Lemon's Church Raid Exposed: Ex-CNN Radical Films Anti-ICE Thugs Shouting Down Worshippers | 1/20/26

LIVE: The Glenn Beck Program | Hour 1 | 1/20/26

Glenn Beck: Iran’s regime is crumbling — and the REAL villain isn’t China

Iran's streets continue to erupt in one of the most intense nationwide uprisings since the 1979 revolution. Thousands have been killed, tens of thousands arrested, and a brutal regime crackdown with live fire, mass detentions, and a near-total internet blackout has largely smothered visible protests for now. And yet whispers of regime fragility grow louder.

But there's more to this story than meets the eye. Iran’s real vulnerability, says Glenn Beck, lies not in its inability to squash a protest movement but in its oil-dependent economy, propped up by shadowy deals that could unravel overnight.

Glenn breaks it down brilliantly with a simple, chilling apple farmer analogy that exposes how global banks and China's "teapot" refineries have kept the regime afloat through sanction-skirting barter schemes ... until the buyer suddenly says "no more."

Glenn’s story begins with an apple farmer named Mo and an apple buyer named Ming.

“[Mo] starts out small. He has a few trees, a few crates. He works hard and everything, and he reinvests all the time. He plants more trees. He buys more land. He takes out loans for trucks and storage and refrigeration,” Glenn begins.

His business keeps growing and then “one day something incredible happens. A massive single grocery chain [run by Ming] picks up Mo's apples — not a few apples, all of the apples. Which is good because what I didn't tell you about Mo is he thinks he's a good guy, but he's pissed every other apple store off in the world,” he continues.

Ming tells Mo his plans to “refine” the apples into “apple cider and apple juice.” Mo, thrilled that now “demand is guaranteed,” expands even more.

“The trucks are financed. The warehouses are leased. The future looks locked in,” says Glenn.

But then one day, everything comes to a screeching halt. Suddenly “Ming says, ‘Yeah, we can't take any more apples. We're at capacity.”’

This news wrecks Mo’s world – without Ming, there’s nothing to keep his business empire afloat.

Almost immediately, apples begin to pile up, and the trucks loaded with supplies are parked. Then “the police are like, ‘Why are all these trucks on the sides of the roads?’ ... Then they realize, ‘Wait a minute, you don't have a license to ship apples. In fact, you don't have a license on this truck,”’ Glenn continues.

It turns out Mo hasn’t been making any money from his apple farm because Ming has been paying him in equipment and infrastructure the entire time. Mo’s business collapses immediately because he never actually owned anything.

“The banks did,” says Glenn — not because they trusted Mo but because they trusted Ming, who took out the insurance policies.

“Ming is actually the refinery in China, and Mo is the oil in Iran,” he finally reveals.

The banks and insurance companies knew that China couldn’t legally purchase Iranian oil because there’s an embargo on it. But they were perfectly fine with a barter system — where China provided goods, services, and infrastructure in exchange for oil. As long as there was “no money changing hands,” the banks would sign.

This prospect is already enough to give Glenn “a brain aneurysm,” but sadly the story takes an even darker turn.

“The farmer Mo — he has sons, and each one ran a different part of his farm,” he says, returning to his analogy.

Ming’s sudden decision to bail stirs up tension in Mo’s family.

“One son says, ‘Sell the land while it's worth something.’ Another says, ‘No, hold on — the store might come back.’ Another one says, ‘No, you know what? I'm not with either of you’ and starts moving equipment out of the barn in the middle of the night, and he's just going to get onto a plane and disappear at some point,” says Glenn.

“This is when countries go down because each son stops asking how do we save the farm, and they start asking how do I get out before it collapses. The farm doesn't change hands in a ceremony. It just empties out.”

It starts with Mo’s sons, then the farm workers, and then the security team. Protests erupt outside Mo’s gates, and he is forced to cope with the fact that his apple farm has rotted from the inside out.

“This is what's happening in Iran,” says Glenn.

To hear more of his analysis, watch the video above.

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A protest doesn’t become lawful because Don Lemon livestreams it

What should have been a peaceful Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, turned into a political ambush. Roughly 30 anti-ICE protesters pushed into the sanctuary mid-worship, chanting slogans and confronting church leaders as families tried to pray.

Disgraced former CNN anchor Don Lemon was there, too, livestreaming the chaos.

If activists can storm a church mid-service, scream at families, and then hide behind the First Amendment, the standard becomes simple: The loudest mob sets the rules.

