America has always protected lawful protest. It has never protected persecution. Some communities now blur that line on purpose, and anyone who cares about civil rights, religious freedom, or the rule of law should be alarmed.

Most recently, agitators stormed Cities Church in Saint Paul, near Minneapolis, during a worship service to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids around the Twin Cities. Federal authorities, including the Department of Justice, are investigating the incident under civil rights laws that protect religious exercise at places of worship. Several people, including journalists present, have been arrested or charged in connection with the disruption.

You don’t need to agree with the worshippers in Minnesota or California to defend their rights. Civil liberties mean nothing if they apply only to causes we like.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Peaceful worshippers have faced unlawful harassment before.

Last year, in March and September, Christian and Jewish worshippers in Southern California gathered peacefully to pray, sing, and express deeply held religious beliefs about Israel and the Jewish people. They came to worship. A coordinated campaign of intimidation met them instead: blocked entrances, screaming mobs, bullhorns blaring sirens, graphic signs aimed at children, physical assaults, and targeted harassment designed to make worship impossible.

First Liberty Institute filed a detailed federal complaint describing how the disruptors planned and coordinated these attacks and then celebrated them afterward. They registered for church events under fake names, infiltrated the Mission Church, screamed accusations of “genocide” and “Nazism” at Jewish and Christian worshippers, and resisted removal. Outside, others blocked exits and forced families — including children and seniors — to run a narrow gauntlet just to reach their cars.

At another interfaith service, agitators surrounded vehicles, jumped on worshippers’ hoods, laid dolls in driveways while calling Jewish guests “baby-killers,” and blared sirens for hours to drown out prayer and preaching.

That conduct is flatly illegal. It is also a transparent attempt to cloak intimidation in the First Amendment.

The First Amendment does not authorize people to physically interfere with worship, intimidate attendees, or use force and coercion to silence beliefs they despise. Congress recognized that principle when it passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) made sure the law would protect religious exercise at places of worship from exactly this kind of obstruction. When mobs block entrances, assault worshippers, or deliberately prevent services from being heard, they break the law.

RELATED: When worship is interrupted, neutrality is no longer an option

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These incidents also reveal something darker: the targets and the motive.

The worshippers were Christians and Jews united by shared religious convictions about Israel. For Jewish attendees, support for Israel is not a political slogan; it is woven into faith, daily prayer, and identity. For Christian congregations, support for the Jewish people flows from sincerely held theological beliefs. Targeting those beliefs through harassment and violence is religious discrimination.

History shows where this road can lead. When officials tolerate intimidation against one disfavored group, it spreads. Our complaint documents a surge in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide since Oct. 7, 2023, along with a widening hostility toward anyone who publicly stands in solidarity with Jews. Persecution works the same way every time: isolate the target, then punish anyone who refuses to abandon the target.

The aftermath should chill every American. The complaint alleges that organizers vowed to continue, posted videos on public Code Pink channels boasting about their actions, and shared images of worshippers online to expose them to further harassment. Churches canceled events. Interfaith groups struggled to find safe venues. Ordinary people began to fear worship in their own communities.

The Free Exercise Clause means little if mobs can intimidate Americans into silence inside their own sanctuaries.

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

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On Monday, victims of this harassment will testify before President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. The commission plans to issue a detailed plan to protect religious liberty in coordination with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

You don’t need to agree with the worshippers in Minnesota or California to defend their rights. Civil liberties mean nothing if they apply only to causes we like. The moment we excuse intimidation because we sympathize with a protest’s message, we abandon equal freedom under the law.

Courts now have an opportunity — and an obligation — to draw a firm line. Peaceful protest belongs at a respectful distance, not inside sanctuaries. Reasonable debate belongs in the public square, not enforced through threats, coercion, and attempts at injury. If mobs get to decide who may worship freely, no one is safe.

​Opinion & analysis, First amendment, Freedom of religion, Free exercise, Religion, Freedom of speech, Freedom of the press, Don lemon, Face act, Minnesota, Cities church protest, California, Interfaith, Worship, Law and order, Anti-ice protests, Minneapolis, St. paul minnesota, Department of justice, Journalists, Rule of law, Persecution, Christianity, Christians, Jews, Donald trump, Religious liberty commission 

Bad Bunny — real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — used the Super Bowl LX halftime show to deliver a political message. That’s his right. The part worth discussing is the NFL’s decision to underwrite it, package it as entertainment, and beam it into tens of millions of living rooms as if it were part of the deal fans signed up for.

As Martínez Ocasio demonstrated at halftime, he is an unrepentant Puerto Rican leftist, following a familiar script in the tradition of Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo of the 1950s and the Macheteros of the 1970s: grievance, agitation, and a convenient villain.

If the NFL is now acting as an advertising agency for political organizations, shouldn’t the IRS take a fresh look at the tax advantages that help the league operate like a monopoly?

