Badlands Brief
Backpedaling Despots, Mid-East Madness, & Not So Rare Earths
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.
Change of Command in Minneapolis as State Leaders Appear to Backpedal
President Donald Trump and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke in a private call Monday, and the President said that they are “on a similar wavelength” regarding federal immigration operations in Minnesota. Walz’s office described the call as “productive.” The president also reportedly spoke to Mayor Jacob Frey.
In related news, the President announced that he is sending Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to take charge of federal immigration enforcement operations.
The announcement came the same day as senior Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was reported to have been relieved of his duties in Minneapolis. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin disputed the rumor on social media:
“Chief Gregory Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties. As @PressSec stated from the White House podium, @CMDROpAtLargeCA is a key part of the President’s team and a great American.”
Despite the reported thaw in state and federal relations, protests continue in Minneapolis as do Federal immigration operations under “Operation Metro Surge. The officer involved fatal shooting of Alex Pretti dominated online discussions Monday.
Ashe in America: Things must be pretty bad in Minnesota for Governor Walz to openly state that his conversation with the President was productive. Either that, or he’s flipped into “our boy jazz hands.” Gross.
Border Czar Homan is dropping into Minneapolis, and the internet went nuts yesterday on The Atlantic rumor of Bovino’s ouster. Conservative influencers amplified the rumors into virality. In response to all the outrage over a government position that no one has mentioned before, Jon Herold pointed out that “Commander at Large” of the border patrol didn’t exist before last year.
So silly. Also, in response to the influencer outrage, the White House and DHS both denied the claim—meaning all the social outrage cycles for naught.
Again.
This happens a lot.
The winter of love continues in Minnesota, complete with rape whistles and jazz hands, an inbound Tom Homan, and waning law enforcement restraint.
How does it end?
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Mixed Signals From Caracas: Rodríguez Denounces U.S. Pressure, Trump Cheers Releases
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, publicly said she has had “enough orders from Washington” and called for Venezuela’s internal conflicts to be resolved by Venezuelan politics without foreign interference in her first public address since Maduro was removed from power.
“Enough orders from Washington on politicians in Venezuela. Let Venezuelan politics resolve our differences and internal conflicts. Enough of foreign powers,” Rodríguez said, according to AFP.
Since January 8, 2026, Venezuela has released political prisoners under the interim government; President Trump praised the releases Monday, calling them a “powerful humanitarian gesture.”
“I am pleased to report that Venezuela is releasing its Political Prisoners at a rapid rate, which rate will be increasing over the coming short period of time. I’d like to thank the leadership of Venezuela for agreeing to this powerful humanitarian gesture! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
Rodríguez announced that 626 individuals had been released as of January 23, 2026. Though human rights NGOs dispute the figures according to reporting on family protests and remaining detainees by legacy media.
President Trump’s social media posts and public praise of the interim government have drawn criticism about Rodriguez leadership and reported accomplishments.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: This is all part of the political theater from Kokomo.
I recently learned that the Venezuelan opposition, operating out of the United States and led by Juan Guaido, among others, retained the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell back in 2019 to prepare to restructure the $60 billion in debt that Venezuela had.
For those who aren’t familiar with this firm, I would implore you to look into them—listen to any of the many podcasts we have done on the subject here at Badlands—but the short version is that they were the CIA before there was a CIA. (Both of the Dulles brothers maintained employment there throughout most of their lives.)
It’s clear that when President Trump signed his recent Executive Order that intends to protect Venezuela’s oil profits from creditors and other vultures, Sullivan and Cromwell was at least one of the “targets” of the EO.
I would also recommend that you take a listen to last night’s episode of The Book of Trump—Hugo Chavez, Part Two—where I explain that it was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson who started the Deep State’s crusade against Venezuela in 2007, ten years before he would become President Trump’s first Secretary of State.
Tillerson flexed on Maduro during Trump’s first year, leaning on Steve Mnuchin to issue sanctions against him. President Trump then fired Tillerson in March 2018—the exact same month that Maduro’s famous lawyer, David Boies, filed those infamous lawsuits against 42 entities related to a RICO-styled corruption case.
