be a robust and comprehensive investigation that takes place to determine if the use of force was justified,” the group added.

In a separate post, the N.R.A. called Mr. Essayli’s comments “dangerous and wrong.”

“Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens,” it said.

Video footage shows that Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, stepped between a woman and an agent pepper spraying her, and then was sprayed himself. He appeared to hold a phone in one hand and nothing in the other.

As agents restrained him, one appeared to take his pistol, videos show, and then agents opened fire, killing him.

Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis police said that Mr. Pretti was an American citizen with no known criminal record, and had a firearms permit allowing him to carry a gun openly.

“We the people have a right to bear arms in public,” Cam Edwards, a prominent gun rights activist and radio host, said in a social media post. “I’ve encountered countless police while I’ve been armed, and never been shot. The presence of a firearm, by itself, is not an indicator of a criminal intent or a threat to law enforcement.”

Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official leading the crackdown in Minneapolis, said at a news conference on Saturday that Mr. Pretti “had two loaded magazines,” and appeared to want to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

No evidence has been produced to back up that claim.

Dana Loesch, a former spokeswoman of the National Rifle Association, highlighted Mr. Bovino’s comments, saying in a social media post that “statements like this don’t help. What he has or didn’t have isn’t the issue. What he was doing, with or without it, is the issue. Did he draw on agents? Reach for it? Was it on him?”

Christopher Fernandez, an Orlando, Fla., firearms instructor and founder of Equality In Arms Defensive Training, also took issue with Mr. Bovino. Mr. Fernandez said the official had falsely characterized Mr. Pretti as “a crazed assailant launching himself at C.B.P. officers, pistol drawn and firing with the intent to slaughter as many of them as possible.”

He said that the heavy-handed tactics of federal agents have left people on both sides of the political spectrum “living in fear.”

He added: “How can they not be when this is what we are seeing?”

The Trump administration has argued strongly for the right to carry guns. A Justice Department suit filed in December against the U.S. Virgin Islands over its gun permitting process, for example, noted that “law-abiding citizens” have “a fundamental right to ‘carry handguns publicly for self-defense.’”

Jordan Levine, who runs an online gun rights advocacy company called A Better Way 2A, said that “what happened in Minneapolis shows that ICE will treat the mere presence of a legal firearm as justification for lethal force. Carrying a gun is not a crime, yet it was readily used as proof of dangerous intent once Alex Pretti was dead and unable to contest that narrative.”

Danielle L. Campbell, who helped found Protect Peace, a community outreach group for gun owners in Central and Southern Florida, said she was shocked after watching video of the shooting.

“I’m willing to wait for more facts to come out,” she said. “What I will say is carrying a concealed weapon legally shouldn’t be a death sentence.”

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FBI’s search of Washington Post reporter’s home raises questions

The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson’s home was search, and as a result, many in the media and elsewhere have worried about a chilling effect on reporters and potential whistleblowers, reported Lawfare. Advocates have also invoked the First Amendment: The search, critics have insisted, was an unconstitutional encroachment on press freedom. Commentators have even agonized over the possibility that the search represented only the beginning of a more aggressive posture toward journalists—in which not only are leakers to the media prosecuted under the Espionage Act, but the media is prosecuted, too.

An Early Morning Search

Jan. 14 was not a quiet day for Natanson. Early in the morning, the FBI conducted a search of the Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones for allegedly leaking the documents he mishandled, presumably to Natanson. According to reports, Natanson had her cellphone, a recording device, a Garmin watch, and two laptops seized, but was told that she was not the focus of the investigation. The same morning, the government also issued the Washington Post a subpoena requesting information related to Perez-Lugones. 

Natanson is well-known for her coverage of the Trump administration, including efforts to fire federal workers. She published a story last week—which cited government documents obtained by the Post—that covered the U.S.’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

But the impetus for the search warrant in the case centered on Perez-Lugones, not Natanson. The affidavit alleges that Perez-Lugones took notes on information from a classified system on a notepad, which he then brought home. He is also accused of taking a screenshot of a classified report about an unidentified foreign country, speculated to be Venezuela. Investigators reportedly recovered these materials during a search of his residence.

