Following the murder of Renee Nicole Good, Donald Trump doubled down and sent more ill-trained, masked, and lethally armed occupying forces into Minneapolis. It’s a safe bet that his efforts to ratchet up community outrage and violence will succeed sooner or later, if not in Minneapolis then somewhere else controlled by Democrats.
While it’s clear that Trump is doing everything he can to bolster and hasten his invocation of the Insurrection Act, for online gamblers betting on predictable and stupid Trump moves, it’s just a question of when it will happen.
Astute betters might predict that Trump’s declaration under the Insurrection Act is still five or six months away, closer to November, the better to cancel the midterms. But Jeffrey Epstein could return to dominate headlines any day, and Trump will indulge his compulsion to out-noise him. Also, judging from his non-stop blunders in other areas (looking at you Greenland, tariffs, and the flop in Davos), Trump will likely stumble into another strategic error by invoking the act early, while there’s still time for SCOTUS to smack it down on First Amendment grounds.
In the meantime, Trump officials are sharpening attacks against peaceful protesters, treating the First Amendment like inconvenient fiction.
Targeting Don Lemon, hiding federal policy
When former CNN news anchor Don Lemon filmed a marathon seven-hour protest at a Minneapolis church last week, Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s Assistant Attorney General, 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.”
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.
Full out assault against the First Amendment
The DOJ’s response to Don 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, or doesn’t understand the difference between interrupting church services, which may not be protected by the First Amendment, and protesting outside a church, which is. 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 and feeding worms. Putting protestors and journalists “away for a long, long time,” is straight out of Putin’s playbook, and 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.
‘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 Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary 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,” Young said.
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 columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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