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.
Donald Trump won a bid on Monday to pause his $454 million civil fraud judgment if he posts a smaller $175 million bond within 10 days, in a victory for the former U.S. president that blocks New York state authorities from taking steps to seize his assets.
The decision by a mid-level state appeals court eases an acute cash crunch for Trump, who has said he would be forced to sell assets at "fire sale prices" to post bond in the case.
If Trump posts bond by the new deadline, state authorities will not be able to start seizing his assets.
The ruling delays enforcement of a judgment in a case that found he overstated his wealth to dupe investors and lenders, though it does not indicate how the appeals court might ultimately rule or address the merits of the case. It could take judges up to a year or longer to reach a decision on that.
"I greatly respect the decision of the appellate division and I'll post either the $175 million in cash or bonds or securities or whatever is necessary, very quickly," Trump told reporters at a New York courthouse where he was appearing in a separate criminal case.
New York Attorney General Letitia James's office, which is handling the civil case, said Trump is "still facing accountability for his staggering fraud."
– Reuters
Our Take: “In one of the most impressive boomerangs we have seen to date, a decision made by a mid-level appeals court ruled that President Trump has 10 days to pay a $175m bond as opposed to the $454m he was facing beforehand, which was due on Monday.
This also ended any hopes of NY AG James, and any rabid leftists, who actually believed his properties would be seized.
This news coming on the same day that news broke that Trump’s TMTG will now officially be traded publicly, bumping Trump’s personal wealth by an estimated $6.5b.
When asked what collateral he plans to use for his $175m bond, Trump replied “Cash.”
AG James has just learned how the Trump quicksand works. Life comes at you fast, Letitia. Thanks for playing.”
A video shows Vice President Kamala Harris clapping along with a song during her visit to Puerto Rico, before being told that the song is actually a protest against her.
Well, this is awkward.
Harris was visiting the Goyoco community center in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan when her motorcade was confronted by dozens of loud demonstrators, one of whom held a sign saying “Kamala Harris war criminal”.
Unable to take the hint, Harris then reacted to a group of musicians thinking they were welcoming her.
After clapping along and smiling inanely, Harris was informed by her aide that the musicians were actually singing, “We want to know, Kamala, what did you come here for?… Long live Free Palestine and Haiti too!”
“We want to know what you think of the colony,” they also asked.
– Modernity News
Our Take: “This is so awkward. Kamala is grooving and clapping to protesters mocking her. You can see the moment she realizes, and it’s painful. This has moved beyond mockery. The Gun Czar / Border Czar / AI Czar is a national embarrassment.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Friday subpoenaed President Biden’s ghost writer, advancing their efforts to gain access to recordings and a transcript of conversations referenced by special counsel Robert Hur.
Hur’s report indicates that Biden at three different times read passages from his notebook that references classified information while working with ghost writer Mark Zwonitzer to develop his memoir.
Zwonitzer at one point deleted the recordings, but they were recovered by Hur’s team, who did not recommend any charges for the ghost writer or Biden.
The escalation comes after Zwonitzer apparently initially agreed to turn over the materials, only to change course.
“On March 11, 2024—over two weeks after the return date on the original letter—your attorney informed the Committee you would not produce the documents without a subpoena compelling your cooperation,” committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a letter accompanying the subpoena.
The subpoena is one of numerous efforts House Republicans have made to get their hands on materials related to Hur’s investigation.
— The Hill
Our Take: “House Republicans subpoenaed Resident Biden’s Ghost Writer. It’s interesting because Hur’s report indicated the possibility that Biden had passed classified information along to his Ghost Writer, which of course is a crime.
Remember the Democrat Communists have been busy telling everyone how Biden is presidential and in command. No take backs.
This move comes after Biden’s Ghost Writer Zwonitzer changed his mind after he originally promised to cooperate. Obstruction of justice, much? Boomerang.”
President Joe Biden's administration on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to turn away billionaire businessman Elon Musk's dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk in December asked the justices to take up his appeal after a lower court upheld his consent decree with the SEC that arose after he posted on Twitter, now called X, in 2018 that he had "funding secured" to take his electric car company Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab private. The SEC accused Musk of defrauding investors.
Musk's agreement was part of a settlement with the SEC under which he and Tesla each paid $20 million fines, Musk gave up his role as Tesla's chairman and he agreed to let a Tesla lawyer approve some posts on Twitter. Musk bought the social media platform in 2022 and renamed it.
