Badlands Brief

Riddled With Scandal ... And Still Truckin’

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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US Envoy Tom Barrack Reports That Israel Has Attacked a Syrian Airbase; Israel Says It Was Targeting Turkish Forces

Israeli airstrikes struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwestern Syria (near Aleppo/Idlib) early on August 18, 2026, with reports of eight strikes hitting the runway and storage or hangar facilities. Syrian state media and local sources confirmed no casualties.

Israel initially imposed a gag order but later claimed responsibility through the Prime Minister’s Office, stating that Syria was on the verge of violating a security status quo by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the base despite repeated Israeli warnings.

The base, long out of service as an active airfield and controlled by Syria’s post-Assad government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, had recently seen runway reconstruction efforts.

Turkey and Syria condemned the strikes as violations of Syrian sovereignty and escalatory aggression. Turkish officials denied any military presence at the base and accused Israel of inventing pretexts to destabilize the region.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack (ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria) called the action an “unnecessary escalation” that does not advance regional stability, urging restraint and dialogue instead.

Behind the scenes, the Trump administration expressed frustration, noting that Israel had informed the White House in advance, but that Syria had not taken hostile steps and had sought de-escalation arrangements that Israel resisted.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: None of this is at all a surprise.

In fact, I was talking about this nearly a year and a half ago on Badlands Media.

Several Israeli public figures, both inside and outside the government, have signaled that a war with either Turkey or Syria (or both) was on the horizon, and it appears that this may be the opening salvo.

What's interesting is how much things have changed since I spoke about this scenario on The Daily Herold.

Back then, I was citing that an attack against Turkey could potentially trigger Article 5, which would bring the US, Canada and Europe into the fray on the side of the Turks. Now we also have the Mecca Agreement, which would bring in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as well as a newly signed security agreement with Russia.

There's also Hezbollah, which has been fighting to preserve the Syrian state since 2011, and, of course, Iran.

That is a pretty impressive line-up.

It's practically the entire Sovereign Alliance, minus China.

Though I think China has enough vested interest in this conflict—it receives more than half of the oil for its economy from Iran—to get involved, assuming it isn't already.

We also have this timely comment from the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder.

If that name sounds familiar, he is the sole heir to the Estee Lauder [cosmetics] fortune, and also the father-in-law to the new Federal Reserve Chairman, Kevin Warsh.

For those who didn't watch the video, Lauder states that Israel is engaged in an information war against the world, and must "unleash the Mossad and Shin Bet."

For those who think it's crazy for Israel to try and take on the world, consider this: the software technology that is used by nearly every intelligence agency around the world to hack into cell phones and laptops to activate the microphone/camera and steal the data is called "Pegasus." It was developed by former Mossad agents, is owned by the Israeli government, and is licensed by them to those agencies. (They pull licenses all the time when governments become troublesome or noncompliant, as they did to Saudi Arabia a few years ago.)

You can bet that they have even more sophisticated technology that we don't even know about.

So the idea of Israel fighting an information war against the entire world is not only plausible, it's probably already been happening for several years.

... and now you understand why the Sovereign Alliance was absolutely necessary.

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2026 Midterm Primaries Are Riddled With Scandal Across the Nation

According to Axios, the 2026 midterms are seeing a surge in political dirty tricks, including primary meddling, mysterious super PACs, alleged straw candidates, and last-minute maneuvering.

With fewer competitive House districts after redistricting and a closely contested Senate map, these tactics could meaningfully affect control of Congress.

Both parties are involved.

Democrats face accusations of Green Party spoiler candidates (such as in Pennsylvania’s 7th District) and last-minute Senate candidate dropouts in states like Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota aimed at boosting independents against Republicans.

Republicans, meanwhile, have been linked to “pop-up” super PACs that spent money boosting left-wing or flawed Democratic primary contenders in key districts, while also dealing with ballot confusion efforts like a second “Dan Sullivan” appearing on Alaska’s primary ballot.

High-profile incumbents from both sides—including Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.)—drew criticism for timing their retirements to clear the field for preferred successors.

Pro-Israel group AIPAC has also used obscure super PACs and conduits tied to Democratic caucuses to influence Democratic primaries.

Ashe in America: Axios is pointing the spotlight on a select, bipartisan sampling of “dirty tricks” during this midterm cycle as though it’s notable.

