Badlands Brief
Tina Peters' Sentence Commuted; ISIS Killed in Africa
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.
Governor Polis Commutes Prison Sentence of Tina Peters
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has commuted the prison sentence of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 for allowing unauthorized access to county voting systems tied to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results. Peters is expected to be released after serving about two years in prison. (Associated Press, May 15, 2026)
Peters had been sentenced to roughly nine years after prosecutors said she enabled unauthorized access to Mesa County election equipment and data that later circulated among election denial activists. An April 2026 Colorado appeals court decision upheld her convictions but vacated the sentence and ordered resentencing, citing issues with the trial judge’s sentencing comments.
Polis said the commutation reflected concerns that Peters, a first-time nonviolent offender, received an unusually severe sentence. He said the decision did not endorse her conduct or false claims about the 2020 election.
The case became a national rallying point among supporters of President Donald Trump, who repeatedly called for Peters’ release and claimed in 2025 that he had pardoned her, despite state officials saying presidential pardons do not apply to state convictions.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and other critics said the commutation risks weakening deterrence against election-system tampering and could damage public trust in election administration.
Ashe in America: On Friday, Governor Jared Polis granted clemency to Tina Peters in the form of a reduced sentence and grant of parole. Read the official grant, Tina Peters’ statement, and the reactions of the fraud deniers here.
He cut her sentence in half, moved up her eligibility date, and granted parole. The conditions of her parole will be determined by a governor-appointed parole board. I read through the statutes yesterday, and they have broad discretion in assigning the terms that they determine are needed.
I got to hug Tina on Saturday and celebrate a bit with her. Her first priority upon release is seeing her 97 year old mother. Her second priority is reclaiming her health, eating fresh food, and restoring her body. She wants to see Minka, but not until she can be sure she’s never leaving her again.
Tina plans to eat a thick steak and a salad with real tomatoes and avocado.
And she’s excited to get real sleep. Tina told me that the first time she actually slept since she’s been inside was Friday night after the grant of clemency came down.
There is a lot of speculation about whether or not Tina was forced or otherwise coerced to issue her statement of contrition (in the linked article above), and I asked her about that. She said that she approved the statement and stands by it. That is consistent with what she’s told me in our previous conversations.
Much more will be released in the coming weeks, and Tina is ready to tell her story. But the priorities above are her priorities. She’ll tell you about them herself soon…
And June 1 can’t come soon enough for Tina Peters.
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Trump Warns Iran “Clock is Ticking” As Potential False Flag Attacks Are Conducted Against UAE and Saudi Arabia
A drone strike caused a fire near the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates on May 17, according to Emirati authorities, who said there were no injuries or radioactive leaks. The UAE defense ministry said three drones entered the country from the western border direction, with two intercepted and one striking an electrical generator outside the plant’s inner perimeter in the Al Dhafra region.
The UAE blamed Iran or allied proxy groups for the incident. Presidential adviser Anwar Gargash called the strike a “dangerous escalation” and said it violated international law and norms. Emirati officials said investigations into the source of the drones were continuing.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said military activity threatening nuclear safety was “unacceptable” after discussions with UAE officials about the strike. The UAE’s nuclear regulator said there was no impact on reactor operations or public safety.
Saudi Arabia condemned the attack and reported intercepting three drones approaching from Iraqi airspace in a separate incident. Regional tensions have remained elevated during a fragile ceasefire linked to the broader Iran conflict.
U.S. President Donald Trump warned Iran that “the clock is ticking” in a social media post amid stalled negotiations tied to the conflict. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Israel had built and defended a secret base in Iraq during the Iran war to support operations against Tehran.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: Just nine days before the Iran-Israel started back in February, a Deep State-aligned think-tank called the Middle East Council on Global Affairs published an article asserting that a detente with both Saudi Arabia and the UAE was a strategic priority for Iran.
The article was well-sourced, providing quotes from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from June 2025—during the Twelve Day War: “Saudi Arabia stands with its brothers in Iran and will spare no effort to support them.” He added that “the entire Islamic world is united in backing Iran.”
The UAE joined in the collective condemnation of Israel’s unprovoked aggression against Iran, as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi both expressed their solidarity with the Muslim world, going as far as to call their longtime rival, Saudi Arabia, their “brothers.”
Israel had succeeded in uniting the entire Islamic world under a single banner, and that banner was to oppose Israeli aggression.
Now Saudi Arabia is offering to formalize a non-aggression pact with Iran, and suddenly it is hit by a drone attack… from Iraq? Right after joining a Saudi-led initiative to integrate economic infrastructure and investment across the Middle East? An endeavor potentially worth $100 billion, which could transform the region?
It’s worth noting the recent report of two Israeli military bases that were secretly built in the remote parts of Iraq. The bases were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd named Awad al-Shammari. After reporting his discovery to the relevant authorities, al-Shammari was reportedly gunned down by a helicopter strike.
Now we have an attack on the UAE’s nuclear power plant—an attack that came in from the west. Let’s check the map.
