The news cycle is impossible to fully track these days. That’s where we come in.
The Badlands News Brief is a uniquely curated selection of the stories dominating the info war — with context and commentary from Badlands hosts.
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A group of 14 states sued Elon Musk and President Donald Trump on Thursday, arguing that the authority the White House granted the tech billionaire and his advisory Department of Government Efficiency is unconstitutional.
The suit, filed by Democratic attorneys general from states like Arizona, Michigan and Rhode Island, takes aim at the magnitude and scale of Musk’s power, noting that DOGE has led the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce, dismantle entire agencies and access sensitive data.
“The founders of this country would be outraged that, 250 years after our nation overthrew a king, the people of this country—many of whom have fought and died to protect our freedoms—are now subject to the whims of a single unelected billionaire,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. – NBC News
Our Take: What can we learn by combining a quick study of the DOGE Deployment with 1987's action classic Predator and the movement and communications patterns of ant colonies?
Quite a bit, as it turns out.
The Deep State is committing suicide. [read more] –
Europe’s American century is over. Two geopolitical thunderclaps on Wednesday will transform transatlantic relations.
Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin brought the Russian leader in from the cold as they hatched plans to end the war in Ukraine and agreed to swap presidential visits.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, went to Brussels and told European allies to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent.”
The watershed highlights Trump’s “America First” ideology and his tendency to see every issue or alliance as a dollars and cents value proposition. It also underscores his freedom from establishment advisors steeped in the foreign policy mythology of the West, who he thinks thwarted his first term. Although Hegseth recommitted to NATO, something fundamental has changed. […]
Trump is returning to the rationale used by many presidents wary of foreign entanglements from the start of the republic, saying Wednesday, “We have a little thing called an ocean in between.” – CNN
Our Take: The original headline was, “Is Europe’s American Century Over?”
Yes. Yes it is.
That aside…
“Trump’s detailed strategy remains opaque. The dashing of many of Zelensky’s aspirations means that Kyiv’s agreement to any Putin-Trump deal cannot be taken for granted. And after his steady gains on the battlefield, there’s no certainty that the Russian leader is as desperate for a swift settlement as Trump, who has long craved a Nobel Peace Prize.
But the framework of a possible settlement has been a topic of private conversations in Washington and European capitals for months, even during the Biden administration. As Hegseth made clear, Ukraine’s hopes of regaining all its lost land is unrealistic. What may emerge is a solution along the lines of the partition of Germany after World War II, with Russian-occupied territory frozen under its control with the rest of Ukraine — on the other side of a hard border – remaining a democracy. Perhaps the western edge would be allowed to join the European Union, like the old West Germany. But this time, US troops won’t make it safe for freedom.”
…what does this tell us about the history we were taught and the situation in Europe as we were told it existed. –
Several employees at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) responsible for election security have been placed on administrative leave, news agency Associated Press reported. This move affects critical support for state and local election offices across the country.
Seventeen CISA employees who worked with election officials on cybersecurity, ransomware threats, and physical security have been placed on leave pending a review, news agency AP reported, quoting a source familiar with the situation. Ten of them are regional election security specialists who were hired to strengthen election security efforts ahead of the 2024 election. The review will examine efforts to counter foreign interference in US elections, which have been assigned to other staff members.
These employees, all former state or local election officials, were brought in to build relationships across all 50 states and more than 8,000 local election jurisdictions. They spent the past year working with officials, attending conferences, and providing guidance on cybersecurity and physical security measures. – MSN
Our Take: I first saw this story in Democracy Docket, Marc Elias’ hysterical rag, and they are freaking out about it.
“Employees tasked with helping to secure elections from foreign threats and disinformation within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been placed on administrative leave. The move puts the security and integrity of elections in the U.S. — especially at the state level, where local election officials rely on CISA resources to securely run elections — at risk… The employees…worked specifically within CISA’s election efforts, helping state and local election officials secure their elections from cyber attacks and handle foreign and domestic-based disinformation and influence campaigns.”
Well, they failed in that mission by every conceivable metric.
Elections are not even a little secure let alone the safest and most secure tech system on the planet, one that is magically immune to known hardware vulnerabilities with admitted critical software vulnerabilities as well.
CISA’s 2020 election narrative was always vaporware nonsense.
