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 Thursday, May 9 …

"The Polling Data Has Been Wrong All Along": Watch Biden Deny Economic Reality In Train-Wreck CNN Interview

During a brutal CNN interview aired Wednesday, Joe Biden looked shocked when host Erin Burnett reeled off a list of stats detailing how bad the economy is. Instead of suggesting how he is going to improve the situation, Biden denied any of it was real and claimed every poll showing Americans favouring Trump on the economy is wrong.

“Voters, by a wide margin, trust Trump more on the economy,” Burnett noted, before listing possible reasons for that including the cost of buying a home having doubled, real income accounting for inflation being down, economic growth being way short of expectations and consumer confidence being near a two year low.

“Are you worried that you’re running out of time to turn [the economy] around?” Burnett asked Biden.

“We’ve already turned it around,” Biden bizarrely claimed, before adding that “the polling data has been wrong all along.” — Modernity News

Our Take: “Rewriting history is the theme of the day, as scrotus claims everyone is wrong and the economy is super good.

Reality check: ‘After Biden took office, inflation surged to rates unseen since the early 1980s, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1 percent in June 2022, a full 17 months after he took office.’

It’s the policies. More specifically, it’s the result of actions taken by scrotus to undo Trump’s policies. Make sure everyone you know knows that. We are the news now.” —

Trump Is Planning to Send Kill Teams to Mexico to Take Out Cartel Leaders

IF HE WINS a second term in November, Donald Trump wants to covertly deploy American assassination squads into Mexico soon after he’s sworn into office again, according to three people who’ve discussed the matter with the former U.S. president.

Both during and after his presidency, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee has floated different ideas for bombing or invading Mexico in response to the American fentanyl crisis and to “wage WAR” on notorious drug cartels. As president, Trump even thought it was possible to bomb the cartels’ drug labs, and then potentially pin the strikes on another country, according to his former defense secretary, Mark Esper.

What was once a fringe notion that senior Trump administration officials quickly moved to shut down has now become a mainstream GOP policy proposal, including among influential Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and conservative think tanks. 

Trump is currently campaigning for the White House on a public vow to, in his words, “make appropriate use of Special Forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.” — Rolling Stone

Our Take: “The Media Industrial Complex is essentially running Trump's campaign for him at this point, as Narrative Convergence abounds in the Info War.

To wit, we've got one of the key culture trend-setters of the old guard putting out what's meant to be a fresh hit piece warning Americans of the dastardly Orange Man and his dastardly plans to ... *checks notes* ... rid the United States of the catastrophic influence of Mexican Drug Cartels, organized crime and a fentanyl crisis that has left tens of thousands of Americans dead per year on its back.

This piece comes on the back of TIME Magazine's attempted warning about Agenda 47, which basically pitched the idea of a return to Law & Order, Justice and Free Markets as anathema to what Americans should truly want in the midst of an inflationary and crime-ridden death spiral under the Biden Administration.

Overton's Goalpost marks the Narrative retreat of the establishment along previously-held mass psychological ground.

And it's undefeated.” —

Chris Cuomo Makes Ivermectin About-Face After Denouncing Its Use for COVID: ‘I Am Now Taking a Regular Dose’

Chris Cuomo’s stance on Ivermectin as a theraputic drug for COVID-19 has done a complete 180, as the news anchor who once said on CNN that anyone promoting it should be “shamed” now says he’s “taking a regular dose” to deal with his own struggles with long-term effects of an infection.

Cuomo shared in January that he’s suffering from “long COVID,” or the long-term lingering effects of a previous infection. This week on the PBD Podcast, a current-events show hosted by Patrick Bet-David, the NewsNation personality said he’s using the antiviral to help with an ongoing inflammatory response and “brain fog.”

“I’ll tell you something else that’s gonna get you a lot of hits,” Cuomo said. “I am taking … a regular dose of Ivermectin. Ivermectin was a boogeyman during COVID. That was wrong. We were given bad information about Ivermectin. The real question is, why?”

When COVID-19 was peaking in 2020 and 2021, Ivermectin emerged as a fringe remedy, and was instantly denounced as a “horse dewormer” – including a segment that mocked podcaster Joe Rogan for announcing that he had success taking the antiviral drug. Though it was first used in the 1970s as an antiparasitic primarily for animals, Ivermectin’s use in humans had become widespread in later decades, as a malaria prophylaxis and treatment in particular, and is considered very safe.

