The arrests of independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort on Jan. 29 and 30 were not the government’s first attack on the freedom of the press in the US, but they did represent a notable escalation. The government says Lemon and Fort were arrested in connection with their coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a church in Minnesota. They are charged with conspiracy against the right of religious freedom and interfering with the exercise of religious freedom. Activists Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy were also arrested. The protest at the church was prompted by activists finding that the church’s pastor is the local ICE field director.
The People’s Tribune joins with the many journalism and civil rights organizations that have condemned these arrests.
After his arrest, Lemon said, “I’ve spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now. In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects that work for me and for countless other journalists who do what I do. I stand with all of them, and I will not be silent.”
Fort was arrested at her home, and she live-streamed the moments just before her arrest. She said, “Agents are at my door right now…they said they have a warrant for my arrest…my children are here, they’re impacted by this. This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media. We are supposed to have our constitutional right of the freedom to film, to be a member of the press. I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press, because now federal agents are at my door arresting me for filming the church protest a few weeks ago.”
(Another journalist, Mario Guevara, a Spanish-language reporter originally from El Salvador, was arrested while live-streaming a protest against immigration raids in Georgia on June 14, 2025. He was detained for 100 days by ICE and then deported from the United States on October 3.)
“The Trump administration cannot send federal agents after reporters simply because they don’t like the stories being reported,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, responding to the arrests of Lemon and Fort.
‘A government that responds to scrutiny by targeting the messenger is not protecting the public, it is attempting to intimidate it.’
Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent, said that, “By covering the protesters and their message, journalists help to inform our public debates, helping Americans get vital information about sides of an issue that otherwise go ignored. And because all too often protests are attacked by police violence, journalists play an important role in checking abuses of the First Amendment. It is for precisely this reason that we have repeatedly seen journalists covering protests across the United States being subject to brutality, false arrests, and bogus charges. The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are clearly part of that shameful practice.”
Damon T. Hewitt, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that “targeting two acclaimed Black independent journalists for criminal prosecution sends a chilling message at a moment when independent Black media is more necessary than ever.”
In a statement co-signed by 48 other journalism and civil rights organizations, the National Association of Black Journalists said, “The First Amendment is not optional and journalism is NOT a crime. A government that responds to scrutiny by targeting the messenger is not protecting the public, it is attempting to intimidate it, and considering recent incidents regarding federal agents, it is attempting to distract it.”
In an article posted in January, Reporters Without Borders compiled a chronology of the government’s attacks on the press this past year and said, “President Trump’s hostility towards the media predates his return to the White House in 2025…. In his second term in office, though, Trump has matched his history of violent rhetoric with a series of concrete actions that have severely damaged freedom of the press in the United States and around the world. In the past twelve months, he has censored government data, dismantled America’s public broadcasters, weaponized independent government agencies to punish media that criticize his actions, halted aid funding for media freedom internationally, sued disfavored outlets, applied pressure to install cronies to lead others, and more.” You can see the full chronology here.
We have also seen FBI raids of journalists’ homes, talk show hosts pulled off the air, the banning of journalists’ social media accounts, and the takeover of media outlets by right-wing billionaires like Jeff Bezos (the Washington Post) and Larry Ellison (TikTok). Many social media users, including activists, professional journalists and citizen journalists, are commenting on the censorship being practiced by the owners of such social media outlets as Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. A handful of big corporations now control all the major media outlets.
Every dictatorship tries to silence the press. When Hitler and the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, they began by shutting down the Communist and Socialist presses and then moved on to others, and over the course of four years the Nazis absorbed or shut down about 1,000 of the 3,600 newspapers that were being published at the beginning of 1933. Eventually no press was allowed to publish if it didn’t tow the Nazi line.
We could suffer a similar fate, but the growth of independent journalism in the US and the stiff and growing resistance to fascism that we have seen so far suggests the American people have no intention of bowing down to any dictators. We should not let up.
Bob Lee is a professional journalist, writer and editor, and is co-editor of the People’s Tribune, serving as Managing Editor. He first started writing for and distributing the People’s Tribune in 1980, and joined the editorial board in 1987.
