The News Cycle is almost impossible to track these days. At least, to do so fully.
That’s where we come in.
In the Badlands News Brief, the Badlands Media team hand pick news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community.
Many items feature original (and subjective) commentary. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see our writers’ Substack accounts and check out their other work.
Now, onto the news from Monday, April 22 …
NY vs Trump wraps for the day after opening statements
Fox News contributor and legal expert Jonathan Turley said former President Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan over allegedly falsifying business records has left him “in utter disbelief.”
“What is clear, is in this case, Trump is right. I mean, this is an embarrassment. I mean, the fact that we are actually talking about this case being presented in a New York courtroom, leaves me in utter disbelief. I mean, the the arguments today did in fact capture all the problems here,” Turley said Monday afternoon on Fox News.
"You had this misdemeanor under state law, that had run out, this is going back to relate it to the 2016 election. And they zapped it back into life by alleging that there was a campaign finance violation under the federal laws that doesn't exist," he said.
Turley was reacting to the trial Monday, which has officially kicked off in earnest after jury selection last week, as well as a recent poll finding 31% of Americans find Trump’s behavior at the crux of the case unethical, but not illegal. While an additional 14% said there was “nothing wrong” with Trump’s actions, and 35% who said his actions were “illegal.”
“This case should not have been brought , and if it were brought, there was no reason to have this right before the election in my view. But this is becoming the split screen election,” Turley said. “Earlier it was pretty damaging to see the split screen between Trump in different courtrooms. This is even more effective when the other side of the screen shows Biden campaigning in key states like Pennsylvania, while he's held in this courtroom."
“It really brings home something that bothers a lot of Americans, including people don't particularly like Trump, that this is the weaponization of the criminal legal system. It's something we should all be able to condemn."
Court wrapped up around 12:30 on Monday, earlier than initially anticipated, after a juror experiencing a toothache required a dental appointment. — FOX News
Our Take: “I think starting at the end of the above snippet actually makes sense from an absurdist point of view, as the War of Stories has begun its slow, inevitable transition from a thriller, to a drama … to a black comedy.
Keen observers will remember that this is the same judge who said Trump would not be allowed any exceptions to depart proceedings early, even up to being forced to miss the graduation of his son. That said, when a juror has a hurty toof … the entire nation must retire from what we’re told is the most consequential trial in American history (but which is actually a farce.)
While black pills spring forth like anti-hope eternal in this time, I would argue that you can keep your head when all about you lose their own by considering that the absurdity on display is a core feature of both the Patriot Plan and the Great Awakening it runs in concert with, rather than a bug.
Trump will be tried. Trump will probably be convicted.
The Deep State, in the end, will be most affected.” —
Supreme Court prepares to debate Trump immunity claim in election interference case
In what may be the most closely watched case this term at the Supreme Court – involving the highest-profile appellant – former President Donald Trump has offered a sweeping argument for why he should not face trial for alleged election interference.
The high court will hold arguments Thursday morning in what could determine the former president's personal and political future. As the presumptive GOP nominee to retake the White House, Trump is betting that his constitutional assertions will lead to a legal reprieve from the court's 6-3 conservative majority – with three of its members appointed to the bench by the defendant himself.
The official question the justices will consider: Whether, and if so, to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office? — FOX News
Our Take: “The question of Presidential immunity is an important one, and 45 maintains that he is immune from prosecution. Certainly historical precedent supports this position, but that’s only because no one has ever tried to prosecute a president as the Democrats are doing now.
If the court rules with President Trump, then the witch hunts are all neutered. If the court rules against President Trump, then the crimes of Obama and Biden (and Bush and Clinton) are very much on the table for future legal remedy.
President Trump will beat the allegations against him on their merits, so the matter before the high court is one of clarity and precedent. Said another way, it’s a win-win. Let’s see what happens.” —
Former senior policy advisor to Obama White House charged with child sex offences in British court
A former senior policy adviser to the Obama administration has appeared in court in Britain charged with child sex offences.
Rahamim 'Rami' Shy, 46, who co-ordinated the US government's strategy to combat terrorists from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, is accused of arranging the commission of a child sex offence, court documents reveal.
He is also charged with possession of two category C indecent images of children and possessing a prohibited image of a child.
