FIREwire — January 23, 2026

Anti-ICE protests disrupt Minnesota church, Miami Beach police visit veteran over Facebook post, and Trump threatens to block postseason football games

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“I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.”

— U.S. Under Secretary Sarah Rogers arguing UK arrests of Palestine Action protesters merely for speech are not a matter of public order but of censorship.

Protesters disrupt Minnesota church service

Anti-ICE protesters interrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, targeting pastor David Easterwood, who is reportedly also an ICE official.

The protest organizers, who have since been arrested, defended the disruption as an exercise of First Amendment rights while journalist Don Lemon said, “This is what the First Amendment is about.”

But as FIRE board member Samuel J. Abrams writes, “There is no First Amendment right to enter a house of worship and engage in conduct that effectively shuts down a religious service, even as part of a protest.”

Miami Beach police visit woman over Facebook post

Two Miami Beach police officers visited U.S. Army veteran Raquel Pacheco, three-time candidate for local office, after she posted on Facebook that Mayor Steven Meiner was targeting Palestinians and failing to defend the LGBT community.

In an essay on the topic, Angel Eduardo and Aaron Terr recently explained, “If sharp but non-threatening criticism and political commentary can be treated as unlawful incitement, freedom of speech ceases to exist in any meaningful sense.”

Below the fold

• President Trump plans to sign an executive order blocking any postseason football games from overlapping with the annual Army-Navy Game.

• Pete Buttigieg says corporations are not people and money is not speech — for more, see FIRE’s explainer on Citizens United.

• Trump plans to sue the New York Times/Siena National poll, echoing his frivolous lawsuit last year against FIRE client Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.

By the numbers

For the past two years, FIRE’s National Speech Index has tracked Americans’ views on free expression — whether the country is moving in the right or wrong direction, how secure people believe free speech to be, and how often they self-censor. Americans have generally said the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to free speech. But as Nate Honeycutt explains in this week’s data dive, those judgments are highly sensitive to political loyalties.