Badlands Brief

Devolucion, Sedition, Somalis, and Patagonia Pyros

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.

---

Venezuelan Devolution?

In the wake of a dramatic U.S. operation that detained Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro abroad, Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the role of acting president “in the absence” of Maduro, Reuters reported. The court said Rodríguez would ensure continuity of government.

Rodríguez was formally sworn in on Jan. 5, 2026, as interim president at the National Assembly while Maduro appeared in a New York court on federal drug charges following his removal, Reuters reported.

According to a Miami Herald report archived online, Qatari intermediaries presented proposals to the Trump administration in April and September that envisaged a transition described as “Madurismo without Maduro,” in which Rodríguez would remain a continuity figure and retired Gen. Miguel Rodríguez Torres would lead a transitional government in exchange for access for U.S. companies to Venezuelan oil and mining industries.

In the United States, President Donald Trump told The New York Times that the U.S. would be “using oil” and “taking oil” from Venezuela, and said oversight of the country’s oil sector would last “much longer” than a year, according to The Guardian.

The Wall Street Journal, cited by The Guardian, reported that senior Trump administration officials described a plan aimed at using Venezuela’s oil reserves to help cut U.S. consumer prices toward about $50 a barrel by expanding Venezuelan output.

Trump also indicated he might block ExxonMobil from investing in Venezuela after its CEO described the country as “uninvestable,” according to a Reuters report carried by The Guardian.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters that additional U.S. sanctions on Venezuela could be lifted “as soon as next week” to facilitate oil sales and economic recovery, and that he planned to meet with leaders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to discuss their re-engagement with the country.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: On Saturday night, I joined Jon Herold and Chris Paul on Devolution Power Hour to explain a theory I have evolved that the Venezuelan government, with Maduro’s blessing and constitutional authority as president, had entered a continuity of government (COG) contingency plan--something similar to “Devolution.” The plan had been negotiated through the Qataris, with Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Ric Grenell acting as intermediary, and approved by President Trump.

The Miami Herald reported on this rumor back in October.

President Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, spoke at a rally over the weekend and affirmed that COG was in effect, and they were following the directions left by his father.

It’s worth noting that Maduro Guerra was the one holding the Bible when Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as Acting President. She immediately clarified that Nicolas Maduro was still the one true President of Venezuela, which Maduro himself said during his court appearance in New York.

During the show on Saturday night, Jon asked an important question: Why go through this whole song and dance?

I provided my best guess, and stand by what I said. However, I have since stumbled onto new information that I think further validates the move, and it has to do with Scott Bessent’s announcement to imminently lift the sanctions President Trump imposed on Venezuela during his first term, so that oil sales could begin resume, as normal.

As I have detailed in this news brief and on stream countless times, President Maduro was given a laptop in March 2017. Maduro lawyer, David Boies, said: “In terms of the quality of the evidence, the extent of the misconduct, the amount of money, this was right at the top of anything I’ve seen in my career. It really demonstrated a long-running, massive and very sophisticated conspiracy.”

One year after Maduro was given the laptop (by the scorned wife of one of his corrupt officials), Boies filed civil lawsuits in the District of Southern Florida against 42 oil industry executives. He also filed those lawsuits in Geneva, Switzerland, where the companies involved all had offices. The Swiss authorities immediately raided the office of Helsinge, seizing computer servers that would launch a number of additional investigations, leading to countless arrests of industry officials in subsequent years.

Three months after the raid on the Helsinge office in Geneva, the Helsinge office in Miami was raided, and German-national Matthias Krull was arrested and charged with laundering $1.2 billion that had been stolen from PDVSA. A month later (August 2018) Krull pled guilty, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though the judge advised that if Krull fully cooperated with authorities, he could have his sentence reduced.

Krull complied, and thus began “Operation Money Flight,” spearheaded by the Southern District of Florida’s International Narcotics and Money Laundering Section in cooperation with law enforcement in London, Rome, Madrid, and Malta, with the mission “to identify, investigate and prosecute high-level members of drug trafficking enterprises, bringing together the combined expertise and unique abilities of federal, state and local law enforcement.”

Simply put, this was the operation that would connect the white collar cartel (oil/energy/minerals) to the traditional cartel that trafficked drugs, guns, and humans, and Matthias Krull was the key to unlocking the case.

Krull, who was responsible for laundering the money that was being stolen from the Venezuelan government by the cartel, mapped out the financial network for authorities, demonstrating how the embezzled funds moved from Venezuela to the US and Europe. He helped secure plea deals from two other defendants, and the information led to Swiss regulators sanctioning the Swiss bank Julius Baer. For his cooperation, Matthias had his ten year sentence reduced to three and a half years, which is the largest sentence reduction ever granted by a US federal judge.

