SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: We have breaking news. We're covering the Minnesota church protest, which sparked a Department of Justice investigation. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now, your host, Logan Sekulow.

Welcome to Sekulow. Thanks for tuning in this Monday. It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and we have another tragic weekend to cover the news from. Last night, we had those protests that entered a church in Minnesota. As Governor Tim Walz called for the temperature to come down and President Trump called for the temperature to come down, I do think we have to start looking at what this looks like because the safety and the issues are getting out of control.

This happened during a church service. Now, we do know that they were targeting this church specifically. This was a lot of people that stormed this church.

Jordan Sekulow: It was the Black Lives Matter chapter in Minneapolis, which, again, you go back to George Floyd. Remember the city that we're talking about here that's been in the news this last ten days. This is a city that can burn. It's really should be concerning, and even when it's 18 below, right?

Logan Sekulow: You had Don Lemon there awkwardly bum-rushing the pastor who was speaking. We'll play some of those clips a little bit later because it is this very stressful situation.

Jordan Sekulow: Keith Ellison, also the former congressman who is now the current Attorney General, was doing an interview with Don Lemon right before. I don't know how close they were to that church, but obviously, there are laws that protect churches from people standing outside and banging drums. Even doing that is illegal.

Logan Sekulow: This wasn't what we'd call a peaceful protest. This was a legitimate overtaking of this church. Don Lemon was actually out there video recording children leaving and saying, "Look at these kids. I bet they're uncomfortable, but that's the point of protest." What it proved to me, honestly, is that Don Lemon, as much as we know from CNN, there's a reason he doesn't have a job at one of these big networks anymore.

This is someone who was a good commentator who could read a teleprompter pretty well, and I mean good, I don't agree with him, but could be a television host. Clearly, he was not liked and clearly not very smart because he also goes after this pastor and says, "Well, they have a First Amendment right to be protesting." You clearly don't understand the law or how this works. Going into a house of worship and doing this in general is disgusting.

I'm nervous, I'll be honest, that the next statement that comes out from the right and the left is just going to amp this up more. We do not have an opportunity to take a breath, to step back, because it feels for the first time in a very long time that we are on the edge here. We are on the edge of what could be chaotic beyond belief.

Later on in the show, this is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece will be joining us, Alveda King, towards the end of the broadcast. You want to stay tuned. She'll be on to really explain not only why we celebrate today and why we celebrate the nature of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, but how different it is compared to what we're talking about today. Obviously, there are parallels you could look at, but they do not fit the messaging that Dr. King would have had or that a lot of really that whole leadership would be looking at this and discussed.

Jordan Sekulow: First of all, it's one thing to have a silent protest outside of a building of private property. That is not illegal. If you're not disrupting the service, so you're not banging drums or using megaphones, that's not illegal. Sure, why not?

It's the same law that was passed in the 1990s in the middle of the pro-life movement that protects abortion clinics. The FACE Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, was passed to get bipartisan support. This was the early nineties. Remember, the Republican Party had not had its come-to-Jesus moment on the life movement yet.

To get Republican support, because they certainly weren't Planned Parenthood supporters, a lot of them were back then, they said we'll also put in houses of worship. Even though the FACE Act doesn't say anything about churches, it involves and includes places of worship and it makes it a federal crime.

Logan Sekulow: If you have a question or comment about this, go to 1-800-684-3110. You talk about the FACE Act. We see a lot of people talking about it, claiming it, stating it. Let's get into what that really is and what it actually means in terms of how this church was treated. We're also going to discuss a lot more. We've got Jeff Ballabon joining us also, and again, Alveda King at the end of the show. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We do have phone lines open at 1-800-684-3110, of course, covering the protest that ended up with a church being taken under siege. Everyone left. They had to. It looked very stressful. It looked panicked. Let's actually play a clip. This is Don Lemon, formerly of CNN, who entered the church and went up to the pastor who was trying to be like he was the journalist following a protest, but then he became part of the protest. This is at City's Church and he really tries to question this pastor and the chaos that's happening around him. Take a listen.

Audio Clip: Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday, and we were interrupted by this group of protesters. We asked them to leave and they obviously have not left. This is unacceptable. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship. Listen, we live in a country where there's a Constitution and the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest. We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus because that's the hope of these cities. That's the hope of the world. Please don't push me. We're here to worship Jesus. That's why we're here. Do you think Jesus would be understanding and in love with these folks? We're about spreading the love of Jesus.

Logan Sekulow: Don Lemon says, "Listen, we live in, there's a Constitution and a First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest." Of course there is. That's not what is happening in this moment.

