RonNell Andersen Jones

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, these two journalists, one a local Minneapolis journalist and the other former CNN journalist, Don Lemon.

accompanied protesters to the church in Minneapolis.

The protesters were going to the church to protest a pastor there who is an ICE official.

They documented and interviewed people who were there, both parishioners and protesters, and the pastor, although it wasn't the pastor who was the subject of the protest, and then later were charged.

for violating two federal laws.

One, a law that bans disruptions at houses of worship, and the other, a law that makes it a felony, punishable up to 10 years, to disrupt the exercise of constitutional rights of other people.

Here, the exercise of the freedom of religion.

And it was an extraordinary move, never in the history of the country that I

can find have journalists been charged under either of those statutes.

And at an early stage, the government sought to charge them, and a magistrate judge and an appellate judge declined to issue the arrest warrants, saying that these acts of journalism

weren't criminal behaviors or conspiracy to commit criminal behaviors.

But this represents an aggressive move on the part of the administration to seek the grand jury indictment against them and to move forward with a criminal action against them on these charges.

This is a grave concern for press freedom advocates, both domestically and internationally, who are watching some of these developments.

The individual arrests themselves are concerning, but the wider messaging is what's most concerning.

There is clear First Amendment doctrine that refers to the chilling effect.

It's the notion that these sorts of actions by the government that infringe on freedom of speech or freedom of the press are

aren't just having an impact on the individual journalists here who are the targets of the government.

They're having and are designed to have a wider impact on everyone else who is potentially practicing journalism and the sources who are potentially working with those who are practicing journalism.

The idea is that it has this ripple effect and that those who think that they couldn't