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Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles late this week while he was in town covering the Grammy Awards, a startling turn for a man who used to lecture America nightly about morals and media. Federal authorities say the arrest is tied to a January 18 protest that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, and they executed the warrant while Lemon was away from the scene.
The Department of Justice is not playing politics on this one; prosecutors say Lemon is accused of violating federal statutes aimed at protecting the right of worshippers from being disrupted, including charges under the FACE Act and federal civil rights statutes. If the facts show a journalist barged into a sanctuary and helped foment a coordinated disruption, that’s not reporting — it’s participating in an attack on religious freedom.
Left-wing outlets immediately began howling about an assault on the First Amendment, conveniently forgetting that constitutional rights have limits when they collide with the rights of others to worship in peace. Those meltdowns were premature: a magistrate judge earlier declined to sign off on prosecutors’ initial bid to charge others in the case, which only proves this is being handled through the courts and not by cable-show virtue signaling.
Washington’s usual suspects piled on with theatrical outrage, claiming government overreach while refusing to reckon with footage and eyewitness accounts that prompted the probe in the first place. Conservatives should not surrender the narrative to the hysterics; defending the right to worship without disruption is not a partisan act, and neither is holding those who cross the line accountable.
Attorney General Pam Bondi made clear the Justice Department would enforce protections for houses of worship, and for once we saw a federal government acting to defend basic civil liberties rather than weaponizing them. For hardworking Americans who want peace in their churches and safety in their communities, that is reassuring — and it should be applauded, not turned into a punchline.
This episode exposes the rotten double standard of modern media: when lefty celebrities and pundits cheer disruption it’s “protest,” but when consequences follow it magically becomes a crackdown on the press. Conservatives should use this moment to demand that journalism means reporting the news, not starring in the chaos, and to press for equal treatment under the law for people of all political stripes.