Krull’s information provided the road map for sanctions imposed on Venezuela by President Trump, which were strategically crafted and issued in a layered sequence that allowed for asset forfeiture and to ultimately crush the corruption ecosystem.

But the sanctions did something else that I had not fully appreciated before now.

I have previously relayed that because of Executive Order 13850 that President Trump issued in November 2018, which targeted entities doing busy with PDVSA by freezing bank wires and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), the defense attorneys for the 42 oil officials were able to convince the judge that proceeding with discovery would violate national security. The judge agreed, and dismissed the lawsuits filed in Southern Florida.

What I didn’t realize was that what this meant wasn’t that the case was over. What it meant was that the case was paused, due to the sanctions, and would resume as soon as the sanctions were lifted. Meaning that discovery to pursue that evidence will still be viable.

Not only that, but as soon as Scott Bessent lifts those sanctions, and the [now lawful] bank wire transfers proceed from PDVSA operations, the regulators who monitor those transfers will quickly begin to notice discrepancies between how the money is flowing now versus how it was flowing prior to the sanctions, triggering new SARs that will likely lead to new investigations.

When the information from the discovery from PDVSA’s 2018 lawsuit is coupled with the information that was seized in the Helsinge raids, not to mention any new intel that is generated from newly filed SARs, that is going to create a massive web of conspiracy that will surely implicate a number of individuals and corporations.

I plugged the lawsuit filings into ChatGPT (which provides a list of alleged embezzlers) and asked it to run scenarios of how this could play out. It speculated that a single banker cooperating could lead to multiple companies being exposed. It speculated that, given the information already publicly available, that the private banks involved (Julius Baer Group, EFG International, Credit Suisse) were almost certain to cooperate first, along with the compliance officers and internal auditors. It then ran through the whole list of defendants, gauging their likelihood to cooperate in exchange for reduced time.

While many of the senior executives will likely avoid prison time (though plenty have already been prosecuted), given the countless loopholes and insulation from the criminality, in these situations the real goal is the asset seizure. However, what makes this case unique is the fact that certain PDVSA officials do have ties to the traditional cartels, and those entities have been designated terrorist organizations by the Trump administration. So things could get very interesting very quickly, if this plays out the way that it should.

So to answer Jon Herold’s question, “Why did Maduro have to initiate COG and remove himself from power?”

So that the optics would allow Scott Bessent to lift the sanctions against PDVSA, and open up the floodgates for discovery via lawfare, which should ultimately link banks and oil companies to the cartel.

Checkmate, Deep State.

***
Burning Bright: I believe Donald Trump and the shadowed patriots in the Sovereign Alliance have given just about every archetypal carve-out within the collective we refer to as the global hivemind nothing they expected, while somehow landing on exactly what they wanted.

Which bothers them to no end.

Hell, even for the faux intellectuals at the table, along with the Media apparatus that wants to install a different proxy princess into Maduro’s vacant seat, Trump’s approach in the aftermath of what was initially viewed as unprecedented brinkmanship is being framed as pragmatic.

As for the new ‘interim’ status quo?

We’re being told it could last for some time.

A status quo that is already bearing fruit.

So, what’s it all add up to?

All bases have been covered on a Narrative level, which has led to an asymmetric reading of the game board wherein I believe the patriots are threading a false narrative over the collective mindscape that is ironically allowing true actuals to come to the fore.

So, while I agree that the regime was tweaked instead of changed, which is to say, it wasn’t really changed at all, I believe the actual regime (the global one) was effectively and permanently blocked from effecting their own regime change op.

In other words, Maduro fell on the story’s sword, as was likely planned for some time, because he was the core animating engine of the true enemy’s real regime change narrative arc ... its prime villain and therefore, the narrative fulcrum on which the brave rebellion storyline was built, fomented and persisted.

In other words, it’s going to be VERY difficult for the Regime Change network to spin up the public mandate (or the illusion of it) for a second Regime change on Maduro’s replacements (which are really just Maduro’s deputies) so they can get their latest WEFian princess in place.

Of course, as we’ve learned time and again in this narrative dance, it’s just as likely that Trump will rug pull even this Narrative, and we will see Machado or someone of her ilk installed.

