Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel expects President-elect Donald Trump’s second term to be rife with protests, and she’s lecturing law enforcement on how to deal with it.

“I anticipate that 2025 will be a year of increased exercise of these rights, and citizen protests are likely to play a large part of our national discourse,” Nessel said in a statement Monday. “That is why I am issuing this legal guidance to support our law enforcement agencies and lawmakers in navigating situations where constitutionally protected speech may conflict with state laws and local ordinances designed to protect the public.”

Nessel issued a letter to the state’s law enforcement agencies, along with a condescending five-minute video explaining why.

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“The government has a compelling interest and law enforcement the clear authority to secure public safety for all our communities. And for that reason, laws and regulations governing the exercise of free speech and the rights inherent to the First Amendment must be well by both our law enforcement and the public,” Nessel said in the video.

In her letter to law enforcement, Nessel notes “protesting and picketing are generally protected speech under the First Amendment,” and warns that ordinances to protect the public and property “should be applied reasonably and judiciously.”

“Laws and ordinances that are prior restraints on speech deserve particularly close scrutiny and must, among other things, contain sufficient standards for a decisionmaker to issue or deny a permit for speech activities,” Nessel wrote.

The four-page letter offers the AG’s perspective on eight different Michigan laws dealing with protests, as well as considerations for different types of locations, including election sites, private residences, schools, medical facilities, funerals, jails, police stations, and the state capitol.

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“First Amendment questions are fact-intensive, and this memo cannot address every scenario that might arise,” Nessel wrote. “The goal of the memo is to offer useful guidance to law enforcement officers in enforcing those laws.”

The letter served as an executive summary of “Protesting and Picketing and First Amendment Considerations” compiled by Solicitor General Ann Sherman and others at the AG’s office at Nessel’s request.

The full 27-page memorandum from Sherman, which includes references to case law, is also posted on the AG’s website.

“My office will continue to manage the prosecutions we’ve already initiated following the clearing of the Diag at the University of Michigan last spring, and other multi-jurisdictional investigation in which we are involved,” Nessel said in the video. “However, moving forward, we expect local prosecutors to properly handle such incidences.

“Our hope is this guidance can provide a road map for local agencies to do just that.”

Nessel’s legal advice comes as she’s prosecuting 11 people for alleged crimes stemming from protests at UM over the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel. The case involves two individuals who were charged with interfering with demonstrators on campus, The Detroit News reports.

The UM charges prompted U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat and the only Palestinian-American in Congress, to insinuate Nessel’s Jewish faith played into the “frivolous” charges she described as a “shameful attack on students’ rights,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib told the Detroit Metro Times. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

“The AG failed to deliver justice for the victims of the Flint Water Crisis but has time to bring frivolous charges that only serve to silence those speaking out against a genocidal apartheid regime?” Tlaib posted to X. “This shameful attack on students’ rights will fail. Follow the Consutution (sic).”

Nessel faced similar criticism from Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

More recently, Nessel threatened Michigan House Republicans and Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, after they walked out of the legislature’s lame duck session last month, alleging the move is “literally criminal.”

Nessel walked back her lame duck comments on Monday, after lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle blasted her “absurd” remarks as “a clear violation of the separation of powers.”

“Madam AG, surely you’re aware of the other relevant parts of our Constitution that require you to respect the separation of powers,” Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, posted to X. “If anything is criminal, it’s the willful neglect of THAT duty by threatening a member for advancing and defending the interests of her district.”

“On the House Republicans and Dem Rep. Whitsett, who did not attend the final House sessions of last term, Nessel said she will NOT charge either with willful neglect of duty, and said her remarks during lame duck were based on frustration,” Gongwer Michigan reporter Ben Solis posted to X.

Incoming Michigan House Speaker Rep. Matt Hall, R-Richmond Twp., responded to Nessel’s threat with a promise that her office will face oversight hearings under a new Republican majority that takes office on Wednesday.

“House Republicans, we’re not going to be bullied by the attorney general. We’re a separate branch of government, and we’re the legislative branch, and under Michigan’s laws and constitution we have the authority to look at her budget. We set her budget,” Hall said.

“And her office is out of control, so there’s a lot of changes we’re going to have to make to her budget to stop her from going after innocent Michiganders time after time after time,” he said. “There will be oversight hearings, trying to get her to justify all of these radical things she’s doing.

“I mean, she’s spending your tax dollars to lose frivolous lawsuits. People should be outraged by that. So we’re not going to stand for it, we’re not going to be bullied by her, and it’s unbelievable she would even make that threat.”