Badlands Brief

Elections are Fake; as is Trump's Friendship with Bibi

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.

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Netanyahu Calls Off Major Iran Strike After Trump Warned Israel Would Be On Its Own

President Donald Trump intervened to prevent a broader renewal of fighting between Israel and Iran, warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could find itself “on your own very soon” if it expanded military operations against Iran, according to comments Trump gave to Axios that were later confirmed by Reuters. Reuters reported that Trump said he cautioned Netanyahu against resuming a wider war with Iran.

Axios reported that Netanyahu canceled what would have been Israel’s largest strike on Iran since the April ceasefire after discussions with Trump. The report came amid renewed hostilities that began after Iranian missile launches against Israel and subsequent Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. Axios reported that the Israeli attacks marked the first reported Israeli strikes on Iran since the ceasefire took effect in April.

On June 8, Trump publicly called on both countries to “immediately stop shooting.” Axios reported that Trump spoke again with Netanyahu and asked him to halt planned strikes on Iran. Trump also said Iran had informed the United States that it did not intend to conduct further attacks and requested that Washington relay that message to Israel.

Following the intervention, Netanyahu said Israel would “hold fire” against Iran, according to reports, while indicating that Israel reserved the right to respond if attacked in the future. The developments temporarily reduced fears that the exchange of missile and air strikes would escalate into a broader regional conflict.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: And there it is.

For months, I’ve been speculating that President Trump is actually waging a war against Israel, using Iran as his [perhaps unwitting] proxy.

I knew at the time that it sounded crazy. I don’t blame those who mocked me for saying it—I realize that it ostensibly looked like me pushing “hopium” and trying to put spin on a situation that appeared to contradict all of my analysis regarding Trump and his relationship with Israel.

Almost nobody was buying it. You would have to be crazy to think that Trump would end up abandoning Netanyahu, leaving Israel to face Iran and Hezbollah alone—which is what I have suggested has been the plan all along. Only an insane person would believe such a thing… which is exactly why it is such a brilliant plan. It’s the last thing anybody would expect.

Even now, presented with all of the evidence, people are reluctant to see the situation for what it is. They assume that Trump and Netanyahu are running an op, or that President Trump is earnestly seeking peace but will cave to Netanyahu and the immense pressure of the Israel lobby.

Despite all the evidence in front of them, people are still clinging to their own preconceived notions of this conflict and the parties involved. It is easy to understand why.

Again, this is what makes this strategy so brilliant.

The only way President Trump was ever going to sell the idea that he was an ardent Zionist was if his own support base believed it. He had to be seen as authentic, which would require intentionally damaging his own reputation in order to sell the ruse to the public, to the press, and most importantly, to the zealots running the Isreali government and the Deep State insurgency occupying DC.

Do you remember when President Trump said this?

Reporter: "Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran?"

Trump: "No, I might have forced [Israel’s] hand."

If you listen carefully, Trump says, “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they (Israel) were going to attack first…”

In hindsight, is it crazy to suggest that maybe the “lunatics” he referenced were actually Netanyahu’s cabinet?

What would a war waged against Israel (using Iran as a proxy) look like?

I may be biased, but I think it would look a lot like everything we’ve seen unfold over the past 2+ months. We can get some affirmation on this by listening to Mark Levin, who is now beginning to turn on President Trump. First, he accuses President Trump of being “desperate for a deal,'‘ mocking him for being unable to negotiate. Levin then goes on to back Bibi while disparaging Trump. "I don't know why he keeps bashing the Prime Minister of Israel! …Why the constant beating up of Netanyahu?!"

If this isn’t proof of trouble in paradise, then I don’t know what is. Clearly, Levin understands that the United States has already made the decision to abandon Israel military campaign to conquer the Middle East. Hence why Levin is now throwing shade at Trump.

What’s clear is that nothing is as it has seemed. We should all maintain an open and skeptical mind toward all things being reported and happening at this important moment in history.

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LA Mayor’s Race Proves Elections Are Still Fake

Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman advanced to the November runoff election for mayor and will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass after finishing ahead of former reality television personality Spencer Pratt in the city’s 2026 primary contest. The race drew national attention because of Pratt’s celebrity profile and criticism of city leadership following the Palisades Fire.

