U.S. Service Members Killed as War Expands, and Federal Cases Against Protesters Crumble

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**Tracy Mumford** (0:33)
From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, July 20th. Here's what we're covering.
In the Middle East, the death toll is rising as the war between the US and Iran escalates.
In Jordan on Friday, two US soldiers were killed in an Iranian missile barrage, according to the Pentagon. A US official told The Times that remains recovered at the scene are believed to be those of a third soldier who's been missing since the strike. And on Saturday, another American soldier was killed in northern Iraq during the detonation of a downed Iranian drone. That marked the 17th confirmed death of a US service member since the war began. As of last month, Iranian officials said about 3,500 people there had been killed, and that was before the latest surge in fighting. In the past few days, both the US and Iran have carried out widespread strikes, including some on water and desalination plants across the Gulf region in attacks that risk cutting critical utilities during the hottest part of the year. Beyond that, the US has been heavily bombing roads and other infrastructure in southern Iran, and The Times has learned that the US is flying in more F-16 and F-35 fighter jets to the region from bases in Europe. Still, Iran's strikes on US targets have caused heavy damage and show that Tehran continues to be able to outmaneuver the far more powerful US military. For example, even before the service members were killed this weekend, dozens of US troops in Jordan had been injured in Iranian attacks in the past week or so, according to several US officials who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity. The Pentagon had not disclosed those earlier attacks or casualties, as it continues to provide limited public information about US military strategy in the Middle East. The last major Pentagon briefing on the war was in early May.
When the Trump administration launched its nationwide immigration crackdown last year, it also began charging people with impeding or assaulting immigration officers. In all, the Justice Department charged hundreds of protesters and immigrants, with President Trump and members of his administration branding them as insurrectionists or terrorists. Now, a New Times investigation into those charges has found that federal law enforcement has been engaged in extensive misconduct, and many of those cases have fallen apart.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:19)
Am I able to safely get to a nearby police station or? They're literally following me, so every time I get to like a stoplight or something, they're trying to get in front of me. They're intimidating on me.

**Tracy Mumford** (3:30)
In one case, in November in Charlotte, North Carolina, two women who had been part of a crowd yelling at federal agents called 911 to report that they were being followed by unmarked cars after leaving the scene. The cars eventually blocked them in on a dead-end street, and footage recorded by a nearby resident showed an agent getting out of his car and smashing the driver's side window with the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed towards one of the women.
The women were then detained and charged with violating a once obscure statute, 18 USC 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. But the charges against the women were so weak they were eventually withdrawn. In all, the Times found that in more than 400 cases of people being charged under that same statute, nearly half have unraveled.

**Danny Hakim** (4:27)
What we found is that in dozens of these cases where the government was accusing people of assaulting or forcibly impeding an officer, actually if you looked at the video or studied court records, it was the officers who were initiating physical contact.

**Tracy Mumford** (4:44)
My colleague Danny Hakim is part of a team of reporters at the Times who obtained court filings for these cases. They interviewed witnesses and federal officials and reviewed videos of the encounters.

**Danny Hakim** (4:54)
So what we would see in a lot of these records and videos is officers shoving, tackling, pepper spraying defendants, sometimes when they didn't really appear to be doing anything. And there were over a dozen times where judges specifically criticized prosecutors for the way evidence was mishandled. You know, there was one instance where someone was told to erase videos she had taken on a phone. And judges specifically called out the government about these tactics.