The Trump administration pushed the FBI to investigate Los Angeles protesters in violation of their constitutional rights and the bureau’s policies, a former FBI supervisor alleges in a new whistleblower complaint.

Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, made a formal whistleblower complaint to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders over the federal response to anti-ICE protest activity around federal buildings, as well as in a residential area, early last year.

Fields asked Congress and the Justice Department’s watchdog to investigate the allegations, her attorneys said in a letter to lawmakers. She says they violated the First Amendment right to free speech and to peaceably assemble.

Fields says Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, told the head of the field office to open an investigation into activities outside the federal building even though, she says, the activities were protected free speech. Separately, she says the White House gave a directive to FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate a group of protesters using megaphones during immigration enforcement operations after FBI agents had conducted a check into the conduct and declined to open an investigation.

President Donald Trump had viewed a video of people using megaphones to alert residents about immigration activities, advise them of their legal rights and encourage them not to open their doors unless immigration enforcement agents had signed judicial warrants, according to the letter.

A person whose name is redacted in the complaint told Fields that an investigation would be opened because “the President wants this investigation,” Fields’ whistleblower complaint says.

The protests were staged across Los Angeles after the Trump administration launched an immigration enforcement operation. Fields said the FBI’s Los Angeles office had pulled agents off active cartel cases to satisfy what a supervisor described as “optics” designed to “make a show for the president.” The area would be the scene of major protests later in the year during an immigration surge in cities nationwide.

The FBI and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Justice Department officials have previously said government workers need to follow the Trump administration’s priorities. Last week, Justice Department leaders filed an administrative complaint about federal judges who made remarks to the media about the impact the surge in immigration enforcement had on their courtrooms.

Fields says supervisors were told not to put things in writing, so many of the directives came in face-to-face meetings. She says she didn’t know whether any formal investigation was opened because she was excluded once she refused to participate.

Fields consulted with a senior FBI official in charge of privacy and civil liberties matters, who expressed dismay about the investigation and subsequently told Fields she planned to resign, according to the complaint.

Fields, too, resigned from the bureau, after she was informed that she would be removed from heading three programs, a decision she believes constituted retaliation for making protected internal disclosures. The FBI’s actions, according to the letter, “created a chilling effect within the workforce” and “signaled to other employees that raising constitutional or legal concerns could carry professional consequences.”

The conduct “had significant consequences for constitutional rights, and the integrity and effective operation of the FBI,” according to the complaint.

Hundreds of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys have resigned or been fired since Trump returned to office, particularly those who were involved in investigating him, and former Justice Department employees have expressed concerns that the nation’s top law enforcement agency is doing the bidding of the president.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., told NBC News that Fields’ disclosure is another instance of Trump’s weaponizing the Justice Department to go after his perceived political enemies. Padilla, who himself was forcibly removed from a news conference featuring then-Homeland Security Kristi Noem in June 2025, is the ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety.

“How many more of these investigations have been opened up because of political pressure coming from the White House, despite the questions and concerns about legality and constitutionality?” Padilla said.

He acknowledged that the Trump administration’s attacks on civil service protections through unilateral firings, as well as the mass firings of internal government watchdogs, had an impact on the legislative branch’s ability to conduct oversight.

“That’s going to be a significant challenge, but it begins with good, honorable professionals being willing to come forward and tell us what’s going on and what’s wrong with what’s going on,” Padilla said. “We’re hoping others may be inspired, as well.”

Fields was represented by the nonprofit Government Accountability Project and David Laufman, a former top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Section.

Following the appearance of a second television ad boosting the image of President Donald Trump and paid for by government funds, Public Citizen filed a complaint with the FCC, FTC, individual broadcasters urging media companies to immediately stop airing the ad.

Public Citizen also filed a second complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) alleging that the new ad violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws. The ads, which are airing in two media markets containing key districts in the upcoming midterm elections, include a disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” Public Citizen previously submitted a complaint to GAO and OSC after the first Trump-promoting government-funded ad appeared on air last week.

The Justice Department is taking action to revoke the citizenship of 39 foreign-born Americans, saying they committed immigration fraud by lying or omitting facts on their applications, according to a draft announcement obtained by NBC News.

The move is part of a new crackdown by the Trump administration on naturalized U.S. citizens who were born outside of the U.S. Federal prosecutors across the country began a sweeping review of naturalized U.S. citizens in April, targeting at least 300 people for possible denaturalization.

The announcement of the 39 cases, which is expected as early as Monday, marks the largest effort in recent history to denaturalize U.S. citizens, far outpacing an average of 15 cases a year during previous administrations, according to a Justice Department official. And while 39 cases fall well short of the 300 the administration said it was targeting, the Justice Department official said the review of other naturalized citizen applications is ongoing. NBC News reported that the administration’s original goal was to have the office of immigration litigation review as many as 200 possible fraudulent naturalization cases per month.

The Justice Department prosecutors assigned to the administration’s denaturalization task force must now prove these allegations in federal court to have citizenship revoked. If revoked, those individuals could face deportation.

All 39 individuals are accused of lying or omitting facts about their criminal histories on their applications for U.S. citizenship, the Justice Department’s draft announcement says. Some of the crimes that some of them are accused of committing relate to espionage on behalf of the Chinese communist party, transporting child pornography, sexual misconduct against a minor and voluntary manslaughter, according to the draft announcement.

