Staff Reports
On January 17 in Minneapolis a small group of pro-ICE, pro-enforcement activists led by online conservative organizer Jake Lang was chased off near City Hall by hundreds of anti-ICE counterprotesters, a chaotic scene that left Lang bloodied and claiming he had been stabbed during the melee. Local and international reporting confirms the clash and notes that Lang posted on social media saying his protective vest had stopped a stabbing, though Reuters could not independently verify the claim and the police had not filed an official report at the time.
Jake Lang is no anonymous parishioner; he is a nationally visible conservative activist who was pardoned after his role in the January 6 events and now courts controversy with anti-immigration stunts and inflammatory rhetoric. The facts matter: this was a confrontation he organized as a provocation to a neighborhood with many immigrant residents, making it a predictable magnet for the sort of hard-left counterprotesters who equate confrontation with moral virtue.
Video from the scene shows a disorderly, hostile crowd tossing water balloons and pushing into Lang’s small group while police largely held back, and footage captured Lang with visible injuries to the head as he tried to leave the area. Observers on multiple platforms reported scuffles and a sustained effort by counterprotesters to run the right-leaning demonstrators out of downtown, and while Lang insists he was stabbed his account remains something authorities were still sorting through amid the chaos.
Make no mistake: nothing excuses political violence or attempted murder, whether the target is an opponent on a livestream or a neighborhood resident. Yet modern left-wing mobs are increasingly comfortable with turning public space into theaters of intimidation, and Minneapolis has become a case study in how negligence and performative outrage invite disorder instead of solving it. The attackers here were part of a larger, organized anti-ICE movement in the city, not random bystanders, and elected leaders should answer for letting politics descend into street justice.
This story also exposes an ugly pattern in media coverage, where the person who is assaulted is immediately reduced to their worst accusation while the mob gets treated as a noble corrective. Conservative outlets and independent journalists are right to demand that police and federal authorities investigate aggressively and treat all victims of violence equally, not through a political filter that excuses the left’s lawlessness. Commentary outlets have rightly criticized the inconsistent outrage and the reflex to criminalize speech while tolerating organized physical intimidation.
Worse still, this came as Minnesota was already on edge after recent federal operations and a fatal encounter involving ICE agents, and the governor had mobilized the National Guard to try to keep a lid on the unrest — a clear sign that the situation has reached a dangerous tipping point. If authorities are serious about protecting free speech and public safety they must arrest offenders, enforce laws against assault, and stop treating violent mobs as political actors above the law.
Americans who believe in law and order should be furious, not bewildered, when political disagreements end in blood on our streets. This episode is a clarion call: stop normalizing mob violence, hold public officials accountable for keeping citizens safe, and defend the basic right of Americans to speak and assemble without fear of being chased, beaten, or worse.
