Posted on 01/20/2026 12:16:26 PM PST by Morgana
On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) said that when people find out “someone that’s supposed to be speaking for the community in church” is “a federal agent that is running ICE in their communities, they have the right to go in there.” “Churches have always been an open door,” and the people who barged into a church in St. Paul over the weekend weren’t violent.
Host Jim Sciutto asked, “Do you believe it was a step too far for protesters to go into a church?”
Grijalva answered, “I don’t. I don’t. I think that when they find out that someone that’s supposed to be speaking for the community in church is found out to be an ICE
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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According to the report, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D‑AZ) argued on CNN that:
Churches are “open door.”
Protesters had a “right to go in” to the St. Paul church where an ICE official was speaking.
She framed it as justified because the speaker was “someone that’s supposed to be speaking for the community” but was actually “a federal agent running ICE.”
She also claimed the protesters were not violent.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto pressed her directly:
“Do you believe it was a step too far for protesters to go into a church?”
She answered:
“I don’t. I don’t.”
The Free Republic thread is overwhelmingly critical of her position. The commenters argue:
Churches are private property, not public forums.
Disrupting a worship service is illegal, regardless of political motive.
The FACE Act (18 U.S.C. § 248) protects houses of worship from threats, intimidation, and interference.
Many note the double standard: if protesters stormed a mosque, synagogue, or Capitol, the reaction would be very different.
Several emphasize that “open door” does not mean “open season.”
The thread cites the FACE Act, which:
Prohibits force, threats, intimidation, or interference at places of religious worship.
Carries penalties up to 11 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for violent conduct.
The commenters argue that barging into a service to disrupt it would fall under “interference.”
Grijalva is making a political argument about transparency and protest rights. The critics are making a legal argument about private property and protected worship.
Those two frameworks don’t overlap neatly.
If you want, I can also map out:
what the First Amendment actually protects in a church setting
how the FACE Act applies in real cases
or how courts distinguish protest, trespass, and interference with worship
ouch!
“It’s not going too far, not like going into a Taco Bell and arresting all the Latinos.”
I’m a Vikings fan... I fully understand.
‘ I’m a Vikings fan... I fully understand.’
Condolences
It is a fact now that wherever such misbehaved violent "protesters" approach a church in any of the many states that now permit adult citizens to carry concealed deadly weapons, it will be quite likely that they will find one or more armed persons there in that property attending services.
Terrorism has its costs, and this is one of them: unfamiliar miscreants will be assumed to be terrorists until proven otherwise, and anyone intending to disturb the meetings should take this into very serious account.
Exactly.
Let a group of off duty ICE agents show up at her office with bullhorns and nightsticks and thump her and her associates in the head; maybe that will knock a little sense into their heads but that is no guarantee.
Let a large group of ICE agents show up with bullhorns and nightsticks, make a lot of noise and disrupt the service
It is WAY past time for the left to be repaid in kind.
My church has armed security guards in the vestibule and I would not be surprised if some of the members are CCW.
I know... If whatever shreds of masochism attached to my personality had a color... It’d be purple.
The fan motto is: “There’s always next year...”
Gee, like the open door some J6 people went through?
copilot: You’re tapping into something real — not in the conspiratorial sense, but in the structural sense. The feeling that “everything is breaking down” often comes less from what’s happening on the ground and more from how the information is framed, filtered, and amplified.
Let’s unpack this without heat, without slogans, and without pretending the media landscape is neutral.
Not because of a coordinated plot, but because of incentives:
Outrage drives clicks
Fear keeps people watching
Conflict is easier to package than nuance
Social media rewards the most extreme framing
Newsrooms chase the narratives their audiences already expect
This creates parallel realities, not a shared one.
In ’92, the fog lifted when the riot ended. Today, the fog is continuous:
partial facts
viral clips without context
selective reporting
emotionally charged headlines
commentary masquerading as news
It’s not that the media lies about everything — it’s that they curate reality.
And curation is a form of power.
When every story is framed as:
collapse
extremism
crisis
existential threat
…your nervous system starts mapping the world as if it’s Koreatown ’92 every day.
But the actual indicators of civil order — courts, utilities, emergency services, supply chains, governance — are still functioning.
Strained? Yes. Collapsing? No.
When one side of the media ecosystem:
excuses certain protests
downplays certain violence
amplifies certain grievances
ignores certain victims
…it creates a tilted field of perception.
People start believing:
“My side is always under attack.”
“Their side gets away with everything.”
“Institutions only protect them.”
That’s how societies lose trust long before they lose order.
You’re not wrong that the coverage is skewed. You’re not wrong that it shapes how people interpret events. You’re not wrong that it creates a sense of unraveling.
But the breakdown of civil order isn’t happening in the streets first. It happens in the information layer — the layer that tells people what the streets mean.
That’s where the real fracture is.
Why ‘fans’ continue, like Charlie Brown, to pay vast amounts of money and time to see something that allows only 1/2 of their ‘teams’ being ‘WINNERS!!!’ each year is beyond me.
This is the way of the Left. They want the ability to arrest opponents of their erotic liberty activism under federal hate crimes laws if the pastor preaches against sexual perversions. They want the ability to attack our Governor inside church. The totalitarians of the Left have decided the power belongs to them forever.
I would love to see them try that on a Friday when they have their largest crowd.
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