That said, many in the so-called Truth Community openly cheered for the Maduro arrest with the same fervor AND, most importantly, FRAMING of the NeoCon establishment ... the same corrupt faux conservative core that metastasized during the Bush era—including when Bush Sr. effectively ran the Deep State during the Reagan admin—before effecting Monday pivots to follow the very obvious signal some of my peers—specifically, Ghost—have been putting out regarding the obvious and cartoonish nature of the Maduro photo ops juxtaposed against the litany of major sociopolitical scandals set to be unraveled on the back of his capitulation and cooperation with the Trump DOJ, from cartels to election fraud, forgetting that it is not nations that rig elections, but rather globalist swine wearing nations as Prussian skin suits.

And that’s all BEFORE other major sovereign players on the game board get involved in the narrative, including Russia, who have already offered Maduro pre-emptive asylum on the back of Trump’s earlier promises of amnesty.

All of which, at the very least points to Maduro’s ouster being pre-planned, his ‘perfect’ arrest reframed more accurately as an extraction of a key player, just possibly not a player on the team you thought.

So, if Venezuela is part of the Sovereign Alliance already, now said alliance has the Narrative Shielding to say so due to the ‘change event’ of the Maduro arc.

Without said ‘change event,’ there is no buy-in to an Actual paradigm shift.

In other words, and as perhaps only Badlands Media commentators have theorized, it is far more likely we’re looking at a Venezuelan Devolution situation than anything even close to what you’re being told out of any player operating in the central narrative or adjacent to it.

(For MUCH more on this nuanced topic, consider my latest too-long-form on the subject, Sovereign Disentanglement.)

***
Ashe in America: There are multiple angles to the Venezuela story, and they’re all rather exciting. Here are my favorites.

Angle 1: Don’t mess with America because we have weaponry you can’t imagine.

This story dropped Friday night and was instantly viral as, allegedly, a Maduro security guard recounted, in Spanish, a terrifying story of super soldiers and energy weapons. Early Saturday, WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the story, amplifying its credibility.

Then this resurfaced:

That was 13 years ago. Regardless of how many times we’ve been told that energy weapons are a conspiracy theory, they’ve been disclosed for over a decade and are now, based on this story angle, confirmed as operational by the US Military.

Quite the power projection. Excellent propaganda. ‘Merica.

Angle 2: Americans Must Get out of Venezuela! Roving gangs are looking to kidnap and ransom you!

As Venezuela continues to dominate headlines, news of the State Department ordering Americans to leave the country is making the rounds.

The travel advisory was issued on December 3, 2025, but didn’t get broadly picked up in public square until now.

I used to get these advisories as internal communications when I was traveling globally for work. This kind of escalation and status change would trigger business continuity protocols in the region, travel cancelled, potentially projects cancelled, and removing our people from the region would be priority one.

The reason I share that is that, in my experience, this kind of CHANGE isn’t just a narrative deployment. This kind of deployment has a ripple effect across US industries that trigger changes to business operations.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t a CHANGE. Venezuela was at Level 3 since the mid 2010s, and the US closed its embassy in Caracas in 2019, changing it to L4 equivalent. It’s been there and regularly “reissued” ever since.

So this travel advisory making the rounds is actually just a narrative deployment; that is, there is no change.

Just the story of change.

When combined with the weapons angle, the Venezuelan takeaway would, I imagine, be that the US isn’t done.

Accelerate.

Angle 3: US oil companies are ready to go back in — with conditions.

There is a cynical take to be had that this story angle is the real purpose of the entire saga to begin with.

Maximize power projection.

Maximize fear to set the conditions to exert power.

The US Oil & Gas Association is relying on both for its take:

“There are 2 “Must haves” for producers to go back into Venezuela.

1 - We need know our crews are not going to get kidnapped.

2- We need to know investment and capital expenditures are going to be safe from seizure by a foreign government.

The overwhelming show of force from the US military on last Saturday morning – well, that solves the first problem.

Thinking of kidnapping my Exec?s Let me introduce you to some new friends of mine.”

They go on to say, “This is the Art of the Deal and there’s no one better than the guy who wrote the book.” Read their full statement here.

Separately, that OGA account is trolling California and it’s hilarious:

The Venezuelans have agency to make a deal. Sort of. According to the narrative, they’re under threat of energy weapons and super soldiers, so it’s also arguably coercion. Also, the deals are reportedly already done anyway, lol. H/t: Burning Bright.

What’s the so what of it all?

If you ask President Trump, he’s making Venezuela great again which will help make America great again.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry joins Blue Eyes and me tonight to discuss all this so tune into Culture of Change at 9pET.

Of course, we can’t MVGA or MAGA until we have fraud-free elections, but that’s a Venezuela story for another day — specifically, tomorrow. Tune into Badlands Book Club tomorrow at 6pET where ColonelTowner joins CannCon and me for Chapter 2 of Stolen Elections.