The criminal complaint in the case does not charge Perez-Lugones with disclosing that information, although a separate filing mentioned the possibility of his disseminating it if not detained pretrial—which prompted the judge in the case to issue a review of his pretrial release.

Such obscurity is not, in and of itself, atypical; arrests in classified documents cases often proceed on the basis of allegations of mishandling of material and are later superseded with updated charging documents if and when further evidence is uncovered.

But in the immediate aftermath of the search, Trump administration officials were quick to suggest classified information had indeed been leaked. Attorney General Pam Bondi commented on X:

This past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars. I am proud to work alongside Secretary Hegseth on this effort. The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.

In a tweet a few hours after the search, FBI Director Kash Patel similarly implied a leak had occurred. He also claimed that the “leaker” had been arrested that week—as opposed to on Jan. 9, the date the affidavit in Perez-Lugones’s case was filed:

This morning the @FBI and partners executed a search warrant of an individual at the Washington Post who was found to allegedly be obtaining and reporting classified, sensitive military information from a government contractor—endangering our warfighters and compromising America’s national security. The alleged leaker was arrested this week and is in custody. As this is an ongoing investigation, we will have no further comment. 

The search of Natanson’s home quickly drew backlash from the public and the media, particularly with regard to its implications for freedom of the press. Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said that the search was “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern[s] around the constitutional protections for our work.”

“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home,” the New York Times noted.

On Jan. 14—the same day that the FBI searched Natanson’s home—the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a brief to unseal documents relating to the search of Natanson's home and the seizure of her devices. The brief requested that the court unseal the warrant in the case because “[t]he public is…left with no means to understand the government’s basis for seeking (and a federal court’s basis for approving) a search with dramatic implications for a free press and the constitutional rights of journalists.” On Jan. 21, the FBI released the search warrant for Natanson’s home, although the application for that warrant remains undisclosed to the public.

That same day, The Washington Post filed a brief requesting that federal law enforcement return Natanson’s seized belongings, arguing that “almost none” of the materials were relevant to the warrant and that the search “flouts the First Amendment and ignores federal statutory safeguards for journalists.” A magistrate judge ordered the government to preserve but not review materials seized from Natanson (including materials seized pursuant to two separate search warrants for her car and her person) until further briefing and scheduled a hearing on the matter for Feb. 6.

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Texas prisons see spike in overdose deaths

K2 is a psychoactive drug that targets the same part of the brain as THC, but the effects can be far different from those of marijuana, in part because many doses have been heavily adulterated with harmful chemicals. Synthetic cannabinoids don’t make up a large part of the free-world drug market, but at least one study found their use is increasing. K2, also referred to as “spice,” has been circulating in prisons and state jails since at least 2017. 

Worse, the number of people whose deaths in state jails or prisons were attributed to synthetic cannabinoids increased from 16 in 2023 to 65 the following year, reported the Texas Observer. And this is likely an undercount, given that synthetic compounds can be difficult for labs to detect in standard drug tests or postmortem toxicology screens.

The rise in K2 deaths is part of a disturbing trend: Between January 2020 and July 2025, at least 189 Texas prisoners died of drug-related causes—and each year through 2024 was deadlier than the last. In 110 cases, synthetic cannabinoids were confirmed or suspected to have caused or contributed to in-custody deaths, according to a Texas Observer analysis of reports filed to the state’s Office of the Attorney General. Most overdoses were attributed to drugs illicitly smuggled into state lockups. Another 128 people in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) died of accidental or unknown causes during that period that could have been linked to drug overdoses, based on symptoms or circumstances described in related records, the Observer’s analysis found.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG)—governed by the Texas Board of Criminal Justice but independent from TDCJ itself—launched an investigation into Wiley’s overdose the very same night. That’s routine in such cases, according to Amanda Hernandez, communications director for the prison system. “TDCJ has zero tolerance for illegal substances and contraband,” she said. “If any person, whether that is inmate, staff, volunteer, [or] visitor is caught bringing illicit substances into any TDCJ facility, the Office of Inspector General is immediately called to investigate.”

