Badlands Brief
Election Exposure, Energy Angst & War Rackets
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.
FBI Investigating Maricopa County Elections
The FBI has obtained election-related records tied to Maricopa County, Arizona, as part of a federal criminal investigation into election administration going back to 2020 and through 2024, according to the reports.
Just the News reports that the records were obtained through a grand jury subpoena seeking “terabytes of data” and other materials connected to voting systems and election procedures in Maricopa County, Arizona. The scope of the subpoena and the specific materials obtained have not been publicly disclosed.
The investigation follows concerns raised by House Administration Committee observers during the 2024 election who inspected a third-party ballot processing facility used by Maricopa County. According to a memo cited in the report, observers reported that completed mail ballots and blank ballots were stored in the same room at the facility – Runbeck Election Services, a private contractor hired by Maricopa County to process ballots. They reported no state government officials were present while ballots were being handled, and that some pallets of blank ballots appeared to have torn wrapping with ballots missing or removed at the facility.
According to the report, Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) previously asked the US Department of Justice to investigate Runbeck Election Services and the handling of ballots during the 2024 election, and the Arizona action is part of an ongoing federal investigation into election issues in multiple states.
President Donald Trump shared the Just the News report on his Truth Social account, amplifying the story with, “Great!!!” in the body of the post.
Ashe in America: Back in January, CannCon and I had former Maricopa County Clerk and Recorder Stephen Richer on Why We Vote.
The conversation was constrained to Fulton County, GA, but at one point Richer downplayed Runbeck’s role in Maricopa County elections in 2022 — that was the “drawer three” election.
Runbeck Election Services is so specialized it requires waiving competitive contracts in certain contexts — like country-level contract and funding approvals. (see: El Paso County, CO)
In other contexts — like efforts to verify ballot chain of custody and obtain loading dock footage — it’s so basic that it’s just like the Staples or the UPS store. (See: Maricopa County, AZ)
This is the essence of the of public private partnerships in elections — plausible deniability via ever-moving goal posts.
It can’t be both. It can’t been so specialized it deserves a waiver of the standard bid requirements but, also, so unspecialized that the government can’t compel transparency in “our democracy.”
That’s been the narrative landscape for Runbeck to date — but that elusive transparency is now the substance of a federal investigation.
About that… remember the Maricopa audit? I made a timeline in 2021 of all times the county obstructed justice, overlaid with audit findings and other notable moments:
This conduct is now being investigated. We’re closer than we’ve ever been.
Georgia… Arizona… who’s next?
P.S. You guys think Richer will come back on the show?
Saving Seoul now available in Digital/Audio Formats!
Following the limited edition leatherbound hardcover, Saving Seoul, the first book in the Sword Punk Trilogy is now available in digital and audio formats from our own Burning Bright Publishing.
The audiobook was produced in partnership with Soundbooth Theater.
This isn’t some AI read aloud crap; it’s a full-on audio theater production, featuring a cast of professional actors, original music and high-end studio polish, and I think it represents the best vision for the Sword Punk aesthetic in the best package for this audience, bringing the story of Akio Prince and his war against the Deep State to life in vivid detail.
Head over to BadlandsMedia.tv/SwordPunk to listen to a free sample, and download the full Audio Production for $25.
Graham Meets Middle East Leaders as Trump Pursues Iran Talks
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this month, amid discussions about Iran and regional security.
According to reporting, Graham urged stronger action against Iran, including the possibility of military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Graham’s meetings with Netanyahu drew attention during a Fox News segment in which host Laura Ingraham questioned Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about what she described as “secret meetings” between the South Carolina senator and the Israeli leader. Cruz responded that members of Congress routinely meet with foreign officials as part of diplomatic engagement.
At the same time, President Donald Trump has been pursuing negotiations aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program while also authorizing US military strikes on Iran as part of joint operations.
Separately, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call discussing international security issues, including the situation involving Iran, with the Kremlin stating that the leaders addressed regional stability and potential diplomatic solutions.
President Trump confirmed the “very good call” in a press conference Monday.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: We all owe a deep debt of gratitude to President Trump for exposing—beyond all reasonable doubt—the traitors in the GOP who have sold out our country to Israel. (And probably other places, too.)
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
Exhibit D:
Exhibit E:
Well, Lindsey Graham must be just about the most unsophisticated and uncalculating moron to ever serve in the US Senate. I am certainly no trained diplomat, but I have studied Saudi Arabia enough to understand that the royal family values their privacy, preferring to handle their business and conduct diplomacy behind closed doors. So going on Fox News and social media to present your proposal to the world is not likely to achieve an agreement with the Saudis.