“Everyone’s going to say ‘Joe Rogan was right,’” Cuomo continued. “No, Joe Rogan was saying – yeah, he was right – that’s not what matters. What matters is, the entire medical community knew that Ivermectin couldn’t hurt you. They knew it … I know they knew it. How do I know? Because now I’m doing nothing but talking to these clinicians, who at the time were overwhelmed by COVID, and they weren’t saying anything!”

When Cuomo was still a CNN anchor, he and colleague Don Lemon ridiculed its use after Rogan’s disclosure. — The Wrap

Our Take: “‘I knew at the time.’ No you didn’t.’ - Chris Cuomo

Dear Chris,

Yeah, actually, we did. You’re talking to clinicians now. We were talking to them then.

You were demonizing the FLCCC and mocking ivermectin as ‘horse paste.’ We were listening to their medical advice (which proved to be correct, btw).

You question the experimental mRNA jab now. We were tracking VAERS reports and EUA processes then, realizing why ivermectin had to be taken off the game board.

We didn’t know the truth back then?

Why?

Because you didn’t know the truth back then?

Why?

Because you were paid to carry propaganda, and you did gladly. Only when you and your brother were tossed aside by the regime did you pretend to find integrity.

It’s obvious. To everyone.

Do you know why people got ivermectin ‘horse paste’ from the tractor supply? Because doctors wouldn’t write it, and even if they did, pharmacists wouldn’t fill it.

Understand that reality: doctor and patient healthcare decisions were thwarted by pharmacists because of government pressure and propaganda.

The government pressure and propaganda only worked because people like you carried it and demonized voices telling the truth.

Many lives could have been saved by using ivermectin, HCQ, Vitamin D, etc. Thousands died because they were denied these treatments, given remdesivir, and put on ventilators.

YOU did that, Chris.

That you are so arrogantly recasting yourself in this movie is brazen and disgusting. We all know your hands are dripping with blood.

The history books will remember your role in this season accurately, including this moment where you try to change the narrative and pretend that no one knew the truth, you were just doing your best (lol), and you’re not an absolute scumbag that helped kill many people’s grandmas.

We will never forget.” —

High-profile New York lawyer says he tried to advise judge in Trump civil fraud case

A high-profile New York real estate lawyer, whose law license was once suspended, said he approached the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud case to offer unsolicited advice about a law at issue in the case.

Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey made the claim during an interview with NBC New York, saying he spoke to Judge Arthur Engoron three weeks prior to the judge’s February decision to fine the former president $454 million for falsely inflating the value of his assets.

The judge, through a court spokesman, denied impropriety and said he was “wholly uninfluenced” by Mr. Bailey. New York’s judicial oversight body has now launched an investigation into the alleged interaction, according to sources familiar with the matter. — NBC New York

And …

Trump Announces 'Major Motion' Filed In New York Appeals Court Over Gag-Happy Judge

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that his lawyers asked a New York state appellate court to issue a ruling on a judge’s gag order that prohibits him from speaking about certain individuals connected to his ongoing trial.

His team filed a motion on Wednesday, which has been sealed and is inaccessible, according to the court docket. The Manhattan district attorney’s office filed a response to the motion, but it was also sealed.

While speaking with reporters outside the courthouse on Thursday morning, President Trump confirmed the move. Anonymously sourced reports published Wednesday said that it was a motion to expedite the ruling.

“I just want to let you know that we’ve just filed a major motion in the appellate division concerning the absolutely unconstitutional gag order, where I’m essentially not allowed to talk to you about anything meaningful that’s going on in the case. And many good things are going on with the case. It shouldn’t have been filed,” he said.

During his comments to reporters, he did not go into specifics about the motion. — The Epoch Times

Our Take: “There are so many congruent Trump Trials going on at once that, unless you’re watching all of the Badlands and

And yet … therein lies the rub.

After all, when normieville thinks ‘Trump Trial Scandal,’ we typically default to the assumption that they’re thinking about Trump himself. And yet, every day, it seems we get another series of investigations, probes, motions and inquiries launched not against the Martyr-Champion himself, but rather agains those who would presume to judge him, and by extension, the movement he represents.

Arguments about Patriot Control abound in the Truth Community, and while I personally verge further into the ‘full control’ territory than some, I think we can all agree that, where it concerns the public optics of the Witch Hunt, things just aren’t going quite how they cooked it up.

Unless, of course, exposing the corrupt Justice System was at the top of the to-do list for the progenitors of said system.” —

Why Germany Is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power

The world is experiencing a nuclear renaissance. Uranium prices are soaring as the world snaps up nuclear fuel, public favor for nuclear power is at a 10-year high in the United States, Russia is busily expanding its own nuclear energy empire in emerging economies in Africa, and even Japan is moving back to the carbon-free energy source 13 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. All told, approximately 60 new nuclear reactors are currently under construction around the globe, and another 110 are in planning stages.