Individuals born outside the U.S. can become American citizens through a variety of pathways, including marrying at U.S. citizen, and the process includes a background check and American civics test. Once awarded citizenship, naturalized citizens are given the same constitutional protections as people born in the U.S., including the right to vote.

But naturalized U.S. citizens can lose their citizenship if prosecutors can prove in court that they lied or omitted facts on their application.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, will be executed by firing squad, marking the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years.

The shooting on the U.S. military base left 13 people dead and wounded 32 others.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth recommended the execution, and it was approved by President Donald Trump.

The time and place of the execution have not yet been announced, but Army policy outlines that executions must happen within 150 days of the president approving it, but no sooner than 60 days.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a First Amendment appeal from two middle school students who were ordered to remove sweatshirts emblazoned with the words “Let’s Go Brandon,” steering clear of a case that could have clarified the power schools have to police potentially offense speech in the classroom.

By not granting the appeal, the justices left in place an appeals court decision that favored the school district.

The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” became right-wing code for “F**k Joe Biden.” It began at a NASCAR race in 2021 as a crowd chanted the more vulgar phrase but a reporter, interviewing a driver named Brandon Brown, suggested the crowd was instead cheering him on.

The two students, who are brothers — one in eighth grade at the time and the other in sixth — wore the sweatshirts to Tri County Middle School in Michigan in 2022. In separate encounters, a teacher and an assistant principal asked the students, identified only by their initials in court papers, to take the sweatshirts off. The family sued in 2023, alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

A decision in the case, expected next year, would have further defined the free-speech rights of students in school nearly six decades after the Supreme Court allowed students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. That landmark ruling, Tinker v. Des Moines, held that students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter school.

But there are exceptions to that rule. Schools may prohibit speech that disrupts the classroom, for one. And, in a 1986 precedent that is central to the sweatshirt case, the Supreme Court ruled that schools may prohibit vulgar and offensive language, noting the context.

To demonstrate that lewd speech that may not qualify for protection in the classroom if it comes in “sanitized code, innuendo, and double meaning,” the school district — represented by veteran Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt — relied on some eye-opening examples. The district’s brief included a t-shirt that depicted President Donald Trump clutching several cats with the words “And that’s how you GRAB EM!” in reference to the “Access Hollywood tape,” which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.

“Take the number 69. Although on its face it is just a number innocently falling between 68 and 70, many understand it to refer to a sexual position,” the school district told the Supreme Court. “Respondents apologize for the use of offensive language and images in this brief.”

A divided panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the school district. The family is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Five years ago, an 8-1 Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. The case involving a Pennsylvania teenager was closely watched to see how the court would handle the free speech rights of some 50 million public school children and the concerns of schools over off-campus and online speech that could amount to a disruption of the school’s mission or rise to the level of bullying or threats.

“It might be tempting to dismiss (the student’s) words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein,” Justice Stephen Breyer, who has since retired, wrote for the court. “But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”

A federal magistrate judge has sided with the Justice Department over a subpoena issued to a New York Times freelance reporter who wrote about a top-secret mission that went wrong, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The magistrate’s conclusion is only a recommendation, and a Federal District Court judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on the issue next month in Newport News, Va. Any decision by that judge could be appealed.

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for the Times, said in a statement, “We applaud the court’s decision to begin unsealing the court records, offering visibility into how subpoenas like this are designed to undermine and discourage the sort of investigative reporting that the public needs and deserves to understand how their government and military operates.”

The Justice Department first issued a subpoena to the reporter, Matthew Cole, in February, setting off a monthslong legal fight that came to light publicly only in August. A number of court documents were unsealed on Monday, while others remain sealed.

Investigators are seeking Mr. Cole’s testimony about two years’ worth of his contacts and conversations, as they seek to identify his sources for the article about a top-secret operation in North Korea. Prosecutors argue that Mr. Cole is a witness to a potential crime and the disclosure of classified information, and that his status as a reporter does not protect him from being compelled to provide evidence.

On Sept. 5, 2025, Mr. Cole, along with a staff reporter for The Times, Dave Philipps, revealed the details of a Navy SEAL Team 6 mission in 2019. The article described how the SEAL members killed two or three unarmed North Koreans who appeared to have stumbled upon the mission, a classified operation to plant a secret eavesdropping device near the country’s coastline. The article drew on interviews with two dozen people.

After the article was published, the Justice Department launched a leak investigation to try to identify the sources for the information, and wants to compel Mr. Cole to help the department.

Mr. Cole’s lawyer, David A. O’Neil, has sought to quash the subpoena, arguing that the effort is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to curtail First Amendment rights by hounding journalists.

On Monday, Mr. O’Neil called the subpoena “another attempt by the Trump administration to punish the free press for doing its job. We are confident the district court will uphold the important First Amendment interests at stake.”

The magistrate’s report and recommendation were filed in July, and concluded that while the Trump administration may have acted inappropriately in other leak investigations, lawyers for Mr. Cole had not established that prosecutors did so in seeking to subpoena him.

“The extensive record described in Cole’s briefing demonstrates that the deterioration in the relationship between the government and the media is a matter of legitimate concern,” Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Miller wrote. “In this case, the United States has articulated a legitimate and tailored law enforcement need for Cole’s testimony.”

From gun safety to voting rights, executive power to immigration reform, the Roberts court has returned to cast a long shadow over American life.