The Brief | Feds Arrest Church Invaders as Democrats Splinter Over ICE
Plus: Murder rates hit a 125-year low, Barron Trump saves a woman's life from across the Atlantic, and the Clintons face contempt charges
Happy FRIDAY! So, who’s ready for the storm? Are you looking at lots of snow or maybe lots of ice? For those facing ice, I am right there with you—and with ice, we likely also lose power. Get that wood stacked and generators ready because this one looks like it’s going to be a doozy for many Americans. I have a book and a puzzle on standby.
I also want to take a moment and thank you all! One of my goals this year is to give my Substack more attention, and you guys seem to love it. I appreciate all the encouraging responses to The Brief, Sunday Desk, and most recently, Between the Lines—which was really fun.
Between The Lines | Protesters Disrupted a Worship Service. Legacy Media Shrugged
Welcome to the first edition of “How to Read Between the Lines.”
Balancing all these plates takes time and discipline, so I appreciate the encouragement and the financial support. It’s humbling.
Ok, enough sap. Let’s get into it.
I slow down viral news, expose what’s framed or buried, and equip readers with the facts and language to push back before the narrative sticks.
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The Feds Come for the Church Protesters
You guys! Pam Bondi finally did a thing!
The three activists who disrupted a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul to protest one of its pastors’ ties to ICE are now in federal custody.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday that FBI and Homeland Security agents arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, and William Kelly, charging them under the FACE Act for conspiracy to deprive worshippers of their First Amendment rights. Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and former Minnesota NAACP president, organized the invasion. Allen, who leads Black Lives Matter Twin Cities and sits on the St. Paul School Board, helped coordinate. Kelly, who days earlier had publicly dared the DOJ to arrest him, got his wish.
However, a federal magistrate judge refused the Justice Department’s request for an arrest warrant against former CNN host Don Lemon, who attended and filmed the disruption while claiming to be an “independent journalist.” The judge’s wife works as an assistant attorney general in Keith Ellison’s office. Make of that what you will.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—who’s made no public comments condemning the church invasion—has demanded the release of the arrested protesters. The man has priorities.
Remember when we were told the FACE Act was exclusively for protecting abortion clinics? Pro-life activists who went to prison under it certainly do. I guess Armstrog, who is a civil right attorney forgot that the FACE act also applies to all places of worship. “Well, well, well, how the turntables.”
The “5-Year-Old Detained” Story Is Missing Some Key Details
If you’ve been anywhere near the news in the last 24 hours, you’ve seen the headlines: “ICE Detains 5-Year-Old Boy.” The story has been all over every legacy outlet, complete with a heartbreaking photo of little Liam Conejo Ramos standing next to federal agents in his Spider-Man backpack. School officials accused ICE of using the preschooler “as bait.” Governor Walz called it “masked agents snatching preschoolers off the street.”
Devastating stuff. Also, not quite what happened.
Here’s what the Department of Homeland Security actually says occurred: ICE agents approached the vehicle to arrest the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias. The father “fled on foot, abandoning his child.” One officer stayed with Liam for his safety while others apprehended the dad.
Then NBC reports, according to DHS, officers made “multiple attempts” to get Liam’s mother—who was inside the house—to take custody of her son. They “even assured her that they would NOT take her into custody.” She refused. The school board chair, who says she witnessed the arrest, although previous reports claim she arrived after the arrest, claims Liam was being used as bait and she and others offered to take the boy but agents refused, likely because federal agents cannot hand over a child to someone who is not a parent. What’s not disputed: the father requested that Liam remain with him, and father and son are now together at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
So even taking the most charitable version of events for the activists, the story isn’t “ICE detained a 5-year-old.” The story is: “Father fled from ICE and abandoned his child in freezing temperatures. Father then asked to keep his son with him rather than be separated. ICE kept them together.”
There’s more context the headlines omit. The family entered the United States in 2024 using the CBP One app, the Biden-era program that expanded asylum eligibility and created a digital appointment system for migrants to enter legally. DHS confirmed the father “was released into the US under the Biden administration.” The family has a pending asylum case but no deportation order.