Hutchins saw three drug-related deaths in 2024, the most of any state jail. Wiley was one of two confirmed K2-related deaths at the unit that year: Daniel Jacob Sauceda, 22, died six months later of synthetic cannabinoid toxicity. Another man, 62-year-old Victor Blanco, died April 18 after overdosing on prescription drugs.

Hutchins is part of a state jail system created in the 1990s primarily to house people convicted of relatively minor drug and property crimes. State jails were billed as places where low-level criminals serving short sentences, like Wiley, might get help with addictions. But, over the years, experts say that state jails experienced a kind of mission creep, as higher-level criminals were locked up at the facilities and as drugs seemingly circulated freely. With a high proportion of drug users, large and crowded living areas, scant educational programming, and less advanced medical facilities than prisons, these units can become breeding grounds for drug use.

For those who do make it to their release dates, a 2019 state House committee report found that their time has typically been wasted: “State jails … merely warehouse inmates who unproductively serve out their time until being released, with no new resources, into the same conditions that led them to jail in the first place—most often, drug addiction and poverty,” the report reads, concluding the facilities should be abolished or “overhauled in every respect.”

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The corruption of the FBI in the words of current and former agents

When he returned to office last year, President Trump called the F.B.I. a “corrupt” agency in need of overhaul, reported The New York Times. He had by then been the subject of three F.B.I. investigations: Agents examined his 2016 campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Though all three inquiries took place in part or entirely under Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director Trump appointed, he repeatedly accused the bureau of mounting a partisan attack against him.

To replace Wray, Trump chose Kash Patel, a former public defender and intelligence official who had never worked for the F.B.I. and had spun conspiracy theories about the bureau. Since Patel’s confirmation last February, the F.B.I. has undergone a transformation that has upended its nonpartisan rules and norms, deeply rattling many of its 38,000 employees.

Patel has fired agents who worked on the Trump investigations and radically changed the bureau’s mission. More than 20 percent of the F.B.I.’s work force has been assigned to immigration enforcement, pulling agents and analysts away from investigating public corruption, cybercrime, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. Patel has also been embroiled in controversies over his use of government resources, his temperament and missteps in high-profile investigations.

We interviewed 45 employees who work at the F.B.I. or who left during Trump’s second term, as well as many other current and former government officials. Beginning with Trump’s selection of Patel, our sources narrated the events that most troubled them over the last year. Many details of what we learned are reported here for the first time.

The F.B.I. is a rule-bound and tight-lipped institution. Bureau policies prohibit active employees from speaking to the news media without authorization. Even for former employees, speaking out is a sign of serious alarm. Some of our sources shared their stories anonymously because they feared retribution from the administration. (To protect their identities, we are not indicating whether the people we quote anonymously are still employed by the F.B.I.) We corroborated their descriptions of specific events and conversations with colleagues, contemporaneous notes and internal records.

Patel and other F.B.I. leaders named in this article declined our requests for interviews, and we followed up with a detailed list of questions. In response to a request for comment, Ben Williamson, an F.B.I. spokesman, wrote: “This story is a regurgitation of fake narratives, conjecture and speculation from anonymous sources who are disconnected from reality. They can whine and peddle falsehoods all they want — but it won’t change the facts that the F.B.I. under this administration worked with partners at every level and delivered a historic 2025.”

We also asked the White House for comment. “President Trump and F.B.I. Director Kash Patel are restoring integrity to the F.B.I. by returning its focus to fighting crime and letting good cops be cops,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Many current and former employees fear, however, that the F.B.I. has become a weapon of the White House, and that the firings and the diversion of resources to immigration enforcement have left the country vulnerable to attack.

