Staff Reports
Americans woke up this week to video of an unruly crowd barging into Cities Church in St. Paul and shutting down a Sunday service — an assault on a house of worship that should make every freedom-loving citizen furious. Eyewitness footage and reporting show anti-ICE agitators interrupting the congregation’s service, chanting and surrounding the pulpit while many worshippers fled in shock. This wasn’t a spontaneous protest on the sidewalk; it was a targeted political raid on people who came to worship, and it happened in broad daylight in the heart of Minnesota.
The rationale offered by the mob was that one of the church’s pastors was affiliated with ICE — a charge that, whether perfectly accurate or not, does not justify flipping a sanctuary into a political battlefield. Multiple outlets report that a David Easterwood is both listed among local ICE leadership and appears in church leadership rolls, though public records and reporting have not yet ironed out whether the identities are identical. Regardless of paperwork, the lesson is plain: left-wing activists decided to weaponize religious services to score political points, showing contempt for the very idea of sacred space.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon did not simply cover the chaos from afar — he livestreamed from the scene and narrated the disruption in ways that amounted to cheerleading for the interrupters. Video shows Lemon describing the action as “the beginning of what’s going to happen here” while defending the protesters’ tactic as protected dissent, even as parishioners begged for peace. When a former mainstream news figure uses his platform to normalize hijacking worship services, it reveals a media class that increasingly views institutions like churches as legitimate targets.
This is not merely a matter of hurt feelings; federal law exists to protect religious worship from precisely this kind of intimidation, and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division has opened an inquiry into potential violations of the FACE Act. Harmeet Dhillon and other officials have signaled the DOJ is considering whether the disruption crossed into criminal conduct by interfering with Americans’ right to practice their faith free from threats and obstruction. If the rule of law means anything, it must mean that churches are off-limits to political mobs and that violations must be prosecuted to the fullest extent.
Even ICE itself publicly warned that its officers and supporters were being hunted from hotels to churches, and the agency explicitly called out Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for failing to keep order. That public rebuke underscores a pattern: when elected officials fail to uphold law and order, the vacuum is filled by radical activists who escalate rather than debate. Minnesota’s officials owe their constituents an explanation and a commitment to secure houses of worship immediately.
Conservatives should be blunt: those who stormed that church deserve to be charged, and anyone who instigated or glorified the action — including media personalities who use their megaphones to inflame crowds — must face accountability. This is not a partisan plea for censorship; it is a plea for consistency in the application of the law and for protection of ordinary Americans who want to worship in peace. If prosecutors want to prove they’re even-handed, they should move quickly and transparently in this case.
It’s time for citizens to stand up for the rule of law and for the sanctity of worship. Call your representatives, demand answers from local law enforcement, and refuse to let the media and radical organizers normalize religious intimidation. Protecting churches is protecting our country’s moral backbone, and we will not tolerate mobs turning faith into a battleground.
