Jake Lang — a racist and anti-LGBTQ+ Republican former candidate for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat who was jailed for allegedly assaulting Capitol Police officers during the January 6, 2021, riots — held a hate rally outside of City Hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during which he held up a sign that said, “Jake Lang loves Black people but hates [n-words].” Before he left, a counterprotester dressed as Spider-Man punched him in the face, and the punch was clearly captured on video. Lang was arrested soon after.
Lang’s rally was reportedly in response to 37-year-old white woman Shiloh Hendrix being found guilty of disorderly conduct after calling an autistic 8-year-old Black boy the racial slur at a playground in the Minnesotan city of Rochester. Lang appeared at City Hall on Saturday around 11:50 am in the back of a truck, protected by guards and Minneapolis Police and followed by an additional SUV, Newsweek reported.
The rally devolved into violence as counterprotestors attacked Lang and his crew, forcing them to flee City Hall after barely being there for six minutes. Shortly after their escape, police arrested Lang and charged him with inciting a riot; police also impounded the truck and SUV that Lang brought to City Hall.
Police also arrested the man in the Spider-Man costume, later identified as William Nicholas Love, along with 10 others. A GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign for Love’s legal defense has nearly raised all of its $70,000 goal as of Tuesday morning. He has been charged with assault. Meanwhile, Lang remains in jail without bond.
For future history books:Spider-Man punches Republican Christian nationalist racist Trump-pardoned Jan 6er pos Jake Lang.
In that incident, Lang had promised to lead a march through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood (which has Minneapolis’ highest concentration of Somali-American residents) before burning a Quran on the steps of City Hall. But he reportedly didn’t get to do either because the counter-protestors — who outnumbered the 10 attendees at Lang’s event — cornered him outside City Hall before attacking him and chasing him away.
The anti-racist counterprotestors threw objects and water balloons at Lang before a 30-year-old Black Minneapolis resident named Isaiah Blackwell helped Lang escape.
Trump pardoned Lang after he had served four years in prison for attacking a U.S. Capitol police officer during the January 6, 2021, riots.
The U.S. military is experiencing a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe largely driven by President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, a U.S. defense official in Europe and a NATO official told The Associated Press, raising concerns about vulnerabilities in NATO countries to a potential Russian attack.
The U.S. defense official said the most concerning shortfall involves Patriot missile interceptors, which can shoot down Russia’s high-speed ballistic missiles. The NATO official confirmed the low inventories of Patriots among American and NATO forces in Europe. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.
In the event of a Russian ballistic missile assault on, for example, a military headquarters or power plant, NATO could be in a similar position to Patriot-starved Ukraine and be forced “to take punch after punch in the mouth,” the U.S. defense official said.
Smoke rises above warehouse stores after a Russian air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In Europe, the American military “definitely” does not have enough Patriots to stop any possible sustained ballistic missile attack and would have “very limited” capability to defend against a single ballistic missile strike or a stray Russian missile that goes off course, the U.S. official said.
Smoke rises above warehouse stores behind a sunflower field following a Russian air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
US Patriot transfers to Ukraine played a role in the drawdown, but the Iran war wasn’t expected
U.S. Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, a senior NATO military spokesperson, said it is “simply not the case” that the number of Patriot missiles in Europe is beyond critical.
NATO, he said, is able to “block punches” and has enough air defense munitions available to defend itself as well as to donate to Ukraine.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Thursday that claims of U.S. munition shortages “are false.”
“We have everything required to strike at the time and place of the President’s choosing,” Parnell said. “Across multiple combatant commands, we have already executed successful operations while maintaining a deep, ready arsenal to defend our people and our interests.”
Officials in Ukraine, however, are begging for more Patriots to defend against Russian missile attacks, while previous U.S. transfers to Ukraine have drawn down some of the American supply of the interceptors.
Kyiv says only U.S.-made Patriots can stop Russia’s advanced ballistic missiles, which increasingly are getting through Ukrainian defenses, including as part of a barrage overnight into Thursday.
The U.S. supplied hundreds of Patriot missiles to Ukraine over the course of the 4 1/2-year-long conflict, but the Iran war was the tipping point for shrinking inventories, said Ed Arnold, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a military think tank in London.
The supply to Ukraine was planned for and reasonably measured, he said, whereas stocks in the Middle East have been unexpectedly and quickly drained, exposing supply chain constraints.
The U.S. military in Europe also is grappling with critical shortages of the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, a medium-range ballistic missile designed to strike behind enemy lines, the two officials said. But the overall munitions picture in Europe is less dire than on air defenses alone because some European militaries have their own offensive missiles, such as the Taurus and Storm Shadow, which are both long-range air-launched bunker-busting missiles.
Europe has few alternatives while stocks are low
The dearth of Patriot interceptors in Europe would leave few alternatives for shooting down Russia’s more advanced ballistic missiles, which can be combined with swarms of inexpensive drones to overwhelm defenses, experts say.
Ukraine and some allies already use systems that can destroy slower-moving drones without expensive missiles. But ballistic missiles are a challenge because they dive steeply toward targets at more than five times the speed of sound, leaving little time to stop them.
The Patriot system tracks the missile, predicts its path and launches within minutes, all while carrying out complex calculations to ensure the interceptor finds its target. One Patriot battery can only cover a limited area: for example, a small military base but not a whole city.
One alternative could be France and Italy’s SAMP/T NG air defense system. France has promised to speed up the delivery of the system — the upgraded version of the current SAMP/T — to Ukraine, which the manufacturer says is better able to counter ballistics.
The new iteration, however, has not yet been battle tested and the current version of the SAMP/T has a smaller range than the Patriot.
While U.S. and European militaries have warships that can serve as mobile air defense, they may be too far from a target to protect it and could risk getting sunk.
