TRUMP WILL GET HIS ABUSE FIX ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

This week, far too many people fell for the notion that President Trump now recognizes the need for self-restraint in Minnesota after the thuggish murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Trump made a few cosmetic changes in the state, but he appears to have responded to the widespread outrage by getting his abuse fix in other ways.

Here's the act of abuse that's leading the news:

The former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., his lawyer said, in a case rejected last week by a magistrate judge.

Mr. Lemon has said he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18 to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.

The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, including Mr. Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.

But the magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied.

Lemon is well off and has a high-powered D.C.-insider lawyer, Abbe Lowell. It's quite likely that he'll beat the rap. But Lemon isn't the only Black journalist who's been arrested for the crime of covering this protest:

Minnesota based Independent Journalist GEORGIA FORT has been arrested for filming a protest of the church pastor that works as an ICE manager. SPREAD THE WORD! Georgia has been doing outstanding reporting from ground zero!

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— The Letterhack (@theletterhack.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 8:23 AM

Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was also arrested by federal agents this morning I was sent this video of agents at her door:

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 9:58 AM

On Wednesday, the FBI seized voting records and ballots from the 2020 election in heavily Democratic Fulton Country, Georgia. Yesterday, Trump sued the FBI for $10 billion, accusing the agency of negligence in hiring an employee who went on to leak Trump's tax returns. And there are

media reports that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told state leaders that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a 30-day surge in Ohio....

The operation in Ohio is set to begin Feb. 4 after the Trump administration ended Temporary Protective Status about 500,000 Haitian immigrants in the U.S.

If we want to look at these new fronts in Trump's war on common decency as "distractions," please note that he's distracting us from his evil acts in Minnesota with more evil acts.

If it's all meant as a distraction, it's not meant as a distraction intended to make us forget that Trump's thugs have been doing morally reprehensible things in Minnesota. If anything, it's intended to distract us from the fact that Trump didn't crush the Minnesota resistance. Trump doesn't think he did terrible things in Minnesota that alienated most of America -- he thinks he looks weak because he had to make even a superficial retreat. If he's trying to distract us, he's trying to distract us from his failure to be a completely successful thug.

(Or you could argue that he's trying to distract himself from his poor polling and his failure to dominate Minneapolis.)

Regrettably, it will be a struggle to get normie voters to respond to these outrages the way they've responded to two summary executions in Minneapolis, even though the attacks on elections and the First Amendment are deeply alarming. Maybe Trump understands that on a gut level. Maybe he assumes that only journalists -- who are held in low esteem these days -- will be truly outraged at the arrests. Maybe Trump critics in the press will continue to insist that he can't really tamper with the midterms. If so, these will turn out to be successful distractions, whether or not that's what they were meant to be.