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.
Grassley said on Fox News on Thursday that the newly released Durham annex reveals that the FBI had information a decade ago “that they never followed up on” and that the agency “had a hand in” attempts to “stop Trump” via the Russia collusion hoax.
Grassley suggested the Durham annex “brings attention to the fact that there was either a Clinton conspiracy to make this happen, or Russian disinformation. But either way, it was an attempt to stop Trump.”
The annex shows that FBI officials “found two Russian-language memos and emails purportedly hacked by ‘individuals affiliated with Russian intelligence services’ to ‘likely not be credible.’” One of the documents indicated that the Clinton campaign was routinely obtaining information from Attorney General Loretta Lynch about “the plans and intentions of the FBI.” – The Federalist
Our Take: "Thus, the record reflects that the FBI was fully alerted to the possibility that at least some of the information it was receiving about the Trump campaign might have its origin either with the Clinton campaign or its supporters, or alternatively, was the product of Russian disinformation. Despite this awareness, the FBI appears to have dismissed the T1 information as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations."
The COUP... de grâce. Email from Leonard Benardo showing Hillary approved the plan to vilify Trump.
IC analysts stated that "their best assessment was that the Benardo emails were likely authentic. Multiple analysts noted that the Russians had in fact hacked Benardo's emails."
The goal stated in the email was to essentially create enough buzz around Russian interference that it could be considered a critical infrastructure threat which would allow Obama and their IC to "speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable."
Remember that Obama's DHS classified election infrastructure as critical infrastructure on 1/6/2017, exactly as this email predicted.
It further states that without direct evidence, Crowdstrike would "supply the media," which is exactly what happened. – Jon Herold
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Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the Central Intelligence Agency director, have over the past month claimed that senior officials of the Obama administration manufactured politicized intelligence, silenced intelligence professionals and engaged in a broad “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. That is patently false. In making those allegations, they seek to rewrite history. We want to set the record straight and, in doing so, sound a warning.
Let’s recap. The Trump administration’s claims focus on the intelligence community’s findings about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which were published in January 2017. The assessment found that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had ordered an influence campaign to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm the electability and potential presidency of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
The assessment also found that the Russians had developed a “clear preference” for Mr. Trump and aspired to help his election prospects. It further stated that the Russians employed a variety of tactics as part of this campaign, including hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party organizations and officials and publicly releasing the stolen data through digital allies. Those covert activities were complemented by the overt but disguised efforts of Russian government intelligence agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users. As stated in the assessment, Mr. Putin himself ordered Russian intelligence to conduct the campaign.
While some external critiques have noted that parts of the Russia investigation could have been handled better, multiple thorough, yearslong reviews of the assessment have validated its findings and the rigor of its analysis. – The New York Times
Our Take: This article was published Wednesday, one day before the Durham Annex was declassified. This is one of the worst public relations moves these fools could have made. The information declassified on Thursday proves that this op-ed is nothing more than damage control – and a continuation of the conspiracy that is wholly lacking in verisimilitude.
Damage control is the best way to describe the regime right now. From Marc Elias begging the media not to cover the scandal to Chris Cuomo attempting to distance himself with vague admissions that he was just bamboozled, the panic is setting in and it’s streaming live to a screen near you.
Buckle up.
There has never been a bigger, more treasonous scandal in US history.
The grand conspiracy predates that video. And many of the coconspirators are reportedly the same people that allegedly buy the children.
It’s all very exciting; well, probably not for the coconspirators. [Clip Link] – @ashe
Sweeping pivot from precedent: The White House announced a new trade policy that affects virtually every nation as the US cemented its breakaway from decades of free trade toward a new protectionist era.
“Universal” rate: A tariff of 10% will remain for countries with which the US has a trade surplus, which is most of them. Nations with which the US has a trade deficit face a 15% floor. Deals with China and Mexico are still pending.
New Canada rate: President Donald Trump also said he is raising tariffs on Canada to 35%. Goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement would not be subject to that higher rate, the White House said, which would blunt the impact.