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Last year recorded the lowest homicide rate in over a century

Last year will likely register the lowest national homicide rate in 125 years and the largest single-year drop on record, according to a new analysis of 2025 crime data, reported The New York Times.

Violence has been falling for several years. But last year for the first time, all seven categories of violent crime tracked by the analysis fell below prepandemic levels. The numbers provide further evidence that the surge in violence in the early 2020s was a departure during a time of massive social upheaval, not a new normal.

The analysis of data from 40 cities, by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, found across-the-board decreases in crime last year compared to 2019: 25 percent fewer homicides, 13 percent fewer shootings and 29 percent fewer carjackings. Between 2024 and 2025, only drug crimes went in the wrong direction, but they were still lower than in 2019.

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CREATORS: Tinkering With The Criminal Justice System

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
January 20, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court has been busy this month tinkering with the criminal justice system. The Court rendered three decisions in five days that have implications for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments.

Initially, the Court, in a 5-4 ruling, rejected the government's limitations on the number of times federal inmates can challenge the legality of their sentence.

Federal habeas corpus law allows inmates to challenge, in federal court, the grounds for their detention. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) created separate procedures for state inmates seeking relief from their state convictions in federal court and for federal inmates challenging their federal convictions.

Enacted after the Oklahoma City bombing, AEDPA created strict deadlines and deference to state courts in federal reviews, making it harder for inmates to overturn convictions while empowering federal efforts against terrorism. The AEDPA implicates the Fifth Amendment — due process for federal habeas corpus limitations; and the Sixth Amendment — fair trial rights, especially regarding counsel and evidence; and the Eighth Amendment — cruel and unusual punishment.

An unlikely majority of Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh found that the AEDPA could limit opportunities for state inmates to challenge their convictions, but could not limit federal inmates from having their convictions reviewed by the court.

Five days later, the Supreme Court entertained a double jeopardy question.

The Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause provides that no person shall "be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." The Double Jeopardy Clause can be invoked to prevent a person from being tried twice for the same offense or, as in the case before the Supreme Court, being punished more than once for the same crime.

A New York man was charged in federal court with using a firearm during a robbery, a crime of violence, and causing death.

All the justices were satisfied that a century-old decision determined that the two charges counted as the same offense. The longtime test for double jeopardy was clear: "whether each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not."

The unanimous decision, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, found that because using a firearm during a crime of violence does not have any elements not shared by causing death, the double jeopardy clause applies and the defendant cannot be punished for both offenses.

Finally, on the same day, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Montana man who was convicted of assaulting a police officer. In another unanimous decision written this time by Justice Elena Kagan, the court ruled that police officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they entered the home of a man without a warrant due to an emergency in the home.

The Court rejected the man's contention that the police officers needed "probable cause" to go into his house. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and protects a person's home by generally prohibiting law enforcement from entering without a warrant.

Under the Supreme Court's earlier cases, it was enough that the police officers reasonably believed that someone inside a home needed emergency assistance. The court rejected the need for probable cause to enter a home without a warrant and sustained an "objectively reasonable" standard.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the police in Montana had acted appropriately when they entered a home without a warrant because they had an "objectively reasonable basis for believing that a homeowner intended to take his own life and, indeed, may already have shot himself."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Justice Kavanaugh sends a signal on Insurrection Act

Adam Liptak writing for The New York Times:

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh sometimes says the quiet part out loud. He did that last month when the Supreme Court refused to let President Trump deploy National Guard troops in Illinois.

The decision was a rare loss for the administration at the court, and it seemed to prompt Mr. Trump to abandon his efforts to deploy troops in Illinois, Oregon and California.

But Justice Kavanaugh, in a footnote in a concurring opinion, suggested that the ruling could be a speed bump on the road to greater presidential power. He pointed to the possibility of Mr. Trump invoking a different law, the Insurrection Act, to send more conventional military troops to American cities.

Less than a month later, Mr. Trump suggested he might do exactly that in response to violence and protests in Minneapolis.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me,” he wrote on Thursday on social media.