On some level, Lindsey Graham must know this—so his reckless behavior suggests a level of desperation that is not only dangerous, but likely doomed to fail.
Simply put, Lindsey is a big fat loser, and we only want winners here on Team America.
But let’s go back to Exhibit B—the part where Lindsey says that President Trump has become emboldened with confidence after his successful op against Maduro and Venezuela.
You see, in my opinion, that is the op. President Trump appears to be playing a trick on these goons, and they are too drunk on hubris to see it. He has fooled them into thinking that he is a cocksure cavalier who leaps before he looks, and can be led into a forever war with enough ego-stroking and pragmatic salesmanship.
Despite all of President Trump’s rhetoric as president, his past commentary against wars in the Middle East, his track record of peacemaking, the core demands of the MAGA base, and his obvious relationships with the Muslim countries around the region, these NeoCons are still foolish enough to go charging, full-tilt, into the Forever War narrative, where they now find themselves sinking in the quicksand of bad optics.
Simply put, President Trump tricked them into getting on the Forever War rug, and he appears to be stepping off just as it is leaving the station and heading toward calamity.
On top of all that, Trump expertly wielded the narrative in such a way that these sniveling rodents are now proudly boasting of their efforts to collude with foreign leaders in order to exploit the American People. Ted Cruz can’t even explain their behavior to a Fox News host—that’s how bad this is.
But their hubris doesn’t stop there. These Christian Dispensationalists in Congress are taking to X/formerly-Twitter to call for the societal revulsion against all Muslims. Their underlying logic appears to be that Muslims desire to exterminate all non-Muslims, so we better exterminate them first.
Classic “eat-or-be-eaten” law of the jungle stuff. Totally what Jesus would do, if He were here.
Here’s Congressman Randy Fine claiming that Iran was planning to nuke the United States, and because Marjorie Taylor Greene opposes the war in Iran, Fine accuses MTG of “wanting to see America get nuked.”
Frankly, it’s a little frightening to see how deranged and violent these people are, once the mask drops. Seems to me that everything they project onto Muslims they, themselves, actually possess in their hearts.
Confident, masculine men—”alpha males”—fully understand that the world is a dangerous place, but we don’t let that manifest into a crippling fear that rules our days and turns us into an anxious mess. Only weaklings and beta males demand “safe spaces” where everything is bubble-wrapped and safety is guaranteed.
If we are going to have a Golden Age, we are going to need to herd these mental patients back into the asylum where they belong. They are all demanding a padded room where they can be safe from the nukes, and I think we should oblige them.
Iran War Triggers Energy Shock as Oil Markets Strain
Iran has warned that escalating conflict in the Middle East could drive global oil prices to $200 per barrel, as fighting and attacks on energy infrastructure threaten supplies across the region. An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman said continued US and Israeli actions against Iran could trigger retaliation affecting oil production and economic infrastructure across the Middle East.
The warnings come amid major disruptions to global energy flows. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a key corridor for about 20% of the world’s oil supply — has been severely curtailed, creating fears of a large-scale supply shock in global markets. Analysts estimate shipments through the strait have fallen sharply, removing a significant share of crude exports from the market and pushing oil prices higher.
Energy markets have already reacted to the instability. Brent crude prices briefly climbed above $119 per barrel, while traders warn further escalation could remove large volumes of supply and push prices substantially higher.
Governments are responding with emergency measures to stabilize supply. The United States has issued a temporary waiver allowing India to purchase Russian oil cargoes, aiming to prevent shortages and reduce pressure on global energy markets during the crisis.
Indian officials said the waiver does not determine the country’s energy policy, stating that India has never depended on permission from any country to buy Russian oil and will continue purchasing crude where available to meet domestic demand.
Burning Bright: An emergent macro narrative is rising to compete with—and in my estimation, subsume—the engineered war story out of Tehran.
That narrative is Energy, its weaponization on the global stage and how this very crisis, whether Actual, Narrative or the fifth-generation blend Trump has mastered is accelerating the germination phase of the Nuclear Renaissance that’s been seeded for years.
To wit, while the headlines scream regime change optics and forever-war escalation, the real story is the deliberate targeting of energy infrastructure—Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities, IRGC responses hitting Gulf assets, production shut-ins and a near-collapse of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The weaponization is blatant.
But watch who it’s actually hitting—and who it’s shielding.
