Hi folks,

Kirk Bangstad here with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

In last night’s “Up North Podcast,” we spoke with Retired Army Colonel George Mason about the real reason that we are at war with Iran. He was emphatic that there was no American interests being served.

I urge you to watch the entire podcast above, but if you don’t have time, here are the main clips from last night’s show.

Mason agreed that disrupting oil flow to China, covering for the Epstein files, bribery from other middle-eastern countries, and a long-term attempt to use war to interfere with our own elections might be secondary benefits to Trump’s regime; but overall, he argued that Israel has co-opted our politicians and gotten us to use our military for their own country’s goals. Here’s the first clip:

Next, George debunked the long-held talking point by both Republicans and Democrats that the reason we’re at war with Iran is to deter a fanatical authoritarian theocracy from being able to use nuclear weapons against us. Why? We already crippled their nuclear capacity last June and haven’t attacked their nuclear sites yet in this current war. Here’s the clip:

Next, in answering the question of why Israel has been able to drag us into their war in the Middle East, it seems entirely possible that they have the same Epstein files that Pam Bondi’s DOJ is hiding, and they’re using those files to blackmail Trump and others in the Epstein class to fight this war for them.

Lastly, George ran through a 90-day timeline for when Congress could legally pull us out of this war using the War Powers Act. He concluded that even if Congress had the spine to pull us out, Trump wouldn’t leave and it would take a decision by the Supreme Court to force us out of Iran. He believed this timeline would happen by this summer, and that Iran’s probable goal was to simply keep fighting until then.

I concluded that I didn’t believe Congress or SCOTUS would remove the U.S. from Iran, and that Trump would use this “Endless War” as a reason to issue executive orders that disenfranchised millions of American voters in the upcoming elections. Here’s that clip:

Thanks for watching, and thanks for caring.

If you appreciate this weekly podcast, the daily essays from our crack team of writers, and the many live broadcasts we sprinkle in throughout the week to catch everyone up on the news, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Minocqua Brewing Company Times.

I’ll be back this Sunday to talk about the inevitability of Trump’s engaging in an all-out domestic war to stop our elections this fall, and what we must to do now to prepare for that inevitability.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hi Folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company. On last night’s “Up North Podcast;” Patti, Amy, and Senator Chris Larson joined me to talk about the fall of legacy media and what we need to do to get the truth in today’s propaganda-filled world.

I decided to talk about media on the show this week because I experienced something remarkable this month while raising $150K in a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Minocqua Marketplace (we just hit our goal yesterday and I’ll write about that on Sunday).

I enlisted the help of Mother Jones—a legacy progressive print magazine; traditional progressive media on radio; and a bunch of progressive influencers on social media to help me raise money for our new “Amazon for Progressives.” What I discovered was that progressive influencers—like the Woke Ginger, Steve Hofstetter, and Qasim Rashid, Esq.—were able to help me raise 10x more money than legacy progressive media (print and radio).

This was a huge “aha” moment for me, because this experience suggested that advertising may no longer work on older platforms like print and radio—even if they reach progressive audiences that overlap my own. If this is the case, then those platforms may not survive.

Here’s my intro to the show:

Before we talked about the future of political media and truth-telling, we discussed how corporate media has disintegrated since Trump’s first election prior to 2016. Senator Larson reminded us that “news” should be a public good and shouldn’t have to be funded by ads, and how the hunt for “clicks” has decimated journalistic integrity.

Next, I reminded the audience that what we’re doing today is not new. Independent progressive media was around during the first “Guilded Age” in the early 1900’s, but they were called “Muckrakers.” Muckrakers flourished because the “corporate media” at the time, William Randolph Hearst’s “yellow journalism,” couldn’t be trusted.

So what do we do when legacy print and radio reaches older audiences with journalists and talk show hosts, but social media platforms reach younger audiences with political “influencers?” Patti said that today’s “Muckrakers” needed to embrace all of the platforms to reach audiences of all ages, and that as long as we we’re genuine and develop trust by backing up our opinions with facts, we’ll help build the progressive movement necessary to get America back.

I agree with Patti and I also agree with Senator Larson when he suggested that America needs to figure out a way to fund real, unbiased journalism as a public good in order to make sure that we’re all hearing the same “truth.” Until that happens, much of America will be continue to be manipulated by charlatans who play on racist and xenophobic tropes to win elections, and we’ll continue to be stuck this Orwellian morass of state-sponsored propaganda.

