Badlands Brief
RFK Jr Calls Out MSM For Covid Crimes Live On CNN
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.
Trump Cancels Planned Major Strikes Against Iran To Reach Deal With Tehran; Saudi Crown Prince Credited For Intervention
President Donald Trump said he canceled a planned U.S. attack on Iran late Saturday, August 1, as regional governments pressed for diplomacy and negotiations continued over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the decision was conditional on the parties reaching an agreement quickly.
Trump said the prospective agreement would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz and addressing what he described as Iran’s nuclear threat.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with Trump on Saturday and raised concerns about possible large-scale U.S. strikes, according to two U.S. officials and another person familiar with the call cited by Axios. One source told Axios that bin Salman urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. The White House and Saudi Embassy declined to comment to Axios.
Axios also reported that Qatari mediators held separate talks Saturday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Omani officials over a potential agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. An unnamed source familiar with the discussions told the outlet that the talks had made progress.
Separately, TASS reported that Israel’s Channel 12, citing two diplomats familiar with the negotiations, said Araghchi had accepted a Qatari-mediated proposal governing navigation through the strait. Under the reported proposal, inbound vessels would travel through Iranian territorial waters and outbound vessels through Omani territorial waters.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: So Trump rugged everybody? Again? And it was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman who intervened to save the day?
It does seem like Trump was potentially setting up MBS for this moment when he would “defy” the Unipolar Hegemony and refuse their demands that Saudi a) join the war against Iran, and, b) join the Abraham Accords. Instead, it appears that Saudi Arabia’s stature on the world stage has elevated, significantly.
As for this Iran War story, at some point, the only thing you can really do is defect from the entire new cycle surrounding the conflict, and save your emotional capital to invest elsewhere. It seems very obvious to me that we are getting peace in the Middle East, and real brotherhood among the Muslim nations (something they have never truly had, even when they were a caliphate).
RFK Jr Tells Dana Bash That Constitutional Rights Take Priority Over Public Health
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. clashed with CNN host Dana Bash on Sunday during an extended interview over the federal response to COVID-19, vaccines and the continuing U.S. measles outbreak.
Kennedy criticized CNN and Bash over the network’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that news organizations failed to sufficiently challenge government pandemic policies. Bash disputed Kennedy’s characterization during the exchange.
The discussion also turned to measles. After Bash pressed Kennedy to directly advise parents about vaccination, Kennedy urged parents to vaccinate their children and said the measles vaccine is about 97% effective.
Kennedy also said Trump “certainly” wants him to investigate a possible relationship between vaccines and autism. His statement concerned an intended investigation and did not establish such a relationship.
The CDC says the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is safe and effective and describes vaccination as the best protection against measles. The agency also says declining national MMR vaccination coverage has increased vulnerability to outbreaks.
The interview came about a month after Kennedy signed determinations ending federal COVID-19 emergency-use-authorization declarations for drugs, biological products and medical devices. HHS said the declarations will terminate after advance-notice periods of 12 months for drugs and biological products and 180 days for medical devices.
Ashe in America: RFK went on Dana Bash’s show and just rubbed her nose in her propaganda. It was rewarding to watch.
As I watched the clips, I wondered how many people actually watched the show, so I pulled the July ratings:
Yikes. Why are these shows the “authoritative sources” when they’ve lost the viewers?
Why are the cabinet members still giving them the time of day?
If RFK gives us any indication, it’s a humiliation ritual. These seem to be happening a lot lately.
Here for it.
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American Students Are AI-Proofing Their Careers By Going Back To Blue Collar Work
Interest in vocational education is increasing among some young Americans as concerns about artificial intelligence and demand for skilled labor influence career decisions, according to a July 31 report by The Epoch Times. Brady Colby, head of market research at Validated Insights, told the outlet that interest in vocational studies had grown steadily before accelerating during the previous six months.
