Man Drives Truck Through No Kings Protest, Hits Woman, and Speeds Away

As an estimated seven million people across 2,700 municipalities peacefully demonstrated against the Trump administration at No Kings events Saturday, reports of violence have thus far been scant—except for some instances in which apparent MAGA agitators targeted the pro-democracy protesters.

One notable incident came out of Jackson Township, Ohio, where a No Kings participant’s leg was injured in a hit-and-run. Witnesses told local outlets that a man driving a white pickup truck deliberately veered onto grass where protesters were seated, hitting a 53-year-old woman, before speeding off.

“It was definitely on purpose,” said one witness in The Canton Repository. “He went up on the curb. She took a direct hit. It could have been a lot worse. She put her fist in the air and said ‘I’m all right,’ but I think she might have broken her leg.”

“He drove up the curb trying to scare us, and we all jumped back,” another witness told an independent local reporter. “Unfortunately, a woman standing close to me was hit.”

The protest continued, and local authorities are reportedly investigating the incident.

In Kent, Ohio—a 40-minute drive from Jackson Township—an alleged Trump supporter was arrested by local police after reportedly shoving a woman.

The man was initially seized by a local city councilman, Jeff Clapper, and a group of other No Kings protesters who had witnessed the incident and heard the man was in possession of a firearm.

On social media, a Kent resident, who captured a photo of the man being held down, called him “a belligerent Trump agitator.” Clapper told the Akron Beacon Journal that he heard the individual was a Trump supporter but emphasized that politics had “no bearing” on his actions, which were simply a reaction to seeing somebody “push a woman.”

At a No Kings event in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a man in a Jeep adorned with Trump flags reportedly brandished a firearm at protesters. He was subsequently taken into custody by local police.*

So, while Republican lawmakers spent the days leading up to No Kings fearmongering about the protesters themselves, early reports show that MAGA troublemakers were responsible for rare instances of violence on the mass day of protest.

* This story originally misstated the state Wilkes-Barre is located in.

Speaker Mike Johnson justified President Trump’s disgusting AI video of him dumping feces on No Kings protesters by falsely claiming that the protesters were calling for political murder.

“Speaker Johnson, you say that the Democrats had a ‘Hate America’ rally, but what does it say that the president of the United States over the weekend released a video of him pooping on the American people?” The Independent’s Eric Garcia asked Johnson at his Monday press conference.

Johnson chuckled. “The president uses social media to make a point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that. He is using satire to make a point,” Johnson replied. “He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents, and that’s what these people are doing.”

What the GOP claims was a “Hate America” rally was incredibly peaceful, as attendees and organizers alike made a point to denounce political violence of any kind. In the days leading up to the event, Johnson accused the event of being a haven for “pro-Hamas supporters,” “antifa types,” and “Marxists,” while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer went one step further and called it an event for the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party. And if Johnson’s comments on Monday are any proof, Republicans are still staunchly committed to pushing those lies.

“The politics, the spectacle, is what the mobs, the crowds, the rallies this week were all about,” Johnson continued. “The irony was very glaring. They called it the ‘No Kings’ rally. But the great irony of course … if President Trump was a king, the government would be open. If President Trump was a king, he would’ve closed the nationals parks and the National Mall so they couldn’t have had the rally out here.”

What exactly does Johnson think millions of people across America were doing on Saturday? That they were all paid by George Soros to be there? That they’re all just crazed Marxists who don’t know how good they have it under Trump? This is yet another example of Republicans trying to convince their voters, themselves, and anyone who listens that everything is fine, and that Trump isn’t wildly overreaching in his executive power as he continues to send the military into American cities while siccing his secret police on anyone he doesn’t like. But in Johnson’s eyes, it’s the people that are crazy, not him.

President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to suspend all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for roughly 42 million Americans amid the ongoing government shutdown—and he may not bring them back.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a letter to states warning that a lapse in appropriations had resulted in “insufficient funds” to pay SNAP benefits through November. Over the weekend, states began to issue warnings to their most vulnerable residents that benefits would be suspended even sooner, Axios reported Monday.

In West Virginia, the Department of Human Services released a statement saying that the USDA had directed it to “delay the issuance of October 2025 SNAP benefits approved on or after October 16, 2025.”

The state had been notified that it was “very likely” that November benefits would also be delayed, if Congress failed to act “within the coming days,” the statement said.

In Pennsylvania, the Department of Human Services announced Friday that SNAP benefits would not be paid starting October 16 “until the federal government shutdown ends and funds are released to PA.”

“Because Republicans in Washington D.C., failed to pass a federal budget, causing the federal government shutdown, November 2025 SNAP benefits cannot be paid,” Pennsylvania’s statement said.

Texas, Minnesota, and Illinois also issued warnings about the pending halt to SNAP, Axios reported.