Musk has called the consent decree a "muzzle" on his constitutional free speech rights.
— Reuters
Our Take: “When the government says further review is not warranted, further review should be compulsory.
Being ‘gagged for life’ is an extreme measure in any circumstance, but a CEO being gagged for life from discussing his own company is straight up weaponized bureaucracy.
The SEC is demanding Musk obtain legal review for anything he wants to publicly say about Tesla, a company where he is the CEO.
The pretense for this harassment is to guard against market impacts from Musk’s speech. Essentially, to guard against Musk unfairly impacting the markets. As a reminder, the laws that govern the SEC are written and passed by Congress, where impacting the markets and engaging in insider trading are commonplace.
Boeing abruptly said on Monday that it was overhauling its leadership amid its most significant safety crisis in years, announcing sweeping changes that included the departure of its chief executive, Dave Calhoun, at the end of the year.
The aircraft maker has been under mounting pressure from regulators, airlines and passengers as the company struggled to respond to the fallout from an incident in early January in which a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane midair during an Alaska Airlines flight.
The incident has roiled the company, considered by many to be a prized American institution, and renewed concerns about its commitment to safety and quality five years after two crashes of 737 Max 8 planes killed a total of nearly 350 people.
In addition to Mr. Calhoun’s departure, Stan Deal, the head of the division that makes planes for airlines and other commercial customers, will retire immediately. He will be replaced by Stephanie Pope, Boeing’s chief operating officer, the company said in a statement.
– The New York Times
Our Take: “So far the arc of the DEI-destroying-the-aviation-industry narrative is playing in our favour.
We need these crystal clear moments of truth about how destructive the woke mind virus is once unleashed into these massive well known corporations. We need failures of scale like this to make the real life danger, and the impact it can have, very obvious.
So far it has become memetic enough that it is now settling in as a fact that will be a useful reference, a kind of symbolic token we can take with us on this hero's journey to defeat the 'woke dragon.'
The question is: will Boeing step up to now become symbolic of an American corporate giant recovering form the woke mind virus? Will the sacrifice of high level employees and a change in management result in a return to reason, safety and profitability?
It sure would kick ass if the next page in this chapter has the new management going scorched earth on DEI initiatives...
With less than eight months before the 2024 election, the Biden re-election campaign is in big trouble. Not only is Biden lagging in the polls vs. Donald Trump, the border crisis he created by shredding all of Trump's Executive Orders on immigration has resulted in 10 million illegals flooding into the United States — which has left even Democrats livid.
Things are so bad that TIME magazine has just devoted 3,700 words to let us know that Barack Obama 'warned' the Biden campaign last June that defeating Trump would be harder in 2024 (because no pandemic or hoax dossier to set him up?). Six months later, Obama 'saw few signs of improvement.' … Now, it's really bad...
‘Three months later, the 2024 general election is under way, and Biden is indeed in trouble. His stubbornly low approval ratings have sunk into the high 30s, worse than those of any other recent President seeking re-election. He’s trailed or tied Trump in most head-to-head matchups for months. Voters express concerns about his policies, his leadership, his age, and his competency. The coalition that carried Biden to victory in 2020 has splintered; the Democrats’ historic advantage with Black, Latino, and Asian American voters has dwindled to lows not seen since the civil rights movement.’ -TIME
Meanwhile, Biden's inner circle is "defiantly sanguine" as a "fog of dread" descends on Democrats… According to the report, GenZ voters "don’t understand why they should be compelled to cast their ballot for a candidate who has done so many things that are against their values," said Kohn-Murphy.
– ZeroHedge, citing TIME
Our Take: “Full exposure of the Uniparty continues unabated.
As we were saying heading into the 2022 Midterms, if the Biden Era truly is an Exposure campaign Re: the establishment, then the America First ideology CANNOT be seen as ‘in control’ while the Crisis Cascade accelerates. All pillars of the Deep State’s System of Systems, from the Financial and Political to the Clandestine and Cultural are converging in the Collective Mind, provoking increasing Mandate for the sort of sovereign reform we advance.
It really is beautiful to watch with that framing in mind. From the border crisis to corrupt Congressional deal making, the Biden crime family to Prussian Proxy States and the impending collapse of the fiat central banking system that holds it all up.
