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religious freedom
Arresting the Witness: Don Lemon, the DOJ, and the Chilling of Press Freedom
When journalists are punished for observation, the public loses access to contested truth and fear becomes a tool of narrative control.
Feb 04, 2026
When federal agents arrested journalist Don Lemon and independent reporter Georgia Fort in connection with a protest inside a Minneapolis church, many commentators rushed to frame the incident as a straightforward defense of sacred space: Worship was disrupted, congregants were frightened, and the law intervened to restore order. That framing captures part of the truth—but it obscures the deeper constitutional and moral stakes at play.The arrests are not simply about a protest in a house of worship. They are about whether journalists can witness and document contentious public events—especially those where power, conscience, and institutional authority collide—without facing criminal charges for the act of seeing itself.
The legal action stems from a January demonstration at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where protesters interrupted a service after learning that one of the church’s pastors also serves as an official with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For demonstrators, that dual role represented a profound moral contradiction: How can a religious leader entrusted with spiritual care also participate in an agency responsible for detention, deportation, and family separation?
Lemon was present to report. He did not identify as a participant, did not lead chants, and did not incite the crowd. He documented the scene, spoke with parishioners and protesters, and relayed what was happening to the public. Georgia Fort, a Minnesota-based independent journalist, was live streaming coverage of the protest and later live streamed her own arrest outside her home. Both were subsequently detained and charged.
Federal prosecutors allege that Lemon, Fort, and others conspired to interfere with religious worship, invoking the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that also applies to religious spaces. Lemon and Fort were released after initial court appearances. A judge placed limits on Lemon’s travel and contact but did not require pretrial supervision. No violence occurred during the protest.
Don Lemon and Georgia Fort did not interrupt worship. They interrupted silence.
That fact matters—but it does not end the ethical inquiry. Fear, particularly in contemporary America, is not abstract. Houses of worship have been sites of mass shootings, and the threat of violence is a lived reality for congregants across faith traditions. No one can read another person’s mind, and no one can fully know the intentions of a group entering a sanctuary in a volatile political moment. Even actions intended as nonviolent moral protest can be experienced as frightening.
Holding this truth is essential. Civil disobedience does not exist in a vacuum, and claims of nonviolence do not erase the perception of danger felt by others. Moral confrontation can be principled and still deeply unsettling. Ethical seriousness requires acknowledging that tension rather than dismissing it.
But fear alone cannot become the standard by which constitutional rights are curtailed—especially the rights of journalists whose role is to observe, document, and inform the public. The central question is not whether congregants felt afraid. It is whether that fear justifies arresting reporters who were not organizing, directing, or participating in the protest.
After his arrest, Lemon emphasized that he was being punished for doing what he has done for decades: covering the news. The First Amendment, he argued, exists precisely to protect that work. Fort echoed this concern, warning that criminalizing documentation of public events—particularly protests—poses a grave threat to journalism itself.
Almost immediately, a familiar dismissal surfaced: Don Lemon is not a “real journalist.” The argument is both unserious and dangerous. Who decides what journalism is? Cable news hosts routinely blend reporting, commentary, and political advocacy, often with privileged access to power. Independent journalists, freelancers, and live streamers—many of whom take on greater personal risk—are frequently denied legitimacy after the fact, especially when their reporting makes institutions uncomfortable.
If journalism is defined by function rather than branding, Lemon and Fort clearly qualify. They observed. They documented. They informed. For that, the state sent federal agents to their doors.
The irony is that Christianity itself has a long and uneasy relationship with disruption. In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly confronted religious authorities, challenged imperial power, and disrupted ritualized comfort in the name of justice. The early Christian proclamation “Jesus is Lord” was not a private devotional claim; it was a public rejection of imperial sovereignty.
That tradition carried forward. The civil rights movement drew deeply from Christian theology to justify nonviolent confrontation with unjust laws and complicit institutions. Figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Pauli Murray, and James Lawson understood that faith divorced from justice becomes hollow.
Acknowledging this history does not negate the fear congregants may have felt. It clarifies why moral confrontation so often occurs in places of symbolic authority. Sacred space has never been immune from ethical challenge—nor should it be.
This is where the Department of Justice’s response raises deeper concern. The arrests do not merely defend religious freedom; they signal to journalists that covering morally charged protests—particularly those implicating powerful institutions—may carry criminal risk. The chilling effect is unmistakable.
This pattern is not new. Over the past decade, journalists covering protests have faced arrests, equipment seizures, subpoenas, and legal threats. While the legal contexts vary, the cumulative message is consistent: Some forms of witnessing are increasingly treated as suspect. When journalists are punished for observation, the public loses access to contested truth. Fear becomes a tool of narrative control.
This is not a choice between religious freedom and press freedom. Both matter. But when the state treats observation as interference, the balance collapses in favor of power. Protection becomes insulation. Accountability becomes disruption.
Journalism is not a threat to faith. It is a threat to unaccountable authority—especially when that authority cloaks itself in moral or divine legitimacy. A functioning democracy depends on contested spaces, on the ability to observe power where it gathers, even when that power claims holiness.
Don Lemon and Georgia Fort did not interrupt worship. They interrupted silence.
The question now is not only whether Lemon and Fort will prevail in court. It is whether witnessing itself will remain a protected act in American public life—or whether fear, once invoked, will become a legal solvent capable of dissolving press freedom wherever power feels exposed.