Democrats suing to remove candidates from the ballots; third-party spoiler candidates; party crossover voters; the battles of the PACs.

This is literally how it works all the time.

Whoever sells the best product with the best story wins.

The products are the politicians, and of the “dirty tricks” reported by Axios, this one is my favorite:

“The lawsuits allege Tupone was a registered Republican until this February and had help from Republicans getting on the ballot, with the Green Party saying he is ‘not endorsed or nominated by the Green Party.’ Tupone has insisted his candidacy is genuine, telling a local outlet he is ‘running for universal healthcare, ending the genocide in Gaza and standing up to the establishment parties.’”

That’s pretty funny. Republicans aren’t usually known for their humorous or novel political tactics, so bravo, Mr. Tupone.

The two people that dropped out right before the filing window closed are dirty tricksters, indeed. That should be prosecutable, but read my other take in today’s Brief for why it’s probably not.

The final two examples provided in the article are about PACs, and how some shadowy figures on the right and AIPAC on the left are both using deceptively-branded PACs to forward progressive candidates and social change measures.

They’re probably both AIPAC, of course, but the battle of the PACs looks way more fun than the gay battles of the fake parties.

Let’s do that instead.

#BadPAC

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Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Disqualifying Nevada Acting AG Responsible for Releasing Alleged Pedophile From Netanyahu Cabinet

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a lower-court order disqualifying Sigal Chattah from serving as acting U.S. attorney for Nevada, ruling that the Justice Department’s efforts to keep her in the role beyond the statutory limit were unlawful.

The 36-page opinion, written by Judge Eric Miller (a Trump appointee) and joined by Judges Sidney Thomas and Stanley Blumenfeld, held that Chattah cannot continue overseeing criminal prosecutions for the defendants who challenged her appointment.

Chattah, the former Nevada Republican National Committee chair, was appointed interim U.S. attorney in April 2025. Federal law caps such appointments at 120 days without Senate confirmation. She resigned just before that deadline expired, after which then-Attorney General Pam Bondi used vacancy rules and other maneuvers to keep her in an acting capacity.

A federal judge in Arizona had earlier found those steps were “never intended by Congress” and barred her from supervising several cases.

The appeals court agreed, stating that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act’s automatic succession provisions do not apply to a first assistant who never served under a validly appointed official, and that the attorney general cannot create a de facto acting U.S. attorney simply by delegating all duties.

The Justice Department said it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The decision represents another setback for the administration’s attempts to install preferred U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation, following a similar invalidation of Alina Habba’s appointment in New Jersey.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: There are several important distinctions to highlight when evaluating this story.

The first is that the appellate court that upheld this decision was a three-judge panel, two of which were Trump appointees. The ruling was unanimous.

The second is that Sigal Chattah was appointed by Pam Bondi.

The jury is still out on exactly what Pam Bondi is, though it seems that she was consistently a television personality and consistently towed the Zionist line.

Which brings me to my third distinction: The fact that Sigal Chattah was born in Israel.

I personally don't think that foreign nationals should be allowed to hold high office in America—especially if they hold dual citizenship. While we can't be certain that Chattah is still an Israeli citizen, there is also no reason to assume that she would have given it up, either.

I will say this: Chattah was unfairly blamed for the flight of accused pedophile Tom Artiom Alexandrovich—who has served in Netanyahu's government as the director of the Cyber Defense Division of the National Cyber Security Authority. The internet has come to the conclusion that, due to her dual citizenship, Chattah was responsible for releasing Alexandrovich on bail just hours after he was arrested.

The truth is that Alexandrovich wasn't charged in federal court, so Chattah had no jurisdiction over the case. It was the District Attorney of Clark County (Las Vegas), Steven Wolfson, who released Alexandrovich, stating that he wasn't a flight risk.

Upon leaving jail, Alexandrovich proceeded to immediately board a plane and abscond back to Israel. He failed to appear at his first court hearing, and appeared remotely at the second hearing to plead "not guilty."

There are many things to cover when it comes to the attorneys in this case, but let's finish up with Chattah.

While her claims that she had nothing to do with his release, and demanded he be returned to face justice, she did mislead the public as to what had occurred and what powers she had to get involved.

Here's the exact timeline:

August 6: Alexandrovich was arrested in a sting operation along with six others after the group tried to lure children to their Las Vegas hotel over the internet.

August 7: Alexandrovich is released on a $10,000 bail and shortly after flies home to Israel.

August 18: After a social media firestorm, Chattah's office issued a boiler plate statement that fails to even mention that Alexandrovich had fled the country. Hours later, Chattah posts on X to express her personal outrage that he was allowed out on bail and that his passport hadn't been seized. She clarified that the federal government has no jurisdiction over the case.

Ignoring the fact that she waited 12 days to make any public statements on the case, despite having full knowledge of it—the Feds were involved in the sting—she says that a judge allowed Alexandrovich to leave.

That is misleading.

Alexandrovich never saw a judge. Judge Barbara Schifalacqua later explicitly said he had posted standard bail before a judge reviewed the case, something that is apparently common practice in Clark County. It was the decision of the District Attorney, Steven Wolfson, to release Alexandrovich, stating that he wasn't a flight risk—despite fitting the perfect profile of a flight risk.

The fact remains that the Feds were at the center of this sting operation, meaning the AG's office would have had advanced knowledge of it.

Given the fact that one of the targets was an official from the Israeli government, and only in the country to attend a convention, seizing his passport could have been part of the arrest procedure. Advanced planning could have been done to ensure that he not be released on bail, and that a plan was in place to handle the diplomatic aspects of his detention with the Israeli government, as well as the public relations aspect of his high-profile arrest.

The fact that none of these considerations were taken demonstrates either gross negligence, gross incompetence, or conspiracy to aid and abet Alexandrovich's flight from the country. And there is evidence that Sigal Chattah was not only an ardent Zionist, but also a major fan of the Netanyahu regime.

Here are some posts from her personal X account, which she has since deactivated.

Furthermore, Chattah's assertion that the federal government had no jurisdiction or involvement was absolutely false.

She could have easily brought federal charges considering that Alexandrovich directly communicated with a federal agent posing as a child online. Sigal Chattah, Pam Bondi or Kash Patel could have initiated extradition requests from the Israeli government, and used their public platforms to advocate for the fugitive's return to the US.

Given the fact that Chattah's office had advanced knowledge of the sting, and that she was personally appointed [illegally] by Pam Bondi (an ardent Zionist,) one must wonder whether this was all an elaborate plot to harm the reputation of President Trump, who has become the target of a sophisticated propaganda campaign to convince the MAGA base that he is compromised and controlled by Israeli interests.

The Alexandrovich case has been one of the more damning talking points used by these operatives to persuade the American public to abandon their support for President Trump.

Now let's talk about the District Attorney, as well as Alexandrovich's defense attorney.

District Attorney Steven Wolfson has never identified publicly as Jewish. However, his daughter Rachel has. She starred in the recent Jackass: Forever film alongside Johnny Knoxville's crew, and in an article published about her role in the film by The Australian Jewish News outlet, her father is explicitly identified as the District Attorney of Clark County.

Oddly enough, her mother is Judge Jackie Glass, who famously sentenced OJ Simpson to prison in 2008 following his theft of sports memorabilia.

In another article written about her role in the film, Rachel explains that she attended Jewish school up until 8th grade, was raised by her parents in the Reform Judaism lens, and described her grandfather as "Orthodox." (Reford Judaism is most known for introducing the concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) which is the justification used by the government of Israel to meddle in the affairs of foreign governments and alter foreign cultures as they see fit, in order to make the world a better place.)

Then there is defense attorney David Chesnoff, who contributed $10,000 to Wolfson's election campaign in 2017 while his law firm contributed another $10,000. Filings show that his law partner and family members also made contributions.

After Alexandrovich was released on bail by Wolfson, Chesnoff made yet another $10,000 donation to Wolfson's campaign in 2025.

Chesnoff's connections to Israel are far more obvious.

In January 2024, the American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) gave Chesnoff its Las Vegas Scopus Award. AFHU says the event raised more than $1 million for Hebrew University of Jerusalem programs. The organization's account praised Chesnoff's “dedication to Israel,” said he had strengthened ties between Las Vegas and Hebrew University, and described his volunteering in Israel.

Chesnoff himself spoke publicly at the event about supporting Israel.

The number of people connected to this case who are either Jewish and/or have demonstrated strong loyalty to the Israeli government is quite stunning.

Considering that Alexandrovich was attempting to rape American children on US soil, these coincidences cannot and should not be dismissed as irrelevant.

In fact, they are very relevant, and fit within a larger pattern that seems to embrace rape as a cultural institution in Israel.

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Trump Declares Strait of Hormuz Open (Again,) Claims It as US Territory

Burning Bright: TACO Tuesday returns!

Or does it ...?

Remember, the "TACO" (Trump Always Chickens Out) acronym has been used by the so-called financial intelligencia to label Donald Trump's on again, off again negotiations and war-making with the so-called Iranian Regime some form of geopolitical cowardice that can not only be predicted with some degree of consistency, but which can be used to inform trades.

Of course, that pattern WAS apparent for the first three months of the so-called conflict around the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, however, cries of "TACO" have fallen silent, as the financial intelligencia (and no doubt, the global intelligencia) simply do not know how to read the ongoing crisis, nor Trump's handling of it, caught between the impression that Trump is the one managing said crisis and the responses to it, or simply reacting to events he kicked off and then promptly lost control of.

Of course, if you're in the Badlands, you likely believe Trump not only knows exactly what he's doing, but that he also has some degree of control over the situation, and its outcomes.

But then, Tuesday's Truth posts by the GOATUS, while nothing new point us back to the ever-present, all-pervading and much more discernible Narrative theater in the Info War than the unknowable Actual one, and once more, I am left with the impression that Trump is being far more direct than most are willing to consider.

Our own Chris Paul has for years used the 'get the hose again' refrain when it comes to our propensity to call elections fake right up until the moment we line up to participate in the next one.

Well, what if we apply the same thing to Trump's War?

If Trump started the so-called War, and if he keeps saying the so-called War is over, why then does the so-called War start again the next day, and sometimes even the next hour, and based almost entirely on media reports about said war?

If Trump is saying the Strait of Hormuz is effectively de-mined and free to pass, then why do vessels refuse to traverse it?

If Trump is saying energy prices in the US should already be stabilized, why are we still being gouged?

Either Trump is lying ... or the collectivist enemy is.

And leaning toward the latter has been a good bet for the sum total of the last decade spent attempting to free ourselves from a mass psychological entanglement most of us didn't know was in the offing to this degree until Trump exposed the spell in the first place.

And make no mistake, a spell is exactly what a narrative is, and I believe Trump is attempting to dispell it by repeatedly and confidently asserting that it has no power over those who stop believing in it.

All of which is to say, when Trump claims the war is won, that the war is over and perhaps that the war never really arrived, is it smarter to ignore him and continue to analyze its on-again, off-again nature ... or is it smarter to look a little bit more closely at the various factions, including those in the US Media Intelligencia and the US Energy Cartel who seem to stand to gain by continuing to claim the opposite?

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Ukrainian MP Says Kidnappings of Military-Aged Men by Recruiters Is an Organized Crime Scheme

A Ukrainian lawmaker from President Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, Aleksandr Kachura, has accused the country’s Territorial Centers of Recruitment and Social Support (TCC) of operating like an organized criminal group. He claims draft officers routinely ambush military-age men on the streets, at workplaces, and near homes—often violently forcing them into vans in a practice known as “busification”—and cites extreme abuses including beatings that leave lasting injuries.

Kachura described a pervasive bribery system in which detainees typically pay $10,000–$15,000 to be released, while securing senior TCC posts can cost $50,000 at the district level or $150,000 regionally. He pointed to visible enrichment by officials, such as a local recruitment chief who upgraded from a bicycle to a Land Cruiser (with his wife driving a Porsche Cayenne), and called for abolishing the TCC in favor of voluntary recruitment of motivated soldiers.

RT places these claims against the backdrop of Ukraine’s prolonged mobilization crisis since 2022, which has barred men aged 18–60 from leaving the country, generated hundreds of thousands of draft-evasion warrants, and prompted lowered conscription ages and harsher penalties.

Ukrainian human-rights officials have also warned of systemic impunity, while Russian officials frame the forced recruitment as throwing untrained men into a “meat grinder.”

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: One of the arguments against the theory that this Ukraine-Russia War is mostly narrative has been the proliferation of videos of military-aged men in Ukraine being abducted on the street by recruiters in vans.

The events have been widely documented, and have led to reports of Ukrainian men hiding out in their apartments for months at a time, and even reports of an underground railroad of sorts that helps men escape to Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has corroborated many of these stories in public statements.

