Badlands News Brief
Weaponization, Willis, and World War III
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 Tuesday, March 19…
Jonathan Turley Says Prosecutions Of Trump Prove Him ‘Right’ About Weaponization Of Government
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that the “improvisational” nature of the cases against former President Donald Trump caused damage to the image of the legal system and proved Trump was “right” about being targeted by a “weaponized” justice system.
Trump’s attorneys said Monday the former president was having difficulty posting a $454 million bond to cover the judgment in a civil fraud case issued by New York Judge Arthur Engoron in February.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that we have a legal system now that is being heavily distorted by politics and you cannot look at all of these cases and see blind justice, you see the opposite,” Turley told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump administration official. “You see a justice that is being weaponized, and in many ways the Democrats fulfill the narrative of President Trump. He is now right. No matter what they thought about it at the beginning, they proved him to be right with this pile-on from Florida to Georgia, to Washington, D.C., to New York and most of the public gets it.”
[…]
“I mean we have to wait to see if New York still has a judge or two that’s willing to say enough,” Turley continued. “When you are forcing someone to come up with half a billion dollars just to get an appeal? Someone has to say enough.”
— Daily Caller
AND
The Fani Willis disqualification attempt might not be over yet
Donald Trump and several of his co-defendants moved for a certificate of immediate review from Judge Scott McAfee, seeking permission to appeal his disqualification ruling.
Judge Scott McAfee said Friday that Fani Willis can stay on the Georgia prosecution of Donald Trump and his co-defendants… It's important to note that there isn’t an automatic right to appeal at this stage. Rather, McAfee would need to grant permission to do so within 10 days of his ruling, and then the state appeals court would need to agree to hear the case. If that happens, it could bring yet more delay to the prosecution that doesn’t even have a trial date yet and has already been sidetracked by the disqualification motion that led to McAfee’s ruling.
It’s unclear if the judge would grant such permission to appeal at this stage. In a recent unrelated ruling in which he dismissed some of the indictment’s counts, McAfee said he’d be inclined to permit an appeal of that ruling. But he didn’t say that in his disqualification order. That doesn’t automatically mean he wouldn’t permit an appeal, but he didn’t go out of his way to signal his openness to the idea like he did in his dismissal ruling.
— MSNBC
Our Take: “While
is taking a much needed vacation this week, it appears Jonathan Turley stepping in to remind us that ‘Trump’s trials are his campaign.’While the normie sphere wakes up to this theater, the Badlands audience has seen clearly for many months: The weaponization of government during the presidential campaign is making Trump stronger than ever.
Take the latest development in the Fani Willis case. While the appeal of McAfee’s disqualification order isn’t surprising, the MSNBC framing of the matter is measured, more subdued than we’d expect from Maddow’s Madhouse.
Are they coming to terms with the inevitable? I say yes.
If you need further proof, check out this very silly OpEd in the Columbia Journalism Review, where ‘journalists’ lament how every time they try to stop 45, they only make him stronger. It’s a fun read.”
Actor and Drag Star Shangela Accused of Multiple Sexual Assaults
Shangela was a breakthrough star… the gregarious Texas drag queen quickly rose to become one of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s most beloved contestants. “[It’s] like ‘Angela’ with an ‘S-H,’” she explained on the show. “The debutantess of the Deep South.”
Despite an early Season Two elimination when the queen was in her late twenties, a more polished version of the future star returned to the runway for two other installments in the show’s franchise… Shangela subsequently built an image as a self-affirming queer activist.
[…]
But behind the curtain — in hotel rooms and apartments — four people allege to Rolling Stone that Darius Jeremy (“DJ”) Pierce, the man behind the famous drag persona, either sexually assaulted them or attempted to have sex with them when they were too inebriated to consent. A fifth person claims Pierce attempted anal penetration in a bathroom closet despite rejecting his advances.
[…]
This investigation, which began in November 2022, is based on 16 months of research, court documents, and interviews with several accusers. Over the course of reporting, Rolling Stone uncovered a previously unreported police complaint, filed in Los Angeles, and multiple independent accusations spanning several years alleging sexually coercive and assaultive behavior by the drag star.
— Rolling Stone
Our Take: “This whole story is so much more shallow than I first thought it would be.
The majority of it is about a bunch of gay guys who got too drunk and had gay sex and are now in a fight about what ‘consensual’ means when two adults get black out drunk together.
Significant emphasis on how dangerous this story is because ‘conservatives may weaponize it against the queer community,’ runs throughout the article.
One of the alleged victims refused to report the abuse because they were 100% sure all police are racist and transphobic.
They are terrified to simply exist in this world, and yet they have ideologically generated the vast majority of that which makes them afraid.
It’s not like there is an oppositional response the conservative media could possibly offer that doesn’t count as weaponization and hate in their eyes. The issue isn’t that conservatives are going to be mean when they could have been nice.
‘Go along with the Neo-Marxist Queering of America or you’re full of hate!’
We should definitely maintain firm resistance to this, of course, I just don’t think dramatic stories about all this gay debauchery are worth anyone’s time.
Radicalized by the right: Elon Musk puts his conspiratorial thinking on display for the world to see
Elon Musk is showing the world how radicalized he has become.
The billionaire, one of the most consequential figures to walk the Earth, spent another weekend swimming in the right-wing fever swamps of X — a bad habit that was apparent when his interview with Don Lemon was released Monday morning.
In the contentious interview, Musk equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to “censorship,” bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform last year and yet again gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory, among other things.
To those not fluent in the intricacies of right-wing media, some of what Musk said may have sounded bizarre or even foreign. But in the right-wing fever swamps, where Musk is now deeply entrenched, these are the issues that animate the masses.
[…]
At this juncture, calling Musk a right-wing shitposter is no longer provocative. It’s simply accurate. And his ugly behavior is even more troubling because of the fact that Musk is enormously influential, casting a large shadow across multiple industries and doing billions of dollars’ worth of national security business with the US government.
— CNN
Our Take: This reeks of panic, but you can’t really blame them. Consider their grievances: Musk ‘equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to censorship, bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform…’
That’s some of their best work!
Musk refuses, at least publicly, to bend the knee to the global communism, and all their efforts to reframe free speech as a net social negative are evaporating before their eyes.
They can’t stop it. They lost their insiders and all that power. And check out that recognition of Elon’s DOD connections. Wakey, wakey!
While X is no where near a ‘free speech platform,’ the fact that it’s less censorious than in 2020 is upsetting all the right people. It’s certainly entertaining. Let’s see if it lasts.”
Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter
A New York state judge on Monday denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against several social media companies alleging the platforms contributed to the radicalization of a gunman who killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York in 2022, court documents show.
“The Court has determined the complaint sufficiently pleads viable causes of action to go forward at this stage of the litigation,” said Erie County Supreme Court Justice Paula Feroleto.
In her decision, the judge said that the plaintiffs may proceed with their lawsuit, which claims social media companies — like Meta, Alphabet, Reddit and 4chan — ”profit from the racist, antisemitic, and violent material displayed on their platforms to maximize user engagement,” including the time then 18-year-old Payton Gendron spent on their platforms viewing that material.
Attorneys for the social media companies named in the lawsuit filed a motion to dismiss saying the companies are akin to message boards containing third-party content, court documents show.
— CNN
Our Take: “The word extremist, by the definition of the far left radicalized legal system, now only refers to right wing ideologies.
Joe Biden’s claim that white supremacy is one of the top threats to the US makes cases like this, where ‘white replacement theory’ was allegedly the motivation for the shooting, a beacon of truth for the indoctrinated.
If this case is successful it will of course act as the pretext for big tech to crack down harder on anyone calling out the racism of CRT, not to mention just white conservatives having basic political opinions.
For context look at how the tidal wave of lawfare emerging from the left isn’t up in arms about the link between social media and the explosion of young girls getting gender affirmative injections and surgeries.
Detransitioners like Chloe Cole, currently suing Kaiser Permanente for medical malpractice, have been very open about how platforms like TikTok and Instagram helped groom them towards medical transition.
But this brings forward the central point about what we’re up against. Can you call what they’re doing lawfare if it isn’t founded in law? If it is merely a weapon that bends to their will then it’s nothing but lawlessness.
As per the boomerang effect, a whole new respect and appreciation for the law is being cultivated as the people are shown the severity of the infection.
Watching the law be abused in this way may be painful, but pain is just information about how to heal and overcome.”
Evidence of Foreign Nationals Accessing Dominion Voting Machines Leaked to Public
A defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and former Overstock.com CEO and Donald Trump supporter Patrick Byrne has descended into chaos after one of Byrne’s attorneys leaked evidence that foreign nationals remotely accessed voting machines used in Michigan in the 2020 elections… According to Dominion, Byrne gave a trove of confidential discovery material to his attorney, Lambert, who then leaked it to law enforcement and others.
It wasn’t clear whether the emails were authentic at first, but Dominion apparently confirmed the evidence when it notified the presiding judge about the leak in a filing on Friday. The attorney who leaked the evidence, Stephanie Lambert, has also now been arrested over the matter… In a response to Dominion filed Monday, Lambert defended her actions.
“Mr. Byrne came into possession of email communications produced by Dominion during discovery (some written in Serbian and foreign languages) with and from top level Dominion employees directing and tasking foreign nationals to remotely access voting machines utilized in the United States during the November 3, 2020 election,” Lambert said.
“The remote access by these foreign nationals occurred while the states were still counting votes, determining a final tally, and prior to certification of the results. The email communications further established that background checks of the Serbian Dominion employees did not place; the United States had no knowledge or oversight of these Serbian individuals including whether or not they had prior Serbian military experience,” she said.
