Pastor blasts woke prosecutor for refusing to charge Don Lemon, comrades over church invasion



St. Paul City Attorney Irene Kao — a warrior against what she calls "structural racism" — announced this week that she won't bother bringing state charges against those radicals who stormed into Cities Church in January.

Kao's apparent tolerance for militant leftist agitation has left the church's lead pastor, Rev. Jonathan Parnell, and others wondering whether the woke prosecutor's purported "commitment to protect religious people includes evangelical Christians."

A mostly peaceful church invasion?

Don Lemon — the former CNN talking head who suggested in October that "black people, brown people" should take up arms against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — apparently joined radicals from Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities for a so-called "ICE Out Action" in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18.

'The law will bend for those whose cause aligns with the politics of those in power.'

Rather than interfere with federal law enforcement operations, this motley crew of leftists stormed into Cities Church, doing their apparent best to drown out sounds of Sunday worship.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, claimed responsibility for the disruption and indicated that Cities Church was targeted because "David Easterwood is a Pastor at this church and the Acting Field Director for the ICE office in St. Paul."

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The radicals refused requests from church officials to leave the premises and instead hectored churchgoers and screamed in the aisles and pews.

The Trump Justice Department took the matter seriously, securing indictments against all 39 individuals suspected of disrupting the church service, including Lemon, Armstrong, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — a radical who previously worked for Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum; has served as the right-hand man for Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County’s Soros-backed prosecutor; and is married to St. Paul City Councilwoman Anika Bowie.

Whereas the DOJ appears keen on holding the suspected church invaders accountable for federal civil rights violations, Irene Kao is evidently of a different mind.

Decision, backlash

Kao, the leftist daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, announced this week that her office will not bring state-level criminal charges against Don Lemon and his comrades.

"Our office has a legal and ethical obligation to file charges only when the available evidence establishes probable cause and supports a reasonable likelihood of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt," Kao said in a statement.

"Following a careful evaluation of the video footage, investigative reports, and other available materials, prosecutors determined that the current evidence is insufficient to meet that standard for criminal charges under Minnesota state statutes," continued the woke prosecutor.

After noting that her decision should not be read as an endorsement of illegal behavior, Kao wrote, "The right to peacefully protest is protected, as is the right to exercise one’s religious beliefs."

"Balancing these equally important rights is paramount to our decision today," continued the leftist prosecutor.

Doug Wardlow, director of litigation for Truth North Legal and representative for Cities Church, said, "The St. Paul city attorney’s decision treats the church like it's a public sidewalk — as if the sanctuary were an open forum that anyone may seize mid-service, rather than private property where a congregation has the right to worship undisturbed."

"By wrongly characterizing the invasion and takeover of a worship service as First Amendment-protected conduct, the city attorney’s office sends an unmistakable signal: The law will bend for those whose cause aligns with the politics of those in power," added Wardlow.

Rev. Jonathan Parnell said in a statement, "According to the St. Paul city attorney’s logic, it is perfectly fine for agitators to invade a mosque, a cathedral, or a temple, intimidate the families and children inside, and shut down their religious gathering. Just call it a 'protest.'"

The Cities Church pastor noted further that "City Attorney Irene Kao’s decision not to charge the agitators who invaded our church on January 18, 2026, leaves us to question whether her commitment to protect religious people includes evangelical Christians."

In addition to facing criticism for setting a dangerous precedent, Kao has been questioned over her possible self-interest in the case.

After all, Jamael Lydell Lundy, one of the radicals whom Kao let off the hook, is married to a member of city council — the very council that confirms the mayor's city attorney appointments.

KSTP-TV has doggedly — but so far unsuccessfully — pressed the offices of Kao and Democratic Mayor Kaohly Her about whether the case should have been handled externally to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

David Schultz, professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University, told KSTP that Kao's handling of Lundy's case creates the "possible appearance of a conflict of interest."

"Send it outside City Hall, not even move it to a different attorney in City Hall, but to basically hire an outside firm, review the file, and make their own independent decision regarding whether or not to prosecute or not," said Schultz. "That way it would clearly have addressed any of the concerns about the appearance of conflict of interest, and again, assured the public that there was no favoritism going on here."

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Muslim principal lasts only one week before Texas school district finds posts on Sharia law and BLM



A Muslim woman has been reassigned after only one week as a high school principal after troubling posts on social media were brought to the attention of the Texas school district.

The Fort Worth Independent School District said Tuesday that Shayma Alzubi was removed as the principal of Western Hills High School pending an investigation into the posts.

The post about Sharia law apparently compared the Islamic regulations to other faith-based rules such as those in Christianity.

Alzubi, who has a decade of experience in education, allegedly posted messages on Facebook defending Sharia law as well as the Black Lives Matter movement.

She also reportedly posted a message reading, "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and one that showed support for COVID mask mandates in the district.

The district said in a statement to KDFW-TV that the posts violated its rules about personal politics.

"Our district leaders, educators, and staff will not inject personal political perspectives into classrooms," reads a statement from the district to Fox News Digital. "Fort Worth ISD serves a wide array of families and students that are civically engaged and maintain a variety of perspectives. As a taxpayer-funded entity, we will remain focused on our mission of providing a high-quality education for all students."

The post about Sharia law apparently compared Islamic regulations to other faith-based rules such as those in Christianity.

Alzubi did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Alzubi's supporters have planned a news conference at the Islamic Unity Center and are expected to demand the district immediately reinstate Alzubi as principal.

