When former CNN news anchor Don Lemon filmed a marathon seven-hour protest at a Minneapolis church last week, Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s assistant AG, publicly threatened him: “You [Lemon] are on notice! A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service.”
Never mind that Lemon did not select the location, organize, or even participate in the protest; it’s apparently now illegal for journalists to breathe the same air as the protesters.
On cue, other Trump officials piled on, declaring the protest an “act of hatred against Christians.” Karoline Leavitt, her signature cross blazing, announced, “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship. The Department of Justice has just launched a full investigation into the despicable [Don Lemon] incident that took place earlier today at a church in Minnesota.”
The hypocrisy. It burns.
Leavitt’s cross must be burning a charred replica on her throat. She forgot to mention that Trump reversed the policy that prohibited ICE from attacking people at places of worship in January 2025, after that policy had been in effect for 13 years.
Since then, Trump’s green shirts have arrested, brutalized, and tackled people in churches all across America. Although most ICE attacks go unnoticed by the media, ICE attacks on or near church grounds to date include a raid on Iglesia Fuente de Vida church in the Atlanta suburbs; a raid on United Methodist church property in Charlotte; raids at Our Lady of Lourdes in San Bernadino; throughout Puerto Rico during Sunday services; on numerous church grounds throughout California (Inland Empire, Downey Memorial Christian Church, Montclair, Highland and St. Adelaide); and in Washington, D.C., where the Evangelical Lutheran Church joined the Quakers in a suit to block ICE raids in places of worship.
On a better day, the hypocrisy would be laughable. Not only is ICE attacking people in their “sacred place of worship” under Trump’s own official policy, but the location isn’t what makes it un-Christian. Dragging people out of their beds with flash bang grenades, tackling senior citizens to the pavement, and pulling handicapped people out of their cars are only Christian acts in Lucifer’s bible.
Trump officials’ full out assault against the First Amendment
The DOJ’s response to Lemon was a warning shot to all journalists: Reporting ICE brutality will cost you. Dhillon said, “Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”
Perhaps Dhillon skipped Constitutional Law, and doesn’t know that arresting people for peaceful protests has long been prohibited by the First Amendment. Ratified and in effect since 1791, the First Amendment is older and wiser than MAGA (low bar), and will still be standing long after Trump is horizontal. Putting protesters and journalists “away for a long, long time,” straight out of Putin’s playbook, is not going to happen here without the Civil War Trump so desperately craves.
Multiple cases pitting freedom of speech against Trump’s “executive authority” ICE brutality are pending in the lower courts, and ICE is going to lose bigly. A recent smackdown from a Reagan appointed judge is instructive while we wait.
‘These Cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution’
Last week, during a hearing over student speech on college campuses, US district judge William Young called Trump an “authoritarian,” and accused the administration of “an unconstitutional conspiracy” against the First Amendment. On Jan. 22, he issued a ruling that Trump officials had, under the law, “objectively chilled protected speech.”
Young found that Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem “have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.” “The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries, and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the first amendment.”
Describing the case as one of “the most important” of his career, Young asked: “How did this happen? How could our own government, the highest officials in our government, seek to so infringe on the rights of people lawfully here in the United States? It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely.”
Here’s to American judges never toeing the line for a fascist, to journalists never pulling their punches, and to the glorious and everlasting freedom to call Trump what he is: an idiot.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
