They’re Arresting Journalists Now

Federal agents arrest reporters covering protests — a direct test of the First Amendment

If you’re following along on your bingo card, you can mark “arresting journalists.” That’s the phase we’re well into now.

This morning, federal agents arrested journalists for doing their jobs. Among them: Don Lemon, a journalist with a thirty-year career, and Georgia Fort, who livestreamed her own arrest as it happened.

Their “crime”? Covering a protest.

The journalists were reporting on a demonstration at a St. Paul church earlier this month. Protesters briefly interrupted a service to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Lemon and Fort entered the church to document what was happening. That’s it. No violence. No incitement. Just journalism.

A federal magistrate judge already reviewed the case and rejected arrest warrants for Lemon and others, citing insufficient evidence. The Justice Department tried again. When that failed, prosecutors went shopping for another way in — pushing the case up the chain until indictments were secured.

Arresting journalists for covering protests is a direct assault on the First Amendment. Full stop. Political protest sits at the heart of protected speech. Newsgathering sits right alongside it. When the government criminalizes the act of observing and recording dissent, it isn’t enforcing the law — it’s sending a message.

The message is simple: watching is dangerous. Reporting is risky. Cameras make you a target.

These cases, at least I hope, won’t get very far. At a minimum, they’ll become long, drawn-out fights as judges argue over whether the First Amendment applies — which it clearly does.

So let’s dispense with the idea promoted by the Trump administration that arresting reporters is simply about the law. It isn’t. It’s about putting another chill in the air. Not only will protesting get you arrested. Reporting on protests will, too.

Georgia Fort understood that in real time. She kept filming anyway.

That’s why this matters. Not because of who these journalists are. But because once the state decides it can arrest reporters for being present, no press credential means anything. And no protest is safe from being erased.