The demand for Ukrainian conscripts to this extent certainly seemed to support the narrative that the frontline is a ‘meat grinder,’ and that casualties now number in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

Perhaps that all is true. Perhaps the conflict is as massive in scale as the official central narrative insists.

But this new wrinkle—the financial incentive for recruiting officers to kidnap Ukrainian men and ransom them via extortion—would help explain the bizarre phenomenon unfolding on the streets of Ukrainian cities, assuming the premise is true that the narrative of the war is grossly exaggerated, or is perhaps entirely fiction.

This would further explain the incentive for the Ukrainian military to continue participating in the narrative of the drawn out war—on top of the more obvious graft of aid money being sent by foreign governments and laundered by Ukrainian officials. (Though it seems much of that money is being diverted to other places to fund groups like ISIS.)

For the sake of debate, if we do accept the premise that there is a major conflict unfolding in Eastern Europe—and I do believe there is enough confluence of history, culture, storylines and competing incentives to support that reality—then this report further illustrates the criminal culture that controls Kiev, and supports Vladimir Putin’s publicly stated ambition to purge it from Ukraine.

Pattern recognition is among the most important exercises we can conduct when evaluating the war of stories. And the pattern that has emerged is the moral decay that is prevalent in the political leadership of Ukraine, Israel and Washington DC.

One could even call it a moral collapse; one that has fallen off the deep end and into the abyss.

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NSA Deputy Blocked Election Threat Report Over Fear of ‘Deep State’ Label

In March 2020, NSA Deputy Director George Barnes blocked the release of a completed intelligence report on foreign targeting of U.S. elections—including activity related to 2016—because he feared it would brand the agency as part of the “deep state.”

A newly-declassified memo from one of the analysts records Barnes warning that, with an acting ODNI tasked to “clean house” and an administration already suspicious of the intelligence community, publishing the report would destroy NSA’s remaining credibility as a nonpartisan institution, damage workforce morale, and tar the agency alongside the ODNI, CIA, and parts of the FBI.

The report had been finished since December 2018 and covered foreign targeting that began in 2014, with some details judged “sensational.” Higher levels had sat on it for 16 months; by early 2020 the distribution list was approved and it awaited final sign-off from NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, but Barnes objected to releasing it “as-is.” He proposed watering it down into a summary or folding material into a separate 2020 product on the Russian Internet Research Agency’s preferences, while the analyst pushed back that selective editing would look even more political and would still contextually identify members of Congress.

The memo later formed part of the material reviewed by IC Ombudsman Barry Zulauf for his 2021 report on politicization of election-interference intelligence.

Ashe in America: Welcome to the bad mood minute.

I got into a maddening debate with Claude AI yesterday about whether or not this conduct from NSA guy is lawful.

I’m sorry in advance.

“There is no federal crime of ‘suppressing true information from the public/decision-makers to influence outcomes,’ full stop. That’s deliberate: a criminal statute like that would be a direct collision with the First Amendment (the government controlling its own speech/non-speech, including non-disclosure, is treated completely differently than the government suppressing others’ speech) and would hand prosecutors discretion to criminalize essentially any unflattering editorial or classification judgment by any official, ever.”

Excuse me?

Government speech is treated completely differently?

When I pressed Claude on this point, he said:

“There’s no constitutional right to compel the government to say something it doesn’t want to say.”

Oh, I think we need to fix that. Read it again.

At this point, I’m fuming, so I ask about redress and reached the climax of the bad mood minute:

“Congress did build accountability mechanisms for exactly this scenario — but they’re non-criminal: the IC Whistleblower framework, the IG process, the Ombudsman review that in fact happened here, and congressional oversight/subpoena power. That’s not a consolation prize; it’s the actual designed remedy for ‘official withheld/delayed information for self-interested political reasons.’ The system routes this to oversight and accountability, not prosecution, on purpose.”

Congressional oversight, lol.

The statute makers have literally structured the statutes to prevent them (as a class) from ever being held accountable.

Even Claude admits it, and he’s a big ol’ statist:

“So my honest answer is: this is a real accountability failure as a matter of governance and public trust, and the mechanisms that exist to address it (Ombudsman review, IG referral, congressional oversight, public reporting like this) are functioning as designed by surfacing it years later. But ‘even theoretically’ — no, I can’t identify a federal criminal statute whose elements this fact pattern satisfies, because no such statute exists for this category of conduct.”

You know, before we had statutes, we had declarations.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

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