Removing the bad actors that propagated the technologically illiterate story is expected and welcomed – as long as it leads to the diamonds being returned. –
China reiterated its opposition over political manipulation on the origins-tracing of the coronavirus on Wednesday, urging the United States to reflect on itself rather than shifting blame to others.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun made the remarks in response to recent US media reports claiming that the US Agency for International Development used US taxpayers' money to fund gain-of-function studies of the virus at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, which allegedly caused COVID-19 pandemic and led to the deaths of millions around the world.
China has made it clear many times that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never engaged in gain-of-function studies of coronavirus and never designed, made, or leaked COVID-19, Guo stressed.
It is extremely unlikely that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, and this is the authoritative conclusion reached by the experts of the World Health Organization-China joint mission, he said. – China Daily
Our Take: The lab leak theory is made up. The wet market theory is made up. The virus is transmitted through the television. –
We are ready to enhance our support for Ukraine. We commit to its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s war of aggression.
We share the goal to keep supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached. A peace that guarantees the interest of Ukraine and our own.
We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies. Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security. – UK Government
Our Take: I wasn’t aware there was a “Weimar+” alliance.
What exactly has the US been defending in Europe after “winning” World War II? –
Saudi Arabia has launched a scathing state media campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu, pointing to growing frustration in the Gulf state’s royal court with the Israeli prime minister and the war in Gaza.
The unusually hostile barrage, which could only have been published with authorities’ approval, came after US and Israeli officials talked up the prospects of Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel, despite Riyadh’s insistence that this would depend on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The onslaught was triggered by Netanyahu joking in an interview last week about creating a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia. – Financial Times
Our Take: FAFO, Bibi.
The Saudis have long been known for their laconic and private nature. When they do make public statements, it is measured and brief.
They have also been the lifeline for Israel over the past 15 months, organizing land convoys to transport goods from the UAE across the Arabian desert, when Israel ships couldn’t traverse the Red Sea to dock at Haifa, due to threats from the Houthis. They have done all of this while being mocked by many across the Muslim world, who have slandered them as cowards and traitors, for choosing peace over war with Israel.
That’s what makes this media blitz against Netanyahu so shocking. The Saudis are not known for airing out their grievances in public, and they have remained loyal to the mission to establish peace in the Middle East. But everybody has their limits, and Netanyahu has demonstrated a hubris that, for many, is beyond insufferable.
I have no doubt that the Saudis are still in Trump’s corner, and even read in on whatever plan the President has hatched, but this one line from the article is a little alarming:
Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan last week postponed a scheduled trip to Washington after the US president announced his plan, a person familiar with the matter said.
We have covered Faisal many times in this Brief. He has proven himself a capable and congenial diplomat, who has earned friends for Saudi Arabia around the world. Canceling this meeting with President Trump is a signal to everyone that the Saudis have lost their patience with Tel Aviv.
And they are about to host President Trump and President Putin in a highly anticipated peace summit… –
The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after they refused to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, multiple officials said Thursday.
The resignations amount to a stunning public rebuke of the Trump administration's new Justice Department leadership in one of the country's highest-profile criminal cases. The prosecutors resigned after Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, issued a memo Monday ordering federal prosecutors in New York to drop the case against Adams, arguing, in part, that it hampered his ability to tackle “illegal immigration and violent crime.”
Danielle R. Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced her resignation in a brief statement to colleagues Thursday, the senior official said. Sassoon appealed Wednesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi and expressed her alarm at being ordered to drop the case. – NBC News
Our Take: President Trump was asked about Mayor Adams during his press conference announcing reciprocal trade on Thursday. He stated definitively that he did not speak with the DOJ about Adams' case at all.
These resignations follow a Wednesday night purging of US Attorneys around the country. Legacy media is gnashing their teeth about a reportedly spicy termination letter; the Justice Department did not return Badlands’ request for comment on the intent and mechanisms for Wednesday’s terminations. –
US President Trump has announced a deal with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Delhi to import more US oil and gas to shrink the trade deficit between the two countries.
"They're going to be purchasing a lot of our oil and gas. They need it. And we have it," Trump said at a joint news briefing in Washington.
Modi said that "in order to ensure India's energy security, we will focus on trade in oil and gas", also pledging to invest more in nuclear energy. His two-day visit comes as Trump ordered that US trading partners should face reciprocal tariffs - tit-for-tat import taxes to match similar duties already charged by those countries on American exports.