In his own social media post hours earlier, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, had called the opposition to immigration raids in the state a “Minnesota insurrection.”

Mr. Trump has long floated the possibility of invoking the act, and he did not need a sentence in a footnote to give him any ideas. But Justice Kavanaugh’s statement did make plain that the Supreme Court’s action in blocking one kind of deployment could set the stage for other, more aggressive ones.

Mr. Trump relied on a different law to order National Guard troops to cities last summer, an obscure measure adopted in 1903 and 1908 that said deployments were allowed for three reasons.

One, concerning foreign invasions, plainly did not apply to the events in Illinois. The second permissible reason for deploying the Guard was if a rebellion was underway, or if there was danger of one. That is a stretch, and the majority did not cite it, much less discuss it. The court’s order focused on the third reason: the president’s right to deploy the National Guard if he is unable to execute laws “with regular forces.”

Five justices joined the unsigned majority opinion, which rejected the Trump administration’s position that “regular forces” referred to civilian law enforcement like Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Instead, the majority said, the term referred to the military. Since there had been no showing that those forces would be unable to execute the laws, the administration lost — at least for the time being.

Justice Kavanaugh voted with the majority but did not sign its opinion, and accepted only part of its reasoning. Such a “concurrence in the judgment” is unusual in cases decided on the court’s emergency docket.

Speaking for himself, Justice Kavanaugh surveyed the legal landscape and said what the majority had left unstated.

“As I read it,” he wrote, “the court’s opinion does not address the president’s authority under the Insurrection Act.”

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Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Do ICE agents have absolute immunity? Absolutely Not

Absolute immunity is a legal doctrine protecting certain high-level government officials -- judges, prosecutors, and legislators -- from lawsuits for actions taken within their official duties, shielding them from liability even for malicious or unconstitutional acts to ensure they can make difficult decisions freely. It's a near-total shield, contrasting with qualified immunity, which applies to state actors like police officers.

“The idea that a federal agent has absolute immunity for crimes they commit on the job is absolutely ridiculous,” Michael J.Z. Mannheimer, a constitutional law expert at Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law, told CNN.

Mannheimer said that more than 120 years of case law on the issue of so-called supremacy clause immunity has shown that federal officials can be criminally pursued by state prosecutors for conduct taken in the course of their official duties but that it’s up to courts to ultimately determine whether they can be shielded from the charges.

“Officers are not entitled to absolute immunity as a matter of law,” said Timothy Sini, a former federal prosecutor in New York.

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PLW: Pa. Supreme Court Tackles Internet Privacy in 'Kurtz'

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
January 15, 2026

In summer 2016, a woman in Northumberland County went to bed after her husband, a corrections officer, left to work the midnight shift at Coal Township State Correctional Institution.

After he left an intruder entered the home. The intruder bound and gagged the woman, removed her from her home, and raped her in a nearby trailer. The Pennsylvania state police (PSP) investigated the crime.

Although foreign DNA was found on the victim’s body, the PSP could not match the DNA to any known person. Investigators surmised, through their preliminary investigation, that the perpetrator was familiar with the victim. The PSP obtained a “reverse keyword search warrant” requiring Google to provide any search of the victim’s name or address by anyone in the world for a week prior to the attack.

The warrant was not directed at a specific person’s activity, but instead any activity that was directed toward information about the victim. After about a year, Google found that two searches for the victim’s address occurred only hours before the attack.

The information provided by Google included the person’s IP address. As aresult, the PSP focused on John Edward Kurtz who was a corrections officer at the same facility as the victim’s husband. After grabbing a cigarette butt discarded by Kurtz and retrieving his DNA, the PSP found it matched the DNA retrieved from the victim.

Kurtz was arrested and subsequently filed a motion to suppress the Google warrant. Kurtz argued that the PSP failed to establish probable cause individualized to him, as constitutionally required to support the issuance of a search warrant.