Boies filed in both the District of Southern Florida and in Geneva, Switzerland. Within days of this filing, the Swiss authorities raided the office of the lawsuit’s primary defendant, Helsinge. Four months later, Trump’s DOJ raided the Helsinge office in Miami, arresting banker Mathias Krull and charging him with laundering over $1.2 billion for not just the oil companies and banks, but also for the cartel. Meaning Krull is the keystone, along with Executive Order 13850.
So in spite of Kokomo’s theatrics, all of the evidence suggests that she and Maduro are working with Trump against the Deep State/CIA, MI6, and Israel/Mossad.
Carney Walks Back China Trade Talk After Trump’s Tariff Warning
President Donald Trump said the United States could impose 100% tariffs on Canadian goods if Canada pursued a free-trade agreement with China over the weekend.
“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a “Drop Off Port” for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken. China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life. If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT”
Canadian officials said Canada has no intention of pursuing a free-trade deal with China, following Trump’s comments, while China’s foreign ministry, responding to questions about U.S. concerns, said that China’s trade arrangements with Canada are not aimed at any third party.
“China holds that countries should handle relations with one another with a win-win rather than zero-sum mindset, and through cooperation rather than confrontation,” Guo Jiakun told reporters Monday.
Carney told reporters over the weekend that Canada will respect its USMCA obligations.
“What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that have developed in the last couple of years,” Carney said, adding their negotiations with China are “entirely consistent with CUSMA.”
Despite the rhetoric, no new U.S. tariffs on Canada have been announced; likewise, no Canada-China agreement was introduced or signed.
Burning Bright: A Collectivist Capitulation Cascade ignited when Mark Carney returned seemingly triumphant from Beijing a few weeks ago, announcing a new “strategic partnership” with China that included tariffs on Chinese EVs being slashed from 100% to a token 6.1%, reciprocal cuts on Canadian exports and a clear pivot toward diversification—or, in the Globalist lexicon, a hedge against a rapidly-fraying American backstop.
Days later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney ascended the stage to deliver what was billed as a defiant clarion call to “middle powers.”
The old rules-based order, he declared, is fraying under Donald Trump’s epochal rise.
“If we’re not on the table, we’re on the menu.”
It was a shockingly honest—maybe even accidentally based—take from the collectivist would-be king, but it ultimately represented a cry for help that isn’t coming.
The Collective Mind registered the signal: resistance to the Sovereign Disentanglement pattern I outlined in my last major long-form, and a final stand for abstracted multipluralism, which in and of itself represents a sorry—if admittedly clever—attempt to draft off of the language coding inherent in the Multipolar War being waged—and won—against Carney’s Collectorate.
It was a valiant effort from Carney, marrying the soft power projection of economics with the abstraction of Hegelian coding, but it was undone in short order by a true master at both with the actual power to see either through to Canada’s ending.
On January 24, Donald Trump responded via Truth Social with characteristic directness: If Canada proceeds with a deal allowing China to use it as a “Drop Off Port” for goods into the United States, it would face immediate 100% tariffs on all Canadian products.
Or, put more simply …
“China will eat Canada alive,” Trump warned.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent amplified the very next day, not so much arguing as announcing that America could not—and therefor WOULD not—allow Canada to become an opening for Chinese goods to flood the U.S. market … aka, a continued vector for and accelerator of Globalism itself.
By January 25—essentially on the same page, in narrative time—Carney folded, claiming he had “no intention” of pursuing a free trade deal with China, while clarifying that Canada respects its USMCA obligations and that the limited measures taken were merely to “rectify issues” and remained “entirely consistent” with existing agreements.
Again … capitulation, complete and predictable.
You love to see it.
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Middle East Madness: Trump Floats Iran Talks as Region Faces Rising Instability
President Donald Trump told Axios in an interview Monday that Iran wants to talk. The President described the situation as “in flux.” The remarks follow the deployment of additional U.S. naval forces to the Middle East.
“We have a big armada next to Iran. Bigger than Venezuela,” Trump says. “They want to make a deal. I know so. They called on numerous occasions. They want to talk.”
Also in the region, Iraq’s highest judicial body announced Sunday that it plans to prosecute Islamic State militants transferred from Syria to Iraq, citing jurisdiction under Iraqi law. Officials said the move follows coordination with international partners and relates to detainees captured during anti-ISIS operations.