---

Conscious Strength

Jordan Sather’s Conscious Strength all natural supplement line has a new website as well as 3 new products, a whole food Vitamin C, Para~Shite parasite detox support, and Apricot Seed Extract with Vitamin B17. Plus Sather is launching a 6 week program on Jan 25h in his private coaching group with training on nutrition, supplementation, and corrective exercise through weekly live calls and 70+ exclusive videos. Full MAHA ahead!

Sponsored

---

The Seditious Six and Mark Kelly

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has formally censured Arizona Senator and retired Navy Capt. Mark Kelly and launched Pentagon proceedings that could demote Kelly’s retired rank and reduce his military pension, officials said. The action follows a November 2025 video in which Kelly and five other lawmakers urged U.S. service members to refuse what they described as “illegal orders.”

Hegseth characterized Kelly’s participation in the video as “reckless misconduct” and “seditious,” placing a letter of censure in Kelly’s permanent military file and initiating a retirement grade review. Kelly has 30 days to respond, and the Navy has up to 45 days to complete its review, Pentagon officials said.

Kelly, a former astronaut and 25-year Navy veteran, called the move politically motivated and “un-American,” and vowed to contest the actions. Supporters of Kelly have argued that his statements fall within protected speech.

In a separate development, a report from the New York Post said Kelly declined to label recent U.S. military strikes in Venezuela and the arrest of former president Nicolás Maduro as “illegal” in a television interview, though he criticized aspects of the operation’s planning.

The dispute has fueled debate over military discipline, free speech, and the limits of Pentagon authority in disciplining retired service members who are also elected officials.

Ashe in America: It is without question that the lawmakers have made themselves above the laws they make. This has been obvious for a long time, but angry mobs only stormed the capitol that one time, so apparently we’re at the show-don’t-tell phase.

Note that only Kelly is in trouble because he’s subject to a different set of laws than the others.

That seems like a problem in the law — that the lawmakers exempted themselves from accountability for sedition entirely in the civilian world.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Kelly isn’t the test for whether we’re under absolute Despotism.

He’s the proof that we have been for a while.

Now what?

---

Minneapolis and Somalis

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, on January 7 during a federal enforcement operation in south Minneapolis, igniting widespread protest and debate over the use of deadly force by federal agents. The shooting drew tens of thousands of demonstrators locally and more than 1,000 rallies nationwide under the banner “ICE Out For Good,” with activists demanding accountability and an end to ICE’s presence in the city.

Federal officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, have defended the agent’s actions as self-defense and announced the deployment of hundreds of additional federal officers to the state to support ongoing operations. Local leaders have rejected the federal narrative, pointing to video they say contradicts claims that Good posed a threat.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey drew both support and criticism for his remarks, including an on-camera profanity-laced statement telling ICE to leave the city, which he later defended. Meanwhile, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty called on the public to share recordings and evidence with her office amid concerns that the federal government is handling the investigation without local participation.

Despite some arrests and isolated clashes, city officials described most demonstrations as peaceful. Tensions remain high as leaders and communities continue to debate federal enforcement tactics and the circumstances surrounding Good’s death.

Ashe in America: The Renee person seems to have believed her own propaganda that white people have different experiences with the justice system and, in attempting to exercise her white privilege, she ended up dead.

“Minnesota Nice” has devolved into Minnesota Retarded, and people are dying from the stupidity. Attacking law enforcement will get you killed, no matter the color of your skin.

Thank you, Renee, for proving that the past six years of white fragility was Marxist nonsense. Most of us already knew that, but some people always need to be shown.

---

Now On Sale! Tickets to the Great American Restoration Tour in Nashville

Badlands Media hits the road four times a year for a three-day patriot-packed event with our hosts and the Badlands community. Meet like-minded Americans, hear powerful content, and be part of something real on April 9-12 in Nashville, TN.

---

Patagonia on Fire

Wildfires continue to ravage the Argentine Patagonia, with nearly 12,000 hectares of forest and scrubland consumed in Chubut province. The blazes have posed threats to local communities, rural properties, a power plant, and a school, and firefighting authorities reported that more than 350 firefighters, supported by aerial assets, are engaged in containment efforts.

In the political arena, the government of President Javier Milei is pursuing reforms that would significantly alter Argentina’s land ownership regime. A legislative proposal developed by a government-aligned council would effectively remove longstanding limits on foreign ownership of rural lands, overturning key provisions of the 2011 Law 26.737, which set caps on such ownership and restricted acquisitions of strategic parcels.

