Moms for Liberty, Wisconsin's Fascist Sheriffs, and the Insurrection Act

We're going after all of Wisconsin's bad guys

Hello friends,

This is Kirk Bangstad, owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company, and this is the second essay I’m writing this weekend.

Yesterday, I updated you on our continued war with Oneida County and the Town of Minocqua to simply exist in the town that bares our name.

Today, I’m going to recap our Super PAC’s efforts to keep the extremist group “Moms for Liberty” off of Wisconsin's school boards, give you the latest on our efforts to shine a light on Wisconsin's county sheriffs who are all-too-willingly working with ICE, and also foreshadow my worries about Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and what we need to do to protect ourselves in Wisconsin.

As a reminder, "Moms for Liberty" has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “far-right organization that engages in anti-student inclusion activities, opposes LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive school curriculum, and advocates book bans.”

We targeted 20 Moms for Liberty candidates in 11 school districts, and the results were a mixed bag. 11 of their candidates lost and 9 of them won. 6 of those wins were in Southeastern Wisconsin counties (Washington, Ozaukee, and Kenosha), which is where the M4L movement first took hold in Wisconsin.

While we’re proud that we helped stop 11 candidates from politicizing their school boards and harming children and teachers, we wish we could have stopped more and will work harder to do that in the next spring election.

Next up, the Wisconsin Examiner recently reported that 11 Wisconsin county sheriffs have now signed up for ICE’s Warrant Service Officer program, which authorizes sheriff’s deputies to serve immigration warrants against undocumented immigrants in the county jail. They quoted Tim Muth, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin, who said that these agreements were a method the Trump administration would use to find allies in its effort to deport millions of undocumented people.

“What they do indicate is which are the counties who have already raised their hands and said, ‘we are happy to assist with deporting people from the state,’ and I anticipate that the Trump administration is going to start with that list and say ‘we know who our allies are in the state of Wisconsin,’” Muth said. “Let’s see if one: We can get more allies signing these agreements, and, two: For the ones who already have, let’s see what we can do to get them more active in this area.”

To me, that means that these 11 sheriffs are “true believers” in Trump’s politics of retribution, and will ultimately do whatever he tells them to do. And what he tells them to do will most likely move beyond deporting immigrants and into helping other federal agencies harm progressive political activists, women, minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and non-Christians--basically everyone that doesn’t fit inside his regime's bigoted, Christian nationalist, and Fascist world view.

If you live in these 11 counties and want to monitor, document, and disseminate the abuses that these sheriffs will undoubtedly inflict on fellow Wisconsinites, please sign up and volunteer with us. We have now recruited over 500 citizen journalists to follow these MAGA sheriffs around, as well as attend private meetings where MAGA politicians say the darnedest things.

For example, Wisconsin's 7th District Congressman “Toxic Tom Tiffany” recently gave a speech behind closed doors where he threatened our judiciary, denied climate change, and mocked children. One of our volunteers snuck in and caught it all on tape, and we packaged it up in the following video that highlights his batshit-craziness.

Now for the gist of my essay today—Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act 90 days after his inauguration on January 20^th, which would land on Easter Sunday next week, April 20^th.

The Insurrection Act allows a U.S. President to move troops into American cities and actually wage war against U.S. citizens—a very dangerous scenario given that Trump has already shown that he will stop at nothing to silence his opposition.

After the huge success of the multiple “Hand’s Off” rallies across the country on April 5th, resistance groups started ringing alarm bells that Trump may use this tool to crack down on future protests.

Here's the playbook…

By invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying US military to border states in a conjured-up war against migrants, Trump will undoubtedly spark mass protests around the country. Extremist groups like the “Proud Boys” will be encouraged to instigate violence at these protests to create chaos, which the administration will then point to as evidence that drastic action is needed. Militias and police will be deployed, dissent will be criminalized, and arrests will begin- targeting journalists, activists, and political opponents. From there, the tactics may escalate: military occupation of opposition cities, suppression of independent media, censorship of the internet, and the restriction of movement through no-fly lists and revoked passports. Elections could be delayed, manipulated, or canceled entirely.

While this is an extreme scenario, I think that by now we should all be planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

In planning for the worst, I think there are three very important things that need to happen immediately.

1. Before April 20th, Governor Evers should declare that he will not let Trump deploy Wisconsin’s national guard against Wisconsin citizens. Under section 502(f)(2)(A) in Title 32 of the U.S. Code, the president or the secretary of defense may ask a governor to deploy National Guard troops, but the governor is under no obligation to acquiesce.

2. Since most large protests will either take place in our two largest and progressive cities, Madison and Milwaukee, we need the sheriffs of both of those counties to publicly announce that they will be on the lookout for agent provocateurs at future rallies and will work EXTRA HARD to differentiate between non-violent protesters and right-wing extremist groups looking to cause violence.

3. Every progressive organization involved in the wonderfully-successful “Hand’s Off” rallies needs to keep reminding their members that non-violent protests are the ONLY WAY to topple an autocratic regime. Any violence that erupts on our side will most assuredly be used against us down the road.

This week, we’ll be talking to many of the groups we’re working with in the emerging Wisconsin resistance movement and try to advance all three of these important steps, but I encourage anyone reading this email to contact Governor Evers and the Sheriffs of Dane and Milwaukee Counties today and ask them to do their part to prepare for Trump’s potential attempts to declare martial law in Wisconsin.

Contact Governor Evers
Contact Milwaukee County Sheriff
Contact Dane County Sheriff

That's all I have for you today, but I do want to make an ask.

We just hired two more part time organizers to staff the resistance nerve center in our Madison taproom. These two women will take some of the load off of Amy Thomas, our statewide organizer, who has been working around the clock with her volunteer team to not only process new volunteers, but organize and train them across the state while interfacing with other resistance groups, scheduling educational events, and cranking out citizen journalism videos.

We haven't raised the money to fully fund these new hires for an entire year, but we have raised enough to keep them going for a few more months. If you see the value in what we're doing, please chip in here to so we can keep up the pressure.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Together, we will keep gnawing on the ankles of Wisconsin's bad guys, one beer at a time.

Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC