Badlands Brief
American Discombobulation
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.
Fraud Investigations, Indictments & Convictions Happening All Over — Across States and Sectors
A series of fraud investigations and criminal cases across multiple US states and industries highlight ongoing concerns about financial oversight, public fund management, and organized schemes targeting individuals and government programs.
A Washington State agency responsible for administering roughly $1.3 billion in childcare funds reported it is unable to fully audit spending due to missing or incomplete records, raising oversight concerns about how public funds were tracked and distributed.
A lawsuit filed in New Mexico accuses multiple oil companies of large-scale accounting fraud, alleging they underreported revenues owed to the state, potentially impacting public royalty payments.
A Boulder, Colorado dance studio owner has been indicted on 21 felony counts tied to alleged financial fraud, with a warrant issued for arrest according to court filings.
Court records in Florida show 16 individuals, including former state employees, were charged in a $1.7 million fraud and property damage scheme, indicating involvement of insiders in the alleged operation.
A Nigerian national has been indicted in Maryland for an alleged romance fraud scheme, accused of targeting victims through deceptive online relationships to obtain money.
The issue of fraud is increasingly entering the political arena, with lawmakers signaling expanded enforcement efforts and positioning fraud prevention as a key issue in upcoming elections.
Ashe in America: Fraud investigations are happening all over — across states and industries. It’s almost like the data dump phase of DOGE yielded actionable information for local, state, and federal investigators.
Every day we learn of new fraud schemes and investigations and indictments and convictions. It’s not the justice phase we anticipated, but there is, ostensibly, some sort of justice happening. The list in the article above is the top five fraud investigations from the past 24 hours.
Against this backdrop, Politico is suggesting that fraud investigations aren’t popular with voters because addressing fraud will lead to higher healthcare costs.
That makes zero sense from an economic standpoint, but it’s good enough to justify a voting-related conclusion by Politico. Busting fraudsters is super popular. Politico can process that reality by putting out copium; but they can’t change it.
Upside down clown rodeo.
Accelerate.
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US-Iran War Escalates as Trump Pairs Strike Threats with Last-Minute Push for Ceasefire
The US-led conflict with Iran has exposed and intensified fractures between the United States and its allies, particularly within NATO, where multiple countries declined to support military operations or provide logistical access.
President Donald Trump’s criticism of allies and suggestions that the US could withdraw from NATO have further fueled uncertainty about American commitments, prompting European leaders to consider more independent defense strategies.
Speaking Monday, President Trump warned that Iran could face overwhelming military force if it does not agree to US terms, including limits on its nuclear program, while also signaling that he prefers a negotiated resolution and believes a deal remains possible.
At the same time, US officials — working through intermediaries — are advancing a ceasefire framework that would pause fighting and open broader negotiations, with proposals and counterproposals still being exchanged rather than a finalized agreement in place. Military operations continue alongside these diplomatic efforts, with ongoing strikes and retaliatory actions underscoring that negotiations and combat are unfolding simultaneously.
The situation is further complicated by a divergence between Washington and Israel, as Benjamin Netanyahu warned Trump against pursuing a ceasefire in a recent call, arguing that continued military pressure is necessary to degrade Iran’s capabilities and prevent it from regrouping. Iran has also warned of significant retaliation if strikes intensify, raising the risk of broader regional escalation.
Burning Bright: Virtually all layers of the Collective Mind are picking up on a distinctive pattern, if nothing else: Escalations one day, de-escalations the next.
Late-week thunder followed by Sunday evening signals of restraint.
Dramatic reports of downed pilots and miraculous rescues sharing airtime with whispers of regime change, total liberation and total obliteration—often all in the same deployment cycle, and sometimes even in the same statement.
Even segments of the MAGA core look momentarily disoriented by the rhythm of Trump’s narrative deployments.
But, as I said at the time, Scott Bessent laid out the framework two weeks ago: sometimes you must escalate to de-escalate, and I think that’s AS Narrative as it is Actual.
This is the master of the art boiling the mass psychological frog until the observing mind has only two choices left:
Choice one: defect from the central narrative entirely and disengage—retreat into the comfortable fog of cynicism where every claim becomes equally meaningless.
Choice two: reject the surface theater and operate from a first principles framework when it comes to the Macro Narratives unfolding across the battlespace, while tracing every second-order effect you care to to its logical endpoint.
Reverse-engineer every dispatch, every threat, every apparent contradiction as exactly what it is: a narrative deployment designed to force the mind to think rather than consume, to consider rather than to react.
And across every front that matters, the engineered dissolution of unearned trust is not emblematic of capture, but mass psychological liberation, with the untangling of the Iranian Knot being a Macro masterclass in the template.
Let’s start with the rapid, increasingly-apparent death of ‘facts on the ground’ reporting.
Rather, the accepting of it.
The Media Industrial Complex burned its own credibility to ash years ago. But Trump and the institutional voice of the US military still carried real weight in large swaths of the American Mind, specifically those who are MAGA or Conservative-coded.
