Staff Reports
On Sunday, January 18, 2026, anti-ICE activists reportedly stormed Cities Church in St. Paul during a worship service while former CNN anchor Don Lemon was livestreaming the chaos. Witnesses say the protesters chanted and disrupted the congregation, and video from Lemon’s stream shows the scene spiraling into an unacceptable violation of a house of worship. Conservatives across the country are rightly furious that sacred spaces are being treated like political battlegrounds.
Nicki Minaj, who has been outspoken in recent months on conservative causes, exploded on X the next day and demanded Lemon be arrested, accusing him of participating in and enabling the disruption; she also used a homophobic slur in her tirade that shocked many. Whether you agree with Minaj’s brutish tone or not, her outcry reflects a broader national disgust that secular activists and media figures would trample on religious services. The raw emotion from Americans who saw their churches disrespected is understandable and should not be dismissed as mere celebrity drama.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has reportedly opened a review under federal protections for houses of worship, and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon publicly warned that the FACE Act could apply to this kind of disruption. Good — if places of worship are to remain safe, the law must be enforced without fear or favor, and that includes holding journalists and influencers to account if they helped foment or amplify the intrusion. This is about protecting religious liberty, not policing political speech.
Let’s be clear: despite breathless claims on social platforms that Elon Musk somehow “teamed up” with Minaj to torch Lemon, there’s no credible reporting showing Musk weighed in on this specific episode. Major outlets covering the dispute do not list Musk as a participant, which suggests some on the left and right are inflating connections to gin up clicks. Conservatives should resist conspiratorial noise and insist on facts even while we demand justice.
Don Lemon insists he was reporting and not part of the protest, but footage and eyewitness accounts raise serious questions about whether his presence helped legitimize militants barging into a church. Independent journalism does not include escorting mobs into sanctuaries or cheering on the interruption of worship — if Lemon crossed that line, he must answer for it in court, not just on cable. The double standard of protecting some forms of “protest” while condemning others depending on political alignment must end.
Conservative voices are right to demand that law enforcement take this seriously and pursue charges where federal statutes were violated; calls for the DOJ and FBI to investigate aren’t mob rule, they’re the rule of law. If politicians, activists, or media personalities believe they are above statutes that protect churches and worshippers, we will see the breakdown of civil liberties everyone claims to cherish. Americans of faith deserve better than to be shouted down in their own sanctuaries while the media looks the other way.
This episode is a wake-up call for every patriot who values religious freedom and common-sense law enforcement. We should demand transparent investigations, equal application of the law, and a return to basic decency: no more political mobs in churches, no more media-enabled disruptions, and no sacred cow for left-wing agitators. The country needs accountability now — not excuses, not cancel culture, and certainly not the rewriting of who gets to worship in peace.