Jordan Sekulow: There's also freedom of religion within the First Amendment that Don Lemon leaves out as well. These individuals, these protesters, it wasn't just as the news has tried to say, that they were going after what seemed to be a connection between a pastor there and ICE and maybe being an acting field director.

It doesn't matter if he is or isn't because you can't go in and do what these protesters did. They were going up to individual members of the congregation and attacking them, saying, "Look at you, you're so comfortable with your latte. Look at you, you're so comfortable you're wearing clothes. What about the people in the street that are unhoused? What about the refugees and the immigrants?" They were calling them fake Christians and getting in their faces, filming them.

Individuals would come and say, "Please, we just don't want to talk to you. Can you please just leave us alone?" And they wouldn't. They were agitated. They were getting in the face of the congregants. It's illegal what they did, but it wasn't about some pastor connection at all. They went in there to try and create fear, to terrorize this congregation.

There are federal laws on the books. Most of the time, I'm not a huge fan of the FACE Act because usually it's used to harass, intimidate, and arrest pro-life protesters or sidewalk counselors who end up being found not guilty. Let's take a step back and give people an idea of what the FACE Act is.

The FACE Act is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. In 1994, right at the heart of the pro-life movement becoming a little bit more aggressive, doing the sit-ins, sometimes violating the law, Congress, in a bipartisan manner, passed this. At that time, remember, the pro-life movement had not become a core of the Republican Party like you take for granted today.

To get the FACE Act bipartisan support, it was Ted Kennedy, actually. To get the bipartisan support, even though it's not in the name of the law, it also protects houses of worship. It's not just from people blocking doors, it's in any way disrupting. So from blocking the door to banging a drum to showing up with 300 people inside to protest. You don't even have to go inside the building to violate the FACE Act. In fact, most pro-life activists don't go inside the abortion clinic; they get arrested. Even though I don't love the FACE Act, in the United States of America, it exists. Most states also have laws that would protect a house of worship and private property from this kind of harassing behavior.

Does that protect you from people on the street protesting always? No. But houses of worship under federal law today, if you're making noise, if you're disrupting, that alone is enough for you to be charged criminally federally. You could be a federal criminal for the rest of your life.

Logan Sekulow: I've seen some complaints of people going, "Where was security for the church?" You're talking about 100 people showing up. One or two security guards is not going to be able to fix this. This was a rush of this. I think we could even take the legal side of this, the FACE Act, put that to the side for a second.

Just from a humanity point of view, where are we headed? You have someone get shot on the streets, then it amps up. You've got ICE in general that amps up a lot of people. Then you have the issue where the protester gets killed, then this happens. It feels like it's just compounding and there has to be a breaking point.

I really would hope, especially today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that you could actually have a moment where maybe Governor Tim Walz or President Trump could actually meet, discuss, and figure out how to calm this down. Not this "lower the temperature." That's not real. Talk about how to end this because we are at a boiling point that is nerve-wracking.

Jordan Sekulow: To that point as well, we know the DOJ has opened up an investigation. Fortunately, many of these people were live-streaming and posting videos. They won't be too hard to find. But here's also the problem I'm having and the concern as you talk about this. We've seen the increased need for security at places like synagogues because of the rise in anti-semitism.

We're going to talk about something that has been normalized in anti-semitic tropes in the next segment with Jeff Ballabon. But unfortunately, we saw that and were like, that's terrible that synagogues had to have that much security and people were afraid to just go to worship. Now you're seeing it. You've seen attacks on churches recently. They don't make the news as much as they should or they don't stay in the cycle as long enough. But now you're seeing this, that now this red line is being crossed where houses of worship are not seen as sacred, are not given reverence by even people that don't believe, that they're going to go in there and they're going to get in the face of worshippers.

Don Lemon said the quiet part out loud; that was the goal. When he saw people leaving the building with children, he said this. He's trying not to slip on the sidewalk, so it's a little disjointed, but you'll get the point.

Audio Clip: Watch this guy here. Look, he's hugging his kid. And you know, I imagine it's uncomfortable and traumatic for the people here, but again, careful, it's very slippery right here. It's uncomfortable and traumatic for the people here, but that's what, really careful please, really slippery, not kidding. That's what protesting is about.

Logan Sekulow: That's what protesting is about. He says it's uncomfortable and traumatic. They're creating trauma and he says that's what protesting is about. No, it's not about going into a church and causing trauma in young children. That's why one of the reasons, not just because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we're going to have Alveda King on at the end.

