Badlands Media

The Daily Herold: 5/1/26 - Election Security Gap, Comey Leaks Case & Oil Price Mystery

Jon Herold comes into Friday with a full show and a guest. Cybersecurity expert Skip Holt joins to break down two massive data breaches: the Medtronic ransomware hack locking down 9 million patient records and the Conduent breach now affecting 100 million Americans. Jon then connects those stories to something nobody is discussing: the US Election Security Group has not been activated for the midterms, and Jon thinks that silence might be telling. Louisiana just suspended its House primaries after the SCOTUS redistricting ruling, Trump called it tremendous vision and leadership, and Jon is connecting the dots to a potential nationwide midterm cancellation template. The DOJ is now weighing a second Comey indictment over the classified Daniel Richmond documents that John Durham mysteriously declined to prosecute years ago. Trump is also trying to reset the 60-day War Powers clock by arguing the ceasefire paused hostilities, which Jon finds legally creative. Oil prices stubbornly refuse to spike the way analysts predicted despite the biggest supply disruption in history, and Jon thinks that story reveals something important about Trump's economic strategy. Plus the national debt hits $39 trillion and Jon does math that nobody wants to hear.

Badlands Story Hour Ep. 165: No Country for Old Men

Chris Paul and Burning Bright tackle the 2007 Coen Brothers masterpiece No Country for Old Men, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Woody Harrelson. The guys agree it's a modern American classic, and dig into why a film with such a stripped-down setting and plot manages to carry such enormous philosophical weight.
The conversation moves through Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's opening monologue about not wanting to "put his soul at hazard" against an evil he doesn't understand, the nature of psychopathy and whether inherent evil exists, and Anton Chigurh's coin-flipping determinism versus Carla Jean's stark refusal to play his game. They unpack Carson Wells as a coward who depends on the rules of the system, the off-screen death of Llewelyn Moss as a deliberate breaking of storytelling rules, and why Chigurh, not Bell or Moss, is arguably the true protagonist whose arc actually changes.
From there they zoom out to the dark night of the soul, systemic evil, why the enemy lost its mandate after World War II, the gas pump sticker meme, and how moral relativism quietly leads good people into advocating for monsters.

Badlands Daily: 5/1/26 - Redistricting Chaos, 17th Amendment, DeLauro Embarrasses Herself

CannCon and Chris Paul close out the week with a Friday discussion show that earns its runtime. Louisiana delays its house primaries after the Calais decision while Rep. Cleo Fields cries that "people have already voted," which is hilarious given the Virginia Democrats argued the opposite in their own Supreme Court hearing. CannCon and Chris dig into the downstream constitutional implications of ungerrymandering, including whether a GOP-dominant state legislature landscape creates the runway to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, restore state election of senators, and drain money from senate races by taking away the celebrity glamour of running statewide. Trump's whiskey tariff deal with Scotland on behalf of Kentucky opens a conversation about pre-constitutional state sovereignty and whether Trump is optically separating from the British imperial relationship or quietly reasserting it. The fourteenth amendment, the Federal Reserve, and the Creature from Jekyll Island tie it all together. Then CannCon plays the Rosa DeLauro versus Lee Zeldin appropriations hearing where DeLauro claims Zeldin made up Loper Bright, West Virginia v. EPA, and the major questions doctrine. Chris breaks down why this is exactly what institutional delegitimization looks like in real time.

RattlerGator Report: 5/1/26 - Dollar Dominance Sealed, Redistricting Ruling, and India's Moment

JB White closes out the Alexander Muse deep dive on Scott Bessent's dollar swap line doctrine and delivers the five-point grand strategy summary that ties the whole thing together: patient, profitable, protective of the American taxpayer, requiring no troops, and built to make alternative payment systems structurally irrelevant. He also shares an Indian geopolitical chart framing America as the clear dominant power, China as an aspiring power in decline, and argues the UAE has quietly outmaneuvered MBS with a smarter regional alliance. The Supreme Court's race-based redistricting ruling gets a sharp breakdown through John Tillman's lens: sixty years of guaranteed seats in the safest minority Democratic districts produced the worst schools, the highest murder rates, and zero competitive accountability. JB also floats a Trumpian theory about King Charles and Parliament that nobody else is talking about.

Taking it Back Ep. 128: Comey, Bondi's Legacy, SCOTUS Gerrymandering & The 12,000 Rep Plan

Adel Nero is back with Zak Paine and Frankie Val for a packed Thursday hangout, and the news cycle did not disappoint. The guys open on Todd Blanche hitting the ground running at DOJ, the Minnesota raids, and Dan Bongino's cryptic Hannity comments about everything he set in motion before he left. From there, Zak makes the case that Pam Bondi was never the wrong pick. She was the easy confirmation who quietly built the foundation Blanche is now using to bury James Comey under a seashell post and a forfeiture order designed to flip him toward the Brennan conspiracy. The conversation pivots to Iran's economic unraveling, the SCOTUS gerrymandering ruling that just torched race-based districting in the South, and the long term reapportionment trend turning Democrats into a regional party. Then Frank takes the wheel and delivers a barn burner on the original 30,000 constituent rule, arguing an 11,000 member House would gut the lobbyist class, kill the celebrity congressperson, and end the uniparty in one swing. Meaty, fast moving, and oddly hopeful.