Bad Bunny uses hip-hop instead of bullets or bombs, but he is still selling the same posture — righteous rage, revolutionary cosplay, and a political edge aimed squarely at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What irritates even more is the sponsor of this performance: the National Football League, allegedly as American as an institution can be — and certainly as profitable. It rakes in enormous revenue under a legal regime that has long treated the league like a protected creature of Congress. Then it rakes in more when corporations pay obscene sums for skyboxes and “experiences” and promptly write much of it off as a business expense. Nothing says “shared sacrifice” like a luxury suite tax deduction.

All of that would be tolerable if the league stuck to what it does best: organize a children’s game for adults, staffed by small groups of millionaire “college graduates” sprinting around a 100-yard patch of turf while the rest of us yell at referees and pretend we understand the salary cap.

Instead, the NFL now wants to be your civic tutor. The league has decided that the score isn’t enough; it also needs slogans — mostly in Spanish — delivered to a mostly non-Spanish-speaking audience that paid for tickets, cable packages, streaming subscriptions, and, in many cities, the stadium itself.

In recent years, the NFL has plastered the experience with political catechisms: “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names,” “I Can’t Breathe,” “Justice,” “Equality,” “Freedom,” “Power to the People,” “Justice Now,” and “Sí se puede.” Now, thanks to Bad Bunny, the league has added:

“Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa / Quieren el barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya.” (“They want to take away my river and my beach / They want my neighborhood, and they want grandma to leave.”)“Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera / Por eso es que ahora yo la llevo donde quiera.” (“They killed people here for flying the flag / That’s why I carry it wherever I go.”)“De aquí nadie me saca, de aquí yo no me muevo / Dile que esta es mi casa, donde nació mi abuelo.” (“No one’s going to run me out of here — I’m not going anywhere / Tell them this is my home, where my grandfather was born.”)“Fueron 5,000 que dejaron morir y eso nunca e nos va a olvidar.” (“They let 5,000 people die, and we will never forget that.”)

Those lines don’t function as “art in the abstract.” The NFL presented them as civic messaging — without bothering to ask the audience.

RELATED: Bad Bunny delivers just 1 line in English during Super Bowl LX halftime show

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Why am I being subjected to a deluge of unpaid political commercials when all I wanted to do was watch millionaire athletes dramatically move an oblong ball around? Maybe enjoy a few big hits, a few bad calls, and, yes, perhaps place a wager without getting a sermon at halftime? Is that really too much to ask?

And once the NFL decides one side gets free political advertising, why stop there? Why shouldn’t every cause group get a slot? At least we’d have clarity. “Tonight’s halftime: The Coalition for Whatever.” Next year: “The League of Extremely Loud People.” Keep going until the entire broadcast becomes a charity auction for ideologies.

Then there’s the implicit holier-than-thou attitude of the players and performers who shill on cue for “the right side of history.”

Nothing screams ‘liberation’ like outsourced production under an authoritarian regime.

If the NFL wants to present its stars as moral authorities, maybe the league should be required to release the supporting documentation. Police reports. Court records. Paternity suits. The pharmaceutical list required to keep a battered body functioning after one too many concussions. Divorce filings that reveal what the slogans never will.

After all, a convicted dogfight organizer or a wife-beater looks ridiculous wearing “Say Her Name!” or “Justice Now!” on his back — and the league has fielded enough of those case studies to fill a warehouse.

RELATED: Bad Bunny, Green Day, and ICE: ‘The most political Super Bowl ever’

Photo by Jaydee Lee SERRANO/AFP via Getty Images

Add another layer of absurdity: Many of the league’s millionaire geniuses take a knee against “oppression” and “slavery,” with stern faces and closed-fist salutes, while remaining blissfully indifferent to the fact that their uniforms, sneakers, and promotional trinkets come from supply chains tied to modern forced labor. Yes, geniuses. Nothing screams “liberation” like outsourced production under an authoritarian regime.

At that point, the old Marxist-Leninist label becomes less a slogan and more a job description.

Lenin is often credited with the phrase “useful idiots.” Whether he coined it or not, the category exists for a reason: privileged Westerners eagerly carrying propaganda for movements that despise the civilization that makes their privilege possible. The NFL has decided that this is not merely acceptable, but brand-enhancing.

One more thing: If the NFL is now acting as an advertising agency for political organizations, shouldn’t the IRS — along with state and local tax authorities — take a fresh look at the tax and regulatory advantages that help the league operate like a monopoly?

Now would be an excellent time.

​Opinion & analysis, Super bowl lx, Bad bunny, Halftime show, Benito martinez ocasio, Entertainment, Woke sports, National football league, Nfl, Puerto rico, Nationalism, Leftism, Griselio torresola, Oscar collazo, Macheteros, Terrorism, Irs, Nonprofit, Tax exemption, Stadiums, Subsidies, Professional sports, Football players, Spanish, Lenin, Marxist-leninist