Happy Spring, MW reader! Below you’ll find a quick BiMonthly covering February and March 2026. Key themes this month are as follows:
- Updates around militias (and their allies) rallying against Virginia gun bills
- A whole chunk of legal updates covering defamation cases, threats, and more
- A couple of stories of public rightist infighting that touch on the Patriot Movement and those involved in it
If you’d like to travel back to the start of the year, January’s Monthly is available here:
Virginia Updates
On March 14, at the behest of a t-shirt seller running a new “2A” org in Virginia, militia members and other gun enthusiasts gathered in Richmond, VA, to protest against coming gun restrictions. The Virginia Kekoas, a Boogaloo-associated group, attended, and one of their members showed off a new initiative they have stood up to sort interested Virginians into their most local militia configuration. US Representative John McGuire attended the event, shouting to militia members how much he supported their efforts. Representatives from Magpul (a firearms accessories company) attended and distributed free 30-round magazines, simultaneously protesting against the coming ban on 30-round mags and taking the opportunity to do some marketing with some of their biggest fans in the commonwealth.
You may remember that the Kekoas (and other firearms fans) just showed up in Richmond a couple of months back. Indeed, this rally was held less than 8 weeks after the Virginia Citizens Defense League’s Lobby Day. Many of the same people attended, from militias to dads in gunshirts to public speakers to streamers blasting quotes from whomever of the Kekoas said or did the most outrageous thing.
Legal Updates
On February 10, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled against People’s Rights Network (PRN) associate Diego Rodriguez, affirming a ruling that found that he, Ammon Bundy, and the broader PRN still owed nearly $53 million in a civil defamation case around their behavior towards St. Luke’s Health System. This is an ongoing saga following the 2023 court decision for Bundy and Rodriguez’s 2022 antics and represents yet another loss for the far-right activists.
On March 30, John M. Valle, a former American Patriots III% leader, received no jail time after pleading guilty to felony harassment after he threatened to kill a man and his family via voice memos over text message. Valle told the man, who ran a construction business and fired one of Valle’s III% buddies years ago, that he would kill the man’s wife and child and place their “heads on poles”. Valle’s time served (one day) is well below the standard range of sentencing for those found guilty of similar crimes. Valle previously threatened another militia leader, James “Russell” Bolton of the Stevens County Assembly, but faced no consequences for the 2019 episode that forced Bolton to flee to West Virginia.
Also at the tail end of March, the state of Pennsylvania charged Jack Robert Brosius with four counts each of terroristic threats, simple assault, and harassment after he sent a threatening email to Pennsylvania Mineral Services LLC in February, wherein he claimed that he (and an unnamed “expert and deadly armed militia”) would shoot employees of the company on sight. There’s currently no indication that Brosius was actually involved in a militia, and he’s not a known figure among the movement, so this may have just been some added flavor to his threats rather than an admission of reality. A preliminary hearing is set for the end of April.
Rightist Infighting
On March 28, a right-wing activist revealed on Facebook that Colorado House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell once belonged to local militia group United American Defense Force (UADF), an outfit founded and run by John “Tig” Tiegen. A prominent member of the UADF called out Caldwell in a pro-2A Facebook group after he voted in support of HB26-1302, which amends the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s firearms background check operating hours. Caldwell responded to the activist in the Facebook comments but did not deny his involvement with the UADF.
In mid-March, Stewart Rhodes denounced the MAGA movement after Trump began his illegal war of choice against Iran, joining Alex Jones’s InfoWars show to say, “I no longer call myself MAGA.” This announcement should be taken with a grain of salt, because Rhodes is also in a moment of severely hindered influence, so he’s making bombastic claims to drive attention to himself and his recent (weak) rebooting of the Oath Keepers.
Further Reading
- David Gilbert writes for Wired on would-be militia members turning into social media influencers to spread their message (and sell their merch)