10/18/2026
Kirk Bangstad here, owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company.
All of this was avoidable, but here were are.
Trump is all but certain to disrupt our elections in two weeks, but Democrats in power refused to talk about election protection for the last two years—claiming to not want to dampen voter turnout.
I won’t waste one more keystroke on all the Wisconsin politicians, political non profits, and lawyers I contacted to come up with a public plan to avoid the inevitable—because browbeating self-interested, siloed group-think won’t change what’s coming.
Instead, here’s my main message for the day:
I’m no longer confident that your mail-in ballots will get counted because a small army of armed mercenaries have surrounded blue city post offices. Because of this fear, I encourage all Democrats to vote early but in a way that avoids the US Postal Service.
Was that alarming enough for you? Because it should be.
Nearly 1,000 armed security officers (ASOs) have been deployed in at least 55 USPS facilities through a private contractor, multinational security firm Prosegur, which has a history of alleged human rights abuses and price fixing, according to a recent Raw Story investigation.
These ASOs are located at USPS facilities coast-to-coast in places like Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Diego and Tampa.
During the Up North Podcast last Thursday (at 1 pm weekly), I spoke with Alexandria Jacobsen, the investigative reporter that’s been breaking these stories. You can check these clips on our Substack post today, because if I play them here, Zuckerberg throttles us.
Now, given the fact that the Minocqua Brewing Company Times is barely a legitimate news outlet, I can’t believe we’re one of the few platforms talking about this outside of The Raw Story, The New Republic, and Thom Hartmann —where I first heard about Alexandria’s reporting.
To me, it’s absolutely clear that if enough mail-in ballots are “disrupted” by private armed security guards in blue cities, where most of our Democratic Congressional districts are located, Trump will be able to claim those Democratic victories are in dispute and not seat their new majority on January 3rd.
So if you’re reading this and live in a blue state with a Democratic Governor, please call and ask him/her to activate your state’s National Guard to shut down these mercenaries who don’t answer to your states’ election officials, before they can mess with your mail-in ballots. And yes, at this point, it seems reasonable to suggest that if you live in a large blue city, you’d be better off figuring out a way to vote early and in person, instead of voting through the United States Postal Service.
Now let’s talk about what happens after November 3rd. I spoke with Anita from , a wonderful group of progressives organizing to protect our elections in D.C., Again, go to the our substack for clips of that conversation, but here was the gist.
--Trump will disrupt elections on November 3rd, claiming all Democratic victories were rigged.
--Lawsuits will be filed and mass protests will occur in between November 3rd and January 3rd, but none of this work will guarantee a peaceful transition of power.
--Trump won’t allow Democrats to be seated on January 3rd, rendering Congress useless, and will attempt to install himself as a dictator.
So how do we stop this from happening?
We occupy Washington DC and every major airport in this country until the next Congress is seated.
We must fill DC with so many people that every person in the executive branch will have to move heaven and earth to get around. We must grind the federal government to a halt until a new Congress is seated, just like they did during the non-violent Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution in 1989.
Next, we must organize to block some other crucial part of the economy to apply pressure to the regime to seat the new Democratic congressional majority. The best idea I’ve heard yet is for Americans to occupy every major airport in the country so that air traffic controllers are unable to come to work. If we stop all air traffic in this country, our economy will reach a breaking point, and something would have to give.
As crazy as all of this sounds, I believe it all will happen, and have been predicting this outcome since Trump was elected in 2024. To expect any other outcome, given Trump’s track record from January 6th, 2021, is to hide one’s head in the sand.
While predicting the inevitable, I spent the last two years building an economic collective of progressive companies designed to help Americans direct their money towards those who will support Democracy, and away from companies who will help Trump install a dictatorship.
We're not where we need to be yet, but we’ve been working for the last 9 months to legally sell shares in the Minocqua Marketplace that will allow us to raise the funds needed to meet the moment. We’re almost finished getting past all the red tape, and I’ll hopefully be able to announce our launch very soon.
Unfortunately, my passion to figure out a way to fund the Resistance through the sale of progressive products won’t solve the near-term chaos we’re about to experience. Only mass mobilization, occupation, and courageous leadership from trusted organizers, governors, attorney’s general, generals, lawyers, and judges will be able to peacefully hand power over to the next Congress. That being said, my company will do whatever we can to assist in those efforts.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we must meet the moment and stand strong through the ensuing chaos, one b**r at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace
Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times