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

Together, we’ll rake the muck and find the truth, one beer at a time.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

I know I’m filling up your inboxes a lot these days, but there’s a lot of important news to pass along.

Last Thursday, I jumped on a Substack Live with my friend, retired Army Colonel George Mason, because he wanted to use our large megaphone to announce that he’s creating “The Wisconsin Committee of Safety” to make sure our elections in 2026 are safe and secure.

I encourage you to watch the 34 minute video above, but if you can’t, here’s some screenshots of the Powerpoint deck he led us through to explain what he wants to do.

In this first slide, George explained the 4 “lines of effort” meant to subvert our elections that he predicted from the Trump administration between now and November.

In this next slide, he explained that to stop the Trump administration from succeeding, we needed to recruit tons of people to show up at the polls and make sure that no one is too intimidated by ICE agents or other federal armed forces to vote.

In slide 3, he announced that he was going to name this organization the “Wisconsin Committee of Safety,” and outlined the initial steps he was going to take in the next few weeks to launch this effort.

In the next slide, George explained that the name “Committee of Safety” was first used in 1776 by groups that formed in America’s colonies to hold the tyrannical British government accountable. He outlined a timeline of when he hoped this organization could get up and running.

In his final slide, he encouraged all military veterans that cared about protecting free and fair elections in the Midwest to contact him at this email address. He said he was actively connecting with veteran groups across the Midwest and needed folks to volunteer to help him organize.

The Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC plans to support Colonel Mason in any way we can.

I’ve been writing about protecting our elections from Trump for an entire year, and when George told me he was recruiting vets to help achieve this goal, I literally jumped for joy.

This is how we protect American Democracy, everyone.

I hope to tell you a lot more about this effort in the coming weeks.

Thanks for watching and reading.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/ Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Qasim is a great thinker who doesn’t pull his punches when criticizing corporate Dems for not fighting hard enough for Democracy.

Thanks also, Qasim, for your endorsement of the Minocqua Marketplace, our “Amazon for Progressives” that currently hosts 90 progressive businesses selling over 5000 products. We’ve launched a Kickstarter to grow this site so we can affordably sell a substitute product for every one made by a company that has bent the knee to Trump.

We can’t get there without grassroots support, and are spending all February leaning on our progressive friends, like Qasim, to help get the word out to their supporters.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi Folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

We had a great panel on the Up North Podcast yesterday that included Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Bishop of Greater Milwaukee Paul Erickson, Milwaukee Senator Chris Larsen, AFT President Jon Shelton, and Ben/Patti — to discuss how Wisconsin was preparing for an ICE invasion similar to what we’re seeing in Minnesota.

In short, one of the best ways that Wisconsinites can plug into resistance efforts to slow down ICE, at least in Milwaukee, is by going to Church. It should come as no surprise that faith-based organizations are unified against ICE since a major tenet of most religions is to “love thy neighbor.”

I’d encourage you to watch the whole episode above, or tune in to Substack, Facebook, Youtube, WCPT 820 AM (Chicago Radio) ,and even Twitch for the live broadcast at 6 pm every Wednesday.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole episode, here are the most important clips from the show.

We started by reminding our audience that Democrats in the U.S. Senate already gave away their leverage to ABOLISH ICE, which SHOULD be their main goal, when they passed funding for most of the federal agencies a few weeks ago. That being said, they now have an obligation to defund the Department of Homeland Security until ICE complies with the most simple guardrails that are already enshrined in the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the U.S Constitution.

These guardrails include ending indiscriminate arrests, requiring warrants for entering private property, body cameras, banning masks during enforcement, and avoiding sensitive locations like schools and churches.

Next, we asked the Bishop what faith-based organizations were doing across Wisconsin to resist ICE, and he mentioned the following initiatives:

* MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope) launched an Immigration Rapid Response Team and published an extensive set of Know Your Rights resources in multiple languages.

* Wisconsin Council of Churches (WCOC) — representing 23 Christian traditions statewide — is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against DHS, arguing the rescission of the “sensitive locations” policy violates religious freedom.

* Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — encompassing 115 congregations and 59,000+ baptized members across seven Southeast Wisconsin counties — joined the national New England Synod v. DHS lawsuit in July 2025.

I thought one of the most poignant moments in this segment was when Bishop Erickson said that the Christian Nationalism running rampant in the Federal Government was a “perversion of the Gospel,” and that religion should be the “conscience of the state,” not the “servant of the state.”

In the third segment, we discussed what the plans were in Milwaukee to resist ICE. Bishop Erickson mentioned all the needs surrounding mutual aid—bringing food to immigrant shut-ins, organizing food drives at churches to replenish food kitchens, etc. Senator Larson talked about signing up with Voces de la Frontera’s “Community Defense Network,” which is organizing volunteers to monitor ICE activities and manage hotlines that document ICE terrorism within communities. He also mentioned all the trainings being held at the Milwaukee Turners, including Immigration Training, Know Your Rights, and Legal Observing.

Next, since AFT President Jon Shelton was with us, I asked him to update us on how close the labor movement was in planning a general strike to bring Trump’s regime to its knees. He said that conversations have started among unions across the country to strike, but that right now, it was more important for folks around the country to join a union. Alternatively for retired folks or those whose jobs make it hard to unionize, the goal was join civic organizations like Indivisible, and push them to connect with the labor movement so that we’re all pulling in the same “resistance” direction.

And finally, because I’ve dedicated the entire month month of February to raising $150K to grow and strengthen our new e-commerce boycotting tool called the Minocqua Marketplace, we dedicated our last segment of the show to talk about how boycotts will accelerate regime change, and how donating to our kickstarter campaign can help us make boycotting MAGA companies easier and more affordable. We’ve already raised over $91K in less than two weeks, but we need more help to get to our goal. To learn more and donate to our Kickstarter campaign, go to this link.

Thanks for watching clips from our show last night, and thanks for doing your part for the resistance. Whether it’s signing up to protect your neighborhood, bringing food to shut-ins, protesting at detention centers, or simply donating money to groups on the front lines, now is the time to DO SOMETHING.

Only together can we stop fascism from taking over our country, and the time to organize is now.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

While Trump tells us he’s going to nationalize elections and Bannon tells us that ICE agents will be militarizing polling places in blue cities, Senate Democrats are caving on their simplest ICE demand—a mask ban for all federal agents.

It’s beyond frustrating to me that our Congressional Democratic leadership has basically abandoned the fight to save Democracy, but that frustration only fuels my fire to a) protect our elections, b) push harder for a general strike, and c) boycott every company that supports MAGA.

We’re on a collision course towards violence and even Civil War in next November’s elections unless something is done now.

The Minocqua Brewing Company is currently in talks with other resistance organizations to support a robust Midwestern poll-watching campaign to protect our elections, and I’ll hopefully have more news about that this coming Thursday at 1 pm (tune in here for that broadcast).

That being said, I’ve dedicated this month to expanding the Minocqua Marketplace, our nationwide boycotting tool, into a site that can actually disrupt the big box stores who have supported MAGA—Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.

We have to make boycotting easier for American consumers before the 2026 elections, so that boycotts will be more effective in pushing corporate America to abandon Trump if he attempts to rig our elections. While my team has welcomed over 90 progressive companies who sell over 4000 products to our marketplace, we’re not yet close to a place where our efforts will make it more painful for oligarchs to support fascism than democracy.

We launched a Kickstarter campaign last week to raise seed money to grow this site, and I’m really excited to announce that in one week, we’ve raised over $60K towards our $150K goal.

Raising $150K won’t magically starve the oligarchs either, but it will help me build a team of people who can take this project to the next level. It took Amazon nearly a decade to become profitable, and it will take millions of dollars to truly compete with them.

That being said, I fully believe that if Trump overturns our elections and we’re staring down the barrel of a dictatorship in 2027—the Minocqua Marketplace will, by necessity, become an essential tool for resistance.

As I’ve said along, if we lose our ability to hold free and fair elections, the only non-violent tactics we have left to get America back are strikes and boycotts.

I’m taking the “if you build it, they will come” approach, and simply believing that the millions of dollars it will take to make this marketplace effective will come when the dire effects of Trump’s regime demand real investment in boycotts.

Until then, we need to keep collecting progressive businesses under one roof and make it logistically easy to buy their products affordably, so when the time comes for mass boycotts—we can run instead of crawl to topple Trump’s regime.

While Kickstarter campaigns are inherently stressful because companies lose all the money they’ve raised unless they hit their goal at the end of the month, I have to say this past week was pretty fun.

The highlight of my week was doing a “Substack Live” with Steve Hofstetter, who is a nationally-known comedian famous for putting hecklers in their place at his shows. I’ve been known to do something similar to trolls who leave fake reviews on my company’s social media accounts, so let’s just say the two of us get along swimmingly. Our entire conversation is recorded at the start of this email, but here’s a short clip of us talking about the campaign.

I was also reminded of the value of forging resistance connections throughout the years, because many of the friends I’ve made trying to figure out how to save Democracy came out in support of our Kickstarter. Here are essays from Chicago talk show host Patti Vasquez, Goods Unite Us Founder Brian Potts, AFT President Professor John Shelton, and Truthout.org journalist Chris Walker.

And last but not least, I think our Kickstarter campaign got an unexpected boost from some unlikely sources last week: right-wing tabloids.

In a moment of exasperation at yet another horrendous headline coming from the Trump regime, I posted that the Minocqua Brewing Company would give out free beer the day “HE” died.

Little did I know that my tongue-in-cheek offer would go absolutely viral and bring fake reporters from Fox News, Blaze Media, and UK’s the Daily Mail my way. These right-wing tabloids all tried to shame me for wishing a speedy end to the worst American in U.S. history, but that faux outrage backfired. Their stories only brought more attention to the Minocqua Brewing Company, and almost ALL the feedback we got from around the globe—over 2.5 million views and thousands of comments on Facebook alone—was that of pure joy and gleeful anticipation. I can’t count how many screenshots we received of people looking up flights to come celebrate with us in tiny little Minocqua when that fateful day arrives.

Galvanized by universal support, I doubled down and started selling Trump voodoo dolls and ICE OUT whistles meant to summon killer orcas to Mar-a-lago…you know…to help get the party started sooner rather than later!

I apologize if this gallows humor is too much for some of my readers, but humor is my way of fighting back and also managing the stress that this regime has put us all under. And if I have to sell voodoo dolls to go viral about what we’re really trying to accomplish with our marketplace, then so be it. I’ll do whatever it takes.

This boycotting site is not going to build itself, and until I meet a few millionaires ready to invest, I gotta count on building buzz to raise money.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Together, we’ll fortify the resistance and hopefully save our elections with a tool to boycott MAGA on steroids—one beer at a time.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/ Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

On last night’s “Up North Podcast;” Patti, Simon, Chris, and I talked about the Epstein Files, the impending vote on funding the Department of Homeland Security, how the ridiculous Republican congressional gerrymander lawsuit is being slow-walked by Wisconsin’s progressive Supreme Court, and my current campaign to raise funds for our "Amazon for Progressives.”

I came away from this podcast both depressed and uplifted. I was again reminded that our current ruling class is unable and/or unwilling to meet the moment needed to save American Democracy, but I was encouraged that more of us our coming to this conclusion and taking it upon ourselves to start organizing.

I’d encourage you to watch the whole episode, but if you don’t have the time, here are the clips I think are most important:

I asked Simon how this latest dump of Epstein files might help us save Democracy. While he agreed with the rest of the panel that the Epstein class will probably never be prosecuted, he felt that this ongoing saga might unify the working class by helping them realize that it’s truly us against the elites—who operate with impunity in America.

Next up, we talked about the impending vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Patti reminded the audience that what our Democratic senators are currently pushing for—ICE body cameras, codes of conduct, warrants for arrests—are already enshrined in America’s 4th amendment that protects us from unreasonable search and seizure. Instead of abolishing ICE and protecting us from what will surely be a militarized siege to take over the 2026 elections, our Democratic senators have given away their leverage and are setting up a situation where they will be able to save face while bending the knee once again.

Simon reminds us to keep calling our senators using the 5calls app and demand that they abolish ICE, not just play lip service to reigning them in.

Next on the list, it has becoming clear that the progressive majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is slow-walking the congressional gerrymandering lawsuit in Wisconsin, which seeks to remedy the imbalance of congressional representation (6 Republicans vs. 2 Democrats) in our 50/50 swing state. To not make this right before the 2026 elections, when overturning the House majority could save American Democracy, is a miscarriage of justice. This is especially painful to watch when we progressives worked so hard to give Wisconsin’s Supreme Court a progressive majority over the last two election cycles.

Last but not least, I ended the show talking about our Kickstarter Campaign to fund the Minocqua Marketplace, our e-commerce site that brings progressive businesses and progressives together to boycott companies who have bent the knee to Trump.

We’ve raised over a third of our goal, $54K, in three days, but we’ll need a lot more help to hit $150K buy the end of February.

Please donate here if you can.

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

Only together will we able to turn our country into a place that works FOR us instead of AGAINST us.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/ Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

This is Kirk Bangstad from the Minocqua Brewing Company, and today we’re launching a Kickstarter campaign to expand our tool to boycott companies that continue to look the other way while Trump destroys our democracy.

As America starts to talk about striking to stop Trump’s regime from harming us further, we must also take boycotting to the next level. Both are the only non-violent tactics that can force regime change outside of holding free and fair elections, and we simply can’t assume that Trump will allow elections to take place next November.

My team started building the Minocqua Marketplace a year ago after I read Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth’s essay called Pro Democracy Organizing Against Autocracy in the United States. In her essay, Chenoweth said that building economic cooperatives among pro-democracy businesses was imperative to not only starve the oligarchs who fund fascism, but to also build strength within the resistance.

We launched our own “economic cooperative” last April with 6 partner companies. Today, we have over 90 partners who have pledged to never donate money to MAGA extremism—selling over 4000 products on the site.

My goal is to make this site the “Amazon for Progressives,” but to do that, we have to grow.

We can’t just sell beer, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and bracelets that say “F*CK Trump.” We have to sell products that are staples for everyday use at affordable prices for an actual mass boycott to work, and that will require hiring more people, buying logistics technology, and building more warehouse space.

Last July, I created a pitch deck and started working my old Harvard network to see if I could find investors for this project. I was disheartened by the meetings I had.

The general sentiment was that this was a great idea and a worthwhile project, but e-commerce sites weren’t “hot investments” right now. AI was.

When hearing this sentiment, I often thought in the back of my head, “yeah, but isn’t our democracy the ‘hottest investment’ of them all, because without that, we have nothing?”

After having a good 10 of these conversations, it dawned on me that many of those in the investment/donor class simply don’t see the world the same way as I do. Regardless of whether we become an authoritarian country or not, venture capitalists—even those who hold progressive beliefs—are probably going to be fine. Their lives won’t change much if Trump becomes a dictator because they have enough money to more easily ignore the effects of his damaging policies.

Those conversations kept reminding me what I’ve known since watching so many of our top companies donate millions to Trump’s inauguration. The working class and the small business community are going to be the people that save our democracy—not the rich.

While I’m still on the hunt for like-mined investment partners, I’ve decided to bridge our funding gap by going to the folks who are currently fighting the resistance—my audience and the audiences of activists I’ve met who are posting progressive political analysis and humor.

Mike Draper is the owner of Raygun, a progressive t-shirt company with stores all over the Midwest. Mike’s team has made a TON of our merchandise over the years, and he’s supported our boycotting tool from the start. You’ll see his mug on our kickstarter launch video. I’ve also befriended progressive comedians Steve Hofstetter, Mary Mack, and Cliff Cash over the last few years as we’ve all become more politically active, and they, along with a bunch of other progressive activists, are going to help us raise $150K throughout the course of this month-long campaign.

While I’d rather be building this tool and helping America boycott Amazon, Target, Walmart, Hobby Lobby, and Home Depot NOW, I can’t do that with my hands tied behind my back. My team and I spent the last few months preparing this Kickstarter campaign to raise what we need to make this boycotting tool effective, and we’ve come up with some great rewards at each pledge level—from $5 all the way to $10K.

Raising $150K is a big ask, and I wouldn’t be making it if I had investment partners willing to buy shares in my company. I haven’t found them yet, but this mission to help make boycotting easy and affordable before the 2026 elections is too time sensitive to wait.

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

Together, the working class and the small business community—who have yet to share in any of the wealth created by America’s current kleptocracy—will save America…one progressive purchase at a time.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/ Minocqua Marketplace Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe