By Daniel Schmid, Op-ed contributor Thursday, January 22, 2026Don Lemon interviews Pastor Jonathan Parnell of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18, 2026, after protesters stormed a Sunday church service. | Screenshot/X/CollinRugg
Nathaniel Hawthorne famously opined that “no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” There is, no doubt, truth in that statement as it pertains to man.
Fortunately, however, the same cannot be said of federal statutes.
The federal FACE Act, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, does indeed have two “faces.”
One face prohibits the use of force or threat of force to obstruct, injure, interfere, intimidate, or attempt to do any of those things to women seeking access to clinics. 18 U.S.C. §248(a)(1).
The second face prohibits the use of force or threat of force to obstruct, injure, interfere, or intimidate “any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of worship.” 18 U.S.C. §248(a)(2).
It is the latter that pertains to the mulishly malevolent Marxist mob who stormed the hallowed ground of a church sanctuary in St. Paul on Sunday to disrupt a religious worship service.
Violations of the statute result in imprisonment for six months, a fine of $10,000, or both. The United States Department of Justice needs to shackle every one of the so-called “protesters” who stormed the holy sanctuary of religious congregants, prosecute them, and seek the harshest penalties allowed by law.
Recall, during the Biden administration, the Department of Justice arrested, tried, and imprisoned an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor for alleged violations of the FACE Act. In fact, the Biden administration charged her twice — once in Michigan and once in Tennessee for her alleged crime of obstructing entrance to an abortion clinic.
Did she join with other individuals to premeditate a plan to storm the doors of the abortion clinic and prevent women from obtaining anything? No. Did she accost the leader of the abortion clinic? No. Did she harass and harangue little children present at the facility? No. What this 89-year-old Holocaust survivor did was sing hymns, pray, and read Scripture in a public space outside of a clinic. Despite all this, Eva Edl (among many others) was hauled before the federal court systems in two different states to answer for her alleged crimes.
Here, the Marxist mob did not quietly sit on the sidewalks outside the church to advocate for their alleged views, which (though unseemly) would have been protected expression under the First Amendment. Rather, the mob stormed the doors, raided the sanctuary, intimidated women and children, disrupted a worship service, accosted the pastor, and threatened to injure every congregant in attendance.
The actions of this criminal and riotous mob were precisely why Congress amended the FACE Act to include protection for religious worship. In 1994, Congress stated that adding the protection for religious worship services in FACE was “a reflection of the profound concern of the Congress over private intrusions on religious worship, and the judgment of the Congress that the exercise of the right to religious liberty deserves federal protection.”
Disgraced “journalist” Don Lemon shoved a microphone in the pastor’s face, saying the First Amendment entitled his henchmen to engage in protest and make people uncomfortable. The pastor said they were merely trying to worship Jesus. Don Lemon said his mob was entitled to squash their entitled white supremacy. This is nonsense, but one shouldn’t expect much from that moron.
Ironically, if you ask the mob what they were at the church for, you get a host of answers:
Some said ICE.
Some said the church is a bastion of white supremacy.
Others claimed homophobia.
Others claimed racism.
Still others cried otherwise.
That should surprise no one, as there is nothing new under the sun. As recounted in Acts, unruly mobs are oft this way. “Some therefore cried one thing and some another … and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together” (Acts 19:32, KJV).
Regardless of their varied and incoherent rationales for invading the sacred ground of religious houses of worship, the actions of this mob are criminal and should be punished as such.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, ironically enough on Don Lemon’s YouTube channel, that the FACE Act only applies to women seeking access to a clinic. He said, “How they can stretch [FACE] to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior of a religious leader is beyond me.”
Only by willfully ignoring Section (a)(2) can one reach such an insane statement. Mind you, Ellison himself has brought a federal lawsuit absurdly claiming that federal law enforcement officials have no right to be in his state, effectively arguing that states have veto power of federal enforcement of federal law.
So, to Ellison, Marxist mobs are perfectly permitted to storm religious worship services where they have no right to be and no constitutional right to engage in expression, but federal officials have no right to enter an entire state because Ellison does not like the particular law federal agents are enforcing.
Such double-mindedness is absurd, but as Scripture says, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).
The rioters storming a church’s worship service are unstable; Attorney General Ellison’s nonsense rejection of federal law is unstable; and all of the actions taken against the church in Minnesota are criminal.
Mind you, Don Lemon spent countless hours on his show castigating individuals for storming the so-called “Temple of Democracy” on Jan. 6, 2021, and arguing why they deserved to be prosecuted. Don Lemon and his Marxist mob stormed a Temple of the Most High God, and they ought to be prosecuted for it.
Anything less would leave the Republic bewildered as to which face of the Department of Justice may be true.
Daniel Schmid is a constitutional attorney and the associate vice president of Legal Affairs with Liberty Counsel, an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family. Since 2012, Daniel has been on the front lines of litigating many critical First Amendment issues and has taught constitutional law at Liberty University School of Law.
