Friday morning, the Department of Justice arrested four people.

Don Lemon. Black journalist.

Georgia Fort. Black journalist. Emmy winner. Founder of BLCK Press. Vice president of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Trahern Crews. Black activist. Co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota.

Jamael Lundy. Community organizer and Minnesota Senate candidate.

Their crime? Covering and attending a protest about ICE agents killing two American citizens.

Here’s what the DOJ won’t arrest: The agent who shot Renee Nicole Good. The agents who shot Alex Pretti ten times in five seconds.

Here’s who the DOJ is investigating: Renee Good’s widow. Becca Good. The woman who watched federal agents kill her wife.

Let that land. Federal agents killed an American citizen. The Department of Justice refused to investigate the killer. Then they opened an investigation into the dead woman’s wife.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said there’s “no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into Renee Good’s death because “everybody can watch the videos and see that [the agent] got attacked with a car.”

But everybody can watch the videos. And the videos show Renee Good turning her vehicle away from the agent when he shot her three times, killing her.

The DOJ won’t investigate that. But they’ll arrest the Black journalists who filmed protests about it.

This is not law enforcement. This is a message. And the message is simple: Watch what we do to white women who resist. Now watch what we do to Black people who witness it.

• DOJ arrests four people—at least three Black—for covering/attending church protest: On January 30, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal agents to arrest Don Lemon (Black journalist), Georgia Fort (Black journalist), Trahern Crews (Black BLM co-founder), and Jamael Lundy (community organizer) in connection with their presence at a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul. The protest occurred after community members learned an ICE field director serves as one of the church’s pastors—this following ICE agents’ fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Federal judges had rejected arrest warrants three times, finding “no probable cause” and “no evidence” of criminal behavior. (Source: NBC News, CBS News)

• DOJ refuses civil rights investigation into Renee Good’s death, investigates her widow instead: The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division declined to investigate whether Good’s civil rights were violated when ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot her. This decision led to mass resignations: the division’s criminal section chief, principal deputy chief, deputy chief, acting deputy chief, and multiple other prosecutors quit. Additionally, six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over “the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Renée Good and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter,” according to The New York Times. (Source: CBS News, Wikipedia)

• Administration conducts smear campaign against the dead: President Trump called Alex Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Renee Good as a “leftist insurrectionist.” Wikipedia documented that “sympathetic nativists justified the shooting by describing a Minneapolis taken over by Somali refugees, but also by pointing to the victim’s divorce and sexuality, the social justice curriculum at her child’s elementary school and the obstinateness of liberal white women.” A legal observer arrested by ICE reported that an agent said: “that’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” (Source: ABC News, MS NOW, Wikipedia)

The pattern is clear. And it’s obscene.

Federal agents kill a white mother of three. The government investigates her widow and attacks her sexuality. Federal agents kill a white ICU nurse. The government calls him an “insurrectionist.”

Black journalists cover protests about these deaths. The government arrests them.

This is not random. This is strategy. And the strategy has a racial logic that is both obvious and deliberately obscured.

Here’s what’s obvious: When Black people witness state violence—even against white victims—they get arrested. Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, and Trahern Crews didn’t kill anyone. They filmed. They reported. They organized. And for that, federal agents came to their doors.

Here’s what’s obscured: The white victims are being smeared to justify their deaths. Renee Good’s divorce. Her sexuality. Her child’s school. Alex Pretti’s anger at federal agents. None of this justifies execution. But all of it gets weaponized to make white America shrug.

And when that doesn’t work—when people still protest, when journalists still film, when communities still rise up—the government arrests the Black people doing the witnessing.

This is how white supremacy functions under the rhetoric of law and order. The state kills. The state smears the dead. The state arrests Black people who make the killing visible.

Trahern Crews told the Associated Press there’s a “tradition” of Black activists and Black leaders being targeted. He said, “Just as being a Black person, you always have to have that in mind.”

Always have to have that in mind.

Georgia Fort built BLCK Press because less than three percent of journalists in Minnesota are Black. She knows what happens when white institutions control the narrative about Black and brown death. She founded an organization to make sure Black voices tell Black stories.

Now federal agents are at her door.

The racist element here isn’t just that Black journalists were arrested. Black journalists were arrested for doing what journalism requires: making power visible. In America, when Black people make white power visible—even when that power kills white people—they become targets.