Trump and Modi have developed a personal rapport over the years, despite friction over trade. "We've had a wonderful relationship," Trump said. — BBC
Our Take: President Trump not only succeeded in keeping his tariffs in place against India — who has high tariffs against the US, despite our “most favored nation” status with them — he was also able to get Modi to agree to buy our oil and gas, in bulk.
That agreement will useful in generating market demand, which should help catalyze the American energy sector back to life.
The two leaders also announced plans for a major global trade route that will run through the Middle East, which will likely compete with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s North-South Transportation Corridor, of which India is also a critical transit point.
It would seem that the transition to the Sovereign World will not be as smooth as some may have hoped, but perhaps the friction is a feature not a bug. —
A couple weeks into Elon Musk's rampage through the federal bureaucracy, we finally have an answer to whether congressional Republicans mind that he's usurped their main source of authority, the power of the purse: No, they do not care. If anything, accepting Musk's self-appointed role frees up their time from troublesome decision-making tasks, allowing them more time to go on TV and make excuses for letting a private citizen conduct what looks very much like a coup.
Still, while lying to cable news hosts is a pleasurable way for congressional Republicans to spend their time, it hardly amounts to a full-time job. Senate Republicans, at least, still have Donald Trump's Cabinet appointees to rubber-stamp. But how else will Republican representatives in the lower chamber spend their days, now that they've handed their main job duties over to an unelected megalomaniac?
Readers will be unsurprised to learn that the answer is thuddingly stupid. On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., announced that he's forming a "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets." – Salon
Our Take: Stop being thirsty, Anons.
I promise you that DECLAS on everything from JFK and MLK to 9/11 isn't going to come by way of a reformed, faux MAGA woman of the night.
It's probably going to come by way of the guy who has the power to do it:
The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday, giving the longtime vaccine skeptic who has vowed to take on "big pharma" and ultra-processed food the power to oversee the nation’s food and health care systems.
Kennedy, 71, a longtime environmental lawyer, was confirmed by a vote of 52-48. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who survived polio before Jonas Salk's breakthrough vaccine in the 1950s, voted against Kennedy after raising concerns about his position on vaccination. The former Republican majority leader has angered some of Trump's supporters for votes and views that conflict with the president's. – USA Today
American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness. [...]
This concern applies urgently to America’s children. In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease. Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s. Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese. [...]
It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. – The White House
Our Take: "President Trump has promised he is going to restore America's strength. But we can't be a strong nation if we have a weak citizenry. We need somebody who has the spine and the guts to challenge orthodoxies and break institutions that have turned against our democracy."
We can’t be a STRONG nation if we have a WEAK citizenry. –
Linda McMahon on Thursday sketched out how key functions of the Education Department could be carved up to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of dismantling the agency, vowing to “reorient” the department while continuing some of its largest programs.
At her confirmation hearing, McMahon said she would preserve core initiatives including Title I money for low-income schools, Pell grants for low-income college students, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. She said the Trump administration wants to “do this right” and she believes it would take an act of Congress to abolish the department.
“We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education,” McMahon said. But closing the department “certainly does require congressional action.”
McMahon said the president’s goal is not to defund key programs, but to have them “operate more efficiently.” But she questioned whether some programs should be moved to other agencies. Enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, she suggested, “may very well rest better” in the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency that already has oversight of disability issues. The agency’s Office for Civil Rights, she said, could fit better at the Justice Department. – AP News
and I covered the Senate hearing for Linda McMahon yesterday. She did a brilliant job and presented herself as an impressive candidate to join the Trump administration. I think even the Democrats were caught off guard, as they expected the former President of the World Wrestling Entertainment company to play more into their contrived stereotypes that they pretend they don't secretly harbor.
To nobody's surprise, the Democrats came out swinging, breathlessly attacking McMahon over Trump's expressed desire to dismantle the Department of Education. They all told meaningless stories of their children, pretending that they don't attend the finest private schools in the country.
As Ashe pointed out, it became undeniably clear that the Democrats prioritize the preservation of the status quo and defending teachers and unions, over doing what is best for students. They also said that they wanted to defend the right of teachers to talk to students about their genitals – the LGTBQ stuff.
I would be remiss if I wrote this take and didn't note the fact that WWE superstar Triple H (who is McMahon's son-in-law and the current CEO of WWE) was seated directly behind her during the hearing.