They blame "multiple right-wing bloggers" who complained that a "visibly Muslim woman was appointed as principal," according to a press release.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also blamed an "anti-Muslim witch hunt" in its release, which said Alzubi was targeted because she wore a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

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Among those who posted about Alzubi on Tuesday was the popular Libs of TikTok account.

Alzubi was working as the assistant principal at Southwest High School before she was elevated to the principal position.

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'Speaking of stupid Democrats': AOC blasts billionaires and founding fathers in ridiculous podcast appearance



In a recent podcast appearance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made some shocking comments regarding billionaires and the founders of our country — and BlazeTV host Pat Gray is not surprised.

“Speaking of stupid Democrats, holy cow,” Gray says, playing a clip of AOC.

“There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned, right? You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that,” the congresswoman said on “It’s Open with Ilana Glazer.”

“You can get market power, you can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth,” she continued.


“Since you didn’t earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it,” she added.

AOC went on to claim that “there are very few real archetypes” of “what America is all about.”

“I think about the civil rights and voting rights movement and how black Americans really created democracy in this country,” she said.

"White Americans have to be eliminated from every aspect of this society,” Gray comments, shocked.

“Anything good that happened in America didn’t come from white people. They’re all evil and bad, and they have oppressed and murdered their way to prominence,” he adds.

“You’re familiar with the father of our country, right?” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in, showing a photo of George Washington that’s been updated by activists to have darker skin.

“George Washington, Black Lives Matter,” he adds, laughing.

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Shelby and Eli Steele’s new film goes straight at the white-guilt grifters



Are you guilty? That depends. Are you white? Then yes, you are guilty. But whiteness is no longer the only offense. Believe in God? Believe Christ saves sinners? Believe in objective morality, the rule of law, or marriage between one man and one woman? Then skin color hardly matters. You are guilty anyway.

Guilty of what? Guilty of the sins of history, the inequities of the present, and whatever new offense the racial racketeers invent tomorrow. At least that is what grifters like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo have spent years selling to America, often for staggering sums underwritten by universities eager to flatter the ideology. Arizona State University, where I teach, has offered classes on the problem of whiteness. ASU’s Barrett Honors College teaches the evils of settler colonialism.

You, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, are footing the bill for Struggle Session 101.

That is the backdrop for “White Guilt,” the new documentary from Shelby Steele and his son, Eli Steele, which premieres this week at ASU. Shelby Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and recipient of the National Medal of the Humanities, has spent decades writing about race, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. In his 2006 book “White Guilt,” he argued that racial moralism had become a tool for gaining power over others rather than a path toward justice.

The film appears at a moment when Americans have begun to see more clearly how much of the modern racial industry depends on intimidation, guilt, and fraud.

Steele understands the temptation from the inside. As a young man, he felt drawn to the black power movement. His parents had been active in the civil rights movement, and he wanted to help his community. But he came to see that race blame solves nothing. It degrades everyone it touches. Blame wielded by race remains racism, no matter who aims it or who absorbs it.

The better question, Steele argues, asks what it means to live as a free and responsible person. What happens when an individual takes responsibility for his own choices? What kind of life becomes possible when dignity comes from agency rather than grievance? That moral vision sits much closer to the American ideal than the racial spoils system now preached across much of higher education.

Steele rejects the fashionable claim that slavery was America’s original sin. The deeper sin, he argues, is the use of race to gain power over others. That temptation did not die with Jim Crow. It adapted. It migrated into institutions, party politics, nonprofits, and university bureaucracies. Today it thrives in classrooms where professors insist they do not teach racism while teaching students to judge one another by skin color, ancestry, and inherited guilt.

That fraud has paid well.

Black Lives Matter offered perhaps the clearest recent example. In the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, BLM became a moral brand for affluent liberals, activist professionals, and corporate America. Shelby and Eli Steele explored the lie at the movement’s foundation in their earlier film, “What Killed Michael Brown?” Their new film picks up a related question: How did the language of anti-racism become such a lucrative racket?

The answer is not hard to find. Much of the left’s social justice industry runs on a simple formula: Manufacture guilt, divide people by race, promise absolution, then collect money, influence, and institutional power. Sell moral panic to well-intentioned Americans, then invoice them for redemption.

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Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Want to end racism? Write a check. Sign the DEI pledge. Sit through the seminar. Keep your head down while the consultants explain that your skin makes you complicit and your silence proves your guilt.

The strategy stays simple. Divide humanity into categories. Teach each group to resent the others. Tell people that the brokenness of the world is not a permanent feature of fallen life but the fault of their neighbors. Then arrive as the enlightened manager who can fix it all, for a fee. That formula has wrecked poorer countries for generations. Now left-wing elites have imported it into American life, dressed it up in therapeutic language, and sold it as virtue.

Anyone who has spent time around a university classroom knows the script. A professor begins with a banal truth: The world is filled with injustice. The class nods. Then comes the poisonous turn: Would you like to know who is to blame? Look around the room. Identify the oppressor. Assign the guilt. Require ritual silence from some students and ritual confession from others. Repackage humiliation as education.

And you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, are footing the bill for Struggle Session 101.

Instead of surrendering to this politics of racial hatred, envy, and managed guilt, Americans should recover a better ideal. Freedom means more than license. It means responsibility. It means building a life through choice, discipline, and moral agency rather than through grievance and tribal score-settling. Whether the world crowns that life a success or a failure, it still belongs to you. No race hustler can take that from you.

“White Guilt” premieres March 25 at 6 p.m. at ASU Tempe in Bateman Physical Sciences F Wing, Room 166.