After the US took several steps to prevent Chinese companies from acquiring both the latest Nvidia AI chips as well as Europe's semiconductor titan ASML from sending its advanced chipmaking machines to Beijing (which resulted in a one-time flood of Chinese orders into both ASML and NVDA ahead of the sales ban which the market assumed was a recurring thing and priced out Nvidia revenue growth ridiculous higher compared to where it will end up being), China has retaliated by introducing new guidelines that will mean US chips from Intel and AMD are phased out of government PCs and servers, as Beijing ramps up a campaign to replace foreign technology with homegrown solutions, the FT reported.
This escalation in the chip war between the two superpowers in the form of stricter government procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, and runs alongside a parallel localization drive under way in state-owned enterprises.
According to the FT, the latest purchasing rules "represent China’s most significant step yet to build up domestic substitutes for foreign technology and echo moves in the US as tensions increase between the two countries."
– ZeroHedge, citing Financial Times
Our Take: “The question this article leaves me asking is, what significant steps is the US taking ‘to build up domestic substitutes for foreign technology,’ The Biden Administration signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in fall of 2022, and it was big news. From the White House, August 9 2022:
‘Spurred by the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, this week, companies have announced nearly $50 billion in additional investments in American semiconductor manufacturing, bringing total business investment to nearly $150 billion since President Biden took office:
Micron is announcing a $40 billion investment in memory chip manufacturing, critical for computers and electronic devices, which will create up to 40,000 new jobs in construction and manufacturing…
Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries are announcing a new partnership that includes $4.2 billion to manufacture chips in an expansion of GlobalFoundries’ upstate New York facility.’
A year after the CHIPS and Science Act made it rain, Global Foundries opened a $4B ‘expanded fabrication plant’ in Singapore. From that linked Business Times article, ‘With the expanded 23,000 square-metre site, the manufacturer is set to create 1,000 jobs in Singapore, including new roles for equipment technicians, process technicians and engineers.’
It seems like the $280B CHIPS and Science Act was a sinister plot to have Americans fund corporate expansion programs and create jobs in Asia (and other non-American places).
Now, Beijing is ramping up ‘a campaign to replace foreign technology with homegrown solutions.’ It appears those homegrown solutions might be funded by American taxes.”
Mayor Eric Adams canceled his trip to the southern U.S. border on Saturday after the U.S. State Department raised safety concerns about a Mexican city he was scheduled to visit.
The executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande, Sister Norma Pimentel, invited Adams to visit her team at the Texas border, according to a City Hall spokesperson. While speaking on “The Reset Talk Show” on Friday, Adams said he planned to meet on Saturday with “national immigration leaders who all applaud what we have done.”
The planned visit would have been Adams’ second mayoral trip to the southern border, and its announcement came as the mayor has repeatedly implored the state and federal governments for additional aid in addressing the migrant influx. More than 184,000 migrants have moved through the city’s intake system since April 2022, and more than 64,000 are still in the city’s care. The ongoing situation has also tested the city’s unique right-to-shelter rules, with officials reaching an agreement last week to cap shelter stays for migrant adults to 30 or 60 days.
A City Hall spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday that Adams’ trip was canceled “due to safety concerns at one of the cities we were going to visit in Mexico.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he will not send a delegation as planned to Washington after the United States refrained from vetoing a U.N. Security Council proposal calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, said that Washington's failure to block the proposal was a "clear retreat" from its previous position, and would hurt war efforts against Hamas, as well as efforts to release over 130 hostages in Gaza captivity.
"In light of the change in the American position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided the delegation would not leave," his office said… The White House denied that the U.S. abstention reflected a change in American policy.
London's High Court is set to deliver its verdict on Tuesday regarding WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's potential appeal against extradition from Britain to the United States. This ruling could mark his last legal challenge within British courts.
U.S. prosecutors seek to bring Assange, aged 52, to trial on criminal charges stemming from WikiLeaks' publication of extensive caches of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables.
U.S. prosecutors contend that the leaks endangered the lives of their operatives and assert that Assange's actions constitute criminal behavior without justification. Conversely, Assange's supporters acclaim him as a journalistic hero who faces prosecution for unveiling U.S. misconduct.
In 2022, Britain granted approval for his extradition, prompting Assange to embark on efforts to challenge this decision. His initial attempt to appeal the extradition was rebuffed, culminating in a two-day hearing last month during which his legal team endeavored to overturn the prior judgment.
Two senior judges are scheduled to announce their decision at 10:30 GMT (6:30am ET) on Tuesday.