Court reviews tariff authority: In a notable hearing, a skeptical federal appeals court heard oral arguments about whether the US president overstepped his legal authority to impose many of his sweeping tariffs. Tariffs have changed for these countries since Trump's April 2 announcement. – CNN
Our Take: Between the breathless headlines and PsyOps, a clear trend is emerging.
The Globalist Superstate is capitulating to Donald Trump and bending the knee to weaponized sovereignty.
President Donald Trump spoke about the new health data sharing initiatives at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, seated next to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, CMS Advisor and DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason and AI and Crypto Czar David Sachs.
“The key breakthrough we've made is getting many of the biggest names in healthcare and technology to agree to…those standards of electronic medical records that we talk about and you've heard about for so many years, and now it's happening," Trump said. "This will allow patients to easily transmit information from one doctor to another, even if they're different networks and using different record keeping systems, no matter what system they use, they're all transferable. The new standards will also make it simple for patients to access their own personal health records."
He continued: "Thanks to this announcement, health care providers across the country will also finally be able to kill the clipboard. …instead of filling out the same tedious paperwork at every medical appointment, patients will simply be able to grant their doctors access to their records at the push of a button, just a button, and you're all set, and all the information the doctor needs will be immediately transmitted.” – Fierce Healthcare
Our Take: The health tech industry’s goals during the Very Deadly Pandemic seems to have been achieved.
The announcements from Dr. Oz and Amy Gleason were downright dystopian and sold to the American people as an opportunity to claim control over their medical data and reduce “friction,” which is the common refrain for advancing surveillance and control.
Who in the world, besides the Uniparty and big tech, asked for this?
“The system will be entirely opt in, and there will be no centralized government run database, which everyone is always concerned about. I'm less concerned than anybody. … people are very, very concerned about the personal records.”
The system will be “entirely opt-in,” just like the health insurance system. Do providers get to opt out if people refuse to opt in? [Clip Link] – Chris Paul
US President Donald Trump has come to believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging Israel’s war in Gaza to hold on to political power, according to two Trump administration officials who spoke to The Atlantic.
The Thursday report claimed, based on several unnamed sources, that Trump and many of his aides are more eager than ever to bring the fighting in Gaza to a close amid widespread condemnation of Israel’s wartime conduct, including from a growing faction of isolationists in the Republican Party.
With negotiations for a hostage and ceasefire deal once again facing steep hurdles, the American president has reportedly become convinced that Israel already achieved its military objectives in Gaza long ago, and that the current fighting is fueled chiefly by the premier’s political interests.
The report was published as Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem Thursday afternoon to discuss the stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas. – The Times of Israel
Our Take: So on one hand, President Trump is acknowledging the reality that many of us have been highlighting for months – that Netanyahu is prioritizing his personal preservation and sacrificing Israeli national security in the process. On the other hand, President Trump also said that Netanyahu is a "competent person," and that "good management" will prevent the theft of aid – implying that Netanyahu is the right man for the job.
It's becoming increasingly obvious that Netanyahu [perhaps unwittingly] is leading Israel to its destruction, while President Trump does everything in his power to make sure Netanyahu remains in power. It is very reasonable to, therefore, conclude that President Trump's endgame is the political implosion of the Israeli government, which perhaps will negate the need for a more kinetic solution, which would likely lead to a wider war and many more deaths. (And in the process, the State Capture by Israel of the US government is being fully exposed to the American People.) – GhostofBasedPatrickHenry
As European Union leaders work through the consequences of their new trading arrangement with the US, they are confronting the bitter reality of just how far they have fallen.
Donald Trump held court on Sunday at one of the golf courses he owns on the Scottish coast, touting the new ballroom he’d had built at the clubhouse and delivering a lengthy tirade on the problems with wind turbines. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen had to wait until the US president had finished his round for the day before she got her chance to discuss the transatlantic trade relationship.
But the terms of that deal will mean a significant hit to European companies — the EU accepted a tripling of tariffs to 15% on most exports to the US and will keep its own levies on imports from the world’s biggest economy to 1% or less.