In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, militants linked to the Islamic State killed civilians during attacks on villages, according to local authorities. Casualty figures vary by report.
In Syria, Kurdish authorities and the Syrian government reached a framework agreement addressing security and governance arrangements in Kurdish-controlled areas. The deal was described as preliminary, and no implementation timeline was publicly released.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: Just as Lindsey Graham and his friends are going into heat over the prospect of [finally] starting a war with Iran, President Trump is stepping off of the rug. (As it accelerates increasingly faster, right into a brick wall.)
It would seem to me that the benefit of a hypothetical Sovereign Alliance would be the narrative pincer moves you can run against your shared enemies. The Sovereign Alliance members would be free to engage in provocative and hyperbolic public exchanges that ostensibly signaled toward imminent kinetic conflict, knowing full well that they were no different than Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage at WrestleMania.
That would be particularly useful when dealing with a country that is generally regarded as irritable, hypersensitive, and allegedly prone to violence. But the fact remains that since being created in 1979, Iran has never initiated or instigated a kinetic conflict with another sovereign nation. The same cannot be said of either the US or Israel. (And if you expand the criteria to include “proxy wars,” then the US/Israeli guilt increases exponentially.)
A country that we almost never discuss is Iraq, because it has—presumably—been under Deep State control ever since Saddam was toppled, and therefore doesn’t make any waves in the geopolitical kiddie pool. Now, suddenly there is a consternation across the information battle space as Nouri Al-Maliki is announced as the candidate for the Shia Party in the upcoming Iraqi elections.
Normally, we wouldn’t pay much attention to primary election outcomes in Iraq, but for some reason the algorithms are pushing it down our throats, and the Zionists are being just as fussy and temperamental as you would expect.
Turns out this Al-Maliki has already served two consecutive terms as Prime Minister of Iraq, starting in 2006, meaning Al-Maliki was among the puppets that the US installed after taking down Saddam. Given President Trump’s comments over a week ago about how everybody we installed in Iraq ended up being ISIS, this can’t be a coincidence.
What’s strange is that the establishment is visibly shaken over Al-Maliki’s return. Marco Rubio has already made thinly veiled threats warning against any alliance with Iran.
According to the Jerusalem Post, this guy helped create ISIS. That is an interesting allegation, as the time in office would certainly line up, but the concern over alignment with Iran isn’t tracking.
For context, Iran is the stronghold of Shia Islam, and ISIS is a notoriously Sunni outfit. This, of course, has never stopped the MSM and mentally retarded politicians from associating the two together—despite the fact that ISIS was 100% created for the purpose of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Iran has always been Assad’s key strategic ally. (Again, another sobering contradiction that nobody ever wants to address.)
Remember in the early days of ISIS when Obama and Hillary were still referring to them as “rebels” fighting against an oppressive regime?
If you try seeking a rationalization of these insane contradictions, you’ll only find smugness. They will tell you that, “it’s complicated,” and that you shouldn’t think about it too hard.
It’s actually not complicated at all. Sunni and Shia have been enemies for over a thousand years. Iran and Assad have always been allies. So to suggest that Iran was funding an insurgency—using weapons and armor looted from the armory of the late Libyan President Gaddafi, whose public murder (streamed online) at the hands of ISIS was decried by Iran and blamed on the West. Hillary Clinton went on 60 Minutes and took credit, cackling in delight over the spectacle of Gaddafi’s brutal death.
But now this Al-Maliki fella is helping the Trump administration prosecute ISIS criminals, as ISIS is allegedly mounting a major comeback. (It should be noted that ISIS is now operating in the DR Congo alongside the M23 group that has been fighting to overthrow the DR Congo government.
What if Al-Maliki really did help create ISIS?
Wouldn’t that give him a very odd connection to the current Syrian President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was also once a public leader of ISIS?
What if al-Sharaa and Al-Maliki both worked for one side, once upon a time, and now both work for the other side?
P.S. Ye has cancelled DEFCON 3. He is now off the rug.
One must wonder if much of what Ye did was orchestrated as part of a larger counter-op to violently shift the Overton Window.