Shy, a US citizen, who lives in New Jersey, worked for the White House under president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was arrested in late February by Bedfordshire Police. He was charged the following day and appeared at Luton Crown Court via video-link from HMP Bedford on Friday wearing a grey prison-issue tracksuit.
He was not asked to enter a plea to any of the charges and was remanded in custody ahead of a hearing in June. — The Daily Mail
Our Take: “There's that Shark Fin template
is always talking about.This time, it's a pedophile shark.
The list of people and organizations to which Rahamim Shy is connected includes not only Barack Obama, but also Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, NATO's military, Citi Bank Group, the US Treasury Department, and some very high profile radical Islamic terrorist organizations.
To be clear, Shy was part of the Obama regime's plan to ‘keep an eye on’ the Taliban and Al Qaeda, both as a high-level consultant for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) but also in a ‘high-level position’ at the Treasury to end financing for terrorism.
During Shy's stint in this role (2008-2014), not only did radical Islamic terrorism grow to unprecedented levels, but the world saw the emergence of ISIS, which established a territorial claim in Syria and Iraq that was larger in area than many small countries. There's no doubt that Shy played a part in Hillary Clinton's overthrow of the Libyan government and brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi, whose private armory was subsequently looted and used to arm ISIS by the CIA, which is what the entire 2012 Benghazi scandal was about.
As I mentioned yesterday on Badlands Daily, the reason ISIS was created was to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was unreceptive to Qatari (Muslim Brotherhood/CIA) requests to construct a pipeline from Qatar that would run through Syria and compete with the Iran/Russia pipeline. (Assad and Putin were and still are key allies.) So the Qataris went to Secretary of State HRC for help, and the rest is history.
For those of you who have been listening to Colonel Towner-Watkins on Breaking History and , you know that this all stinks of Operation Gladio, and Rahamim Shy is the new Gladio-poster-boy.
A PEDOPHILE Gladio-poster-boy.
You could not have picked a better candidate to become this mascot. Almost like it was scripted. I can't wait to learn more about this scumbag.” —
The Cass Review Won’t Fade Away
Anyone who reads the Cass Review, and who then reads most recent mainstream American media coverage of youth gender medicine, will be gobsmacked.
The review, spearheaded by the respected British pediatrician Hilary Cass (and ably summed up in The Morning Dispatch last week), explains that youth gender medicine “is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”
Cass and her colleagues arrived at this conclusion after an ambitious yearslong effort to interview clinicians, parents, and patients about their experiences with the National Health Service’s youth gender medicine system. She also commissioned a sizable bundle of independent systematic reviews evaluating both the evidence for puberty blockers and hormones, as well as the quality of recommendations published by influential groups like the World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare. Overall, dozens of studies were collected and evaluated by the team at the University of York, and this culminated in Cass delivering a damning verdict on the present state of youth gender medicine and the professional guidelines surrounding it.
In her report, Cass clarifies that her goal is not to question whether some young people are “really” transgender. She acknowledges that some young people are in tremendous distress about their gender, and she doesn’t deny the fact that some may benefit from blockers and/or hormones. Her argument, which in any other context would not be controversial, is simply that powerful medical treatments should be underpinned by quality evidence—and that that clearly isn’t the case here. Cass also focuses on the need to ensure youth referred to gender clinics receive the proper screening and assessment before medical interventions are undertaken, especially for the growing subset of these youth who are autistic or who have mental-health comorbidities that, some experts believe, can significantly complicate the diagnostic process in these settings. — The Dispatch
Our Take: “The massive recent UK announcement that the gender affirmative model of medicine is dangerous, lacks evidence and needs to be shut down is revealing the information warfare localized to North American entities for what it is.
The global nature of the information war surrounding the Neo-Marxist push to destroy our children with gender affirmative care is backfiring on the globalists. The wake of this particular woke narrative collapsing in the UK is finally hitting the shores of America.
It's poetic in what it highlights about the failures of the Deep State. They took the risk of radicalizing scientific and academic institutions so far in America that the push-back in the rest of the world is spotlighting how far they have fallen from any and all credibility.