“Economically, this isn’t a good agreement and geopolitically speaking, it is a defeat,” former Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya, now the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, told Bloomberg. “This agreement makes the EU smaller.”
European ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Monday recognized that von der Leyen had no choice but to swallow such an unbalanced deal because the alternatives would have been worse, according to people familiar with their discussions. – Bloomberg
Our Take: For years, I've been writing about a series of pincer moves between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
But one such move is flying so far under the radar, almost nobody caught it. And yet, it's responsible for the EU's current submission.
So, what do Western sanctions on Russia, Trumpian tariffs and even Russiagate's resurgence have to do with the EU's current capitulation pattern?
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. A radioactive wasp nest was discovered at a South Carolina facility that was once upon a time a plant that produced nuclear weapons. The nest was around Aiken at the Savannah River Site (SRS), per a report from the U.S. Department of Energy per BroBible.
Tasked with going to the decommissioned nuclear weapons plant July 3 to check radiation levels, employees found the wasp nest that measured more than 10 times what is legal in compliance with federal regulations. The wasps built their nest around tanks where there was storage of liquid nuclear waste.
The report from the DOE states that the nest was hit with insecticide spray and then disposed of in the fashion of radioactive waste. The DOE’s report also reads that the nuclear waste tanks didn’t have any leaks. – Daily Caller
Our Take: BREAKING! Playing the role of murder hornets this season will be radioactive wasps.
While I could be concerned about the wasps becoming radioactive without any known contact or leak, I choose to delight in the unimaginative narrative-reboot – even though I know it will be even less satisfying than the original.
Obviously, I’m still salty about murder hornets’ premature cancellation. We may get a full story arc on radioactive wasps, but I’m not holding my breath. – Ashe in America
It’s getting harder and harder to separate WWE and Paul “Triple H” Levesque from politics these days.
I remember back in February when Triple H was sitting behind Linda McMahon during her Senate confirmation hearing as she was asked about the Ring Boys sex abuse scandal. That’s just standard Cabinet confirmation hearing content for the current Trump administration.
A few months later, Triple H was taking pictures with vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We live in one of the dumbest timelines, so of course RFK Jr. also happens to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Fast forward to today, and here is President Trump introducing his “friend for a long time” Triple H at the White House during an executive order signing. – Cageside Seats
Our Take: Trump-a-Mania lives, brother!
For those wondering, that is Paul Michael Levesque – better known by his ring name: "Triple H." Levesque married Stephanie McMahon, the daughter of the founder of the WWE Vince McMahon, and now serves as the Chief Content Officer for the WWE.
For what it's worth, Triple H has been close to President Trump for a long time, and joined him at Mar-a-Lago back in December when Linda McMahon was announced as the pick for Secretary of Education. Triple H is also connected to Hulk Hogan, as the two were co-founders of "D-Generation X," often cited as the most popular "stable" of heel characters in the history of the WWE.
Back in April, Triple H made public comments about President Trump, calling him a "genius" and going as far as saying that Trump plays a character to antagonize his enemies, which he thinks Trump learned from his experience in the WWE. (Both Trump and Triple H are inductees in the WWE Hall of Fame.)
In the spirit of that concept – which we obviously embrace, as well – here is a video of Trump performing a proverbial body slam on an obnoxious reporter during the press conference.
"I figured ABC would be the one to ask that question. One of the worst."
President Donald Trump remains open to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in hopes of achieving denuclearization, the White House said, even as Pyongyang warned against any pressure to abandon its nuclear arsenal.
"President Trump in his first term held three historic summits with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un that stabilized the Korean Peninsula and achieved the first-ever leader-level agreement on denuclearization," a White House official told Fox News Digital. "The President retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully de-nuclearized North Korea."
Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of Kim Jong Un, said in remarks carried by state media that relations between Trump and her brother are "not bad." However, she warned that any attempt to pressure North Korea to denuclearize would be viewed as "nothing but a mockery." – Fox News
Our Take: The day after the deal with “South Korea”?! What timing!
