Earlier today President Trump signed an executive order blocking the U.S. development of “gain of function” research, the manipulation of biological agents to weaponize their lethality. [Executive Order Here]

As Health and Human Service Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr noted in his remarks, the modern U.S. development of the bioweapons program was an outcome of a little-known subset within the Patriot Act that allowed scientists to develop bioweapons without legal accountability for any negative outcome.  Let us not pretend….

In 2014 a U.S. developed bioweapon escaped a lab and in response President Obama stopped the program.  However, the stoppage only blocked development of the bioweapons on U.S. soil.  The various government agencies then continued the “gain of function” bioweapon development by offshoring the experiments and conducting the research in foreign countries.  The SARS-CoV-2 weapon, COVID-19, was developed in one of those labs in Wuhan, China, and escaped creating the pandemic of 2020.  WATCH:

EXECUTIVE ORDER – Section 1. Purpose. Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.

The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight. It also actively approved, through the National Institutes of Health, Federal life-science research funding in China and other countries where there is limited United States oversight or reasonable expectation of biosafety enforcement.

This recklessness, if unaddressed, may lead to the proliferation of research on pathogens (and potential pathogens) in settings without adequate safeguards, even after COVID-19 revealed the risk of such practices.

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The Washington Post (but of course, CIA outlet) is reporting on a downsizing effort within the CIA to eliminate approximately 1,200 jobs.  The number represents approximately 5% of the workforce although the actual number of CIA employees is classified (national security, dontchaknow).

Within the report, Director John Ratcliffe is noted as shifting the focus of America’s leading spy agency to use more “human intelligence.”  That phrase, “human intelligence,” is IC silo code speak for shifting away from “analysts” (political operatives) and engaging in more ¹factual intelligence information.

According to the report, DNI Tulsi Gabbard has also reduced the employment level within the Director of National Intelligence office by approximately 25% (current payroll estimate of 2,000 employees).  The general narrative within the WaPo reporting is that “national security” is being compromised by large downsizing of spy agency employment.

Additionally, to bolster the positions of the current political operatives within the CIA, the WaPo waxes concerningly about China and other mysterious foreign adversaries recruiting the CIA employees who are now becoming increasingly concerned about their paychecks.

WASHINGTON POST – “The Trump administration is planning significant personnel cuts at the Central Intelligence Agency and other major U.S. spy units, downsizing the government’s most sensitive national security agencies, according to people familiar with the plans.

The administration recently informed lawmakers on Capitol Hill that it intends to reduce the CIA’s workforce by about 1,200 personnel over several years and cut thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Security Agency, a highly secretive service that specializes in cryptology and global electronic espionage, a person familiar with the matter said. The person, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

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Apparently, each week the Dept of Govt Efficiency (DOGE) team gets together for a weekly debriefing and recap session of what is happening in the various agencies under review.  Fox News host Jesse Watters accompanied Elon Musk to this week’s meeting.

Fox News has shared the discussion to help people understand a little bit more about what is happening behind the scenes with the DOGE review team. It is an interesting discussion.  WATCH:

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Part Two is below.

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The question can be asked, has President Trump ever had a National Security Advisor who was not compromised?

Unfortunately, some people are rushing to the Mike Flynn redo. As a consequence, some context for why Flynn can never be in the administration again is needed. In brief, he’s a fibber.

In November of 2016 CTH first warned of the issue when it was rumored that Flynn would be selected as Trump’s NSA. [SEE HERE] We knew even before the election this could be a problem.  As far as we could surmise at the time – the Trump Campaign and subsequent President-Elect transition team, had no idea that campaign advocate and campaign adviser Michael Flynn was also being paid to lobby in DC on behalf of the government of Turkey, and ultimately put a positive perspective on Recep Erdogan.

