Badlands Brief
A Virtual Smash & Grab & Another Impeachment Hoax
The Badlands Brief is your daily drop of Badlands’ takes on the narratives dominating the info war. Read on, and join the conversation in the comments section.
NAACP Asks Court to Prevent DOJ From Using Fulton Records For Voter Roll Clean-Up & Other Election Integrity Measures
The NAACP and other NGOs filed an emergency motion in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia seeking court-imposed restrictions on how the FBI and DOJ may use election materials seized from Fulton County in January.
The filing, brought under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g), does not directly challenge the validity of the search warrant. Instead, the plaintiffs argue that Fulton County voters have protectable privacy and constitutional interests in their personal voter data — including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and ballot-related information — and therefore qualify as “persons aggrieved” under the rule.
The motion asks the court to limit federal use of the seized materials strictly to the criminal investigation described in the warrant. It seeks an order prohibiting use of the data for purposes unrelated to that investigation, including:
They explicitly request prohibition against use for:
National voter roll programs
Immigration enforcement
Civil enforcement unrelated to the warrant
Data sharing with other agencies
Compilation of voter databases
Public disclosure
The plaintiffs also request access controls restricting review to personnel assigned to the investigation, a detailed inventory of the materials seized, disclosure of who has accessed the records, and a protective order governing storage and handling of the data.
The organizations assert both individual standing — on behalf of Fulton County voters whose data was seized — and associational standing, arguing the seizure undermines voter trust and diverts organizational resources.
The Fulton County records seizure continues to draw intense criticism, with The Atlantic publishing an editorial opinion Monday warning that President Trump is nationalizing elections.
Ashe in America: The panic over election integrity continues. NGOs that register voters are begging a federal court in Georgia to not let the feds check their work. The NAACP has unironically asked a court to prevent the federal government from using federal records to ensure federal compliance in federal elections.
This is surreal.
Is there anyone out there that thinks this doesn’t make them look incredibly guilty? We’re talking about election records from 2020.
As we talked about last week, 83% of the nation supports verifying that people are who they say they are when they vote. That includes democrat voters and black voters – meaning these civil rights organizations are arguing against the positions of the people they claim to be representing.
Crazy. That is just crazy whether you’re looking politically, narratively, actually…
As I see it, the only way the math makes sense on opposing 83% of the country on an issue that impacts the entire country is if the position of 83% of the country is an insurmountable threat to your existence.
Is voter ID an existential threat to get out the vote organizations?
Hey, remind me what Seth Rich was working on at the time of his death?
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Epstein Fallout Continues: DOJ Letter to Congress Sparks Backlash as Lawmakers Press For Redaction Transparency & the Public Calls for Resignations
A formal production letter from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) says the department has complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and describes a review/redaction process aimed at protecting victim-identifying information and other material required by law.
DOJ says it identified more than 6 million pages as potentially responsive, and that over 3 million responsive pages (plus 2,000+ videos and 180,000 images) were released that day; combined with prior releases, nearly 3.5 million pages were produced. It also says ~200,000 pages were withheld/redacted based on privileges (e.g., deliberative process, work product, attorney-client). Read the full letter here: Department of Justice Letter
The DOJ provided a general description of redaction types and a list of “politically exposed persons” referenced in the files – including people who may have no interaction with Epstein/Maxwell and are only mentioned in things like press clippings – and reports emphasize that the “list” itself is not an allegation.
Rep. Thomas Massie said on ABC’s This Week that he does not have confidence in Attorney General Pam Bondi, criticizing her conduct in the House Judiciary hearing, “I don’t think she did very well,” Massie said, adding, “She came with a book full of insults, one for each congressperson. She obviously had one for me.”
The former DeSantis surrogate argued that the DOJ lacks accountability, and that their work on “The Epstein Files” is not done, pointing to shifting redactions and the lack of explanatory context when names were unredacted. Watch the interview here.
