Society
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January 30, 2026
Lemon’s arrest is just not solely a clear violation of the First Amendment but additionally a blatant throwback to the Constitution’s long-discarded Fugitive Slave Clause.
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Don Lemon speaks onstage in the course of the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center’s 2025 Ripple of Hope Gala in New York.
(Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for RFK Ripple Of Hope)
The Department of Justice arrested two journalists, Don Lemon, and Georgia Fort, in reference to their protection of a protest that came about inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota on January 18. The DOJ additionally arrested two activists, Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy, for his or her function within the protest. All 4 of the folks arrested are Black.
The arrests of the 2 journalists are clearly unconstitutional. You don’t have to be a authorized scholar to know that arresting journalists for protecting the information is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Lemon’s arrest can be flatly unlawful. Last week, the Trump administration went to a federal Justice of the Peace choose, Douglas L. Micko, to ask for an arrest warrant for Lemon. The choose refused. The Trump administration then appealed and misplaced that enchantment. The authorized system actually mentioned the federal government couldn’t arrest Lemon, however the authorities arrested him anyway, they usually went all the best way to Los Angeles (removed from Minnesota) to get him.
Georgia Fort is a distinguished Black journalist primarily based in Minnesota. She was out entrance in protecting the George Floyd protests, and expertly coated the trial of his killer, Derek Chauvin. I’ve little doubt that this prior reporting is among the many causes she was focused by the Trump administration.
I do know much less concerning the activists: Crews is a cofounder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, whereas Lundy works within the Hennepin County Attorney’s workplace and not too long ago introduced his candidacy for the Minnesota state Senate. I additionally know that arresting folks for protesting is a violation of the First Amendment.
In her tweet proclaiming the arrests, Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned that the 4 have been arrested “at my direction.” Later stories prompt that the DOJ empaneled a federal grand jury that issued the arrest warrants for Lemon and Fort, however didn’t clarify the trigger for arresting Crews and Lundy. Going to a grand jury to get an arrest warrant that a choose and appeals court docket beforehand denied on constitutional grounds is very uncommon in a democracy, however I suppose it’s how the fascists play the sport.
I count on, at a minimal, that the arrests of Lemon and Fort shall be thrown out in court docket finally, since at the least one among them already has been. I feel the extra necessary query is why all 4 of those Black folks have been arrested. To reply that query, we should always begin with the White House’s official tweet about Lemon’s arrest. They tweeted out: “When life gives you lemons…” adopted by a chain emoji. This ties the arrest of Lemon to this nation’s historical past of slavery in a manner no sane individual will miss.
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The arrest of Lemon harks again to a discarded portion of our unique Constitution: the Fugitive Slave Clause. That clause learn: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” It’s related as a result of the Fugitive Slave Clause counteracted a totally different modification within the Constitution, the tenth, which explicitly reserves all “police power” to the states.
To put it merely, the tenth Amendment says that states are in command of deciding whom they should arrest, however the Fugitive Slave Clause says the federal authorities can violate the tenth Amendment—if they should seize Black folks. Fundamentally, that’s what’s occurred to Lemon. The federal authorities has outmoded the constitutional authority of Minnesota in order that it could actually arrest a Black man who obtained away. And we all know that’s how they’re considering, as a result of they’re utilizing literal chain emojis to congratulate themselves on their accomplishment.
What we’re seeing is an apparent try to vary the face of the victims of Trump’s fascism. I consider the Trump administration all the time assumed that the folks on the entrance traces of the resistance to their ways can be Black and brown. They assumed that the individuals who can be getting brutalized within the streets and shot and killed can be folks of shade. They didn’t assume that the sufferer of their brutality can be a white man who was a nurse for veterans. They didn’t assume it might be a white lady with kids’s plushies in her glove compartment.
Arresting Black journalists and activists, and utilizing specific slavery imagery whereas doing it, is an try to inflame the Black group and remind white of us who the actual targets are. Support for ICE and the Trump administration typically is falling amongst white of us. Trump needs to remind these white of us that he’s actually simply making an attempt to arrest harmful Black folks.
Trump and Steven Miller need a race struggle. They suppose they’ll win it. They suppose white folks will tune in for it. Their working idea is that almost all white persons are viciously racist, like they’re, and that almost all whites secretly pine to reside in apartheid South Africa.
I don’t suppose they’re proper—and I say that as a one who is just not identified to have a significantly excessive opinion of the ethical readability of white Americans. My learn has all the time been that almost all white folks on this nation are like most individuals who eat meat on this nation: they wish to take pleasure in a good steak, however they don’t wish to go to a slaughterhouse and put a bolt gun in a cow. White folks take pleasure in their privilege, however they don’t precisely wish to see how their privilege will get made.
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Arresting a journalist like Lemon—who is just not solely “Black famous” like Fort is however crossover well-known amongst white of us—is as prone to inflame the white group as it’s to inflame the Black group. Lemon obtained arrested final night time whereas protecting the Grammys, of all issues, not the Image Awards.
The arrests of the journalists can not maintain up legally. (The arrests of the activists shouldn’t maintain up legally both, as Bondi is claiming the activist violated the First Amendment rights of churchgoers whereas Bondi is violating the First Amendment rights of protesters.) It is a shredding of the First Amendment that I don’t suppose even Trump’s crops on the Supreme Court can stand for (apart from Clarence Thomas, who might be titillated concerning the alternative to make use of the Fugitive Slave Clause as the premise for his dissenting opinion from the extra sane members of the court docket). I additionally don’t suppose the arrests will maintain up socially. I don’t suppose they are going to change the narrative in the best way Trump and Miller in all probability hope it should.
Of course, the highway to dangerous takes is paved with a reliance on white folks to do the fitting factor. I don’t suppose it will work, legally or culturally, however I’ll want white folks to show me proper.
Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He can be an Alfred Knobler Fellow on the Type Media Center. He is the creator of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, each printed by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation publication “Elie v. U.S.” right here.