The Flynn lobbying arrangement, a corporate lobbyist, then a foreign agent lobbyist, was beyond sketchy.  Before the 2016 election Flynn penned an op-ed advocating heavily for Recep Erdogan –SEE HERE–  The content was entirely disconnected from the assembled foreign policy outlook of Candidate Donald Trump. The Flynn Op-Ed was actually counter to candidate Trump’s policy views.

If you go read the Op-Ed now, you will notice a very specific editors note: “On March 8, 2017, four months after this article was published, General Flynn filed documents with the Federal government indicating that he earned $530,000 last fall for consulting work that might have aided the government of Turkey. In the filings, Flynn disclosed that he had received payments from Inovo BV, a Dutch company owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Turkey’s president and that Inovo reviewed the draft before it was submitted to The Hill. Neither General Flynn nor his representatives disclosed this information when the essay was submitted.”

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CTH said in November 2024, I doubt he could succeed.   I said in December 2024, he would be the first to get fired.  I have said over the past several weeks it was obvious Mike Waltz was no longer in a position of National Security influence, and that President Trump had an NSA “in name only.”

Today, Trump fired National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and his deputy, Alex Wong….

VIA CBS – National security adviser Mike Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, will be leaving their posts in the Trump White House, according to multiple sources familiar with their departure.

[…] One source familiar with the situation at the National Security Council said the president thinks sufficient time has passed since the Signal incident that Waltz and Wong’s departures can be framed as part of a reorganization. The president has been hesitant to oust Waltz over the perception that doing so could be seen as bending to outside pressure.

Wong served in the first Trump administration as deputy special representative for North Korea and also as deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department. In announcing his appointment, Mr. Trump said that Wong helped negotiate his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (more)

I’m not going to repeat all the issues that made this outcome transparently predictable from the first day of then President-elect Trump’s announcement.  You can read the background HERE and HERE and HERE.

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Republican senators Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski all voted in support of removing President Trump’s ability to impose tariffs under national security grounds.  However, the overall vote failed in the Senate 49-49.

The vote was mostly symbolic for the upper chamber as the House previously approved a rule to block any effort to restrict President Trump’s trade authority, and the White House would obviously veto any bill that might pass.  However, the vote does showcase the Republicans who are in support of multinational corporations outsourcing jobs and manufacturing.

The bill was originally created by Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democrat Senator Ron Wyden.  The intransigent neocon wing of the GOPe, those who take funds from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (aka Decepticons) also supported the bill, but given the certainty of Trump’s veto, needed to retain their masks.

WASHINGTON – […] The legislation, designed to end the national emergency Trump used to impose his now-paused “Liberation Day” tariffs, failed by a vote of 49 to 49 despite three Republicans joining all Democrats. {Full Story}

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Only President Trump could get the Canadians to vote for an exit to the USMCA, and he did it brilliantly.

To understand President Trump’s position on Canada, you have to go back to the 2016 election and President Trump’s position on the NAFTA renegotiation.  If you did not follow the subsequent USMCA process, this might be the ah-ha moment you need to understand Trump’s strategy.

During the 2016 election President Trump repeatedly said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Both Canada and Mexico were reluctant to open the trade agreement to revision, but ultimately President Trump had the authority and support from an election victory to do exactly that.

In order to understand the issue, you must remember President Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer each agreed the NAFTA agreement was fraught with problems and was best addressed by scrapping it and creating two seperate bilateral trade agreements. One between the USA and Mexico, and one between the USA and Canada.

In the decades that preceded the 2017 push to redo the trade pact, Canada had restructured their economy to: (1) align with progressive climate change; and (2) take advantage of the NAFTA loophole.  The Canadian government did not want to reengage in a new trade agreement.

Canada has deindustrialized much of their manufacturing base to support the ‘environmental’ aspirations of their progressive politicians.  Instead, Canada became an importer of component goods where companies then assembled those imports into finished products to enter the U.S. market without tariffs.  Working with Chinese manufacturing companies, Canada exploited the NAFTA loophole.