Rep. Nancy Mace piled on in a Facebook post, “My first thoughts walking out of the DOJ tonight. Many of the co-conspirator documents are missing or still redacted. I was unable to view critical information. Memos and attachments drafted by the DOJ on potential co-conspirators remain hidden. The excuse? This is how they received the data. What is clear: these girls were young. They were groomed. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are p*dophiles. The American people deserve every page. Every name. And every truth the government is holding onto. I’ll be back tomorrow for more.”
Reputational and career fallout from the files continues internationally, with Axios reporting that the latest round of disclosures has contributed to resignations and other consequences across business, politics, and law – citing examples including Hyatt heir Tom Pritzker stepping down as executive chair, Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp resigning, and other high-profile figures, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, facing investigations or pressure to resign.
Related: Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein reportedly discussed invoking the 25th Amendment against President Trump during his first term, according to a 2018 text message exchange on New Year’s Eve – just after Republicans lost control of the House in the midterms.
In a text message exchange that began on New Year’s Eve in 2018, shortly after Democrats retook the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.
Bannon: “Going to blow him up right out of the box–WH has zero plan to punch back–Fort Apache with no cavalry in sight…”
Epstein: “He is really borderline. Not sure what he may do.”
Bannon: “I think it’s beyond borderline — 25 amendment.”
Burning Bright: Now this is what we call flooding the zone.
We’ve got the Trump Administration, at least, the DOJ being assailed by all sides of the Media Industrial Complex, and it’s arguable that many Truthers are helping to energize the push, by hook or by crook.
The open question that I don’t have the answer to ultimately nests within the Net Effects refrain:
Is it a good thing that a good portion of the very Sleepers we were once trying to wake are now calling for blood on the back of the Epstein Narrative ... or is it indicative of the exact sort of ‘hoaxification’ and weaponization Donald Trump has been warning us about for several years, now?
Additionally, regardless of whatever actuals do or do not underly the Epsteinian narrative—is there signal to be found in the names attached?
Again, Donald Trump himself is mentioned under baseless (literally) accusations, while we’re told Elon Musk was exchanging Emails with Epstein and planning visits to his island.
Steve Bannon and Howard Lutnick are firmly in the crosshairs, and a good portion of the MAGA base seems to be closing ranks with the same media protectorate they once proudly hunted in defense of such names.
And yet, even there, was Epstein not a honeypot, in the estimation of most in this community?
And even then, if we assume what cannot be assumed—namely, that these communications are verifiable and attributable—can we then attribute guilt to ALL figures who associated with Epstein as Trump himself did years before the nature of his crimes surfaced?
Elon’s own response to the drama is as sobering as it is logical. After all, he’s absolutely right that nobody pushed harder than him to see justice done on behalf of the CRIMES and the co-conspirators, not the attempted crimes and the intel targets, of which Elon would obviously be as elusive and exclusive a whale as Trump himself, if not more so, given his greasing of the rails toward an autonomous and energy-focused future that could alternatively enslave humanity all over again, or else free us from the collectivist grasp of the cabal.
If Epstein worked on behalf of hunters, of collectors of the elite and all the abstract and actual power projection they wield, is the dividing line between benefactor, associate, target and true ally delineated in black and white, or alternating gradients of gray?
But then, they aren’t the only names in the files, and just as cognitive dissonance or outright denial assails the Truth Community when figures they like appear, where it concerns others, they fit into well-worn grooves that were initially dug in the wake of the Pizzagate viral storm, which itself preceded the Q drops, which only added fuel to the fire over the intervening decade.
So, do we have a case of guilt by association with some names in the files, and not others?
Or is the Deep State (what remains of it,) using ‘burn cards’ when it comes to Maxwell, the Clintons, the Gates and a smattering of others besides?
These are questions worth asking, and—to Trump’s ‘hoax’ comms—answers may be long, if eternal in coming.
And yet … there IS a lot in a name.
***
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: This [Bannon] story is utterly retarded, to the point where I felt inclined to come in off the bench and address it.