A Moscow court convened late on Sunday to hear prosecutors' demands on pre-trial detention for a group of men detained in the aftermath of Friday’s Crocus City Hall attack, which claimed lives of over 130 people.
The suspects, all of whom are nationals of Tajikistan, appeared individually. Thus far, terrorism charges have been leveled against 32-year-old Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, who faces a life sentence if found guilty. Prosecutors told Judge Timur Vakhrameev that the suspect had admitted his guilt.
The court has opted to rule behind closed doors.
– RT
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.
Editor’s Note: I’ll be taking a short break from the Info War (and other work) to enjoy some R&R (and I’m not talking about Righteous Russia, for once,) but our own
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I have been looking forward to Jon's interview with Mike Benz ever since Jon announced he secured the interview.
Y'all know how passionate I am about the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 being revised by Obama in 2012. Mike Benz, in his explanations of the level of corruption in our Government falls right back to Obama revising The Smith-Mundt Act, when Obama did this he removed all penalties that could be leveled against the MSM for knowingly misrepresenting news stories through the use of propaganda and opinion.
By revising the Smith-Mundt Act, Obama also removed the protection in the Act that prevented our military, Gov. Agencies and MSM from running a "Color Revolution" on U.S. Soil and Citizens which is exactly what they are doing right now IMO.
Jon did a great job and asked some very good questions, Mike was very passionate in some of his answers, what's better is Jon allowed Mike all the time he wanted to answer his question without interrupting him, Jon was even taking notes during the interview which I hope means Jon is going to write a substack article about the topics they discussed in this interview.
I hope Jon and Badlands Media will be able to interview Mike Benz again and ask him about his thoughts on Obama revising the Smith-Mundt Act I would love to hear Mike's thoughts on this.
The theater of the absurd continues in DC as the weak-kneed Republicans, instead of subpoenaing the encrypted Blackberrys -- which would have led to the 20-year-old DNC corruption ring run by Hillary Clinton -- instead continued their dog-and-pony show. MTG and the other Reps put on a Kabuki theater play the other day with their cardboard photos of a couple of the Biden Blackberry email messages. If they had continued they would have gotten somewhere. But no, they were like little kids in the sandbox, playing around with something they don't understand. Or maybe they do, and were doing a PR act to say "Nothing to see here, move on." And move on is what they did, to Biden's ghostwriter, what a joke! Can you spell D-E-F-L-E-C-T-I-O-N?
Meanwhile the Dems are continuing their campaign to get the House before the '24 election as more and more Republicans resign. IMHO all of them are just part of the swamp.
I have been looking forward to Jon's interview with Mike Benz ever since Jon announced he secured the interview.
Y'all know how passionate I am about the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 being revised by Obama in 2012. Mike Benz, in his explanations of the level of corruption in our Government falls right back to Obama revising The Smith-Mundt Act, when Obama did this he removed all penalties that could be leveled against the MSM for knowingly misrepresenting news stories through the use of propaganda and opinion.
By revising the Smith-Mundt Act, Obama also removed the protection in the Act that prevented our military, Gov. Agencies and MSM from running a "Color Revolution" on U.S. Soil and Citizens which is exactly what they are doing right now IMO.
Jon did a great job and asked some very good questions, Mike was very passionate in some of his answers, what's better is Jon allowed Mike all the time he wanted to answer his question without interrupting him, Jon was even taking notes during the interview which I hope means Jon is going to write a substack article about the topics they discussed in this interview.
I hope Jon and Badlands Media will be able to interview Mike Benz again and ask him about his thoughts on Obama revising the Smith-Mundt Act I would love to hear Mike's thoughts on this.
re Republicans subpoena Biden ghost writer:
The theater of the absurd continues in DC as the weak-kneed Republicans, instead of subpoenaing the encrypted Blackberrys -- which would have led to the 20-year-old DNC corruption ring run by Hillary Clinton -- instead continued their dog-and-pony show. MTG and the other Reps put on a Kabuki theater play the other day with their cardboard photos of a couple of the Biden Blackberry email messages. If they had continued they would have gotten somewhere. But no, they were like little kids in the sandbox, playing around with something they don't understand. Or maybe they do, and were doing a PR act to say "Nothing to see here, move on." And move on is what they did, to Biden's ghostwriter, what a joke! Can you spell D-E-F-L-E-C-T-I-O-N?
Meanwhile the Dems are continuing their campaign to get the House before the '24 election as more and more Republicans resign. IMHO all of them are just part of the swamp.