Commerce Department Issues Letter of Intent to Support USA Rare Earth With $1.6B Package, 10% Equity Stake
The Trump administration announced that the U.S. government will back a $1.6 billion funding package for USA Rare Earth, a rare-earth mining and processing company, under a non-binding letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce. This package includes $277 million in proposed federal funding and a $1.3 billion senior secured loan under the CHIPS and Science Act.
As part of the deal, the U.S. government is expected to acquire a roughly 10% equity stake in USA Rare Earth by receiving 16.1 million shares and roughly 17.6 million warrants, according to Reuters. USA Rare Earth’s shares rose about 15 % to $28.42 on January 26, 2026, following the announcement of U.S. government backing.
USA Rare Earth is already developing a mine at Sierra Blanca, Texas, slated to open by 2028. The company also operates a magnet manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, expected to begin production later in 2026.
The $1.6 billion funding package for USA Rare Earth is part of broader U.S. efforts to strengthen domestic rare-earth production and reduce reliance on China for critical infrastructure.
Ashe in America: President Trump told the audience at the World Economic Forum that “rare earths” weren’t actually rare, but that the capability to process them is rare:
“Everyone talks about the minerals. There’s so many. There’s no such thing as rare earth. There’s rare processing. But there’s so much rare earth.”
That was foreshadowing.
“And to get to this rare earth, you got to go through hundreds of feet of ice. That’s not the reason we need it. We need it for strategic national security and international security.”
He was talking about Greenland and claiming that the move to acquire the ice covered landmass north of Canada was about national security, not mineral rights.
But mineral rights are national security. The “rare earths” are used in our communications systems, weapons systems, healthcare systems, and more. Scaling the brave new world would have required rare earths. Building and scaling the Golden Age will, too.
Still, President Trump said they aren’t rare – the processing capabilities are rare and, now, we have this news that USA Rare Earth is opening processing capabilities in Texas.
“There’s no such thing as rare earth. There’s rare processing. But there’s so much rare earth.”
Sounds like Commerce is incentivizing USA Rare Earth to make American processing less rare. If we’re going to stop relying on foreign capabilities for our critical infrastructure–and we must–then we’re going to have to build the capabilities here.
And now we are.
Foreshadowing.
Accelerate.
BONUS ITEMS
Pentagon Defense Strategy Elevates Homeland Security, Presses Allies on Burden-Sharing
The Pentagon’s newly released unclassified National Defense Strategy places defense of the U.S. homeland at the top of the priorities list while calling for greater burden-sharing from allies as Washington reassesses its global military footprint.
The document ranks homeland defense above the Indo-Pacific and signals potential reductions to U.S. force posture in Europe and South Korea. It emphasizes allied contributions and expanded investment in the U.S. defense industrial base.
The strategy follows the White House’s National Security Strategy released in December and reflects notable political shifts from the 2022 edition, referencing President Trump far more frequently despite a shorter length. It highlights Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative, renewed emphasis on counter-drone systems, a modernized nuclear deterrent, and an updated interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine.
The Pentagon’s stated priorities are defending the U.S. homeland, deterring China in the Indo-Pacific “through strength, not confrontation,” increasing burden-sharing with allies, and “supercharging” the U.S. defense industrial base.
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People are worn-out and disgusted in equal turns by what is happening in Minnesota. More than one person has asked if this drama is a “distraction.” In my opinion this is in no way a distraction. In fact I think it is the beginnings of the main event. The can of sardines has been cracked opened and it is stinking to high heavens already. By the time the lid has been peeled completely back, at least 50 rotten fish will be exposed to gag us to the reality we have plugged our nose against for decades. It is not a coincidence that Our Boy Jazz Hands (thanks Ashe) was paraded around the country in 2024 as a buffoon. He has top billing in this shit-show, until we get to Maine, or California, or “name that state.”
"How does it end?"
I live here in MN and all of a sudden the MPD is back on duty...
Trump is signaling he is re-focusing on the fraud away from immigration and that is making Walz VERY nervous. That is fine as TX and AZ are deporting more than anyone without riots.
The Fraud is the game and is where I want Trump's team to focus. You kill the funding and illegals self-deport. So do the communists who are in charge here.