Raman entered the mayoral race shortly before the filing deadline and campaigned on issues including housing affordability, homelessness, and city services. Before the primary, public polling showed Bass, Raman, and Pratt competing in a closely contested race.

Pratt’s campaign emphasized homelessness, crime, and public dissatisfaction with city government. However, vote counting ultimately left him outside the top two positions needed to advance to the November runoff. Los Angeles voters chose from 14 candidates in the nonpartisan primary election.

Ashe in America: As CannCon points out, LA is the only jurisdiction in the US that still uses Smartmatic.

But Smartmatic has a founding role in the code bases of the other US election systems in use around the country.

The following summary is based on @canncon’s research and reporting. He and I were working on a joint project a couple years ago that never came to fruition, but the effort has been repeatedly fruitful in the many months since, today included:

In April 2000, just seven months before the Bush v Gore v Chad in Broward and Palm Beach, Florida, Alfredo Jose Anzola incorporated a company called Smartmatic Corp. in Delaware and headquartered the company in Boca Raton, FL, part of Palm Beach County.

Just four years later, in 2004, Smartmatic would gain its first contract with Venezuela ahead of the recall election of Hugo Chavez just months after receiving investments from the Venezuelan government.

According to the New York Times, “Seven months before that voting contract was awarded, a Venezuelan government financing agency invested more than $200,000 into a smaller technology company, owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic, that joined with Smartmatic as a minor partner in the bid. In return, the government agency was given a 28 percent stake in the smaller company and a seat on its board, which was occupied by a senior government official who had previously advised Mr. Chávez on elections technology. But Venezuelan officials later insisted that the money was merely a small-business loan and that it was repaid before the referendum.”

That company, Bitza, had 28% of its shares held by the Venezuelan government and simultaneously wrote the software in use in the Smartmatic voting machines.

Just a year later in 2005, Smartmatic would purchase Sequoia Voting Systems from British firm De La Rue PLC for $16 million — a loss of $19 million for De La Rue after their $35 million investment just four years earlier.

Just two years later, Smartmatic announced it would divest of Sequoia. However, in a Delaware Court in April 2008, it was discovered that Smartmatic would hold on to a $2 million unsecured promissory note from the divestiture. But more significantly, that Delaware Court filing showed that Sequoia Voting Systems was still using Smartmatic’s Intellectual Property.

From a Venezuelan start-up incorporated in Delaware in 2000 to running the election in Venezuela with Venezuelan-backed software to purchasing a much larger and more established US-based company in 2005. And that was just the beginning…

Fast-forward to 2010 and the Obama Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, would force US voting equipment powerhouse Election Systems & Software, or ES&S, to divest of the former Diebold Inc subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, which ES&S had purchased just six months earlier.

The DOJ required ES&S to divest of “all of the intellectual property associated with all versions — past, present, and in development — of the Premier voting equipment systems to another company.” They also required the company to, “grant a fully paid-up, irrevocable, perpetual license to use the AutoMARK, ES&S’s ballot marking device” and ensure the “right to modify and improve both Premier products and the AutoMARK.” DOJ demanded that, “ES&S must sell the divestiture assets to a buyer approved by the department,” and they also “require ES&S to grant the divesture buyer an opportunity to compete to provide services to Premier customers currently under contract with ES&S.”

That buyer was Dominion Voting Systems.

Now that Dominion acquired a formidable share of the market, here is how they connect to Smartmatic.

A few months after acquiring Premier, Dominion Voting Systems would go on to purchase Sequoia Voting Systems as well. Sequoia was formerly held by Smartmatic and was still utilizing Smartmatic’s intellectual property as of the 2008 filing.

According to John C. Bonifaz — who separately is one of the masterminds in the lawfare against me and my co-defendants — in a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

“Dominion, Now the Largest or Second Largest Voting System Company, Is Foreign Controlled and Depends Upon Secret Source Code Created and Owned by Smartmatic, a Foreign Controlled Company With Ties to The Venezuelan Government Led by Hugo Chavez… Dominion is reported by Dun & Bradstreet to be a Toronto-based company with one listed key official, board members and employee, John Poulos, and under $18 million in sales for which the company obtains no income.”