That’s why so many DOJ prosecutors resigned. Career civil rights attorneys saw what was happening. The government wasn’t interested in justice for Renee Good or Alex Pretti. The government was interested in punishing anyone who made their deaths matter.

Especially if those people were Black.

There’s a wilderness tradition in Black faith that speaks directly to this moment. Not the wilderness of exile. The wilderness of survival. The place where God meets those the empire has marked for death.

Womanist theologian Delores Williams teaches us in Sisters in the Wilderness that Black women have always survived in spaces where the powerful thought would kill them. Hagar in the desert. Enslaved women in fields and auction blocks.

Black mothers watching their children being dragged away. And they survived by witnessing—by refusing to let the dominant narrative erase what happened to them.

Fort is in that tradition. Building BLCK Press in a state where less than three percent of journalists are Black. Covering Derek Chauvin’s sentencing when most of white media looked away. Founding an organization to make sure Black death gets documented by Black hands.

That’s wilderness work. That’s Hagar work. That’s the work of surviving and witnessing at the same time.

And now she’s under arrest for it.

Asian-American queer theologian Patrick Cheng reminds us in Radical Love that queer people know what it means to be erased twice—first by violence, then by the silence about that violence. The state killed Renee Good, a queer woman. Then the state called her a “lesbian bitch” to justify killing her. Then the state investigated her widow.

This is what Cheng calls “sin-talk”—the weaponizing of identity to justify violence. Being queer becomes the reason you deserve to die. Being Black becomes the reason you can’t witness the dying.

The federal agent who said “that’s why that lesbian bitch is dead” wasn’t making a mistake. He was making theology. Bad theology. The theology of domination that says some lives are disposable and some witnesses are criminals.

Katie Geneva Cannon taught us that Black women have always practiced a “survival hermeneutic”—reading scripture and living faith in ways that keep us alive when the world wants us dead. Part of that hermeneutic is telling the truth about what we’ve seen. Bearing witness. Refusing erasure.

That’s what Lemon did. What Fort did. What Crews did.

They saw state violence. They witnessed it. They made it visible. And the state arrested them for surviving with their eyes open.

Womanist theologian Emilie Townes writes in Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil that evil doesn’t just kill bodies. It kills memory. It erases witnesses. It makes sure nobody remembers what happened or who it happened to.

This is why the government smears the dead. Renee Good’s divorce. Her queerness. Her child’s school curriculum. Alex Pretti’s anger. All of it designed to make you forget they were human beings who got executed by federal agents.

And this is why the government arrests Black journalists. Because Black journalists remember. They document. They make archives. They build institutions like BLCK Press specifically to resist erasure.

The church’s calling in this moment is the calling it’s always had: Stand with the wilderness survivors. Stand with the queer witnesses. Stand with the Black journalists who refuse to let empire write the only story.

Because when the state comes for the witnesses, it’s coming for the truth. And when it comes for Black and queer witnesses specifically, it’s coming for the truth that most threatens its power: Nobody is safe. Not white mothers. Not nurses. Not anyone.

And the only people brave enough to say that out loud are the ones who’ve never been safe. The ones who learned in the wilderness that survival means witness. That silence means death. That telling the truth is how you stay human when the world treats you like you’re not.

→ LEARN: Read Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness and Patrick Cheng’s Radical Love. Understand the theological tradition of wilderness survival and queer resistance. Read Georgia Fort’s work at BLCK Press and support her legal defense.

→ ENGAGE: Donate to the legal defense funds for Lemon, Fort,Crews, and Lundy. Contact the National Association of Black Journalists and ask how to support Black press freedom. Support queer-led and Black-led journalism financially.

→ ADVOCATE: Call your representatives and demand:

Contact information: House Judiciary Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee

May you refuse to look away when the state kills.

May you stand with Black witnesses when the state arrests them for seeing.

May you remember that wilderness survival requires witness, that queer existence requires truth-telling, and that journalism is holy work when it makes power visible.

May you know that when they come for the witnesses, they’re coming for all of us.

We defend each other. We tell the truth. We will not be silent while they erase the dead or arrest the living.

Go forth with wilderness courage and beloved community. The struggle is long, but we do not struggle alone.

Amen.

Politically Pastoral is a reader-supported ministry. Support independent journalism and theological truth-telling.