But there’s one major detractor to the new nuclear revolution. A year ago, Germany took its last three nuclear power plants offline. And it seems pretty clear that they won’t ever be bringing them back on. Germany’s staunch anti-nuclear stance is a surprising one in many ways. The European nation is an outspoken proponent of the green energy transition, but has opted to take away one of its most reliable forms of carbon-free energy production as a matter of higher priority than transitioning away from coal – the dirtiest fossil fuel. 

Germany’s move to eliminate the last vestiges of its nuclear energy sector also comes at a time when the nation’s energy security is a cause for some concern. Critics had been warming for years that Europe – and Germany in particular – were dangerously reliant on Russian energy imports to keep the lights on. And those warnings proved to be correct when the continent was plunged into an energy crisis due to the energy sanctions brought against Russia in the wake of Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The German economy and energy sector was hit hard, as the country was reliant on Russia for a whopping 50% of its natural gas supplies at the time of the invasion.

But instead of extending the life of its nuclear sector in the interest of low-emissions energy security, Germany has chosen to spend billions on its own new natural gas plants, augmented by significant renewable energy expansion, and to fall back on coal when energy supplies are short. For many energy and climate experts, the move has been nothing short of baffling. — OilPrice.com

Our Take: “In April of 2023, Germany disconnected its last active Nuclear Power Plant at Neckarwestheim, effectively putting the de facto leader of the EU all in on alternative (and far less efficient) forms of energy, including natural gas, solar and wind.

This is likely going to visit catastrophic effects onto the German people in the years ahead, as the Russia-Ukraine situation and ensuing sanctions have laid bare the issue with the country's reliance on Russian natural gas imports (a liability Donald Trump infamously pointed out during his world tours,) while solar and wind have proven to be unable to handle grid loads while being highly vulnerable to disruption, not to mention costly to maintain.

While the US, Russia and China, as well as emerging nations in the Global South are making moves to kickstart a major nuclear renaissance, going all in on the cleanest and most efficient energy yet known to man, the EU is going to be left behind.

Who could've seen this coming?

Well, besides DJT.” —

BONUS ITEMS

Georgia election board proposes an ‘inquiry’ before certifying results

The State Election Board started writing a new rule Wednesday that requires a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying Georgia elections, granting a request from a Republican county election board member who refused to sign off on this year’s presidential primary.

If certification rules are changed, local election board members could use them as a justification for voting against approving the results of upcoming elections, said state board member Sara Tindall Ghazal.

“The risk is using pretextual reasons to fail to certify when folks are not pleased with the results,” Ghazal, a Democratic Party representative on the board, said during its meeting Wednesday. “That is my concern — using excuses to fail to certify.”

Three Republican board members from Fulton and Gwinnett counties voted against certifying the presidential primary results, saying they wanted more detailed documentation beyond a broad summary of votes cast. Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden both easily won their primaries. — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says

Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri's then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said. — NextGov

Missouri AG files motion to block after nonprofit attempts to close state court

Missouri’s Attorney General has filed a motion to block a nonprofit journalism organization that has now made a federal attempt to shut down a Missouri court.

On Wednesday, May 8, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he filed a motion to block Media Matters, a nonprofit organization, from shutting down a Missouri court. The move follows a motion made by the nonprofit in federal court to halt his investigation into fraudulent business practices.

AG Bailey filed the suit against Media Matters in March to force the organization to turn over documents related to the investigation. Litigation in that case remains ongoing in state court.

“Media Matters is attempting to shut down Missouri courts by filing a motion in a D.C. court to halt our investigation and lawsuit into their fraudulent practices,” Bailey continued. “D.C. courts have no control over Missouri courts. I have filed a motion to keep this suit in Missouri, where it belongs. I will not allow Media Matters to run to a D.C. court to evade Missouri law.”

According to the AG, Media Matters came under fire after allegations were made that it deceitfully manipulated the algorithm for X (formerly known as Twitter). The algorithm placed adversers’ content next to controversial posts which caused the social media platform to suffer astronomical financial losses after advertisers pulled their content from the site.

Since then, Media Matters has been outspoken in attempts to defame the popular platform for its refusal to censor disfavored viewpoints. The investigation into the organization started in November 2023 after evidence of solicited donations came to light. The move directly violated the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. — KCTV 5

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.

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