You look at the civil rights movement. Was it hostile? Were there a lot of intense moments? Was there violence? Obviously. It ended in the tragic death of Martin Luther King Jr. However, his goal was to bring people together, was to actually change hearts and minds within the church, within the community, and to actually bring people, to give them something new to hopefully hold on to, to show them the truth.

What we have here now is Don Lemon saying the reason people are protesting is to make you uncomfortable, to make kids traumatized. That should not be the goal of a protester. The goal of a protester should be to protest the issue and hopefully make change, make an impact. You can agree with what ICE is doing, you can disagree with what ICE is doing. You can agree with President Trump, you can agree with Tim Walz. I don't really care.

Jordan Sekulow: You can protest peacefully, too. That can also mean violating the law. It often does. It means like you could be blocking the street. It can mean having a march that's not sanctioned, that doesn't have it, that wasn't approved. How many of our ACLJ clients were breaking the law, and the reason the ACLJ got involved was to help change the law because the law was incorrect. So you know what? When there is that statement of people going, well they should just obey the law, that's what it is. Sometimes in protesting, that is not the case.

But does it mean essentially threatening a house of worship? Does it mean causing just chaos? It feels like there's no win in sight. There's no win for the people who are against ICE, there's no win for the people that are pro-ICE. There's not a middle ground at all. We're going to discuss this coming up more. I want to hear from you. We're also going to hear from Jeff Ballabon, who runs ACLJ Jerusalem. Another interesting moment that you're not going to want to miss. A revelation in the anti-semitic tropes that have come out of Israel. This one coming out of the autobiography of Josh Shapiro. You're not going to want to miss that. Of course, you remember he was being vetted to potentially be the vice presidential candidate instead of Tim Walz. Probably would have been a better choice looking at it now. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back with more on Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take some more phone calls coming up at 1-800-684-3110. We're going to divert a little bit off the main topic of what's going on in Minnesota and of course that church protest that turned into chaos. We've been talking about it for a few segments. We're going to continue to talk about it, but now we want to pivot over to Jeff Ballabon from ACLJ Jerusalem.

Jordan Sekulow: That's right. We're going to give kind of this crazy update that came out of the weekend as we saw this was reported by the New York Times, that Josh Shapiro, that is the Governor of Pennsylvania who was vetted to be the running mate of Kamala Harris in 2024. He revealed in his book, which is called "Where We Keep the Light," that he was asked in this vetting process if he had ever been a double agent for Israel.

Obviously, the only reason he's asked that is because he is Jewish. He is the sitting Governor of a state, but they ask him, have you ever been a double agent? And he responded to the individual who was doing the vetting, "That's offensive. You're asking me, I'm the Governor of Pennsylvania, if I'm a double agent." And then they said, "Well, we have to ask," as if that's a thing that you just have to do. Then they continued, they wouldn't let it go. They said, "Well, have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?" to which he responds, "If they were undercover, how would I have known?"

Logan Sekulow: When you think about that, Jeff, I mean we know one of the things that leaked out when they were deciding on whether Josh Shapiro would be the Democratic vice presidential running mate was he might just be too Jewish for this position. That is what came up. That is some of the talking points that were happening. They were laughed at a little bit, but what's clear out of his book from himself, that was absolutely true.

Jeff Ballabon: Absolutely. They tried to deny it. This really first came up because CNN speculated that maybe Shapiro couldn't do it just because he had a Jewish name and he was a Jew, and that was enough to make him persona non grata for a candidate for national office.

It looks like it's even deeper and worse than that. It's not even just pandering to a base. It seems as though the people surrounding the presidential candidate for the Democrats, the people in that campaign with full knowledge decided to explore whether someone, just because he's a Jew, is some kind of a dual agent for another country. They didn't seem to have the same problem with who ended up being the vice presidential candidate with Walz, who was paid by China dozens of times and went over to China, which was actually an enemy of our country. They didn't seem to have that problem. But when it came to this guy, because he's a Jew, Governor Shapiro, they hammered on whether he is a foreign agent. It's outrageous.

Logan Sekulow: Jeff, I think as we see what happened in Minnesota last night with protesters storming a house of worship, we've seen attacks on synagogues, we have seen an attack and an arson attack on this Governor of Pennsylvania because he is Jewish for no other reason. The fact that the Harris campaign would, in this, and it's not as if this was like a public polling question like, "Do you think that he could be a dual agent?" which would be disgusting enough as it is. But this is their private communication with him, vetting him.