Badlands Book Club: The Creature From Jekyll Island - Chapter 1

CannCon and Ashe in America kick off G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island and hit the ground running. Chapter one pulls back the curtain on the secret 1910 Jekyll Island meeting where six of the most powerful bankers in the world quietly drafted what would become the Federal Reserve System. The crew breaks down how the Fed was never designed to protect the public but was structured as a private banking cartel to eliminate competition, control the money supply, shift losses to taxpayers, and consolidate financial power in the hands of a few. The 1913 trifecta of the Federal Reserve Act, the income tax, and the 17th Amendment gets called out as centrally planned, coordinated transformation. Plus, Paul Warburg's outsized role, the Rothschild and Rockefeller connections, and a sharp discussion on why repealing the 17th Amendment may matter more than most people realize.

The Choice: (S3E6) Intensity in Tent City

Ghost and Ashe in America break down Season 3, Episode 6 of The Chosen, a packed hour where Pontius Pilate finally walks on screen, John the Baptist sends a question that surprises everyone, and Z gets cornered by his old order with a dagger to his throat. The hosts trace the surprisingly nuanced Roman storyline (Pilate just wants peace, Quintus is paranoid, Atticus is, against all odds, telling the truth) and the parallel arc of disciples sharpening weapons because they think Jesus needs protecting. He doesn't.
The conversation widens out, as it tends to. The fourth Crusade and how Christians sacked their own empire at Constantinople. Why Russia ended up the unlikely defender of the faith. Whether the Catholics or the Protestants got it right (spoiler: both institutions have problems when they build their own kingdom). Paula White refusing to lay hands until she gets a hundred grand. The "People of the Book" pitch that quietly sets Jesus aside for unity. And why friction, questioning, and being highly frictional is exactly what Jesus models when John himself sends word from prison asking, are you really the one?
It lands on humility. It always does.

The Daily Herold: 4/30/26 - Comey Case Doubts, FISA Renewal & Trump-Putin Call

Jon Herold comes in Thursday with plenty to chew on and no shortage of opinions. He doubles down on his Comey skepticism after Trump himself posts confirming 86 is a mob term for kill, which Jon says actually makes the legal case harder, not easier, since it removes the noncriminal interpretation that the First Amendment requires. The House quietly passed a three-year renewal of FISA Section 702 with barely a whisper of public debate, and Jon is not thrilled. Trump and Putin held a 90-minute call where Putin offered a Victory Day ceasefire and Trump said both the Ukraine and Iran wars are on similar timetables, calling Ukraine militarily defeated. Q1 GDP came in at 2% despite the Iran oil shock, inflation is still running hot, and Jerome Powell apparently wants to stick around at the Fed, which Jon finds predictably annoying. Mike Johnson is calling to suspend Louisiana elections after the Supreme Court voided the state map, and Jon sees it as a potential template for pausing midterms altogether. Trump also nominated Dr. Nicole Safier as Surgeon General. Jon closes with an extended, honest meditation on information war fatigue, the Santa Claus metaphor for Hopium, and why grounded expectations are not the same thing as blackpilling.

Badlands Daily: 4/30/26 - TPS Supreme Court Hearing, Redistricting Fallout, Comey Debate

CannCon and Alpha Warrior close out April with a Thursday packed with courts, consequences, and a genuinely entertaining disagreement. The Supreme Court hears arguments on ending TPS for 330,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, and the law could not be clearer: no judicial review of TPS terminations, full stop. Justice Alito spends a solid portion of the hearing making the plaintiff's attorney look like he wandered in from a different profession entirely. Brandon Gill breaks down the numbers: 65% of Haitian TPS households are on welfare, and with 1.3 million total TPS holders, the fiscal math is staggering. The Louisiana v. Calais redistricting decision reverberates as Florida passes a new map within hours, and CannCon maps out the New England representation gap where states averaging 42% Republican turnout have zero Republican congressional seats. Then the main event: CannCon and Alpha go head to head on the Comey indictment. CannCon calls it garbage political speech that will never see a courtroom. Alpha argues Comey's documented law enforcement knowledge of 86 as a term of violence makes it a prosecutable case and a potential RICO predicate. Nobody backs down.

Devolution Power Hour Ep. 453: SCOTUS Gerry Fix, Comey Indicted, and DOJ Deep State

Jon Herold and Burning Bright open with a live breakdown of the SCOTUS Louisiana redistricting ruling alongside guest Ash, who walks through Justice Alito's 42-page opinion striking down race-based congressional district drawing under section two of the Voting Rights Act, a question courts have been kicking down the road for forty years. From there, the guys turn to newly declassified Grassley documents on the FBI's suppressed Clinton Foundation investigation, including the damning timeline showing it was shut down the same week Crossfire Hurricane was opened. Then comes the Comey indictment for the 8647 Instagram post, and the guys make a principled case for why it is legally weak, potentially counterproductive to future accountability, and why grand juries are not convictions. Burning Bright closes with a tight breakdown of the Strait of Hormuz situation as a financial squeeze not on the US but on Europe, connecting Bessent's Iran shadow banking sanctions, the Trump vs. German Chancellor Mertz feud, and Putin cutting off Russia's Druzhba energy pipeline to Germany in the same week. The show ends on a substantive discussion of why justice must be binary, not incremental.