The so-called Allies—best embodied by Israel and the NATO/European axis—are not only escalating the energy crisis through direct attacks on Iranian reserves and chokepoints; they are also the least equipped to weather the fallout.
Europe, still reeling from the engineered loss of Russian pipeline flows and its suicidal nuclear phase-outs (something even Germany now openly admits as a “severe strategic mistake”) remains over 50% import-dependent.
France’s nuclear-heavy fleet stands as the lonely exception proving the rule, while Israel, for all its precision strikes sits inside the same volatile region it is helping destabilize.
These are the actors playing checkers with a chessboard on fire.
Contrast that with the Sovereign Alliance nations.
Russia continues flowing oil to India—its largest buyer—under a US-issued temporary waiver that Washington carved out specifically to keep energy moving to the ‘right places’ amid the storm.
India, with uncharacteristic sovereign defiance has now responded to any perceived pressure with a blunt statement: “India has never depended on permission from any country to buy Russian oil.”
Meanwhile, China-linked carriers transit the narrowest stretches of Hormuz without incident.
These aren’t coincidences.
The Sovereign Trinity—Russia, China, India (with Iran as economic facilitator)—is sparring on the narrative level while cooperating on the Actual: rerouting supplies, asserting energy sovereignty and insulating their populations from the very shocks the Invisible Enemy (Neocons, Globalists and Warmongers) needs to maintain control.
This engineered energy crisis doesn’t just expose the fragility of fossil fuel dependence and the suicidal folly of the Green Agenda. It discloses the urgent need for the energy transition already underway—while simultaneously accelerating the very pathway there, presenting a feedback loop of Mandate Cultivation and Actualization.
Because what rises above $200 oil warnings, Hormuz chokepoints and European gas panics is the unassailable truth of nuclear power, with baseload reliability immune to geopolitics and weather, fuel stockpiled for years (not reliant on daily tanker runs) and the capacity to meet exploding demand from AI, data centers, manufacturing and electrification without the scarcity programming the enemy has spent decades embedding into the collective psyche.
The Iranian chaos is and will be disruptive in the short term, but it grants Donald Trump an even stronger public mandate to continue—and to continue to sharpen—the divergence down the Nuclear Renaissance path I’ve documented for years, and that he sent into overdrive starting in 2025, from executive orders accelerating NRC modernization and advanced reactor deployment to the quadrupling of domestic capacity and embedding of civil nuclear energy into the AI prosperity framework very few in this community are even paying attention to.
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Turkey and Iran Disagree on Missile Incident
Turkish officials said the country’s air defenses shot down a second missile that Ankara said had been fired from Iran, as tensions and conflicting claims emerged between the two regional powers.
Turkish authorities reported intercepting the missile near the country’s eastern border.
Iran denied launching any attacks against Türkiye or nearby countries, rejecting reports that missiles had been fired toward Turkish territory, Azerbaijan, or Greek Cyprus.
Iranian officials said Tehran had not carried out strikes against those locations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Ankara had warned Iran that Türkiye could defend itself against any threat and was capable of responding to attacks on its territory. He stated that Türkiye’s military has the capacity to repel potential threats if necessary.
Related: Erdoğan accused Israel of taking advantage of shifting global attention to undermine efforts toward a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding that developments in the region were increasing pressure across the Middle East.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: I think most people understand, at this point, that stabilizing the Middle East with a real and lasting security architecture is the only way to achieve world peace, and thus, the Golden Age.
A few short years ago, nobody thought a stable Middle East was even possible. There appeared to be too much bad blood, bad history, tribal politics, and ethnic divisions—not to mention religious differences—to allow the region to reach any sort of political equilibrium that would allow real economic prosperity (not just oil money) to take root.
Then came along Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and [he] changed the game. He seems to have struck the right balance of heavy-handed justice, congeniality, and forward thinking to pull the region out of its backward orthodoxy and into the modern age. For the past decade, MBS has set about resurrecting the diplomatic practice of bilateral agreements, investing in both his own people and the region while also reforming (or even expelling) the radical religious elements of Saudi society.
MBS has gone from uniting the Bedouin tribesmen of the desert to uniting the nation-states of the Muslim Ummah, a task that has never been accomplished purely through diplomacy.
What makes this fragile security architecture work is not sunshine and rainbows and “love for thy brother;” what makes it work is a matrix of incentive structures that have been carefully layered so that Arab monarchies and Turkmen democracies, among other ethnic and political systems, can find common ground and negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes.
Simply put, it works because they are all acting in their own self-interest, just like the rest of us. But for them, getting to this point has been a long and complicated road.