I’ve taken the liberty of marking with an arrow the place where these drones reportedly crossed into the UAE, according to their official statements. I’ve also marked where Iran is located, as well as Israel. You will notice that Iran is not located to the west of the UAE, but Israel and Iraq both are.
I should also remind you that Israel staunchly opposes any Muslim country possessing nuclear technology. The intended target of the attack was the nuclear power plant in the UAE.
It seems to me that somebody is trying to provoke a war between the various Muslim nations. The only nation that would benefit from such a development would be Israel.
Sometimes logic and common sense are all you need to evaluate a situation.
Putin To Visit China Just Days After Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Beijing on May 19-20 for talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a Kremlin announcement released Saturday. The Kremlin said the visit coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship and will focus on bilateral relations, economic cooperation, and international and regional issues.
Putin’s trip comes less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump concluded a state visit to China that included meetings with Xi on trade, Taiwan, and the conflict involving Iran. Chinese state media described the sequence of visits by the U.S. and Russian presidents as unusual and indicative of Beijing’s growing diplomatic influence.
Ahead of the visit, Xi and Putin exchanged congratulatory messages, with Chinese state media quoting Xi as saying China-Russia cooperation had “continuously deepened and solidified.” The two countries have expanded political and economic ties in recent years, particularly after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine increased Moscow’s dependence on Chinese trade and energy purchases.
The Kremlin said the leaders are expected to discuss “key international and regional issues” during the meetings in Beijing.
Burning Bright: The Sovereign Signal is no longer subtle. It is no longer deniable.
In Beijing, in May 2026, two leaders who were supposed to be enemies stood in the same frame and spoke the same language of partnership over rivalry, and watched the last globalist chess pieces tremble as their shadows fell over the board.
And also in Beijing, another leader is set to drop by for his own stoic brand of deal-making and cold, strategic posturing just days after Trump’s departure.
Talk about timing …
And while the Media Industrial Complex—and unfortunately, large swaths of the Alt. Media and even the so-called Truth Community—will attempt to spin up the Putin-Xi convergence as anathema to any prospective and pending US cooperation with the two, long-time readers of the Bright Archives know that nothing could be further from the truth.
And Donald Trump is telling you as much in as many ways as he can.
So, while the financial media largely saw the summit as a dud for the lack of Actuals to come out of it, and while the Globalists are trying to sell it as some sort of loss for Trump and the American people—and no doubt for global markets—the truth is, much like the perpetuation of the Iranian Knot, the longer the sovereign flirtation stretches between Trump and Xi, Trump and Putin and all three as a trinity with the gravity to move the world into a step change, the more the Actual and Narrative pressure builds on the System that seeks to stop them, and the more time the Multipolar World has to carve itself out from the collectivist ether in the interim.
In short, the US can absorb the shocks.
China can absorb the shocks.
Russia can absorb the shocks.
But can the Collectorate?
Can the System?
Can the ideology masquerading as a philosophy?
In Beijing in May of 2026, Trump and Xi dropped the only signal they needed to, just like Trump and Putin did in Helsinki way back in 2018: that they have the power, each to himself before one another, yes, but also each to himself AND one another.
For you see, the Multipolar World does not mean there will be no cooperation. It means the only cooperation that will occur will be the sort that makes sense, the sort that is intuitive and pragmatic.
The sort that is moral and right and yes, righteous.
In short, the sort of competition sovereigns on the micro and on the macro have always engaged in for mutual gain.
Which is exactly what both men echoed in the immediate aftermath.
And herein lies one of the great paradoxes of the globalist plight, as, just as the Iran War has utterly exposed the Western Globalist Hegemon on an Actual level as being a Paper Tiger, the very panic pattern that reaches critical mass anytime two of any three members of the theorized Sovereign Alliance take center stage in the central narrative in concert demonstrates to a bipartisan audience the ironclad promise that lies at the heart of the Power Paradigm premise.
Power begets Power.
Power recognizes Power.
Power is Power.
And three men—meaning three nations, meaning three peoples—wield it in abundance relative to the rest of the map combined.
Which means, de facto that any direct pairing of two of the three represents a force multiplier to that power, and an exponential, extinction-level threat to whatever apparatus opposes it.
Controversy Escalates Over Massive Citizenship Verification in Voter Registrations
The Trump administration has run at least 67 million voter registrations through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE program, AP reported Monday, citing eligibility checks that critics say could lead to valid voters being removed from rolls before the November elections. USCIS said 60 million checks identified about 24,000 potential noncitizens, and AP reported at least 25 states have used SAVE for voter-roll checks since April 2025.
The SAVE Act, H.R. 22, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Congress.gov shows the House passed the bill 220-208 on April 10, 2025, and sent it to the Senate the same day.
Rasmussen Reports said a March 8-10, 2026, survey of 1,098 likely U.S. voters found 63% supported the SAVE Act and 32% opposed it. Rasmussen also published question wording for a May 10-12, 2026, election-integrity survey of 1,060 likely voters.
Ashe in America: How did we get here?