Of course there is the old 'it's just political division and extremism that's driving this' excuse that needs to be replaced by the cold hard reality that we're dealing with sophisticated psychological and info warfare. And yet, what the article does do is accurately paint a picture of all the compromised media, academia and activism on the left that has been participating in the largest child abuse scandal in human history.
In this article alone, NBC, CNN, GLAAD, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Paediatrics, and 20-something left wing journalists are all being put on notice that they helped spread dangerous mal-information that's sterilizing kids.
Yes, when these kinds of normie-but-awakening authors point to an institution or journalist simply being 'politically polarized' we know to reframe it as communist ideological subversion astroturfing a revolution at the behest of the New World Order. But when it comes to getting indoctrinated left wing people on board with literally saving our children, the ammunition for red pilling on a much bigger scale has just arrived.” —
Americans Struggle The Most In Cities Controlled By Radical Democrats
A new Census Bureau survey highlights the 15 largest US metro areas where residents face the most financial difficulties, almost all of which are under Democratic leadership. This comes as no surprise as issues of elevated inflation, high taxes, soaring violent crime, and a migrant crisis are spiraling out of control across many blue cities.
The survey asked 70,000 respondents between March 5 and April 1 in major metro areas these three questions:
Difficulty paying for usual household expenses,
food scarcity,
and unable to pay energy bill.
The survey's findings are stark: Riverside, California; Houston, Texas; and Chicago, Illinois, are the top three metro areas with the most financial hardships. All three cities are under Democratic leadership. With the exception of Dallas (#4 on the list) and Miami (#6), the rest of the metro areas are under liberal control. — ZeroHedge
Our Take: “This is obviously true, and the results of Democrat policies have never been clearer. When you prioritize equity over equality, everyone suffers.
Denver doesn’t make the list, but the city has become a massive homeless encampment and, as we reported a few weeks ago, the Denver mayor’s office was recently caught on video begging migrants to go somewhere else. That was before they reallocated $89.9M from police and fire to migrant services.
Equity is Marxism, and Marxism is misery.
The most unfortunate aspect of our current urban dystopia is that residents can’t just vote out the marxists until we have free and fair elections. You can vote your way into communism, but getting out is a much more complicated endeavor.” —
‘I will always carry the pain’: IDF intel chief Aharon Haliva resigns over Oct. 7 failure
Israel’s top military intelligence official announced his resignation on Monday over his role in the failures that led to the Hamas terror group’s October 7 onslaught.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, chief of the Israel Defense Forces’s Military Intelligence Directorate, will step down from the military once a replacement is appointed, the IDF said.
The move was coordinated with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and approved by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the military added.
Once he quits, Haliva will become the first senior officer in the IDF to resign over the October 7 attack. (Another top intelligence general who was planning to step down over the onslaught quit after being diagnosed with cancer.)
Alongside Haliva, other top defense officials have said they bear responsibility for the deadly invasion carried out by Hamas on October 7, including the head of the Shin Bet security agency and the IDF chief of staff. None of them has announced plans to resign as of yet, though many are expected to do so once the security situation stabilizes. — Times of Israel
Our Take: “So it begins.
At first glance, one may think that this is mere scapegoating—and to some extent, it most certainly is—but if you go back and check the record, General Haliva first announced his decision to resign way back on November 29. Since that day, he has been considered a lame duck.
To quote that November 29 article from the Jerusalem Post:
’Now, all that remains for Haliva is to figure out when he intends to retire, whether it be after Israel officially announces the end of the war, or before there is any sort of permanent ceasefire and the army switches to a method of raid operations only.’
The IDF does appear to have somewhat shifted to a ‘raid’ warfare strategy. (‘Smash and grab’ missions conducted with a specific purpose, where land is not captured and held; instead, raiders quickly retreat to a previously held position after attacking, before the enemy can mobilize a response.)
However, Gaza has already been effectively bombed into a crater. These raids are now being conducted in the West Bank—where Hamas has no political presence, and its relationship with the West Bank's political faction (Fatah) has soured— and airstrikes are being launched against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
This war is not ending anytime soon, as Bibi Netanyahu has publicly stated. In fact, it appears to be ever-expanding via scope-creep; And dissention within the ranks of the Israeli cabinet are growing.
