Former CNN journalist Don Lemon arrested in connection with Minnesota protest
Don Lemon attends the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ 2025 Ripple of Hope Gala at New York Hilton on December 09, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for RFK Ripple Of Hope)
(NEW YORK) — Former CNN journalist Don Lemon was arrested early Friday morning in connection with an incident in which anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service at a Minnesota church, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The incident unfolded on Jan. 18, when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul. The protesters said one of the pastors is the acting field director of the St. Paul ICE field office.
Bondi said on social media that Lemon and three others were arrested early Friday “at my direction” “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church.”
At least three additional people were previously arrested in connection with the protest.
Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said last week that a magistrate judge rejected charges against Lemon. A source told ABC News that Bondi last week was “enraged” at the magistrate judge’s decision to not charge the journalist.
Lowell said on Friday that Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents while he was covering the Grammy Awards.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this case,” Lowell said, calling the arrest an “attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”
Lowell called Lemon’s arrest an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment” and said the journalist “will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) Officials decided to gradually increase air travel reductions to 10% after the safety team determined it would be the safest approach, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters at Reagan National Airport.
Major airlines say they are planning to cancel hundreds of flights on Friday — out of thousands of daily flights — as the Federal Aviation Administration is set to begin limiting flight capacity at 40 major U.S. airports amid the government shutdown.
If the government shutdown continues, more air travel reductions could be on the way, Duffy said.
“I want it to be fixed, but also I have to continue to look at data and if this continues, and I have more [air traffic] controllers who decide they can’t come to work and control the airspace, but instead have to take a second job, with that you might see 10% would have been a good number, because we might go to 15% or 20%,” Duffy said.
This could likely cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, Duffy said.
The initial plan called for a 10% reduction starting Friday, but officials chose to gradually increase the reductions for safety, Duffy said.
Loss of separation — the minimum distance kept between aircrafts to keep them safe — in the airspace and complaints from pilots about stress from air traffic controllers are among the data points that led to the decision to reduce air travel, Duffy said.
“We’ve seen more breaches in regard to that loss of separation, we see more incursions on tarmac throughout the country, and we have more complaints from pilots about stress from air traffic controllers, and more complaints about the lack of responsiveness from controllers,” Duffy said.
“That data is going in the wrong direction, not in the right direction, which made us make the decision we have to actually take additional measures to reduce the pressure in our system,” Duffy said.
As of 2:30 a.m. ET on Friday morning, at least 814 flights within, into or out of the United States have been cancelled so far, per FlightAware
American Airlines said Thursday it will cancel about 220 of its roughly 6,000 departures starting Friday and lasting through this weekend.
United Airlines said in a statement it plans to cancel less than 200 of its more than 5,000 flights each day through the weekend. The airline has listed the flight cancellations on a special website along with other information for travelers.
A company spokesperson told ABC News that about half of customers who had their flights canceled were able to be rebooked within 4 hours of their original departure time.
Delta Airlines said it planned to cancel about 170 daily flights.
American, United and Delta — the three largest airlines in the U.S. — all have said they believe they will be able to accommodate most of the impacted passengers on other flights.
The cancellations are the latest — and perhaps biggest — disruption to air travel since the government shutdown began more than a month ago.
The FAA decided not to cut any international flights as it would be a violation of international agreements with the countries, according to Duffy.
“We have international agreements that we abide by, and because of those international agreements, I’m not going to impact those international flights. And because if I do, what will happen is we have other countries that are waiting to have a breach of those contracts from the US so they can cut down American flights, and then that would have a very long lasting impact on our ability to to to send travelers from the U.S. to those partners that have the agreements,” Duffy said.
Duffy said he has spoken to President Donald Trump about the flight reduction decision and that the White House is “fully read in” on it.
“The White House also looks to the safety team to help us make the right decisions to do the best we can to keep people safe. But there’s an easy answer. There’s an easy answer, open up the government, stop this,” Duffy said.
What travelers are saying Travelers began to be notified of the canceled flights on Thursday.
Caitlin Ladner, in Wisconsin, said she had planned to fly to Raleigh, North Carolina, on a Friday for a trip to surprise her parents with her sister but got a notice about her canceled flight on the United app.
“We’ve been planning it for a while …. It’s pretty upsetting,” she told ABC News.
Despite an offer to reschedule her flight, she said she decided to cancel it altogether.
“I don’t know when all this is going to end,” she said.
Meanwhile, other travelers across the country on Thursday were bracing for delays — and trying to make it home before the cancellations started.
At Reagan National Airport, just outside Washington, D.C., Frederick Ross, from Fort Myers, Florida, told ABC News the current travel headaches have him rethinking his upcoming holiday travel plans.
“It’s a big factor to have to possibly deal with delays and cancellations, and talking about traveling with the whole family, it’s easier to just take a road trip,” he said.
FAA order limits flights The FAA said earlier this week it was reducing flight capacity at 40 major airports across the country to alleviate staffing pressures. The reductions this weekend are starting out at 4% but will eventually climb to 10%, federal officials said.
Under an emergency order issued by the FAA on Thursday, airlines are required to reduce operations at the 40 “high-impact airports” by 6% by Nov. 11 and by 10% by Nov. 14. Any airline that does not comply will be fined $75,000 per flight over the limit, according to the FAA order.
That announcement came after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the FAA would be forced to shut down the airspace in some areas if the shutdown continues into next week, warning of “mass chaos.”
Staffing shortages among air traffic controllers has been an ongoing concern and there have been scattered flight delays and cancellations over the past several weeks, as the shutdown has stretched on.
Last weekend, a surge in callouts among air traffic controllers led to strained staffing at multiple airports across the U.S. — including in the New York City area where 80% of controllers were absent at one point, the FAA reported.
Air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay for the duration of the shutdown, are credited with helping end the most recent shutdown in 2019, when a series of absences delayed flights and heightened pressure on members of Congress.
The precise impact the flight cancellations will have on overall air travel is unclear.
“We’re not in the peak of summer, we’re not over a holiday period. So we feel confident that we have enough seats in these markets to accommodate all travelers,” United’s chief customer officer, David Kinzelman, told ABC News.
“There will not be chaos over the weekend,” he said, likening the impact of the reductions to a “medium-sized storm.”
He added, “We are going to cancel flights that we think have the least amount of disruption for customers. If you’re in a market with only two small regional flights and you cancel one or both of them, that’s a huge impact to that market. We want to avoid that. And so what we’re doing is really spreading it around the system.”
ABC News’ Ayesha Ali, Sam Sweeney and Rachel Scott contributed to this report.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, on Friday, April 25, 2025. Jamie Kelter Davis/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(MILWAUKEE) — Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted last month of obstructing federal immigration agents at her courthouse, has resigned, according to a letter to Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.
In the letter, Dugan vowed to keep fighting her case but added that Wisconsin citizens “deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 13 rather than have the fate of that Court rest in a partisan fight in the state legislature.”
“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan wrote in the letter, dated Saturday.
Dugan was accused of obstructing official Department of Homeland Security removal proceedings and knowingly concealing an undocumented man from immigration authorities at a courthouse in April. Following a weeklong trial in December, a jury found Dugan guilty of obstructing federal agents and not guilty of concealing an undocumented immigrant from arrest during the courthouse incident.
A sentencing date has not been set. She faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Dugan defended her record as a judge in the letter, writing, “Behind the bench I have presided over thousands and thousands of cases — with a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberatively, and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”
“Beyond the bench I have attended hundreds and hundreds of community events, listening to Milwaukee County residents voice their justice system experiences and concerns — as jurors, witnesses, litigants, victims, and justice-impacted citizens who care about our courts,” she continued.
She said her “faith in God and in our legal system leads me to trust that in the long run justice will be served for our independent judiciary and for me.”
According to federal prosecutors, Dugan encountered federal agents who were at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court on April 18, 2025, to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was appearing in her courtroom on a battery charge.
Prosecutors say that after speaking to the agents, Dugan directed them to the chief judge’s office down the hall and then sent Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a non-public door in an attempt to help him evade arrest on immigration violations. Flores-Ruiz was ultimately captured outside the court building after a brief foot chase and later deported.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court had suspended Dugan in the wake of her arrest, stating in an order that it found it was “in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties.”
Stock image of police lights. Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
(AUSTIN, Texas) — The mysterious death of Texas A&M student Brianna Aguilera has been ruled a suicide, police said, noting a suicide note found on her phone and reported previous comments about self-harm.
The investigation began at 12:46 a.m. Saturday when officers responded to an Austin apartment complex and found Aguilera on the ground with trauma from an apparent fall from a high floor, Austin Police Detective Robert Marshall said.
Cameras showed Aguilera arriving at the apartment complex just after 11 p.m. Friday and going to an apartment on the 17th floor, Marshall said at a news conference on Thursday. The video showed “a large group of friends left that same apartment at 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 29, leaving just Brianna and three other girls in the apartment,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, Aguilera was at a tailgate for the Texas A&M vs. University of Texas football game, and she “became intoxicated to a point where she was asked to leave,” Marshall said.
Aguilera told her friends that she lost her phone, and when they arrived at the apartment Friday night, she borrowed a phone to call her boyfriend, he said.
Witnesses heard her argue on the phone with her boyfriend, Marshall said. That phone call took place from 12:43 a.m. to 12:44 am — two minutes before a 911 call, he said.
When police later found Aguilera’s lost phone, they recovered a “deleted digital suicide note dated Tuesday, Nov. 25 of this year, which was written to specific people in her life,” Marshall said.
“Brianna had made suicidal comments previously to friends, back in October of this year,” he said. “This continued through the evening of her death, with some self-harming actions early in the evening and a text message to another friend indicating the thought of suicide.”
No evidence in the investigation ever pointed to a crime, Marshall stressed, adding, “Every friend and witness during this investigation has been nothing but forthcoming and open.”
Aguilera’s family told local media earlier this week the beloved college student was not suicidal and was planning to pursue a career in law.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said at the news conference, “I understand how grief and the need for answers can raise intense emotions and many questions. But sometimes the truth doesn’t provide the answers we are hoping for, and that is this case.”
Davis said her “heart aches” for Aguilera’s parents.
“I have three daughters and a son, and I cannot begin to imagine the pain,” Davis said.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide — free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call or text the national lifeline at 988.