All of that work is now under threat, as they face their first real stress test for the region under this newly formed geopolitical framework. Fortunately for MBS, he is not alone. There are other strongmen leaders in the region who also have a vision for their people and their culture, and who also share a common friendship with President Trump.
Erdogan of Turkey is one of these strongmen, and he has made it clear that he will not be tricked into a conflict with his neighbors in Iran. We also the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, who has just come out in support of Iran— despite historical differences and a deep love for President Trump that Sharif has tearfully expressed on many occasions.
There is also King Abdullah of Jordan, President Auon of Lebanon, President Al Sharaa of Syria, Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, King Hamad of Bahrain, General Al-Sisi of Egypt, Mohammed bin Zayed of UAE, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman, and of course, Emir Tamim Al Thani of Qatar.
All of these strongmen have pledged their loyalty, at some point, to President Trump, (as have the Taliban in Afghanistan) and in doing so all of these men have also pledged their loyalty to the common cause of peace. With the eyes of history upon them, will they allow these conniving forces to rip them apart, backsliding into the abyss of yesteryear? Or will they prove themselves resilient enough to forever change the course of history and make the Middle East into the world’s next great civilization?
War on Terror Reloaded? Afghanistan & ISIS Make US Headlines
On March 9, 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States designated Afghanistan as a “State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention.”
The designation was made in response to the Taliban’s detention of US nationals and other foreign citizens considered unjustified or politically motivated. The “State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention” designation is a State Department classification used to identify governments that detain foreign nationals to gain diplomatic leverage or concessions. The designation allows the US government to increase diplomatic pressure and coordinate efforts to secure the release of detained Americans.
Afghanistan’s designation follows other countries that have been labeled under the same framework for detaining Americans or foreign nationals.
Related: The DOJ announced terrorism-related law enforcement action tied to the federal government’s counterterrorism efforts. From the DOJ Press Release:
“This was an alleged ISIS-inspired act of terrorism that could have killed American citizens,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will not allow ISIS’s poisonous, anti-American ideology to threaten this nation—our law enforcement officers will remain vigilant, as they were when these devices were brought to a protest.”
“These men allegedly sought to inflict mass casualties in service to ISIS with the hope of exceeding the carnage of the Boston Marathon bombing,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “We are tremendously grateful to the brave law enforcement officers who ran into harm’s way to apprehend these individuals and disarm the explosives before anyone was harmed. Thanks to the quick investigative work by federal law enforcement, this Department of Justice will prosecute these men who pledged allegiance to a foreign terrorist organization to the fullest extent.”
“The defendants allegedly support ISIS and tried to follow the path of that deadly group by attempting to detonate explosive devices in a crowd,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “The FBI and our partners have no tolerance for terrorist organizations or those inspired by them to engage in attacks. We are committed to stopping acts of violence and will hold accountable those who seek to harm our citizens. I want to commend the brave NYPD officers who took action to prevent injuries or loss of life on the streets of New York.”
Ashe in America: Today’s news brief reminds me of when we discussed the WEF’s prediction of the coming “Polycrisis” back in the beginning of 2023.
The globalists always [try to] follow through.
It seems like Trump is playing whack-a-mole with emerging war narratives but, thankfully, despite Lindsey Graham and his donors’ best efforts, the President always seems at least a few steps — or years — ahead.
I hate violence. We should be able to negotiate our differences in the modern age. We should be able to make deals. The President it a deal maker first.
It’s all war narratives lately. War narratives are weapons in an information war.
One thing we know for sure: War is a racket.
How do you roll up a racket?
Accelerate.
BONUS ITEM
Turley on Dem Backlash for Waffling on War Powers
Democratic lawmakers are facing questions about past statements supporting broad presidential authority to conduct military operations without new congressional approval. The scrutiny comes amid current debates over whether the president must seek congressional authorization before potential military action against Iran.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted that several of the same leaders previously backed expansive executive war powers during earlier administrations.
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The opinions expressed in the Badlands Brief are those of the tagged authors and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes or positions of Badlands Media.
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Ghost, tell us how you really feel!! "sniveling rodents, mental patients back into the asylum". Your usual humor is a great way to start the day. (BTW, I know you mean it, but its still funny how you put it!)
What an amazing show that we are not simply watching but actually living through... WOW, God is Good!
The whack a mole is an excellent analogy of Trump 2.0 mastery of the Narrative, his whole team has a PhD in Trump-A_Mania.
What will we see today, what a time to be alive!
God Wins!
God Bless!!!