The Trump administration ended the CBP One program shortly after taking office, arguing it had become a loophole for mass entry rather than a tool for genuine asylum seekers. Since then, migrants who entered through the program have been able to voluntarily return to their home countries via the same app, at government expense.
None of this context made it into the wall-to-wall coverage framing ICE as child-snatchers. The school superintendent’s press conference allegation that agents used Liam “as bait” became the lead. DHS’s detailed rebuttal—with the timeline, the mother’s refusal, and the father’s request—got buried paragraphs deep or omitted entirely.
Vance Arrives in Minneapolis
Vice President JD Vance touched down in Minnesota on Thursday—ground zero for this media circus, and addressed the Liam story directly: “What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death?”
Vance held a closed-door roundtable with law enforcement, ICE officials, and community leaders before a press conference where he laid into Minnesota’s sanctuary city policies. His argument: if local officials would cooperate with federal authorities, there’d be less “chaos” in the streets.
“What is wrong with Minneapolis authorities?” Vance asked. “They so hate the idea of enforcing immigration laws that they’re telling their people not to get sex offenders out of their community.”
He also noted that “viral stories of the past couple weeks” involving ICE agents’ conduct have “turned out to be, at best, partially true.” The Liam story, playing out in real-time, proved his point.
On the Renee Good shooting from two weeks ago, Vance has walked a careful line, acknowledging the tragedy while pointing to what he sees as the root cause. Good, a mother of three, had been trained as an ICE “watcher” by local activist networks and was monitoring federal enforcement operations when the fatal confrontation occurred. Vance has expressed sympathy for her death but argued that she’d been fed a dangerous narrative by Minnesota politicians and activists, one that encouraged ordinary citizens to physically interfere with federal law enforcement. In his view, the people who trained her and promoted that activism bear responsibility for putting her in harm’s way.
Minnesota Democrats see it differently. State party chair Richard Carlbom accused Vance of doing “Trump’s dirty work: defending disgusting ICE actions.”
The White House isn’t backing down. Hundreds of military police troops remain on alert for deployment after Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if local leaders don’t stop what he called “professional agitators.”
The question nobody in Minnesota leadership seems willing to answer: Who’s telling school officials to hold press conferences with incomplete information? And why does every “ICE brutality” story seem to fall apart within 48 hours of going viral?
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Democrats Split on DHS Funding—Seven Break Ranks
The House passed a Department of Homeland Security spending bill Thursday by a vote of 220-207, but the real story is who crossed the aisle: seven Democrats voted with Republicans despite Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demanding they oppose it.
The rebels: Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, and Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi of New York. Notice a pattern? Vulnerable seats. Swing districts. People who have to explain their votes to actual constituents instead of BlueSky.
Jeffries accused ICE of operating “in a lawless fashion” and claimed the agency is “using taxpayer dollars to inflict brutality on the American people.” The top House appropriator, Rosa DeLauro, who negotiated the deal—also voted no on the DHS portion despite her role in crafting it.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal lamented that her party had tried to “out-Republican Republicans” on immigration instead of defending pro-immigrant stances. “It’s never worked,” she said. “You’re going to lose your base and you’re not going to get any of the Republicans to come over to you.”
Some progressives wanted Democrats to fight for ICE funding guardrails as hard as they fought for ACA extensions during last fall’s 43-day shutdown. Instead, they got $20 million for ICE body cameras and called it a win.
The DHS bill now heads to the Senate, where Sen. Chris Murphy has already said he’ll vote no because it lacks “meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE.” But the Republican don’t need Murphy, so cry more my dude.The government funding deadline is January 30.
Murder Rates Just Hit a 125-Year Low
Here’s a story you probably won’t see leading legacy media: murders in America plummeted more than 20% in 2025, the largest single-year drop on record.
A new Council on Criminal Justice study analyzing data from 40 major U.S. cities found 922 fewer murders last year compared to 2024. Homicides dropped 21%. Carjackings plunged 43%. Robberies fell 23%. Nonfatal shootings decreased 13%.