Normally, I avoid this type of tabloid drama—unless it is Trump-a-Mania adjacent— but here I see something more than just run-of-the-mill slander. So here it goes.
The allegation is rooted in this screen cap of a text message conversation between Steve Bannon and Jeffery Epstein, dated December 31, 2018.
Bannon texts about the 25th Amendment, and everybody is suddenly claiming that this means that Bannon wanted Trump removed from office.
What is more likely is that Bannon was alluding to a Democrat strategy to remove President Trump from office via the 25th Amendment, which we know because the New York Times published an article in September 2018 claiming that Rod Rosenstein was planning to do this.
Even Q posted about it, and Q would go on to post about the 25th Amendment countless times.
However, this was the first time that Q had posted about the 25th Amendment—on the day it was first reported: September 21, 2018—and just hours after posting a link to the NYT article, Q posted the exact same link, though with a second link to an article about Omarosa conspiring against Trump, as well.
From studying “The Apprentice” as part of my ongoing The Book of Trump series, I have learned all about Omarosa and can attest with certainty that Omarosa became a fixture for Donald Trump. She was a character that Trump would regularly deploy into the field to sow confusion and chaos among the contestants.
Why? Well, on a number of occasions throughout the show Trump would say that he likes to see how the contestants handle pressure—as if that metric were just as important, if not more important, than simple acumen. He would also confer with Omarosa about her interactions with the contestants, in an exercise that seemed akin to intelligence gathering.
Back to Steve Bannon, I’ll remind you that he and President Trump had a “break-up” in August of 2017, in what could be the first real instance of kayfabe. I never bought for a second that after working together to defeat the Clinton’s and the Bush’s that Trump and Bannon would suddenly have bad blood. When President Trump later referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve,” I suddenly recognized the phenomenon we now call “Trump-a-Mania.”
From that moment, Bannon appears to reach out to Jeffery Epstein, and becomes chummy with him. The MSM and ConInc now point to this as evidence of Bannon being a black hat and traitor to MAGA.
But I’m now left wondering if that was the point of the kayfabe. I had always assumed the kayfabe was meant to get the media off Bannon’s back (at the time they were more fixated on him than even President Trump) so he could off and create the media empire that would one day take on the MSM.
What if he also used this narrative shielding (a “spat” with Trump) to ingratiate himself to someone like Epstein?
They tell us that Jeffery Epstein is this moron who never earned the kingdom he was given, but if that were true then why did Adnan Khashoggi recruit Epstein out of Bear Sterns to become his personal accountant and money-launderer?
What if Epstein actually is a financial genius who did also work for the Deep State as a money launderer and financial consultant? What if Epstein understood the financial architecture of the transnational cartel so thoroughly that he could detail ad hominem? What is that was the real reason he and Bannon have recorded 16+ hours of interviews?
What if Bannon convinced Epstein that Trump was actually taking on the highest levels of the Deep State, or what if Epstein had his own axe to grind against his former partners?
What if Epstein had incentive (by hook or by crook) to help the Trump Team understand how money was embezzled, laundered, and stolen by the Deep State? What if he had evidence of such crimes? What if Bannon was merely the point of contact?
These are merely questions and theories. They are not establishing anything definitive in terms of a specific theory. But what is clear is that dishonest narratives are circulating, and stoking confusion. And I am left feeling suspicious of everything we think we know about this entire situation.
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PSYOP: Rumors of MBZ Death Greatly Exaggerated…Maybe
Online rumors circulated on social media this week, claiming that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) had died. According to Arab News, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan posted on X on Sunday that he was postponing a visit to Abu Dhabi because Emirati leader Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had a “health problem.”
The message, which was later deleted according to the reports, claimed Erdogan had talked with Al Nahyan by phone.
“During the course of the call, President Erdogan expressed his sadness over the health problem experienced by (President) Al Nahyan and wished him a prompt recovery,” the message reportedly said, stating that Erdogan would travel to UAE at a later date
As of publication, there is no official confirmation that MBZ is deceased.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: “The King Emir is dead! The King Emir is dead!”
