For a long time, militia activity has largely been associated with a small fringe population, but recently it has become more common to see armed vigilante groups taking to the streets over controversies like protecting Confederate statues, detaining migrants and patrolling racial injustice protests like those in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. The modern militia movement largely flowed in two waves, experts say. The first was in the early 1990s with anti-government standoffs like those in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and then in Waco, Texas — and the second occurred with the election of President Barack Obama, whom militia groups saw as a significant threat to their Second Amendment rights, according to Robert Futrell, a professor who researches far-right extremism. But the election of Donald Trump flipped the script, he said, prompting a shift to new enemies: immigrants, Muslims, anti-fascist protesters and other "armies of the deep state," like Black Lives Matter. | 