Justin Trudeau was strongly against renegotiating NAFTA, and stated he and Chrystia Freeland would not support reopening the trade agreement.  President Trump didn’t care about the position of Canada and was going forward.  Trudeau said he would not support it.  Trump focused on the first bilateral trade agreement with Mexico.

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[AUTHORS NOTE: Having attended the ASEAN conference to make contacts, after a brief respite at home I spent the past several weeks traveling Southeast Asia to research the likely impact from Trump’s tariff and global trade reset. Visits included manufacturing and distribution facilities in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and South Korea. What I will share with you in the next few months is an overview from direct first-hand discussions, contrast against the MSM financial media outline.]

The predictable doomsday Wall Street Journal narrative includes a forecast for a massive drop in exports from China as shipping conglomerates begin to outline a drop in trans-pacific sea cargo and container carriers.

What I would say to concerned Americans is to filter out the political narrative and remind yourself of the expanded footprint throughout SE Asia that Beijing has already established.  Chinese companies, many of them subsidized by the CCP, are pre-positioned to begin transnational shipping. I have witnessed it first-hand.  However, here’s the WSJ narrative as it begins.

WSJ – The number of ships sailing from China to the U.S. laden with clothes, electronics, furniture and other goods is plunging, as an accelerating number of cargoes are canceled.

The scrapped sailings come after the Trump administration ratcheted up tariffs on China while giving a three-month reprieve on punitive levies for much of the rest of the world.

At the Port of Los Angeles, one of America’s biggest gateways for imports from China, executive director Gene Seroka told port officials Thursday that he expects a 35% drop in import volumes in two weeks “as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers has ceased.”

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I said right after the election the foreign policy and econ institutions would be the first and easiest to deconstruct.  I also said the Intelligence, Main Justice, National Security and Defense apparatus would be the most difficult.

Here’s the high elevation picture of how it works.  The more President Trump (the Executive Branch) doesn’t use the institution, the easier it is to take them apart.  Foreign policy is being run out of the White House, with Rubio doing well.  All economic policy is being run out of the White House, with Bessent and Lutnick doing well.

[Meanwhile, Trump is ignoring (for now) the CIA silo, as if they didn’t exist; but that cannot last long (see Ukraine).  HHS, Ed, Energy, Interior and EPA are making slow and steady progress]

Conversely, President Trump leaves Pam Bondi (Justice), Kash Patel (FBI) and Tulsi Gabbard (DNI) to run/manage their own shops.  It’s an issue of (in)ability, and you can see Main Justice and the FBI remains a hot mess.  Bondi and Patel refuse to call their institutions corrupt, so the operators within them just keep doing what they have always done.  This was predictable, if you just look honestly at the big picture dynamic.

Today, Marco Rubio starts taking apart around 20% of Foggy Bottom. “The Trump administration has begun an aggressive shake-up at the State Department that will close 132 agency offices, including those launched to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.” {READ MORE}

MARCO RUBIO – “Today America confronts a new era of great power competition and the rise of a multipolar order with a State Department that stifles creativity, lacks accountability, and occasionally veers into outright hostility to American interests. The Department has long struggled to perform basic diplomatic functions, even as both its size and cost to the American taxpayer has ballooned over the past fifteen years.

The problem is not a lack of money, or even dedicated talent, but rather a system where everything takes too much time, costs too much money, involves too many individuals, and all too often ends up failing the American people.”

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At 1:00am on Saturday, the Supreme Court of the USA issued an injunction [SEE HERE] blocking President Trump from deporting illegal aliens identified under the Alien Enemies Act.  It was/is a bizarre order considering the lower court had not even ruled on the matter; worse yet, the Supreme Court created an imaginary “class” of aliens.

Any illegal alien who happens to also be a gang member, or illegal alien who would ‘smartly’ now claim to be a gang member, is ultimately the beneficiary of a Supreme Court order blocking their removal or deportation.  That’s how judicially insane this injunction is.

As outlined in the original injunction order, Justice Alito issued a blistering dissent, calling out seven of the justices who affirmed the order. [SEE HERE]

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