However, before Kurtz could challenge the validity of the search warrant, he first had to demonstrate a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area searched. What is a reasonable expectation of privacy triggering the protection of the Fourth Amendment?

In Katz v. United States, 389 US 347 (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court found that a bookie using a telephone booth to place bets was protected by the Fourth Amendment and if police wanted to listen to his end of the conversation outside a telephone booth, they needed to get a search warrant.
The majority opinion was not as newsworthy as the concurring opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan. As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court noted, Harlan’s often quoted concurrence bears repeating,“Justice Harlan explained that, for a person to demonstrate an expectation of privacy,‘there is a twofold requirement. ’First, that person must‘ have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, ... the expectation must be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.’”

After Kurtz’s suppression motion was denied,he was convicted at trial of multiple rapes. The Superior Court affirmed his conviction and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ultimately granted Kurtz’s allowance of appeal at Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 98, 99, and 100 MAP 2023.

Initially, the Supreme Court determined, “In this case, we must decide whether a person who conducts general, unprotected internet searches has an expectation of privacy in the records generated by those searches.”

The court continued, “The internet is now commingled with most, if not all, of our personal and professional activities that does not mean that a person automatically has a constitutionally reasonable expectation of privacy in its general usage.”

The court suggested that an individual’s use of the internet in her own home—a place often viewed by the U.S. Constitution as an individual’s most sacred and protected refuge, is not automatically protected. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court acknowledged, “At the heart of the Fourth Amendment‘ stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’”

The majority opinion in Kurtz, written by Justice David Wecht and issued on Dec. 16, 2025, took care to examine a number of well-known U.S. Supreme Court decisions establishing, and later restraining the “third-party doctrine.” The doctrine stands for the premise that if an individual makes personal matters accessible to a third party, that person cannot then invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the third-party doctrine in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), in which the court held that attaching a GPS device to a vehicle and using satellite technology to track the operator’s movements in that vehicle constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment and requires a search warrant..

The Kurtz opinion then focused on Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. __(2018). Police had retrieved cellphone numbers from a member of a burglary ring. Investigators then obtained the cellphone site location information (CSLI) without a search warrant. The U.S. Supreme Court held a person does not make a voluntary choice to place CSLI generated by cellphone use into the hands of third parties. Rather, such transmission happens automatically.
Based on the analysis of the third-party doctrine and its subsequent treatment, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reasoned that the resolution of Kurtz’s claim hung“upon whether such actions are governed by Carpenter’s “narrow” rejection of the third-party doctrine, or fall instead under the traditional third-party doctrine.”

Wecht wrote, “the pedestal upon which the Fourth Amendment places the home crumbles when “a person knowingly exposes [private material] to the public. ”While “a man’s home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy,” that privacy does not extend to those “objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the plain view of outsiders.”

The court continued, “The point is that the data trail created by using the internet is not involuntary in the same way that the trail created by carrying a cellphone is.” An individual should not be surprised that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in Google searches, “It is common knowledge that websites, internet-based applications, and internet service providers collect, and then sell, user data.”

The court ruled in Kurtz that an individual does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to internet searches, in this case the simple, and prolific decision to “Google it.”

The court did not make access to internet searches unlimited. The court made clear that internet users who take efforts “to secure some degree of privacy” may be afforded greater constitutional privacy protections. The court pointed to use of virtual private networks, internet browsers that do not collect or share data, and websites that are password-protected as examples of internet use that may permit users to “retain a constitutionally recognizable expectation of privacy.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania.He is the author of "The Executioner’s Toll." You can follow him on Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com.

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SCOTUS sustains standard for emergency entry of a home without a warrant

The Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement officials had flexibility to enter a home without a warrant based on reports that someone inside might need emergency help, a decision with implications for police tactics and the expectation of privacy in one’s home, reported The New York Times.

In a unanimous decision, the justices said that the police in Montana had acted appropriately when they entered an Army veteran’s home without a warrant because they had an “‘objectively reasonable basis for believing’ that a homeowner intended to take his own life and, indeed, may already have shot himself,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and provides protections for a person’s home by generally prohibiting law enforcement from entering without a warrant.

