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Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort have been arrested.
If you’ve been following me over the past year, you know Don and I have been doing weekly “Two Brothers Talking” Substack Lives together. He’s a friend. He’s a colleague. So this hits close to home, not just as a journalist, but as a human being.
What happened to Don and Georgia is unacceptable. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s wrong.
You can watch the full Live above and read key takeaways below.
Don Lemon & Georgia Fort were arrested for doing journalism
I watched Don’s stream. I saw it with my own eyes.
He repeatedly stated, clearly and explicitly, that he was not among the activists and that he was simply reporting. He interviewed not only protesters, but the pastor and members of the congregation. From what I saw, the protesters did not even tell him at the outset where they were going.
This is real journalism. Constitutionally protected First Amendment work. The exact kind of reporting Don has done for decades.
And it’s not just Don. Georgia Fort, an independent journalist in Minneapolis, was also arrested for simply filming. That tells you everything.
Treating a journalist like a participant because they are physically present is a slippery, authoritarian logic. If that’s the standard, then journalists would have been charged en masse during the George Floyd protests. If a reporter films wrongdoing, does that make them guilty of the wrongdoing? Of course not.
This is not complicated. This is not a gray area. Don was doing his job.
This isn’t justice. It’s intimidation.
Let’s call it what it is.
This is not about “the rule of law.” This is an intimidation tactic. They are trying to make an example out of Don Lemon to scare independent journalists, to scare anyone with a platform, and to scare anyone thinking of stepping outside the script.
They are already pressuring corporate media through settlements and threats. This is what it looks like when they turn those tactics toward independent journalism.
They do not want people seeing what this regime is doing in real time.
Even judges saw the truth. The regime pushed anyway
One of the most damning parts of this story is that two judges already rejected this.
A magistrate judge in Minneapolis refused to sign off on the criminal complaint the first time. They tried again. The Trump regime appealed. That didn’t work. So Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to her own words, personally directed this arrest.
This is the playbook. When you can’t justify the crackdown on the merits, you escalate the spectacle.
And as the saying goes, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.
This isn’t about strength. It’s about desperation. It’s about using the machinery of the state to punish and deter.
Everyone needs to speak out
I’m going to say something plainly.
No one should treat this as a typical “administration.” This is a regime. They have tried to make examples out of public officials. Now they’re trying to make examples out of journalists.
If you still support this, you need to do some soul-searching. I’m serious.
At some point, “politics” stops being an excuse. At some point, people have to decide what side they’re on when the government starts targeting the press and empowering federal agents to murder civilians.
This is not a theoretical debate about norms. This is a live test of whether the First Amendment still means what we say it means.
The only answer is louder, unified pushback
Here is my call to journalists and to anyone with a platform.
Speak out.
No hedging.
No fake neutrality.
No pretending this is just another news cycle.
This is unconstitutional. It’s unacceptable. It’s depraved.
And it is designed to scare the rest of us into silence.
To that, I say: hell no.
The politically weak Trump regime wants to scare us. Wants us to pipe down. Wants us not to report on what they’re doing. Wants everyday people and independent journalists to stop recording and telling the truth about their authoritarianism.
Let’s do the opposite. Speak louder.
Support Don. Support Georgia Fort. Support independent journalism. Subscribe to the people doing this work. Back the reporters who are showing up, filming, documenting, and refusing to let a regime operate in the dark.
This is a moment that demands solidarity and volume.