...is what they are all saying on X, and have been saying for the past day.
None of this was helped by Turkish President Erdogan posting that he was delaying a trip to the UAE due to the UAE leader’s bad health — a post that was immediately deleted. (The UAE leader being Mohammed bin Zayed, aka MBZ.)
This has turned into a chicken-and-the-egg situation, because I can’t determine whether it was Erdogan’s post that started this story, or fueled it into hyperdrive. In any event, there are countless accounts adopting the position that MBZ is either dead or has suffered a serious stroke. Both the Turkish and Emirati governments have put out statements about a phone call that occurred between the leaders, but nobody seems satisfied that this proves anything. (It doesn’t.)
It seems like there has been this concerted effort to drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and UAE, and both sides have capitalized on this evolving dynamic to negotiate new bilateral agreements with various countries in the region, including India and Pakistan.
The fact that we now have this strange psyop purporting the death of MBZ, and the fact that the psyop may have been started by Erdogan — a known Sovereign Alliance bro — I am inclined to speculate that all of it has been bullshit; nothing more than a ruse to sow confusion while geopolitical dynamics were reshaped.
Disney Alleges ‘Virtual Smash-and-Grab’ in Fight Over Seedance 2.0
The Chinese tech company ByteDance released (in China) an AI video-generation tool this month called Seedance 2.0 that can produce short cinematic videos from text, images, audio, and video inputs.
Over the weekend, viral Seedance-generated clips – featuring recognizably realistic portrayals of Hollywood actors and characters – circulated online, including scenes interpreted as resembling big-budget productions.
Major Hollywood studios — notably Walt Disney and Paramount — sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance, alleging Seedance 2.0 uses copyrighted material and characters without authorization. The letter has not been publicly distributed, but was first reviewed and reported by Axios.
“Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing and creating derivative works featuring those characters,” Disney’s attorneys allegedly wrote. “ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive and totally unacceptable…We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg – which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.”
The Human Artistry Campaign piled on, stating according to Deadline, “The launch of Seedance 2.0 is an attack on every creator around the world. Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI-generated slop is destructive to our culture: stealing isn’t innovation. These unauthorized deepfakes and voice clones of actors violate the most basic aspects of personal autonomy and should be deeply concerning to everyone. Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft.”
In response, ByteDance promised improved safeguards on IP theft.
Ashe in America: The AI narrative has gone off the rails as AI advancements out of ByteDance are going to test the authorities and enforcement capabilities of US and global intellectual property frameworks. Disney and Paramount assert that Seedance 2.0’s outputs violate copyright and other IP laws.
It’s Napster all over again.
The studios will try to enforce traditional governing rights, centralize power, and remain the monopolistic players in a transforming industry. The industry is transforming regardless, and the studios want to be in control of it… but that’s not how this works.
Piracy of music transformed the world’s relationship with music. We don’t go to record stores or buy CDs anymore. We have access to all the music in our pockets.
The world’s relationship with movies is already transforming – we rarely go to theaters anymore and award show ratings (as a measure of public interest) are near or at record lows. People don’t care about the studios, or even the actors really anymore. But they do love the characters.
The worst thing the studios can do in this kind of transformation is stand on authorities that their customers are rejecting.
If courts stop Seedance, another tool will emerge before the signature on the temporary restraining order is dry. When they “stopped” Napster, we got Kazaa and LimeWire and BitTorrent and a digital music revolution that changed the world.
By trying to stop what is coming, they’re going to accelerate it.
The studios largely protected themselves in the 2023 strike negotiations, but their most valuable assets are the franchises… What happens when franchises are democratized, reclaimed by the people? The studios will fight in court – but by the time they get a ruling, or even a hearing, it will be too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube and reclaim their property.
Spoiler alert: It’s too late now.