The article cited a Validated Insights report saying trade-school revenue increased 11.4% in 2025 to more than $19 billion. It also cited a January survey of 1,250 Gen Z adults by Resume Templates in which six in 10 respondents said they planned to pursue blue-collar work in 2026, with long-term job security against potential AI-related displacement cited as the leading reason.
The Epoch Times also cited May research from Challenger, Gray & Christmas that counted 38,579 announced job cuts attributed to AI, representing 40% of announced cuts that month.
Labor-supply pressures are developing alongside that shift, according to analyses cited by the article. A Georgetown University analysis projected 18.4 million workers ages 55 to 64 with postsecondary education would retire through 2032, compared with 13.8 million similarly qualified workers ages 16 to 24 entering the workforce. A Randstad analysis cited by the outlet reported that demand connected to the U.S. data-center expansion had risen 107% for robotics technicians, 67% for HVAC professionals and 30% for construction-related jobs.
Burning Bright: I'm going to take a SHORT break from geopolitical analysis for this Brief and focus on a welcome trend that's not just encouraging for the future of our youth (wait ... am I getting old?) but which also acts as a soft proof that the Golden Age Agenda is going to look a lot more like a fusion between a stolen past and a promised future than something entirely divorced from the two.
I graduated high school in 2007 and was born to blue collar Boston parents, with my father as a tradesman and my mother as a teacher. Both are lifelong Union members, which I have long contested is their primary political animating force, not policy or partisanship.
Both of them encouraged me to get a four-year degree as the starting point for a professional adult life that would stand to earn more, or at least be more stable than my father's line of work was.
Granted, as it will shock none of you to learn, I was also naturally more gifted in the creative realm than I was in the mechanistic, so the fit made sense.
And yet, when I graduated college in 2011 saddled with about $40,000 in debt at 21 years old, I interviewed for my first job downtown Boston, a $27k salary without benefits that I lost to a 50 year-old woman who had lost HER higher-paying job in the same corporation.
And therein began my disillusionment with the liberal worldview, with the Obama PsyOp I had bought into in 2008, and with the 'white collar' promise I had been sold, but which failed to deliver for the tail end of my generation, and certainly the ones that followed it.
Meanwhile, two of my childhood friends I had trained with for a decade went decidedly blue collar instead of opting for college.
By the time I was scrounging enough money together to rent my own apartment (which I split with my brother and my cousin,) both of those friends were putting down payments on houses in their early 20s.
Obviously, I've managed to make something of myself in the interim, but one of the great lies the machine has ever sold to us is that human labor, which is to say human ingenuity will go by the wayside as the march of technological progress continues.
Now, with the advent of the Age of AI, the disruption IS coming, but it seems entirely focused on said white collar industries. Paper pushers and number crunchers rather than the men and women who actually know how to do things in the physical world, where mind and body meet.
I think this is a welcome trend, and I think the Golden Age is going to represent far more of a fusion between the physical and the mental, the mechanistic and the creative than we've ever been led to believe.
I think society goes as young men go, and I think the fact that said men are flooding back into the WORK force rather than the OFFICE force is a highly encouraging trend.
Now, imagine what these men are going to do when AI and autonomy are AUGMENTING their skills rather than replacing them?
The Golden Age isn't going to be built for us, but BY us.
And some are already starting to act accordingly.
“It’s The Honor System” In NJ Voter Registration, And Everywhere Else
A software error in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system improperly sent approximately 6,600 people into the voter-registration process between June 2023 and June 2024 even though they had indicated they were not U.S. citizens, according to state officials.
The state said the affected applicants answered “no” when asked whether they were U.S. citizens and did not attest that they were eligible to vote, but vendor software transmitted their information for voter-registration processing anyway.
A preliminary state review found that fewer than 400 people who were newly registered because of the error later voted. New Jersey says it has found no evidence at this time that those votes changed the outcome of an election.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill said July 21 that she ordered an investigation and directed election officials to remove residents erroneously registered during the affected period. The state says the investigation is ongoing and the Motor Vehicle Commission is replacing the vendor involved.