If journalists can be arrested for documenting protest inside a church, the precedent will not remain confined to sacred spaces. It will travel—to campuses, courtrooms, town halls, and streets—wherever institutions claim moral authority and demand insulation from scrutiny.
A democracy that punishes witnessing does not preserve order. It preserves silence.
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'Educating, Not Evangelizing': Court Rules Against Texas Ten-Commandments-In-Every-Classroom Law
"Children's religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools," said a Texas rabbi who sued the state over the law.
Aug 20, 2025
A federal judge on Wednesday shot down a Texas law that would have mandated all public school classrooms across the state display the Ten Commandments.
As reported by local news station KSAT, US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction, ruling that the state's law crossed the line from education to proselytizing on behalf of a specific sect of Christianity.
Noting that "the Ten Commandments set out in Texas's Ten Commandments law differs from the version observed by some Protestant faiths, and most adherents of the Catholic and Jewish faiths," Biery argued that the law violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.
Biery imagined the uproar that would ensue if the city of Hamtramck, Michigan, which is majority Muslim, passed a law mandating that all public schools post passages from the Quran in all classrooms. He then argued that such a law would be just as unconstitutional as the Texas Ten Commandments law.
"While 'We the people' rule by a majority, the Bill of Rights protects the minority Christians in Hamtramck and those 33% of Texans who do not adhere to any of the Christian denominations," he wrote.
The judge also argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."
Organizations that advocate for the separation of church and state were quick to praise Biery's decision to strike down the law, which had been due to go into effect on September 1.
Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said that the ruling affirmed that the state cannot coerce any Texans into adopting a particular religious faith.
“Today's ruling is a major win that protects the constitutional right to religious freedom for Texas families of all backgrounds," he said. "The court affirmed what we have long said: Public schools are for educating, not evangelizing."
Rabbi Mara Nathan, one of the plaintiffs who sued to get the law overturned, welcomed the ruling and stated that "children's religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools."
Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor similarly said that "religious instruction must be left to parents, not the state, which has no business telling anyone how many gods to have, which gods to have or whether to have any gods at all."
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, hailed the ruling and said that it sends a "strong and resounding message across the country that the government respects the religious freedom of every student in our public schools."
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Christian Nationalism for Lunch? Thanks, But No Thanks
A new U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo allowing workplace proselytizing is not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
Aug 13, 2025
Imagine you’re a federal civil service employee, reading today’s paper while having a sandwich during your lunch break in the cafeteria. Another federal employee, maybe a coworker or maybe not, sits down beside you and politely begins to tell you why his faith is correct and why yours, actually, isn’t. Sounds annoying, possibly enraging, and presumably inappropriate if not prohibited? Think again.
According to a July 28, 2025 memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies from Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), employees “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” including “why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” is perfectly okay and even protected religious expression, so long as it falls short of harassment.
As a former federal attorney who worked for the U.S. Labor Department for 39 years, including eight years as a senior executive who ran a regional office, I find this policy disconcerting at best. From the standpoint of office mission effectiveness, maintaining positive and respectful peer-to-peer relationships is crucial. It’s one thing for coworkers, during breaks, to have candid and even heated discussions about sitcoms, musical tastes, or even politics. It’s quite another to laud one’s own spiritual belief and disparage, if not outright insult, another’s. Not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
This right to attempt to convince others that their religious convictions are misguided extends not only to peer coworkers, but to supervisors too. In other words, as you’re enjoying your sandwich in the cafeteria, your supervisor could sit down next to you and explain why your deeply held beliefs happen to be wrong. Not quite so easy to tell them it’s none of their damn business.
The prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims.
But there’s another aspect of this policy that casts an even darker shadow. All this arises in an administration fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to “bring back Christianity,” and populated or supported by self-described Christian nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Russell Vought, once again head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.
Christian nationalism means different things to different people, but has a number of core beliefs. A major 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute included five statements designed to measure support for Christian nationalism. The list included:
- God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
- The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
- Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
- If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
- U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
The study found that 30% of Americans can be classified as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers” (those who fully or mostly agree with the five statements), compared to two-thirds of Americans found to be “skeptics” or “rejecters” (that is, they mostly or fully disagree with the statements). Nevertheless, according to preelection reporting by Politico, “Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it.”
According to Christian nationalism expert and history professor Kristin Du Mez, “This is not a pluralist vision for all of America coming together or a vision for compromise… It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’” She believes that if the Christian nationalist movement gets what it wants, “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to—and then the rest of Americans.”
Is this latest OPM memo part of a veiled effort to advance a Christian nationalist vision for our country? Consider that the prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims—including, potentially, loyalty to a Vought-endorsed Christian-nationalist-inspired belief system. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which would have enabled mass dismissals of those deemed unsuitable. A similar effort is underway this time around. Will espousing Christian nationalism be one of the unstated litmus tests to get, or keep, a supervisory job?
Whether there’s a Christian nationalist agenda lurking behind the OPM memo or not, a better policy for government workers would suggest, if not require, that unless asked, they—and particularly supervisors—keep their judgments of others’ personal belief systems to themselves.
But since the July 28 memo says otherwise, federal employees, please note: As you’re minding your own business munching a tuna salad sandwich at lunch, you might find your supervisor offering a spiritual lesson that wasn’t on the menu. If it works for you, fine. But if it doesn’t go down well, do send it back, with a polite but firm “no thank you.” Assert your freedom of religion, or your freedom not to be religious, while you still have it.
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