P.S. Blue Eyes and I had an excellent discussion about AI doomerism and the promises of transformation on last night’s Culture of Change. Plus, apparently we can turn all our cement into batteries now… Check it out!
Rubio: The “End of History” Was A Dangerous Delusion
At the Munich Security Conference last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined the administration’s foreign-policy approach, emphasizing national sovereignty, border security, and greater NATO burden-sharing. From the Secretary’s remarks:
“When this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation – actually, it was on a continent – that was divided against itself. The line between communism and freedom ran through the heart of Germany. The first barbed fences of the Berlin Wall had gone up just two years prior. And just months before that first conference, before our predecessors first met here, here in Munich, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. Even as World War II still burned fresh in the memory of Americans and Europeans alike, we found ourselves staring down the barrel of a new global catastrophe – one with the potential for a new kind of destruction, more apocalyptic and final than anything before in the history of mankind.
At the time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march. Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time, victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for. And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt. Our people prospered. In time, the East and West blocs were reunited. A civilization was once again made whole.
That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.”
Rubio urged European allies to increase defense spending and take more responsibility for regional security. He criticized mass migration policies and questioned the effectiveness of some post-World War II international institutions, while affirming continued US commitment to the transatlantic alliance.
Reactions were mixed. Some European officials welcomed the reaffirmation of alliance commitments but expressed concern about the speech’s criticism of migration and multilateral institutions. US and European commentators described the address as a formal articulation of a “MAGA” foreign-policy doctrine – with supporters calling it realist and critics warning it could deepen transatlantic tensions.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: It was a pretty good speech by Little Marco.
I did appreciate how they sent him to Munich to deliver these terms of surrender to the satanic elite. I personally don’t think there is any chance of reconciliation or partnership with Europe’s Old Guard, which has largely destroyed itself through generations of inbreeding.
The People of Europe will be great allies, once they maneuver their way out of the predicament in which they now find themselves. Hopefully that will be a bloodless revolution; but it increasingly appears that the European elite intend to start World War 3 before allowing their power to be stripped away.
It is quite the conundrum. But I’m glad we are finally telling all of them to pound sand. Get on board with the program—or don’t, and miss the Golden Age.
Choose now, Europe.
BONUS ITEMS
Trump Administration Advances Nuclear Microreactor Test as “Arms Race” Rhetoric Heats Up
The United States conducted its first air transport of a nuclear microreactor prototype as part of a Defense Department demonstration program. The test is tied to the Pentagon’s effort to develop small, transportable nuclear reactors capable of providing power to remote or military locations.
The demonstration showed the reactor system can be safely moved by aircraft.
The Department of Energy posted to X, “On May 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to deploy advanced nuclear reactor technologies for national security purposes. Yesterday, we took the next step toward achieving this historic mission.”
“President Trump promised the American people that he would unleash American energy dominance. Yesterday, @ENERGY and @DeptofWar partnered to move a nuclear reactor by air for the very first time. This is the next chapter for U.S. energy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote on X.
In a related opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Tom Cotton argues that the US should not fall behind in nuclear capabilities and frames modernization as essential to deterrence.
“The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired this month. The end of New Start is a watershed moment in American nuclear strategy. Far from a failure of diplomacy, this expiration is an overdue correction of a strategic mistake that left America vulnerable to two nuclear rivals: Russia and China,” Cotton begins the piece.
No new nuclear weapons policy has been announced.
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Ashe, the fact that "the Atlantic publish[ed] an editorial opinion" says it all! On voter ID, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that illegal immigrants were getting driver's licenses, SNAP, Medicaid without difficulty, albeit illegally. Yet, Schumer touts the dems same tired montra ad nauseam, that the Save Act is racist . Do people really listen to this propaganda and still believe it...rhetorical question, really.
"... 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨."
As we've long suspected (read: known) most of these organizations are money launderers who only represent themselves and their puppet masters. The supposed "beneficiaries" are merely pawns.