Now, it’s becoming increasingly clear to most that even placing trust in Trump or the US MIL has very little to do with placing trust in the things they’re saying on a day-to-day, deployment-to-deployment basis.
As a result, the Collective Mind is learning, through raw repetition and cognitive friction that in a true fifth-generation information war, surface-level facts are largely unknowable by design.
The only rational response to such a battlespace is to stop treating any single dispatch as gospel.
And that rejection is the first step toward genuine discernment, as it forces the mind to seek signal beneath the noise instead of swallowing the noise itself, no matter who it’s coming from.
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Supreme Court Clears Way For Dismissal of Steve Bannon Contempt Case
The Supreme Court on Monday vacated the lower-court ruling that had left Steve Bannon’s contempt-of-Congress conviction in place, clearing the way for the case to be dismissed after the Trump Justice Department asked that the indictment be dropped.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee and later served a four-month federal prison sentence. The high court did not explain its order, but it returned the matter for further proceedings in light of the government’s new request to end the case.
The ruling does not itself declare Bannon innocent on the underlying facts. Instead, it removes the appellate decision that had upheld the conviction and opens the door for the lower court to dismiss the case, giving Bannon a major legal win in a prosecution tied to the congressional investigation of the Capitol attack.
Ashe in America: He already did the time.
This is one of the woeful parts of the US justice system that is in desperate need of reform.
When the government makes bad choices that result in harm to Americans, way more often than not the Americans are left to pick up the pieces without restitution for, or even an acknowledgment of, the harm caused.
This was one of the contributing factors of me firing my attorneys and going pro se in the federal case brought against me by the NAACP. The lead attorney on my case went into great detail about a case of his where a criminal conviction was overturned — but the innocent prisoner got nothing except release.
After that conversation, which was months before I fired him, I began to wonder if our objectives and incentives were aligned. (They were not.)
Still, “sorry we fucked you over” might be the right approach in a self-governed society. The people have to pay for all of the prosecutions and related costs, and it’s not a small price tag.
Prosecution should NEVER be political. This is the woeful bit — that these entities are resourced enough to engage in political prosecutions. And a lot of them, according to the past six years.
I don’t recall the words he used when he talked about the rule of law, but the spirit of John Adams is in that point. Do we have rule of law or don’t we?
Set aside the fact that rule of law was an operation to stifle ideas of individual liberty, even as they were in infancy, emerging.
Bannon’s prosecution was a political witch hunt, but it was also a precedent. Throwing the conviction out benefits Bannon, sure, but it also benefits the regime.
Whatever way this goes, I hope he makes them admit what they did.
BONUS ITEM
House Judiciary Report Details Brazil Censorship Targeting US Speech
The House Judiciary Committee released an interim staff report outlining new evidence that Brazil’s censorship regime is targeting speech inside the United States and pressuring American social media companies to comply or face legal action and removal from the country.
According to the report and newly obtained nonpublic documents, the censorship system led by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issues global takedown orders, coordinates with censorship efforts in other countries, and removes legal protections for platforms.
The committee says these actions have directly targeted US-based speech, including posts from Brazilian journalists and political commentators living in the United States, as well as content praising President Trump and criticizing Joe Biden.
The report states that when platforms such as X and Rumble refused to fully comply, Brazilian authorities fined them and threatened or ordered them to cease operations in Brazil. It warns that forcing American companies to censor US residents’ speech creates a broader threat to First Amendment protections.
The report also says Brazil’s censorship network is coordinating with similar foreign censorship regimes and Stanford University. It alleges that Stanford previously played a central role in “laundering US government censorship requests” to social media companies in an effort to influence the 2020 US election, and that it has since shifted from enabling domestic censorship to aiding foreign censorship efforts.
The committee said it will continue oversight and pursue legislative responses to counter foreign censorship threats.
National Capital Planning Commission Approves Trump White House Ballroom Plan
The National Capital Planning Commission voted 8-1 Thursday to approve President Trump’s plan to build a new White House ballroom.
Commission chair Will Scharf said many public comments submitted to the panel were outside its authority, including concerns over funding, demolition, and political criticism, adding, “We are not some sort of free-ranging ballroom justice commission.”
Following the vote, Trump thanked the commission on Truth Social, saying the project was approved “overwhelmingly, 8-1,” and noting that even Sen. Rand Paul voted in favor. He said presidents for more than 150 years had envisioned a White House ballroom, calling it a long-needed addition for hosting state visits, grand events, and inaugurations.
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Good morning ***
What is that sound I am hearing? Is it the normiesphere having an earthquake over the fraud revelations?
I, for one, am very thankful for all the fraud being exposed. I want the diamonds back. I want more than just exposure. I want to see justice. Maybe a pipe dream - but praying over our dreams can bring results.
The Trump administrations have been our revealer. And it is continuing to reveal. May it continue to reveal until there is nothing left to reveal.
And yes, Joe Kronner, God wins!!!
Looking forward to the next episode of As The World Turns.
Just goes to show what a joke Politico is!!
"Politico is suggesting that fraud investigations aren’t popular with voters because addressing fraud will lead to higher healthcare costs."