This is what they think are the questions that are going to inform them whether or not he's the best fit to run with her. First of all, if you have ever thought, "I'm going to go directly ask someone if you're a double agent and they're going to give me a straight answer," the absurdity of that as it is. But the fact that they're buying a disgusting trope, a disgusting anti-semitic trope that could spread everywhere on the worst parts of the internet. That is what the Kamala Harris campaign was. They were willing to go and ask someone just because they're Jewish, "Do you have dual loyalty? Are you a double agent?" like it's some James Bond spy movie and he's going to go, "Yep, you got me. Dual agent for Israel. I can't be your vice president." Maybe they should have spent more time asking real questions about policy or fraud in your state. How have you handled waste, fraud, and abuse? And they wouldn't have ended up with Tim Walz. But instead, this is where we are.

Jeff Ballabon: It ties very much into a cultural moment in the United States that you just talked about in the last segment, which is things seem to be coming apart in ways that are very frightening and very dangerous. Famously, the phrase is that the Jews of any country are the canary in the coal mine. The coal miners would take down a small bird and if there was some kind of a gas emanating that was dangerous to them, first the bird would die; they'd know to run. That's what that phrase means.

The idea is that when a country turns against its Jews, it's a sign that the whole country's about to collapse. That is actually a moment of danger when you have people knowing not much else running in and storming into churches, yelling and no one's listening. When you have media commentators not understanding the First Amendment and sort of standing by these people protesting. This is a similar cultural moment. These aren't random people charging into a church. These are well-vetted, probably there were a bunch of lawyers who looked at this, the people on the team reviewing this asking these questions of a governor, a sitting governor. By the way, you're also not allowed to discriminate against somebody based on religion for public office; that's also pretty constitutional fact as well. And yet, this wasn't street people. These are people in the campaign who are actually asking this question and it's really much about the cultural moment where someone just because he's a Jew.

Listen, I've shared this. I mean, I wear a yarmulke so people all the time in Washington, not always enemies, sometimes friends, they're not thinking and they'll talk to me when I go to Washington about my government, my country, or my Prime Minister. Well, let me tell you something. My government, United States of America. My country, United States of America. And I don't have a Prime Minister because I've never been anything but an American. I'm a Jew, but this notion that it's pervasive, but you'd think that smart people would know better. The fact the campaign took it after him, you could see that Governor Shapiro was incensed, was infuriated. He included it here and he's right to be infuriated and we are right to be concerned that this is what's happening in America.

Jordan Sekulow: We see the rise of really hateful anti-semitism both on the left, but now we're seeing it on the right as well. Unfortunately, you can say it's kind of in the shadows of the right, but it is moving in a direction that we've called out a number of times before. But Jeff, it goes back to the dual loyalty issue that has always been an anti-semitic trope in the Western world since the foundation of Israel, which is that if you happen to be Jewish, even if you're an American, even if you're the Governor of a state being vetted to be Vice President of the United States, you've got to be asked these questions because you might not be fully loyal to the United States of America.

Jeff Ballabon: It's eerie. If you think when's the first time we see this? When Pharaoh turns against the Jewish people. Joseph literally saved his country. He literally saved the Egyptians. He was more than the equivalent of the Vice President; he ran the country. And yet, they turned against their Jews and said, "Oh, we're suspicious. Maybe they're going to join our enemies." There was no basis for it then. There's no basis for it thousands of years later.

But when it happens, it's a terrible sign and we need to, the only way to fight that, and you're right, Jordan, we have been raising this here on Sekulow. The only way to fight that is not through anger and resentment and conspiracy theories. It's by returning to what America was meant to be, which is freedom and tolerance and understanding each one of us our human rights are inviolable. They're inalienable because they come from God.

Logan Sekulow: Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today. I know it wasn't in the plans and I appreciate you popping on because what was going on with that one specifically is absurd. But obviously what's happening also in Minnesota as you said, it doesn't feel like America. It feels like we're at this boiling point, this part that's going to break.

How about a nightclub having to put out a statement apologizing to the city with the third-largest Jewish population because they played a song called "Heil Hitler" with Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate this weekend in attendance at a huge nightclub. This is where we're headed here. This is what I am saying. There's got to be this big change that has to happen. I don't know how we get there, but I want to see it and I'm going to pray for it and I'm going to promote it as much as we can because this can't be what we're living in every day. We have the second half-hour coming up. Find us broadcasting live right now at ACLJ.org. However you get your podcast, YouTube, Rumble, we're there. We'll be right back with the second half-hour in less than a minute coming right up.