The Supreme Court has carved out several exceptions, including for when police believe an occupant is seriously injured or facing an imminent threat of injury.

The question in the Montana case was what level of certainty police must have that an emergency is underway before they can enter a home without a warrant.

Police were called to the home of William Trevor Case in September 2021 by his ex-girlfriend, who feared he was suicidal. The Army veteran had a loaded handgun, she told police, and he had previously threatened to kill himself.

Mr. Case was well known to law enforcement officers who went to check on him at his home near Butte, Mont. Mr. Case had “tried this suicide by cop” stuff before, one of the officers said, using profanity, according to a body-cam recording of the police response.

The officers knocked on Mr. Case’s door, yelled and shined flashlights through the windows. They could see empty beer cans, an empty handgun holster and a notepad with handwriting, which the officers thought was a possible suicide note, court records show. After about 40 minutes, they entered through the unlocked front door without a warrant.

When Mr. Case suddenly emerged from a closet, he stretched out his arm with what appeared to be a gun, and an officer shot him in the abdomen. The veteran, who survived, was convicted of assaulting the officer.

He appealed that conviction, arguing that a gun and other evidence from his home should not have been allowed to be presented at trial because the officers had violated the Fourth Amendment by coming into his home without a warrant.

Mr. Case’s lawyer told the court that police should have met a high bar of “probable cause” for the intrusion — a standard his lawyer said would provide “a level of certainty that avoids needless and dangerous confrontations, and enables police and emergency medical workers to provide aid when occupants urgently need it.”

But the court on Wednesday declined to adopt that higher standard, which would have been borrowed from the criminal context. Instead, it reaffirmed a 2006 decision: that it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment when the police make a warrantless entry, if officers have an “objectively reasonable” basis to believe that an occupant is “seriously injured or threatened with such injury.”

The court said it was reasonable for the police to believe Mr. Case needed emergency aid, based on the phone call with Mr. Case’s ex-girlfriend and what the officers could observe at the Army veteran’s home.

“If Case had already shot himself, he could have been severely injured and in need of immediate medical care. And if he had not, the risk of suicide remained acute, given all the facts then known to the officers,” Justice Kagan wrote.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the majority but wrote separately, with Justice Sotomayor cautioning that it may not always be “objectively reasonable” for police responding to a mental health crisis to make a warrantless entry.

She cited studies showing that people with serious mental health conditions were disproportionately likely to be injured and killed during police interactions compared to the general population. The justice also warned that the presence of law enforcement could escalate such situations, “putting both the occupant and the officers in danger.”

The “objectively reasonable basis” test affirmed by the court, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “demands careful attention to the case-specific risks that attend mental health crises, and requires officers to act reasonably in response.”

In response to the ruling, the Constitutional Accountability Center, which had filed a brief in support of Mr. Case’s position, expressed concern that the court’s decision would do nothing to prevent officers from using emergency aid as a pretext for home intrusions.

Austin Knudsen, Montana’s attorney general, praised the court’s ruling, saying in a statement that it would give law enforcement the ability to respond to life-threatening emergencies and “allow officers to continue to keep their communities and citizens safe to the best of their abilities.”

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F.B.I. flouts Privacy Protection Act and searches reporter's home

F.B.I. agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of a leak investigation, a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s tactics in seeking information from the news media, reported Slate.

It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law called the Privacy Protection Act generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.

The Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, had spent the past year covering the Trump administration’s effort to fire federal workers and redirect much of the work force toward enforcing his agenda. Many of those employees shared with her their anger, frustration and fear with the administration’s changes.

A spokesperson for The Washington Post said on Wednesday that the publication was reviewing and monitoring the situation. The law enforcement agents seized laptops, a phone and a smartwatch during their search.

In a message to staff, Matt Murray, the executive editor of The Post, said neither Ms. Natanson nor the paper was a focus of the investigation.