According to Dominion’s press release, in acquiring the formerly Venezuelan Smartmatic owned Sequoia that as of 2008 still maintained Smartmatic’s intellectual property:

“Dominion Voting Systems Corporation today announced that it has acquired the assets of Sequoia Voting Systems, a major U.S. provider of voting solutions serving nearly 300 jurisdictions in 16 states. As part of the transaction, Dominion has acquired Sequoia’s inventory and all intellectual property, including software, firmware and hardware, for Sequoia’s precinct and central count optical scan and DRE voting solutions.”

So, Smartmatic buys Sequoia. ES&S divests of Premier to Dominion. Smartmatic Sells Sequoia. Smartmatic maintains an interest while Sequoia utilizes Smartmatic IP. Dominion buys Sequoia.

The Smartmatic IP is ostensibly present throughout the system, despite its hot potato M&A activity. The Americans with oversight authority know this. And, yet, they all pretend that American elections are real and impervious to manipulation.

Also, they are all direct beneficiaries of the system and seemingly uninclined to change it.

All that to say, Spencer Pratt and Smartmatic in LA in 2026 might be about a lot more than who is going to run the City of Angels.

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Burning Bright: The Los Angeles mayoral primary is the latest, most cartoonish exhibition in a long and accelerating line of successful attempts to subvert American democracy in real time and in full public view.

The mechanics are familiar: a mail-in system with extended windows, results that 'evolve' over days and weeks and the same counting choreography that has defined contested cycles since 2020 (and obviously long before.)

The only thing that has changed in the interim has been the brazenness with which it now occurs under a sitting president who has spent years calling out the same machine.

Donald Trump, tribune of a people among whom only some are increasingly unwilling to pretend the theater is legitimate has called the theft what it is.

Elon Musk has amplified his signal.

In response, the Media Industrial Complex has deployed its standard script: “unsubstantiated,” “normal process,” “conspiracy theory.”

The same institutions that spent years insisting 2020 was the most secure election in history now lecture the public on the statistical inevitability of their fraud.

Investigations aside, the pattern-recognition required to connect the dots is not complex, and it does not take digital soldiers to accomplish.

At Badlands Media, my friends and I have been demonized for years—not primarily by legacy outlets, but by large segments of the so-called Truth Community—for refusing to declare the American election system verifiable or in any way legitimate.

Trump’s victory in November 2024 did not disprove or negate this stance.

As we argued on election night, it rather supplied narrative shielding for the very apparatus now running dress rehearsals ahead of the 2026 midterms, and through no fault of Trump's, who knew the machine was willing to suffer a deferrment to another Trump win if it meant keeping the System alive.

The fraud does not require every race to flip; it only requires that enough races remain controllable, that enough citizens continue participating in the ritual and that enough voices in the 'awake' spaces continue policing the boundaries of acceptable skepticism on the most important topic in the Info War, and thus, the one the fewest are willing to forward a First Principles-stance regarding.

If you have spent the last six years defending the integrity of American elections, or attacking those who label them rigged, fake or structurally fraudulent—while simultaneously demonizing the same people for refusing to lend their consent to the charade Trump has identified since 2020—then you are not merely mistaken, you are functionally aligned with the preservation of the system as it operates, and the very one Trump has been trying to cultivate the collective mandate to dismantle for a decade and more.

Belief that the election apparatus is fundamentally fraudulent comes at the end of a logical sequence, and participation in that apparatus codifies its legitimacy.

This is the only coherent position.

Only by making that position explicit, widespread and impossible to ignore does Donald Trump receive the popular mandate he has requested for years to confront this machinery directly, and on our behalf.

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Trump Admin Announces Deportations For Those Engaged in Immigration Fraud

The Trump administration announced June 8 that it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 naturalized U.S. citizens accused of immigration fraud or other crimes, describing the effort as the largest denaturalization campaign ever undertaken by the federal government. The administration said the cases were filed in federal courts across the country.

Federal law allows the government to pursue denaturalization when officials allege that citizenship was obtained through fraud, concealment of material facts, or other disqualifying conduct. According to CBS News, the Justice Department expanded its denaturalization priorities in 2025 as part of a broader immigration enforcement initiative.

Court filings cited by the report allege that some targeted individuals concealed criminal activity during the naturalization process, used false identities, or otherwise failed to satisfy statutory requirements for citizenship, including the requirement to demonstrate good moral character. The group includes individuals accused or convicted of offenses ranging from child sexual abuse and fraud-related crimes to visa fraud and money laundering. Allegations remain subject to judicial review.