If national data follows this trend, the 2025 homicide rate would be approximately 4.0 per 100,000 residents, potentially the lowest since 1900.
Researchers cautioned against identifying any single cause, but pointed to factors including stabilization of routines post-pandemic, improved policing strategies, and community intervention programs. But no one want’s to point out a glaring change, immigration enforcement. Cities that saw the biggest drops include Richmond, Virginia (down 59%), Los Angeles (down 39%), and New York City (down 10%).
Drug offenses were the only category that rose, up 22%.
Here’s what’s notable about the media coverage: this story got buried on the same day every outlet ran wall-to-wall on the Minneapolis ICE confrontation. Violent crime plummeting to century-low levels during the Trump administration doesn’t fit a particular narrative, especially will immigration is involved, so it gets a paragraph in the B-section.
Barron Trump: International Hero
In news that sounds made up but absolutely isn’t: 19-year-old Barron Trump is credited with saving a woman’s life in London by calling UK police while her ex-boyfriend beat her during a FaceTime call.
According to court testimony, Barron was FaceTiming with the woman, a friend he met online, on January 18 when her ex, Matvei Rumiantsev, became jealous and violent. Barron heard her being attacked, immediately called British emergency services from the U.S., provided her address, and stayed on the line until officers arrived.
Bodycam footage played in court captured officers confirming the emergency caller was “likely to be Donald Trump’s son.” When police called Barron back, he explained he’d witnessed his friend “getting really badly beat up” and felt calling authorities “was the best thing I could do.”
The victim called his intervention “a sign from God.”
Say what you want about the Trumps—and people certainly do—but this is a 19-year-old college student who, when confronted with a crisis 3,500 miles away, stayed calm and got help. Rumiantsev now faces assault charges.
Quick Rundown
Democrats vote to hold Clintons in contempt. In a delicious twist, nine House Democrats joined Republicans to recommend contempt charges against Bill Clinton for defying a subpoena in the Epstein investigation. Three Democrats also voted to hold Hillary in contempt. Democrats set the precedent when Bannon and Navarro went to prison. Live by the contempt charge.
Jack Smith gets grilled on Capitol Hill. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith faced intense questioning from the House Judiciary Committee about his Trump investigations. Trump responded by calling Smith “deranged” and saying he “should be prosecuted.” Smith said the DOJ would pursue charges against him if warranted.
TikTok deal finalized. The U.S. and China signed off on a deal spinning off TikTok's American operations to a group of investors led by Oracle and Silver Lake. ByteDance keeps a 19.9% stake—just under the 20% cap required by law. Trump thanked President Xi for "working with us" on Truth Social. A year of executive order extensions, and the app lives on.
Massive winter storm approaching. More than 235 million Americans across 40+ states are in the path of what forecasters call a potentially historic winter storm expected to deliver heavy snow and dangerous ice from Texas to Maine starting Friday. Arctic temperatures following the system could keep roads frozen for days.
Trump announces Greenland “framework deal.” At Davos, the president said he and NATO’s Mark Rutte reached a deal framework on Greenland and the Arctic, dropping tariff threats against European allies. Denmark maintains Greenland isn’t for sale, but negotiations on expanded U.S. security access continue.
Aimee Bock points fingers. The ringleader of Minnesota’s $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud claims Gov. Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison knew about the scheme but failed to act. Bock says she warned state officials in 2020 and 2021 via emails. She faces up to 33 years in prison.
When the news starts to feel chaotic or off, I break it down in my Between the Lines series.
Paid subscribers get full annotated breakdowns showing what’s framed, buried, or omitted — so you know what’s actually going on and don’t feel crazy.
Let’s Talk
What’s your read on the Minneapolis situation? Is the federal crackdown justified law enforcement, overreach, or somewhere in between? And does the murder rate drop change how you view the “crime is out of control” narrative?
Leave it in the comments—I read everything.
Until Monday,
