{"id":156944,"date":"2026-02-16T09:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/156944\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T09:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:23:07","slug":"assistant-ag-dhillon-talks-don-lemon-arrest-affirmative-action-settlements-during-fsu-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/156944\/","title":{"rendered":"Assistant AG Dhillon talks Don Lemon arrest, affirmative action settlements during FSU appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon was in Tallahassee Thursday to speak at an event hosted by Florida State University\u2019s Institute of Governance and Civics<br \/>During the event, Harmeet fielded questions about the Trump Administration\u2019s recent actions.<\/p>\n<p>FSU students and faculty questioned Dhillon about her office\u2019s use of federal laws, including the FACE Act<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/01\/30\/nx-s1-5693756\/don-lemon-arrest-cnn-minneapolis\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">, to arrest journalist Don Lemon<\/a> in connection with an immigration enforcement protest at a church in Minneapolis. The FACE act makes it a crime to obstruct access to reproductive health care facilities and houses of worship.<\/p>\n<p>Dhillon said Lemon was an organizer of the protest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s clear from the videos that were streamed by the participants before the event that it was planned, and it was planned for days in advance. We know that from some of the GoFundMe that is being done by some of the people who&#8217;ve been arrested, saying, \u2018Oh yeah, Don Lemon contacted me days in advance.\u2019 And we, you know, traveled there, across state lines to do this event,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Lemon has maintained he was working as a journalist covering the event and was not a part of the demonstration.<\/p>\n<p>Dhillon also spoke about the Department of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/01\/29\/nx-s1-5559293\/trump-settlements-colleges-universities\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Justice\u2019s efforts to scrutinize admissions processes<\/a> at universities after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively ended affirmative action.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe pump billions of dollars into some of these Ivy League institutions, and are they following the law? I would argue some of them are not. And so far, I&#8217;ve negotiated half a billion dollars in settlements with some of the top institutions including Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern and some others,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>During her talk, Dhillon also commended Florida State University leadership for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wusf.org\/politics-issues\/2025-08-01\/fsu-bars-student-from-campus-while-investigating-claim-of-antisemitic-comments-in-video\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">suspending a student last year<\/a> after a video went viral that showed the student confronting another student who was wearing an Israeli Defense Force shirt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon was in Tallahassee Thursday to speak at an event&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-156944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}