— Headline USA
Our Take: “Stefanie Lambert has been a guest on Why We Vote several times, and she is a fearless freedom fighter and election integrity advocate. In a time when finding lawyers courageous enough to fight for free and fair elections is nearly impossible, Lambert has helped many America First patriots.
She’s been arrested for giving evidence of a crime to law enforcement — a crime we were told was a defamatory conspiracy theory — and Dominion is big mad. It’s also noteworthy that this is happening in Michigan, where the state executive branch reportedly covered up verifiable evidence of election fraud, but continues to prosecute their bogus “fake electors” case.
I have zero doubt that Lambert’s efforts coming into focus will drive awakening. Tune into Why We Vote on Friday for full analysis of this significant escalation.”
BONUS ITEMS
China To Boycott Swiss-Hosted Ukraine Peace Talks Without Russia
China has emphasized that it will boycott any future Ukraine peace talks if Russian representatives are not present and involved, Politico has reported while previewing an announced trip by China’s Xi Jinping to France, set for early May.
"Officials told POLITICO recently that China is trying to persuade Europe to let Russia sit at the table for future peace talks, potentially in Switzerland — or Beijing will boycott such meetings," the publication said.
"That message was amplified, they say, during Chinese special envoy Li Hui's European tour earlier this month to discuss the future of Ukraine," Politico continues.
Recently the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Li as pledging "support [for] the timely convening of a peace conference with equal participation of all parties." Li is China's former ambassador to Russia.
The special envoy is currently on a tour of Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, and Russia which started at the beginning of March.
— ZeroHedge, citing Politico
Lindsey Graham, visiting Kyiv, urges Ukraine to pass mobilization law
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called on Ukrainian lawmakers Monday to quickly pass a mobilization bill that would make more citizens eligible to be drafted into the military, and sharply questioned exempting men under 27 from the fight.
Graham called for the swift legislative action — even as U.S. lawmakers remain unable to reach their own consensus on aid for Ukraine — while visiting Kyiv, his first trip to the Ukrainian capital since abruptly turning against a $60 billion aid package for the country last month.
As he issued his advice on the draft, Graham, who met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, could offer no true assurances about the pending aid package, instead telling reporters that he is “more optimistic than I’ve ever been that something will get out of the House pretty soon.”
Ukraine is already short of soldiers and ammunition, and Russia is advancing on the battlefield, having recently seized the eastern city of Avdiivka after a Ukrainian retreat.
— The Washington Post
Report: Biden to Consider Cutting Arms to Israel over ‘Human Rights’
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed Monday that the Biden Administration would consider cutting off arms sales to Israel if it did not submit a report explaining how its use of the weapons complies with international law.
Sullivan added that he expected Israel to provide such a report, but did not rule out ending U.S. supplies to Israel.
From the White House briefing transcript:
“Q: The deadline for Israel to comply with the National Security Memorandum… is coming up on Sunday. Has Israel responded in writing?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, first, when you say ‘to comply,’ what they have to do by Sunday is just provide credible and reliable assurances that they will abide by their international obligations, not obligations we’ve imposed upon them, but — but obligations they have freely accepted with respect to international humanitarian law, which, of course, includes not arbitrarily impeding the flow of humanitarian assistance where they can control that.”
— Breitbart News
Statement from President Joe Biden on Government Funding
“We have come to an agreement with Congressional leaders on a path forward for the remaining full-year funding bills. The House and Senate are now working to finalize a package that can quickly be brought to the floor, and I will sign it immediately.”
— The White House Briefing Room
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
is going to be handling the Brief in the interim. Thank you all for your continued support of this publication and this team. —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.
Wow...if this attack on truth isn't obvious I don't know what is. And to arrest someone for producing evidence is a f'in joke! And why is Lindsay Graham or anyone from our government going to Ukraine? This crap is just plain ugly!
Good morning BNB Team and all those who enjoy their Takes!
Two weeks in CO with some of our children and grandchildren and the finalization of the publication of my newest (and first non-career related) book has not kept me from reading these insights - only from having time to share my thoughts about them.
SE: "But this brings forward the central point about what we’re up against. Can you call what they’re doing lawfare if it isn’t founded in law? If it is merely a weapon that bends to their will then it’s nothing but lawlessness." The brilliance of this statement might be overlooked without a forced pause (at least in my case). One of the system of Babylon's greatest tools is the hijacking of language. To take terms that not that long ago were common fare of traditional values (think "gay", "liberal", "justice", etc.) and rework them via constant and pervasive saturation in "modern" society accomplishes two things. It breeds confusion and chaos AND it realigns the seat of authority. This is the dialectic used in the Garden: "Has God said?" (confusion and chaos) followed by "You shall not die!" (realignment of authority). Six thousand years later that tactic of destruction still works - all too well.
Thanks for all of the hard work!!