Another government plan presented by the “Consejo de Mayo” envisages a broader liberalization of land purchases by private foreign investors, drawing criticism from analysts who argue it could erode protections on national territory.

However, these reform efforts have faced legal pushback: a court ruling recently suspended the repeal of the land law, temporarily blocking provisions that would have eliminated restrictions on land purchases by foreigners, following a legal challenge.

Meanwhile, Argentina’s subsurface wealth continues to attract global economic interest. Geological assessments show the country possesses substantial rare earth element (REE) resources, with roughly 190,395 tons of identified materials and 3.3 million tons of potential resources distributed across several provinces.

These deposits form part of a wider critical mineral portfolio that includes lithium, copper, cobalt, chromium, graphite, nickel, platinum-group elements, and zinc, positioning Argentina as a noteworthy player in supplying materials essential for technology and energy sectors worldwide.

Separately, a Ynet News article from 2014 reports that four Israeli tourists were expelled from Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park for violating fire restrictions when they were caught starting an illegal fire park inspectors. In January 2012, an Israeli tourist, 23-year-old Rotem Singer, was arrested in Chile following a massive wildfire that broke out in the natural reserve. The authorities accused him that a toilet paper he burned caused the fire to spread, as firefighters battled the great forest fire for days, deploying four planes and a helicopter to combat the flames. Singer denied the allegations, and after a month he reached a settlement with the Chilean prosecution and was released. Tens of thousands of acres of forest were destroyed in the fire.

In 2017, a group of three Israeli tourists were expelled from the Torres del Paine National Park and fined $600,000 for starting a fire in an unauthorized area. After the incident, director of Conaf in Magallanes, Elizabeth Muñoz, told Tele13 Radio today that most of the expulsions in Torres del Paine National Park involve Israeli tourists. "I've been reviewing the statistics, and since 2012 we've had 36 expulsions, 23 of which were Israelis, and these three are also Israeli. It seems they have a culture of disobeying and going against the rules," she said.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: On December 9, the Argentinian government announced that via executive order, a longstanding law prohibiting foreign entities from owning tracts of rural land has been repealed. The executive order also repealed a related law from 2020 that prohibited the rezoning of rural land that had burn effected by forest fire for a period of 30-60 years.

Here is a picture of one of the fires.

An unverified report circulating social media claims that one of these fires was started by an Israeli-made M26 IM grenade, and resulted in the arrest of two Israeli citizens.

A video report by journalist Sebastian Salgado recaps the history of Israeli citizens being arrested in Patagonia national parks for starting fires.

In another video report by Salgado, he interviews a Patagonia mountain guide named Marcos Sebastian, who claims that he has witnessed groups of IDF soldiers posing as Israeli students traveling through the park. In one instance, he came upon a group that was set up at a remote site alongside a river. He says they had sophisticated radio equipment set up, as well as a large satellite phone, and appeared to be broadcasting or communicating with somebody. When he approached them in a friendly manner, they panicked and began frantically packing up their gear while speaking to one another in Hebrew.

Social media is now saturated in videos of locals speaking to news reporters, claiming to have personally seen countless Israeli nationals wondering the area— many accusing them of starting the fires. As a result, there are now allegedly 100,000+ protesters in the streets demanding that Israeli nationals be expelled from Patagonia (Argentina and Chile).

---

BONUS ITEMS

---

Trump issues ultimatum to Cuba; Says Rubio could rule

President Donald Trump escalated pressure on the Cuban government on Sunday, issuing a high-stakes ultimatum that Havana must “make a deal” with the United States or face unspecified consequences as its access to Venezuelan oil and financial support is cut off. In posts on his social network Truth Social, Trump declared that “there will be no more oil or money going to Cuba — ZERO!” and urged Cuban leaders to negotiate with Washington “before it’s too late.” The remarks come amid heightened U.S. pressure in the region following a U.S. military operation that ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and resulted in the death of Cuban security personnel, changes that have already strained Cuba’s oil-dependent economy.

In a separate social media action, Trump reposted a message from a private user suggesting that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — a Cuban-American and key architect of Trump’s foreign policy in Latin America — could become the president of Cuba. Trump added the comment “Sounds good to me!” to the repost, a move that sparked commentary but did not reflect an official policy proposal. Cuban officials responded to the heightened rhetoric by asserting their nation’s sovereignty and condemning the U.S. approach.

---

Please share the Brief far and wide! Want to join the conversation? Jump in the comments and let us know your thoughts. And if you like the Substack, you should check out our shows — streaming now on Badlands Media!

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.

The Brief is free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative.