Mike "Wompus" Nieznany is a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran who walks with a cane from the combat wounds he received during his service. That disability doesn't keep Nieznany from making a living selling custom motorcycle luggage racks from his home in Gainesville, Georgia. Neither will it slow him down when it's time to visit Washington, D.C.—heavily armed and ready to do his part in overthrowing the U.S. government.

Millions of fellow would-be insurrectionists will be there, too, Nieznany says, "a ticking time-bomb" targeting the Capitol. "There are lots of fully armed people wondering what's happening to this country," he says. "Are we going to let Biden keep destroying it? Or do we need to get rid of him? We're only going to take so much before we fight back." The 2024 election, he adds, may well be the trigger.

Nieznany is no loner. His political comments on the social-media site Quora received 44,000 views in the first two weeks of November and more than 4 million overall. He is one of many rank-and-file Republicans who own guns and in recent months have talked openly of the need to take down—by force if necessary—a federal government they see as illegitimate, overreaching and corrosive to American freedom.

The phenomenon goes well beyond the growth of militias, which have been a feature of American life at least since the Ku Klux Klan rose to power after the Civil War. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which took part in the January 6th riot at the Capitol and may have played organizational roles, have grown in membership. Law enforcement has long tracked and often infiltrated these groups. What Nieznany represents is something else entirely: a much larger and more diffuse movement of more-or-less ordinary people, stoked by misinformation, knitted together by social media and well-armed. In 2020, 17 million Americans bought 40 million guns and in 2021 were on track to add another 20 million. If historical trends hold, the buyers will be overwhelmingly white, Republican and southern or rural.

https://www.newsweek.com/2021/12/31/millions-angry-armed-americans-stand-ready-seize-power-if-trump-loses-2024-1660953.html

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On the positive side, two federal draft voting bills are currently before Congress, the Freedom to Vote and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which aim to set national voting standards and strengthen legal protections against discriminatory voting laws and policies," he added. "It is however far from certain these will succeed in being adopted."

Republicans in the evenly split Senate this year have not only blocked those two bills, but also the bolder For the People Act. Despite such actions from the chamber's GOP, a few Democrats still refuse to support abolishing the filibuster to send voting rights legislation and other measures to President Joe Biden's desk.

Given the current conditions in the country, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance on Monday added the U.S. to its list of "backsliding" democracies. The think tank's secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, said that "the visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation [in elections], and the runaway polarization … is one of the most concerning developments."

De Varennes issued a similar warning during a Monday news briefing, according to Reuters. He said that "it is becoming unfortunately apparent that it is almost a tyranny of the majority where the minority right to vote is being denied in many areas."

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/25/un-expert-warns-of-near-tyranny-against-voting-rights-of-us-minorities-amid_partner/

Allie Young believed in Kyrsten Sinema. Her vote helped elect the seemingly progressive Democrat from Arizona to the Senate in 2018. But she wonders what happened to Sinema when she got to Washington.

Young, a voting rights activist and citizen of the Diné, or Navajo Nation, is appalled by Sinema’s refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster.

“She has betrayed her constituents,” Young, 31, said by phone this week. “The sort of inaction that she’s taking right now is an action and it’s making the BIPOC community, especially in Arizona, distrust her more and more as the days go by.”
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“Her campaign was something that attracted us because back then she seemed to be a little more progressive than she is now. That’s the part that we’re all having trouble understanding. What happened?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/06/kyrsten-sinema-filibuster-betrayed-arizona-voting-rights

Arizona activists have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a potential 2024 Democratic primary challenger to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she does not vote to end the filibuster or continues to obstruct President Joe Biden's agenda.

A committee of Arizona organizers who have helped turn the state blue since 2018, when Sinema narrowly won her seat, launched the conditional fundraiser to pressure the senator to stop undermining her party's agenda. Sinema opposes the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending bill, balking at both the price tag and key measures like drug pricing reform and tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations. She has also vehemently defended the filibuster, which has prevented any progress on the Democrats' voting rights legislation as well as a minimum wage increase, immigration reform, gun violence measures, police reform, LGBTQ protections, protections for workers' right to unionize and other bills that have already passed the Democratic-led House.

"It's time to send a message that she can't ignore," the group's CrowdPAC page says. "Either Sen. Sinema votes to end or reform the Jim Crow filibuster this year or we fund a primary challenge to replace her with someone who will."

State Sen. Martin Quezada, a Democrat who is backing the effort, told Salon that for sitting lawmakers, "the only thing that really gets you motivated to start seriously considering changing your views on things is if you are facing a threat to your seat."

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/29/activists-helped-elect-kyrsten-sinema-launch-crowdpac-to-fund-a-primary-challenger/

Opinion: The audit isn't out yet and already Sen. Wendy Rogers is calling for Arizona's election to be decertified. Curiously, she declines to cite a law that would allow her to void our vote
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Quoting no less than John F. Kennedy, the letter calls on the Arizona Senate to take action based on the not-yet released results of an audit conducted and paid for by the Trump conspiracy crowd.

And it implores senators to consider the laughable conclusions of a door-to-door canvass that produced not one shred of actual evidence of fraud.

And to consider the scientific stylings of famed CueCat inventor/treasure hunter Jovan Hutton Pulitzerand his “kinematic artifact detection,” which isn’t actually a real thing.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2021/09/22/sen-wendy-rogers-cues-up-crazy-again-decertification-talk/5810505001/

Arizona Taxpayers Forced To Pay For Voting Machines Ruined by GOP ‘Audit’

Karen Fann, president of the GOP-led state Senate, called the decision to place the burden on taxpayers a ‘win.’
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However, the Arizona Republic reported that Maricopa County reached a deal on Friday that would let the GOP lawmakers off the hook for the millions in damages. As part of the deal, Maricopa County will pay the costs of replacing the voting machines from its taxpayer-funded budget — despite the Senate’s indemnification agreement that promised taxpayers wouldn’t foot the bill for any costs stemming from the audit effort.

In return for dropping the costs, Arizona’s Republican attorney general backed off his own threat to withhold $700 million in annual state funding to the county — or nearly half of its operating budget — because Maricopa County had not complied with one of numerous subpoena demands. Republicans in the Arizona Senate had subpoenaed routers from the county as part of their audit, but the county refused to turn them over, saying it could pose a security risk, according to the Arizona Republic’s report.

Now, despite dropping its demand that the Senate pay for the ruined voting machines, Maricopa County will still have to answer questions about the routers, the Arizona Republic reported. But the Senate agreed to have the review done by former Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) rather than by Cyber Ninjas, the firm that conducted the audit and is run by an avid Donald Trump supporter who has promoted lies about election fraud.

https://coppercourier.com/story/maricopa-county-pay-replace-tampered-election-equipment/

Hand count in audit affirms Biden beat Trump, as Maricopa County said in November

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142804412