Today the NY Times published an article seeking to paint activist Nekima Levy Armstrong in a favorable light. In case you don't remember that name, Armstrong is the activst/protester who helped plan and carry out the disruption of a Minneapolis church service. Here she is just before the disruption chatting with Don Lemon.
Don Lemon interviews a black woman who led an assault on a church full of mostly white Christians in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Friday.
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) January 18, 2026
This activist, Nekima Levy Armstrong, is vile and Lemon is gross for promoting her instead of alerting police of her attack.
(donlemon on TT) pic.twitter.com/1HhxMPokpF
After the protest, she was arrested and is now facing charges for her actions.
Homeland Security Investigators and FBI agents arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong who played a key role in orchestrating the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota.
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) January 22, 2026
She is being charged with a federal crime under 18 USC 241.
Religious freedom is the bedrock of the United States -… pic.twitter.com/LHh994fXf3
The NY Times article about her is headlined "‘They Couldn’t Break Me’: A Protester, the White House and a Doctored Photo." The doctored photo mentioned is an AI version of the photo above in which Armstrong appears to be crying during her arrest. It was posted by the official White House account after Armstrong's arrest.
https://t.co/ACPZFX2m3x pic.twitter.com/MyvE9HkSRA
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 22, 2026
So that's what the NY Times story is about.
When Nekima Levy Armstrong was transported from the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., to the Sherburne County Jail with three layers of shackles on her body — around her wrists, waist and feet — it was the closest, she said, that she had ever felt to slavery.
Still, she walked calmly, her face resolute, her head held high.
But if you saw a photograph that the White House disseminated of Ms. Levy Armstrong, who was arrested for protesting at a church service, you would not know it.
The White House posted a manipulated photo of her arrest to its official social media account, depicting Ms. Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, as hysterical — tears streaming down her face, her hair disheveled, appearing to cry out in despair. “ARRESTED” was emblazoned across the photo, along with a misleading description of Ms. Levy Armstrong as a “far-left agitator” who was “orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”...
“They couldn’t break me by arresting me,” Ms. Levy Armstrong said, “so they doctored an image to show the world a false iteration of that time to make me look weak.”
About halfway through this article defending Armstrong, the Times does mention the reason for her protest.
Ms. Levy Armstrong, who is an ordained pastor, said that she led the protest on Jan. 18 at Cities Church to stand up for immigrants’ right to worship without fear of arrest. A leader at the church, David Easterwood, is the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office for enforcement and removal operations in St. Paul. Mr. Easterwood, who was not present at the time of the protest, has been named in a lawsuit challenging aggressive enforcement tactics.
Easterwood is one of eight pastors at Cites Church and he wasn't there. So they disrupted a church service to protest someone who wasn't present. As for the claim that Armstrong is a "far-left agitator" the NY Times own description seems to back that up.
She went to Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 as a legal observer after the shooting death of Mike Brown, and went on to help organize Black Lives Matter protests after his death. She also led protests against police killings of Black men by the police, including Philando Castile, Jamar Clark and George Floyd.
She has been arrested before for leading demonstrations, including in 2015 when she and others were accused of shutting down an interstate after the killing of Mr. Clark...
“I’ve been in it — 10 toes down, in the fight for justice,” she said.
There's some speculation the AI image might hurt her prosecution. Her lawyer has mentioned it court filings. If so it was definitely a mistake to post it because otherwise the case against her seems pretty clear cut. Here's FIRE's take on it.
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. Nor does anybody have the right to remain on private property after being asked by its owner or authorized representatives to leave...
The First Amendment restrains government action, not private individuals or institutions. Courts have long distinguished between public spaces, including those that must remain open to expressive activity, and private spaces where those who control them retain the right to exclude unwanted speech. Private property owners are not required to open their spaces to expressive activity simply because the message is political or morally urgent.
A worship service held inside a church is not a public forum. It is a private religious gathering, typically held on private property, convened for a specific and constitutionally protected purpose: religious exercise.
This distinction matters because the First Amendment is often misunderstood as an affirmative license to protest anywhere. It is not. It protects individuals from government suppression of speech; it does not compel private institutions to host expression they do not invite. Treating the First Amendment as a roaming permission slip for disruption misstates both the law and the logic of free expression...
Entering a house of worship or violating trespass or noise ordinances to interrupt services is not merely expressive conduct. It is also disruptive conduct that prevents others from exercising their rights. It interferes with religious exercise and compels an audience to listen and respond against its will.
What Armstrong and her group did was not protected speech, it was disruption of protected speech, the right to assembly and worship. The fact that Armstrong violated other people's rights seems very relevant to an understanding of her protest and the case against her but the NY Times White House correspondent who wrote this story doesn't mention it at all. The goal here was clearly to lionize Nekima Levy Armstrong and paint her as a victim, never sparing a thought for the people she victimized with her illegal protest.
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