Amid his cost-cutting spree, Trump has moved to hold critical nutrition assistance hostage—and like every other federal program he’s threatened, SNAP is a hostage he’s more than happy to kill. Last week, Trump said that he planned to cut some “Democrat programs” and warned that they were “never going to come back in many cases.”

As with every other federal program Trump’s moved to permanently eliminate, he is not authorized to do so, because SNAP was created and funded by Congress. But that certainly hasn’t stopped him before.

The USDA is already rushing to implement new restrictions to SNAP benefits, as outlined in Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” which was passed in July. Trump’s behemoth budget law slashed exemptions to the program’s work requirements by lowering the age of dependent children to 14, raising the age of the work requirement to 64, and ending the exemptions for veterans, homeless people, and young adults out of foster care. Earlier this month, USDA instructed states to implement new guidelines by November 1.

Millions of Americans exercised their First Amendment rights on Saturday, turning out in the largest single-day protest in U.S. history to reject Donald Trump’s monarch-like grip on the federal government. But some leaders in Washington were unimpressed by the enormous display of dissent.

Speaking with reporters Monday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson condemned the rhetoric of the protests, falsely claiming that the No Kings protesters advocate for violence against political officials.

“Congratulations, they didn’t burn any buildings down. That’s a big achievement for the left, to have some kind of gathering where they don’t have looting and rioting and burn a building down,” Johnson said.

By and large, the multi-month protest series has advocated for Americans’ First Amendment rights and rejected Trump’s agenda. Signage related to the event has emphasized the fight for democracy and against dictatorships. In the same political vein, No Kings participants have used their enormous visual footprint to fight against ICE’s unchecked authority, turn out for universal health care, condemn the release of disgraced former Representative George Santos, and raise national awareness to the rise of American fascism.

Somewhere between five and eight million people participated in the nationwide protest over the weekend, and it was remarkably peaceful. Organizers said that more than 2,500 individual events had been planned across the country for Saturday. Despite premature mobilizations of the National Guard in red states such as Virginia and Texas, there was no violence.

As evidence: One of the nation’s largest gatherings in New York City, which amassed some 100,000 people, according to estimates, resulted in zero protest-related arrests by the New York City Police Department.

Still, Republican leadership interpreted the event as an all out assault on the president’s life.

“Over and over again, you could see signs like ‘86-47,’” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, referring to an old restaurant term that means to nix an item off the menu. “I think everybody knows what that’s about. Multiple signs like that, advocating for the death of our president.”

Johnson was similarly unwilling to celebrate or even highlight the crowd control achievement. Instead, he fired paltry rhetorical shots at Portland, which has seen anti-ICE protesters dance and dress up in inflatable frog costumes since Trump directed the National Guard to the hipster paradise.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer was even more vocal about his party’s contempt for the anti-Trump demonstration. Speaking at the same conference, Emmer falsely claimed that protests were the fruit of an alliance between establishment Democrats and domestic terrorists.

“It’s pure partisan politics in a desperate attempt to score points with the radical, pro-terrorist wing of their party,” Emmer said. “Now that their Hate America Rally is over, I hope that at least five Senate Democrats will finally do the right and responsible thing by breaking ranks with Chuck Schumer, passing our clean C.R., and reopening the government.”

Meanwhile, political violence has proved to be a phenomenon that persists in and defies both major parties, failing to fall neatly into a convenient, sellable narrative that can be repackaged for voters or donors. In truth, recent spikes in political violence have harmed both public figures (Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman) and regular Americans alike.

The only common denominator amongst all recent political violence is wide public access to guns, a detail that sets the U.S. far apart from the rest of the developed world.

Donald Trump on Sunday admitted, once again, that he is treating the ongoing government shutdown as a revenge tour against Democrats, boasting about impeding federal funds for a crucial transit route in the New York metropolitan area.

On day one of the shutdown, White House budget director Russell Vought announced that he would withhold funds for the Hudson Tunnel project, a plan to expand service along the country’s busiest rail route via new and improved rail tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey.

Vought said the freeze was to ensure the funds were not used for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. But the president’s comments reveal “DEI” to have been a fig leaf, with the move actually meant to hurt Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has long pushed for the project.

Making this ulterior motive not-so-ulterior, Trump last week said: “The project in New York, it’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated. Tell him it’s terminated.”

On Sunday, the president continued to make clear that he’s using the shutdown to exact revenge on Democrats, particularly vis-à-vis the Hudson Tunnel project.

“As of now, it’s terminated,” Trump said of the project while aboard Air Force One. “And that’s up to me. And as of now it’s terminated, and it’s terminated because the Democrats are so foolish, what they’ve done to the country.”

It’s a damning sound bite. While Trump’s intended target is clearly Schumer, the real victims of the move are the hundreds of thousands of rail riders who commute daily across the Hudson River—not to mention the millions more adversely impacted by other cuts Trump has made during the shutdown to programs that he claims Democrats “like.”