With the United States poised to issue sanctions against multiple battalions in the IDF, accusing them of human rights abuses and immoral misconduct, and the Israeli people taking to the streets in protest against the Netanyahu government, now is as good a time as ever for Haliva to take his leave.
Given the timing, it's difficult to see this as scapegoating, and not a discerning operative abandoning a sinking ship.” —
BONUS ITEMS
REPO Act Passage Has Authorized Biden To Confiscate Russian Assets & Transfer To Ukraine
When the House voted to pass Biden's long sought after foreign aid package Saturday, which will deliver over $60 billion to Ukraine, included in this was passage of the REPO Act, which paves the way for the Biden administration confiscate billions in Russian sovereign assets which sit in US banks.
The US administration has been pursuing a controversial plan to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine for reconstruction, and has been aggressively lobbying G7 countries to jump on board, also given most of the $300 billion in Russian assets are held in Europe - particularly France, Germany, and Belgium.
A summary of the REPO Act - H.R.4175 - on the Congressional website, reads: "This bill requires or authorizes various actions related to the confiscation and disposition of Russian sovereign assets (which include funds and other property of Russia's central bank, direct investment fund, or ministry of finance)."
"Under the bill, the President must require U.S. financial institutions to notify the Department of the Treasury of any Russian sovereign assets located at such institutions. The President may confiscate any such assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction," it continues. "Confiscated funds and the proceeds of liquidated property must be deposited into the Ukraine Support Fund established by the bill." — ZeroHedge
White House condemns ‘blatantly antisemitic’ protests amid ongoing unrest at Columbia
The White House on Sunday condemned the calls for “violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students” as protests continue at colleges in the U.S., including the latest demonstration at Columbia University in New York.
“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous — they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement shared with The Hill.
“And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. We condemn these statements in the strongest terms,” he continued.
The statement came shortly after reports circulated Sunday that a rabbi associated with Columbia University sent a message to 300 Jewish students to leave campus, return home and remain there ahead of the start of Passover, the Jewish holiday that begins Monday night.
The campus Hillel countered this statement, writing on the social platform X, “We do not believe that Jewish students should leave @Columbia. We do believe that the University and the City need to do more to ensure the safety of our students.”
Protests have been ongoing at Columbia University since last week, when dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment of dozens of tents on campus. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik later authorized the New York Police Department to help remove the encampment.
More than 100 protesters were taken into custody, NBC News reported last week. — The Hill
We hope you enjoyed this brief look back at the major news items you might have missed in this ever-escalating and ever-accelerating news cycle as the Information War continues to rage on around us.
As always, if you have any thoughts on these news items or the MANY others swirling in the digital ether, drop into the comments below to share them with your fellow Badlanders.
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.
“Equity is Marxism, and Marxism is misery.” - Ashe
And misery loves company.
The “News Briefs” often capture the mainstream daily grind of negative drama and the Takes are the helping hand out of the mire of the misery frequency.
Thank God for Badlands Media 🇺🇸🙏❤️
Misery is a strategy employed by the global cabal. You can see it everywhere, from the local stage to the world stage. War is misery and the antithesis of creativity. Democrats love misery. The Military Industrial Complex loves misery. BigPharma loves misery.
NATO loves misery and the mainstream narrative pushed by NATO is that Russia wants to conquer and control Europe = fund the Ukraine war! What nonsense, for the truth is that Russia’s superior military strength is actually preventing the global cabal from conquering and controlling the world!
Peace has a future fueled by creativity and vision; misery is a day-to-day struggle of survival.
The Great Awakening chooses Peace ❤️🕊
As a father and grandfather it is extremely hard to read articles that expose the abuse of children. The awareness is critical and needs to continue for the safety of the innocent - of all ages.
I appreciate the BNB Team for your willingness to bring light to the very darkest of places.
Luke 17:10 is one of three statements by Jesus regarding the worthy punishment of those who harm the "little ones". A millstone (which weighed about 100 pounds) hung around the neck and the perp thrown into the sea. This is the only public group (meaning not his disciples or the religious Jews) whom Jesus called out and/or advocated severe judgment. In Revelation 18:21 we are told that the entire system of systems (Babylon) will be brought down like a large (300 pound) millstone being thrown into the sea.
Certainly God wins - He does ask us to do our part and pray.