Patriot stocks have plunged during the Iran war
Ukraine has received Patriots from American and European stockpiles since Russia’s 2022 invasion, with the U.S. providing about 600 of the interceptors during the Biden administration, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel who is now senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
But the greatest expenditure has been during the Iran conflict, which has used up 65% of U.S. Patriots, amounting to roughly 1,500 of the nation’s 2,330 interceptors, CSIS says. About 600 missiles, including those destined for Europe, should be made this year, with a production goal of 2,000 Patriot missiles a year set for 2030, Cancian said.
NATO says Europe’s first Patriot missile production facility is expected to open in Germany in September, with deliveries possibly beginning early next year. The first deliveries should go to countries that have already placed orders, including Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain, the U.S. defense official said.
But for now, that means some countries, such as Germany, have bought expensive Patriot systems but are in the “ridiculous” position of not having any ammunition to fire from them, said Arnold of the London think tank.
Germany’s defense ministry said it does not comment on stockpiles.
Russia also has limitations
Moscow likely cannot carry out a sustained air assault on a NATO target while it launches almost nightly attacks on Ukraine, Arnold said.
Hello folks! I’ve got big news : my newest book, “Sex Ed for Everyone”, is O U T!
“Sex Ed for Everyone : comics about relationships, identities and puberty” is exactly what it sounds like : two sarcastic queer and trans teenagers being sassy and somehow educational talking about sex education. I’m particularly excited about this book, as it is the type of content I would have needed as a queer and trans teenager. You can get it right here
Sorry but if you are obcessing over the genitalia of children, you are the same as those that used my little boy body for their pleasure. Let kids be themselves. Let them discover and explore who they are in their own time. Remember, they are constantly bombarded with cis straight inages, videos, and media. If that won’t turn them cis and straight, then trust that reading a book or watching a movie that had LGBTQ+ people in it did not turn the child either. They are born as they are feeling; accept it and cherish them. If you don’t, trust me abusers will. And the child won’t have a say in that at all. I have been there and lived that. Hugs
I desperately hope the below is a fake. But we have all seen the photos / pictures of her in his lap as a teen, and he himself has talked of wanting to … have sex with her. As an abuse survivor I hope she was not abused, but the reasonable thinking person I am says she clearly was. Hugs
Normally I color the paragraphs. I won’t do that for this post as I want the author’s words to stand on their own as the author intends them. The information is important. We have seen the rise of hate again after decades of forcing racism under the rocks it should have stayed under. But powerful people with money are doing everything possible to forment hate and bigotry to promote themselves as superior. We must fight against the idea and return to moving forward with equality and fairness in the world and the US. Hugs
As economic pressures gut local newsrooms across the country, white nationalist figures see an untapped opening: stepping into media deserts where there are few journalists left to sound the alarm.
“Local media has been dying all over America, which means that there’s essentially no real way to hold local governments accountable—and they can do whatever they want,” Kevin DeAnna told an invitation-only gathering of approximately 50 white nationalists in Rome.
Breaking into a broad smile, he excitedly added: “You should be fantasizing about this. This is a good thing.”
“And these are White people that are not voting. These are White people who are angry and who are radical and have no one talking to them.”
According to the most recent report from the Northwestern University’s Medill School, the “steady, unrelenting decline of local newspapers … is leading to an ever-rising number of news deserts, now 213 counties.”
That collapse of local press coverage in rural America creates a dangerous vacuum—one that allows extremist networks to operate without accountability.
Filling that void is precisely why I launched ConfrontTheHate.com.
‘Pitch to a Billionaire’
DeAnna’s remarks were part of a “Pitch to a Billionaire” panel during the Rome retreat that focused on how white nationalists could solicit funding from the world’s wealthiest people.
“DeAnna’s work under the pseudonym ‘Gregory Hood’ drew upon foundational white nationalist and neo-Nazi texts that have inspired numerous acts of domestic terrorism,” SPLC senior researcher Hannah Gais wrote.
For the panel discussion, DeAnna proposed that “the single most effective way to build political power with the least investment would be to start a political action committee and get-out-the-vote effort for White rural voters.”
Rural areas have an outsized political influence in America, he asserted, and “it requires very little money and very little turnout to win a lot of these elections.”
Embracing the widely discredited “constitutional sheriffs” notion that county sheriffs have enormous power to nullify federal and state laws, DeAnna pushed for a focus on electing sheriffs who would take the law into their own hands.
He argued:
“I think you could take over a whole county with ten people. It would not take much…. Ten people who have some idea how to campaign, and we’re talking unlocking tens of millions of dollars, jobs for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people, real state authority, real law enforcement power, setting up a fortress that leftists can’t even go into without losing everything.”
Other billionaire pitches
Jared Taylor, David Zsutty, Kevin DeAnna (Photo: Screenshot, Counter Currents)
Among those joining DeAnna for the discussion was Jared Taylor, who publishes the American Renaissance website and hosts an annual gathering of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other extremists at a Tennessee state park.
“If you are the defendant, whether it be in a civil or criminal case, you have already lost—the only question is how much,” Zsutty said.
“Even if you recover attorney fees, which are usually quite substantial, you will never recover the lost time, stress, and effort.”
Counter Currents editor Greg Johnson has described the annual gathering as “private, invitation-only retreats for our writers, donors, and friends” to “foster real-world fellowships and collaborations.”
This year’s retreat took place inside the Rome headquarters of CasaPound, a prominent Italian neo-fascist group that Johnson himself characterized as a “militant organization.”
It is not clear who funds these gatherings.
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Daniel Villarreal (he/him)August 25, 2026, 11:30 am EDT
Jared Taylor, David Zsutty, Kevin DeAnna (Photo: Screenshot, Counter Currents)