“Nonetheless, this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work,” he wrote.

Court documents indicate that law enforcement officials were investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of gaining access to and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and basement.

It is unclear whether the F.B.I. sought other means of obtaining the information it was seeking from The Post.

According to the F.B.I. affidavit, Mr. Perez-Lugones’s job meant he had access to sensitive information. It said he had printed confidential documents that he was not authorized to search for and took notes this year on a classified report related to government activity.

The court papers show investigators suspected Mr. Perez-Lugones in recent months of illegally mishandling classified information about an unidentified country.

In a statement on social media, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was executed at the request of the Pentagon to look for evidence at the home of a journalist “who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

Free speech experts condemned the move as an aggressive escalation that could undercut press freedom.

Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, pointed to the chilling effect it could have “on legitimate journalistic activity.”

Bruce D. Brown, the president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called the search one of the most invasive steps law enforcement could take. He said federal laws and policies limited searches to the most extreme cases, lest such a step chill the public interest in a free flow of information to the news media beyond the case in question.

“While we won’t know the government’s arguments about overcoming these very steep hurdles until the affidavit is made public,” Mr. Brown said, “this is a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”

In a first-person account of her experience talking to federal employees, Ms. Natanson quoted some of the messages she would receive.

“I understand the risks,” one Defense Department worker told her. “But getting the truth and facts out is so much more important.”

Another message, by a Justice Department staff member, read, “I’d never thought I’d be leaking info like this.”

The Justice Department’s use of a search warrant to obtain a reporter’s material was treated across party lines as a scandal in 2013. It was revealed that investigators in a leak case had portrayed a Fox News reporter as a criminal in applying for a court order to obtain the contents of the reporter’s email account.

Because Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had recently testified to Congress that he knew of no effort to prosecute reporters in leak investigations, Republicans accused him of perjury. In response, the Justice Department explained that it never intended to charge the Fox reporter and had portrayed the reporter as a criminal to get around the 1980 law.

In the aftermath, Mr. Holder issued a policy forbidding the Justice Department from portraying reporters as criminals to get search warrants for their notes and work materials unless it truly intended to prosecute them.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland bolstered that policy after it came to light that late in President Trump’s first term, the Justice Department sought the phone and email records of reporters at The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN as part of leak investigations. He flatly barred the use of search warrants and subpoenas to seize reporting materials or to require reporters to testify about their sources.

Last year, however, Ms. Bondi rolled back the Garland policy, restoring the ability of investigators to use search warrants and subpoenas to obtain reporters’ information. She largely restored the Holder-era policy, including a requirement to exhaust other means of obtaining evidence first before targeting reporters’ information.

But Ms. Bondi made a crucial change: She dropped the constraint Mr. Holder added that barred circumventing the 1980 law by portraying a reporter as a criminal suspect in bad faith.

While Mr. Holder insisted that he would never allow the Justice Department to prosecute a reporter for doing his or her job, however, it is not clear whether the Justice Department under Ms. Bondi has the same view.

A World War I law called the Espionage Act says it is a crime to disseminate sensitive information about the national defense without authorization, and on its face it would seem to apply to journalists who write about matters the government has deemed classified. But it has been widely considered to be a violation of the First Amendment to try to apply that law to journalists, and for generations, the Justice Department did not attempt to do so.

During the first Trump administration, however, the department breached that barrier by bringing Espionage Act charges against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, for publishing classified documents leaked to the organization by Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst.

While Mr. Assange is not a traditional journalist, the charges treated journalistic-style activities — receiving and disseminating classified information — as something that could be treated as a crime. In 2024, the Biden administration reached a plea deal with Mr. Assange on that charge to resolve his case, so its constitutionality was never tested on appeal.

Mr. Trump himself was charged under the Espionage Act in 2023 and accused of keeping classified documents without authorization after he left office and obstructing government efforts to get them back. Prosecutors had to abandon that case, along with a separate indictment for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, after he was re-elected president in 2024.

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