The Korean War, if it ended, ended when Trump crossed the DMZ a few days after the 66th anniversary of the “end” of the Korean War. South Korea was a global Regime proxy state and US military occupation for those 66 years. We are watching the unwinding of that status. – Chris Paul
Syria is seeking Russia’s support in its efforts to restore unity in the country after continued outbreaks of sectarian violence, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani has said during a visit to Moscow.
The situation in Syria has remained volatile since the ouster of longtime President Bashar Assad by a coalition led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) late last year. Assad, a close ally of Moscow, was replaced by HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. Despite the removal of Assad, who along with his family received political asylum in Moscow, Russia has pledged to continue supporting Syria.
Speaking alongside his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday, al-Shaibani acknowledged Syria is facing “challenges and threats” but described it as “an opportunity to build a united, strong Syria.”
“Relations between the Russian and Syrian peoples are of a historical nature,” he said, as cited by TASS. “Today we are representing a new Syria... We are currently working to ensure the reunification of the people in Syria. And, of course, we are interested in Russia being there with us on this path.” – RT
Our Take: So, last week the Syrian government reached out to Turkey, requesting "security assistance" to deal with the incursion in southern Syria by the IDF.
Now, they are asking Russia – who is currently harboring former Syrian President Bashar Assad – to help them achieve "domestic unity," after weeks/months of turmoil, violence, and unrest.
Turkey and Russia, the two countries that we have long speculated would be the players to help sort out the situation in Syria, are now being summoned to do just that.
A Virginia city councilman who was doused with gasoline and set on fire in a brutal attack on Wednesday sustained burns on 50 to 60 percent of his body, according to the publisher of the local magazine where the councilman works.
The police said they had arrested Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes, 29, of Danville, Va., and had charged him with attempting to murder J. Lee Vogler, 38, a Danville city councilman who works as director of sales at Showcase Magazine.
Andrew Brooks, the publisher of the magazine, said in an interview on Thursday that the attack took place at the magazine’s office in Danville.
Mr. Vogler, a father of two, was scheduled to have surgery at a hospital in North Carolina, where he had been airlifted after the attack, Mr. Brooks said. Most of Mr. Vogler’s burns were on his torso, he said.
Mr. Brooks said that several bystanders had used their phones to record Mr. Vogler after he ran out of the magazine’s office covered in gasoline and was set on fire. A woman who was driving by told Mr. Vogler to drop to the ground and roll. – The New York Times
A super-sized lightning bolt struck scientists as something special.
Now, researchers have confirmed that a lightning strike from 2017 has broken a world record. A single flash of lightning that stretched across the Great Plains, from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City, Missouri, turned out to be a staggering 515 miles long.
A new report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society documented the new lightning record, which beat the previous title holder, a 477-mile bolt from April 2020.
“We call it megaflash lightning and we’re just now figuring out the mechanics of how and why it occurs,” Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University professor who worked on the study, said in a statement. – New York Post
There's been a lot of debate this year over the Federal Reserve's decision to leave interest rates unchanged.
Those who favor Fed Chair Jerome Powell cutting interest rates say the risk that tariffs will cause inflation is overblown, and threats to the job market are more important. Opponents say it's too soon to say inflation won't spike because of tariffs and that recent economic data show unemployment is manageable.
There's little debate, however, that we've seen sticky inflation and that cracks in the jobs market have appeared.
The Consumer Price Index showed inflation was 2.7% in June, matching inflation in November, and up from a low of 2.3% in April. Meanwhile, job losses have picked up in 2025, including layoffs associated with the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts this spring. – The Street
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Mr. Smug weekly address, June 6, 2009: "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold."
Do not trust the government with your health records. In fact, don't trust the government, period.
Fall of the Cabal/Fall of the Regime Proxy States/Fall of Monopoly Money. Most people are not tracking this. But just because they are not noticing, does not mean it isn’t happening…. It is definitely habbening.
Mr. Smug weekly address, June 6, 2009: "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold."
Do not trust the government with your health records. In fact, don't trust the government, period.
Fall of the Cabal/Fall of the Regime Proxy States/Fall of Monopoly Money. Most people are not tracking this. But just because they are not noticing, does not mean it isn’t happening…. It is definitely habbening.