Remember when McKinsey told us a Polycrisis was coming and then — as if they were revealing a plan more than making a prediction — the sustained crisis cascade overwhelmed the nation?
It’s not “democrats.”
It’s unipartisan globalists.
And it is, indeed, all connected. And it’s also being dismantled and restructured.
Accelerate.
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US and Nigerian Forces Engage in Joint Operations Against ISIS in West Africa
Nigerian and U.S. forces carried out a joint counterterrorism operation that killed Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, also known as Abu-Mainok, Nigeria’s State House said May 16. The State House said early assessments confirmed Al-Manuki and several lieutenants were killed in a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.
Reuters reported that President Donald Trump and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu both said Al-Minuki was killed in northeastern Nigeria. Reuters, citing the Nigerian Army, said the strike took place in Metele, Borno State, in close coordination with U.S. Africa Command.
The Nigerian Army said the operation began about 12:01 a.m. and ended around 4 a.m. Saturday with no casualties or asset losses, Reuters reported. AP reported, citing a U.S. official speaking anonymously, that Al-Mainuki was involved in Islamic State organizing and finance and had been plotting attacks against the United States and its interests.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry : This would be a complicated situation to unpack, but fortunately we have been tracking it years, and I think I understand the dynamics at play.
First of all, to orient ourselves, this situation falls within the battlespace of Conflict A on the map that I created and shared in the Brief back in January.
The Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—which I would argue are part of the Sovereign Alliance—have been in rebellion against the UN-affiliated Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) since 2022, when Captain Ibrahim Traore led a military coup against his own commander, who had overthrown the government of Burkina Faso just 8 months earlier.
Organizations like ECOWAS are created to control and suppress nations around the world. Developing nations are not allowed to modernize or achieve prosperity, so that their country’s natural resources can be plundered and their people exploited for labor, trafficking, and terrorism.
The conflict in West Africa far precedes 2022. For decades, terrorist groups and militias have kept the region destabilized. These groups are funded by the State Department, CIA, UN, NATO, and the vast matrix of NGO’s that operate under those umbrellas.
Russia has been helping Captain Traore and his allies reclaim their sovereignty from these ISIS-linked groups. Russia and the AES have repeatedly accused Ukraine of funding, arming, and training these groups.
Isn’t it strange that Ukraine would prioritize sending weaponry and money to a random place in Africa, while they were ostensibly fighting a war against Russia?
It makes more sense when you realize that the money Congress approved to send to Ukraine was always intended to fund these groups, so that the Deep State could overthrow the governments of the countries they have lost control over; Countries that provide critical resources like gold (Burkina Faso) and uranium (Niger).
Before ISIS was around, it was Boko Haram operating in the region, and they affiliated themselves with Al Qaeda. (Another CIA-created terrorist organization.)
The leader that President Trump mentioned in his post, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, was the former leader of Boko Haram. His most famous exploit was the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria in 2014—who were most likely trafficked as sex slaves.
110 of these girls were rescued in Nigeria in March 2018, and we know for a fact that US Special Forces were operating in that exact area from our analysis of the Tongo Tongo Ambush, where four US soldiers were killed by ISIS in a scandal where they were clearly set up by bad actors in the Pentagon and CIA. I covered this scandal on The Book of Trump last year with The AlphaWarrior Show.
ISIS and its predecessors have been operating in the region for over 20 years. It would seem that the original purpose of their presence was to necessitate the French intervention in 2013.
You may recall that the French/UN occupation of North Africa led to a huge scandal when UN aid worker Anders Kompass turned whistleblower and exposed a pedophile ring run by French soldiers.
It would seem that these terrorist organizations are of enormous benefit to the State Department and its partners, as they are now being used to destabilize the Sahel States so that ECOWAS and the UN can justify invading and taking over their governments—which they have been threatening to do for years.
By killing Al-Manuki, President Trump has done a great service to Captain Traore and his Sahelian allies—though the MSM will posit it as Trump siding with ECOWAS against the AES. Destroying these proxy groups is a critical step in stabilizing the region, but even more important is following the money to determine who is financing them.
BONUS ITEM
Badlands Blitz
On the latest Badlands Blitz, Ashe in America and Burning Bright deep dive on China's role in the Sovereign Alliance, and why the Globalist Deep State was actually so upset about Donald Trump's visit to Beijing.
Also, is the MSM retreating on the election narrative?
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A commuted sentence, with restrictions besides, is far from what Tina Peters deserves, but over the coming years I think she'll be recognized as one of the heroes of the Golden Age who helped bring down the corruption that Joe Biden called "... one of the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organizations in the history of American politics." I hope to someday see schools, roads, and parks bearing Tina Peters' name.
“Jena Griswold and other critics said the commutation risks weakening deterrence against election-system tampering”…I suspect what Griswold really means is that she fears the discovery of election fraud by the corrupt system in power.
I don’t remember the name, but there was another person in CO charged with the same “crime” as Tina but only got parole and community service.
What Americans want to know is why Tina’s sentence was extremely harsh?!