The Justice Department and administration officials said denaturalization proceedings are intended to address cases involving alleged abuse of the naturalization process. Individuals named in the actions have the opportunity to challenge the government’s claims in court. If a court orders denaturalization, the person generally reverts to a prior immigration status and loses the rights and protections associated with U.S. citizenship, including protection from deportation.

Ashe in America: As we’ve discussed in the Brief before, engaging in immigration fraud is one of the only ways that naturalized citizens can lose their citizenship.

When we’ve talked about this before, it was most often in the context of Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman that allegedly married her brother to help him obtain lawful status.

Omar is not on the list of 17 in this reporting, so obviously there’s more to do, but it’s good that those naturalized through fraud are being tossed out of the country.

It must be way more than 17. The job isn’t over until every last fake American is stripped of their status and returned to their homeland.

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Trump Eyeing Purchase of Key British Colonial Outpost

U.S. officials are discussing a proposal that could lead to the United States purchasing the Chagos Islands from Mauritius after the territory is transferred from British control, according to a report by The Telegraph cited by RT. The islands include Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. military base that RT described as one of Washington’s most significant overseas military installations.

The proposal would emerge against the backdrop of a planned transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to Mauritius. Britain previously approved an arrangement to hand over the Chagos Islands while retaining access to Diego Garcia through a 99-year lease. The dispute over sovereignty has been influenced by a 2019 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, which found that the U.K.’s separation of the islands from Mauritius in 1965 was unlawful.

President Donald Trump previously criticized the U.K.-Mauritius agreement, calling it “an act of great stupidity” and arguing that it posed national security concerns, according to RT. The article states that discussions within the administration have included a possible U.S. purchase proposal.

Mauritius has not confirmed receiving any formal U.S. offer. RT, citing Reuters, reported that the Mauritian government said it had not received an official proposal and reiterated that its sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is “non-negotiable.”

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: This is an interesting wrinkle in the effort to bring our military home and stop acting like the World Police.

I am very much in favor of shuttering the overwhelming majority of the 800+ military installations we have built around the world. With that said, I do recognize the strategic value and necessity of maintain at least a few bases abroad—where it makes sense.

This is one of those examples.

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls (ring-shaped island with a coral rim that encircles a lagoon) comprising of over 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, just south of the Maldives. The largest and most notorious of these islands is Deigo Garcia, which houses a British airbase that operates as a joint UK-US airbase. It is often described as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier.”

For context, this is what a typical atoll looks like.

This is what Diego Garcia looks like:

Here is a 2002 map of the island, denoting military installations.

And here is a map of the Chagos Archipelago. Note how most of it is submerged underwater, with only a few islands containing dry land.

While the Chagos Islands are currently controlled by the UK, London last year (May 2025) approved a plan to hand them over to Mauritius—a small island nation near Madagascar—while signing a 99-year lease on the base at Diego Garcia.

Now President Trump seeks to bypass the British and deal directly with Mauritius to purchase Diego Garcia, which would leave the British sidelined and at the mercy of the United States.

It is amazing that under President Trump there appears to be a pattern of dismantling the remnants of the old British Empire.

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BONUS ITEM

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China Launches ‘Special Maritime Operation’ off Taiwan

China launched what it called a “special maritime law enforcement operation” east of Taiwan on Saturday, according to a report citing China’s Ministry of Transport and state news agency Xinhua. Chinese authorities said the operation was intended to exercise maritime administrative law-enforcement jurisdiction and protect national rights and interests.

The reported action followed a May 28 summit in Tokyo at which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced plans to begin maritime delimitation talks concerning their exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the waters under discussion lie east of Taiwan and that any maritime delimitation negotiations in the area must involve China.

Taiwan also objected to the planned talks, stating that the area overlaps with waters in which it claims rights and interests and urging Japan and the Philippines to consult with Taipei. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said any agreement reached between Tokyo and Manila would not be legally binding on third parties.

Taiwan’s coast guard said it deployed at least five vessels in response to the Chinese operation and monitored four Chinese government vessels departing from Xiamen. The developments come amid ongoing disputes involving China, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines over maritime claims and jurisdiction in waters surrounding Taiwan.

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