Ben Shapiro has responded after the Livingston City Commission shut down production on his Daily Wire banner’s ICE film “Pawn Shop,” which has since resumed filming. The political commentator slammed the decision as “content discrimination” and “a violation of the First Amendment.”

“Let us be clear: there’s only one reason the city commissioners ruled they were going to stop our production on the street: politics, pure and simple, and they pretty much admitted it,” Shapiro said. “One commissioner named Cindy Daniels said, quote, ‘I’m not willing to sacrifice the resources of the safety, the security of the mental health of our community. Absolutely not. This wasn’t a Hallmark film. This wasn’t, you know, Christmastime in Livingston, and it wasn’t a romantic story.’ Well, I mean, I wasn’t aware that we had to fulfill your idea of what the story required.”

He added, “In fact, I’m fairly certain the First Amendment says precisely the opposite of that. So they’re saying a Hallmark romance would have been totally fine. But a Daily Wire film about enforcement of immigration law loses that. That is content discrimination openly performed and a violation of the First Amendment.”

Permits were reinstated Monday night after a meeting with city officials.

Filming for “Pawn Shop” in Livingston, Mont., was shut down following a Special City Commission meeting on Saturday, during which locals complained about the production’s impact on the Livingston food bank and improper warnings about hazardous stunts. The Commission concluded the meeting with “a motion to immediately temporarily suspend Bonfire Pawn Shop LLC’s permit while seeking legal opinion from the city attorney in a timely manner to amend, suspend, or revoke the permit to come back to the commission not after 5 p.m. on Oct. 5th.”

Cast members for “Pawn Shop” include Myles Clohessy, Danny Trejo, Harvey Keitel, Henry Thomas, CJ Salvador, Noel Guglielmi, Paris Bravo, Joseph Lucero, Eddie Spears, Simon Rhee and Forrie J. Smith.
Michael Polish serves as director.

An official logline for the film reads: “When a Minneapolis riot forces a young ICE officer to complete a high-stakes arrest alone after his partner is killed, he is hunted through the streets by a furious mob intent on freeing the prisoner and punishing anyone who still upholds the law. Barricaded inside a neighborhood pawn shop with a hard-edged Hispanic veteran and the man’s progressive college-age grandson, ordinary men must choose between the rule of law and the chaos that wants to burn it all down in a modern siege of honor and defiance.”