’s point about the LGBTQ stuff – the strange desire of teachers and public school administrators to groom children – check out this local story from Colorado:
Welcome to Colorado. People should be in prison. Literally no one got in trouble for this. Getting the criminal commies out of our schools can’t happen quickly enough.
In addition to yesterday’s McMahon hearing, Kennedy was confirmed, as above, and Brooke Rollins was confirmed for Secretary of Agriculture as well. Also yesterday, Kash Patel advanced out of committee. Then, reportedly, his nomination was kicked down the road so a bunch of Senators could go to Munich. CEO of The Federalist, Sean Davis, posted on X last night:
Why are we sending 20 Senators to Munich for a boondoggle if, as they say, we are in a Constitutional crisis? Apparently they’ll be back to work next week.
This is a(nother) dereliction of duty by a body already suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Let’s lock them out of their offices while they’re out of the country. Wait, can we prevent them from returning?
Finally, speaking of Munich, apparently this happened:
A 12-year-old girl, who happens to be a distant relative of Vice President JD Vance, has been denied a spot on a heart transplant list. Her parents claim that she was denied the opportunity of being put on the list since she has not been vaccinated for COVID-19 and the flu.
According to a report from The Cincinnati Enquirer, Adaline Deal was born with two rare heart conditions that her family knew would one day require a transplant, her mother Janeen Deal told the outlet. She continued, stating that Adaline, a distant relative of Vance by marriage through his half-siblings, has been treated at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for nearly 10 years. Her parents hoped that she would, one day, receive her heart transplant there.
However, Adaline’s parents explained that the hospital now requires patients to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu in order to receive a transplant. They also added that the hospital declined to make an exception, even after they expressed that their religious beliefs as non-denominational Christians did not make them feel comfortable to go through with it. – One America News Network
UNLV senior offensive lineman Ben Christman has died at age 21, the university announced Wednesday. Christman was found dead in an off-campus apartment Tuesday morning, UNLV said. The university said it has no other details at this time and the cause of death will be released by the Clark County Coroner’s Office (Nevada).
Christman’s family and the UNLV football team were informed of the news and the university said counseling is available for those in mourning. Christman transferred to UNLV this offseason after spending the last two years at Kentucky, where he appeared in 12 games on special teams last season. – The New York Times
Internews head Jeanne Bourgault is secretly married to Ray S. Jennings, a high profile regime change specialist for USAID. Despite paying herself $451k, Bourgault told her alma mater that she goes to the office "once or twice a month." Jennings has authored numerous papers recommending funding for his wife's methods.
The relationship between Bourgault and Jennings appears to have only one obscure reference on the entire Internet. It has not been disclosed by USAID, Internews or the 4,291 media outlets connected to it. “Alumna brings an information revolution to the developing world” – WikiLeaks
Mexico is making further overtures to avert President Donald J. Trump’s imposition of tariffs on exports to America. In their latest move, at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s urging, the Mexican Senate approved on Tuesday the entry of a U.S. Special Forces group into the country, ostensibly to train Mexico’s marines as part of the “Strengthening the Capacity of the Special Operations Forces of the Navy” program.
The training arrangement—which was approved by a unanimous vote—will see a contingent of U.S. military personnel serving as advisors and trainers for Mexico’s marine forces, with a special focus on combating the country’s drug cartels. A similar agreement was approved during the six-year term of Mexican President López Obrador, which saw 11 U.S. military personnel enter Mexico to oversee marine training. – The National Pulse
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Today’s brief takes are so brief. I like it! Thanks for this and covering all the congressional and press happenings. I worked for the state department in an overseas embassy and I can safely say that there is NO REASON on God’s green earth for any congressional junket overseas. NONE And guess what? Foreign service officers spend HUGE amounts of time coordinating these trips. Extreme waste.
All interesting, of course, but this is my favorite TGIF tidbit: "...The virus is transmitted through the television..." Hahaha. (I like to laugh when it's snowing outside.)
Today’s brief takes are so brief. I like it! Thanks for this and covering all the congressional and press happenings. I worked for the state department in an overseas embassy and I can safely say that there is NO REASON on God’s green earth for any congressional junket overseas. NONE And guess what? Foreign service officers spend HUGE amounts of time coordinating these trips. Extreme waste.
All interesting, of course, but this is my favorite TGIF tidbit: "...The virus is transmitted through the television..." Hahaha. (I like to laugh when it's snowing outside.)