The Trump administration’s meme-centric posting streak continues.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said federal agents arrested three people allegedly involved in protests inside a Minnesota church on Sunday.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shared a photo of one of the people arrested, activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, on social media, and said she was charged with conspiracy against First Amendment rights.
The White House shared the same image, but it appeared to be a digitally altered image of Armstrong. While Noem’s post shows Armstrong with a straight facial expression, the White House’s version shows Armstrong with tears running down her face.
The White House is defending its move as being just a “meme.”
“YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue,” White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr wrote on X. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The White House did not respond to the Daily Beast’s further inquiry on the alteration of the photo.
The Twin Cities have exploded with protests against ICE following ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, fatally shooting Minnesota mother, Renee Good, 37, earlier this month.
Armstrong and two other defendants, William Kelly and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, were arrested on Thursday in connection with a protest earlier this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, during which several protestors disrupted a Cities Church service. The protest was against one of the church’s pastors who reportedly works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A federal magistrate judge in Minnesota rejected a criminal complaint against former CNN anchor Don Lemon because he was covering the protest for his independent news channel and was reporting on the incident, not participating.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon specifically targeted Lemon for arrest online and in media appearances, and Trump posted a factually incorrect Truth Social post about Lemon’s presence at the incident.
Bondi, who has fired or demoted dozens of DOJ lawyers involved with prosecuting violent Jan. 6 rioters, said the Trump DOJ will “NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.”
The attorney general’s announcement came just before Vice President JD Vance arrived in Minneapolis, where he admitted that federal immigration agents had not acted perfectly. He said that “occasionally videos out there that suggest that these guys, or at least some of the people who work for them, are not doing everything right.”
“My thought on that is, well, of course there have been mistakes made, because you’re always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement,” Vance said earlier that day, adding “99% of our police officers, probably more than that, are doing everything right.”