The Department of Justice has opened a formal investigation and signaled that federal protections for houses of worship may apply. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon noted on the “Glenn Beck Program” that the activists’ conduct could implicate the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which bars intimidation, obstruction, and interference with the free exercise of religion in places of worship. The protesters may have also violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, a post-Civil War law that makes it illegal to terrorize and violate the civil rights of citizens.

According to multiple reports, the demonstrators were tied to the Racial Justice Network and aimed their protest at a church leader they accused of working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The protest followed rising tensions in Minnesota after the fatal shooting of anti-ICE activist Renee Nicole Good during a confrontation with federal agents.

Lemon framed the entire spectacle as civic virtue. He insisted he was “not an activist, but a journalist” and argued that protest inside a church remains constitutionally protected speech.

The footage tells a messier story.

Video released after the incident shows Lemon interacting with the group beforehand, appearing familiar with organizers and the plan. One outlet described the operation as “Operation Pull-Up.” That undercuts the narrative Lemon later pushed — that he simply arrived to document an event that unexpectedly “spilled” into a worship service.

Intent matters. So does outcome. The outcome looked like this: a sanctuary overrun, a service derailed, congregants shaken, and children crying while activists shouted and gestured at the pews.

That is far from “peaceful assembly.” It is targeted disruption.

The First Amendment protects speech. It does not grant a roaming license to invade private spaces and commandeer them for political theater. Rights have edges because other people have rights too. Worshippers do not lose their liberty because activists feel righteous.

That basic distinction keeps a free society from collapsing into a contest of intimidation.

Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images

This case matters because it tests whether the country still draws that line. If activists can storm a church mid-service, scream at families, and then hide behind the First Amendment, the standard becomes simple: The loudest mob sets the rules. Next week it will be another church. Then a synagogue. Then any gathering that activists decide deserves punishment.

The Justice Department is right to examine the FACE Act here. Congress passed it to stop coercion dressed up as protest — the use of obstruction and intimidation to prevent Americans from exercising basic freedoms. That principle doesn’t change because the target shifts from an abortion clinic to a church sanctuary.

The press corps’ selective outrage makes the problem worse. Cultural elites demand “safety” and “inclusion” in every other arena, but many of them treat Christian worship as an acceptable target. They police speech in classrooms and boardrooms, then shrug when activists shout down prayer.

That double standard signals something deeper than hypocrisy. It signals permission.

Lemon’s defense captured the rot in one sentence: Making people uncomfortable, he said, is “what protests are about.” Fine. Protest often makes people uncomfortable. But discomfort does not justify trespass. It does not excuse intimidation. It does not cancel someone else’s right to worship in peace.

A society that cannot protect sacred spaces will not protect much else for long. If the law refuses to punish conduct like this, the lesson will spread fast: Invade, disrupt, harass — then claim virtue and dare anyone to stop you.

America does not need a new normal where mobs treat churches like political stages. It needs consequences.

The government lied for DECADES: RFK Jr.'s food pyramid exposes the FAT truth

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. flipped the food pyramid upside down, he exposed a decades-old government lie — and “Culture Apothecary” host Alex Clark tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck that the government hid the truth for a reason.

“When I was growing up, the food pyramid, it just came out in the '90s. This was in every single textbook in public schools. And it really wasn’t designed for health, like we all thought. Come to find out, it was all designed for profit,” Clark tells Glenn.

“It was not just bad science. It was completely rigged. So the dietary guidelines were written by these committees that were riddled with conflicts of interest. They were people that were tied financially to grain producers, the sugar interest groups, ultra-processed food companies,” she continues.

At the base of the food pyramid, Americans were told they needed to be consuming 11 servings of grains per day.

“They were shelf-stable and they were really profitable. So that had nothing to do with health,” Clark says.

“We were also told that fat was the enemy. So I’m sure you remember, Glenn, like everyone was saying low-fat,” she adds.

“Yeah, and we got fat once everybody started going low-fat,” Glenn chimes in.

“Yes! So we were told butter was bad, eggs were the enemy, beef, you know, red meat was bad for you, they’re all dangerous,” Clark responds.

“It all kind of ends up leading to higher rates of heart attacks and heart disease, and the group eating less fat had more heart attacks. And they buried this data for 16 years. We knew that this was happening,” she explains.

“This is why the new dietary guidelines matter so much. … For the first time maybe ever, Glenn, the government is telling parents the truth, at least about this,” she adds.