The disclosure came after Democratic state Sen. James Beach and Republican state Sen. Kristin Corrado introduced legislation on May 11 that would prohibit the MVC from prompting someone to register to vote, or transmitting that person’s information, when identification presented during an MVC transaction indicates the person is not a U.S. citizen.
New Jersey election officials are reviewing the affected registrations. State law requires U.S. citizenship to vote, according to the state’s guidance on the incident.
The issue also became part of a separate federal dispute over voter records. U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking access to New Jersey’s unredacted voter-registration list, rejecting the government’s asserted legal basis for obtaining the complete computerized list.
Ashe in America: Politico is reporting that the “software glitch” that resulted in non citizens voting “exposed an open secret about New Jersey’s so-called motor voter law that officials and political operatives have known for years: There’s little to stop noncitizens from registering to vote if they want to, or even by mistake.”
Wait, what? I thought states had so many checks and balances to make sure that this couldn’t happen? That’s what the public has been told for years, with inquiry effectively criminalized — don’t question it, the election experts know what they’re doing!
Now we’re being told that it’s an open secret that it’s the honor system? Literally, that’s what they say:
“It’s the honor system,” said NJ County Board of Elections Administrator Beth Thompson. According to who also leads the New Jersey Association of Election Officials.
In my state, the people that run the professional associations are the subject matter experts when it comes to elections…the point of escalation who develop and deploy the talking points. Is that the same in NJ? Is the new talking point that it’s an open secret that voter roll hygiene is a pinky promise?
That’s hilarious.
Also, it’s worse that the NJ government is saying:
“And election officials and campaign consultants from both parties believe that the number of noncitizens being added to the voter rolls is significantly higher than the 6,600 Sherrill cited — because the state has been automatically registering drivers since 2018, and her figure covers only June 2023 to June 2024.”
It’s not just New Jersey, folks. The pinky promise is a feature of a system that prioritizes access.
They just lied about that before.
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US General Warns Pentagon He Cannot Protect Israel And The Homeland At The Same Time
The top U.S. military commander in Europe privately warned Pentagon officials that he lacks sufficient naval forces to continue protecting Israel from incoming ballistic missiles, The Washington Post reported Saturday, citing officials familiar with the communication.
Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of U.S. European Command, sent a written notification saying that without another Navy destroyer he would have to prioritize defense of the U.S. homeland over Israel, according to officials who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity.
A U.S. defense official told the newspaper that such notifications are consistent with communications senior commanders have previously sent when they identify risks requiring Pentagon consideration as commanders compete for limited military resources and weapons. The Pentagon declined to comment, and European Command did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The Navy has five destroyers that deploy from Rota, Spain, with a sixth expected later this year. Officials told The Post that maintenance problems have accumulated amid the Iran war.
As of Friday, the USS Paul Ignatius and USS Roosevelt were in the Mediterranean, while the USS Arleigh Burke, USS Bulkeley and USS Oscar Austin were in Rota, according to a U.S. official. The official said two aircraft carriers and at least 15 additional warships, including 11 destroyers, were operating in the Arabian Sea.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: So General Grynkewich is stating the ultimatum that we all know was there; The ultimatum that I’ve been writing about—in so many ways—over the past few years.
You cannot serve two masters.
You can either serve Israel, or you can serve America.
The US military exists to serve America, not a foreign country. Israel is a foreign country—despite what some Americans will tell you.
This isn’t rocket science. It is basic logic and reasoning. It is First Principles. But emotions, sentiment, and generations of psychological conditioning have clouded the judgement of many.
The mission is to liberate those minds so that America can be liberated from our foreign masters.
BONUS ITEM
Badlands Blitz Episode 27
The latest episode of the Badlands Blitz is live, and it's a pretty fiery one.
Ashe in America and Burning Bright discuss the fall of Saint Fauci, the continued exposure of the Media Protectorate and how one defines legitimacy in an emergent great power competition.
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I'm glad RFK Jr finally got his win in the octagon. I was waiting for him to pull out a copy of his book "The Real Anthony Fauci", read the published date, and then hit her with it.