Back in 2013 and 2014 we shared the story of a man returning to Florida was stopped by police in Maryland who asked him for his firearm. When the Floridian asked the Maryland police how they knew he owned a firearm, things got sketchy. {Go Deep} The event kicked off a constitutional discussion.

A few years later in 2015 the Wall Street Journal reported on a national federal database that was using Automatic License Plate Readers (APLRs) to capture and store the travel of millions of Americans {SOURCE}.

Now we fast-forward a decade and that federal database is now being exploited by local police around the nation to keep track of ordinary persons of interest to their community who travel outside their jurisdiction.  This is where the Flock Cameras come into the discussion.  WATCH:

The same government interests who dismiss our concerns about privacy are the same govt interests who point out how horrible China and Iran are for monitoring their citizens on CCTV systems.

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What is surfacing now, five years later, is a stronger understanding of just how the establishment medical complex determined the safety and efficacy protocols of the COVID-19 vaccination.  They had theories, they had speculation, they had scientific discussion; but ultimately, they did not know to what extent the vaccine was safe – and statistically it wasn’t safe.

Looking back on recent history, the COVID experience stands out. The lessons from observing the government’s response, and how people reacted to it, have influenced our perspective on many topics related to liberty and freedom.

I turn to faith, read the gospel and recognize in more than a few ways the COVID experience was a generational test.

It is generally accepted that somewhere around 60 to 70% of Americans accepted the COVID vaccine, although a great many of those who took the vaccine did so under tremendous pressure, essentially under duress and without fully informed consent.

There really was no way to apply “informed consent” to the process because the ‘information’ that should have supported the consent was skewed, shaped and in many instances intentionally manipulated.  Again, the pressure for compliance to the process was extreme; beyond extreme.  I said at the time we had never seen such a pressure campaign on any topic or issue as aggressively oppressive as we endured during two-years of COVID vaccination compliance pressure.

I do not fault anyone who took the vaccine.  In fact, I hold great empathy toward those who now live with the hindsight question of their life potentially being shortened.  Everyone has been impacted by this medical experiment and the subsequent sociological implications in the aftermath.

A few days ago, a person wanted to discuss Dr Anthony Fauci’s testimony with me. I never bring up the subject of the COVID vaccine; not ever in personal discussion.  However, if it is brought up to me, I will engage carefully, honestly and with empathy.  I was asked about Fauci taking the fifth amendment and his previous grant of immunity by Joe Biden.

My response was short, purposeful and direct.  Why would Anthony Fauci need criminal immunity?  A lengthy reframing of the question resulted from my friend, who essentially then repeated it.  Again, I responded, “why would any agent of the United States govt even begin a thought process that immunity for criminal activity would be needed?”

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Earlier today President Trump held an executive order signing ceremony in the oval office on the subject of the childhood vaccination schedule.  [White House Fact Sheet Here]  President Trump also took questions from the media.

WHITE HOUSE – DELIVERING GOLD STANDARD CHILDHOOD VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to recognize Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations that maximize parental choices over vaccinations for their children and align three categories of childhood immunizations with scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries.

• The Order provides recommendations that give parents more information and options when making immunization decisions for their children.
  • The Order recommends all children get immunizations to provide protection for 11 diseases – a decrease from the 18 diseases recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024. Immunizations no longer recommended for all children are now recommended for shared clinical decision-making, ensuring that parents have all options available to them.
  • The Order recommends separating out the combined MMR vaccine into three single-disease shots and recommends administering all vaccines during separate medical visits to give parents more options regarding the timing and frequency of this vaccine administration.
  • States that enact school vaccine requirements are advised to consider the Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations and consider updating their laws to reflect the recommendations.
  • All Federal agencies are advised to advance the Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations based on their relevant authorities to ensure Americans have the best scientific information.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gets it.  When asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Bessent notes that yes, things will likely never return to the way they were before; however, there is a distinction that must be applied.

Even if Iran completely acquiesced to all of the most stringent terms and conditions requested by President Trump, they will never again recapture the position they held with the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint.

Capital markets respond to risk in the medium and long term; risks are always mitigated.  With the Strait now identified as a strategic risk, the emphasis will be on forever neutralizing that risk and avoiding the issue in the future.  As a consequence, Iran’s strongest point of leverage is disappearing now and will continue to disappear.  WATCH (prompted):

As further explained by James Thorne on X: “By repeatedly signaling its willingness to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran hasn’t strengthened its hand, it has accelerated the market’s exit. Capital does not tolerate chokepoints; it routes around them.

Saudi Arabia is expanding its East-West pipeline. The UAE has already built out Fujairah as a bypass. Iraq is revisiting overland export corridors. Every marginal dollar now flows toward redundancy, not reliance. What was once a geopolitical lever is being engineered into irrelevance. Bessent gets it: markets don’t absorb coercion; they arbitrage it away.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent continues on two domestic financial approaches to block banking services for illegal aliens and simultaneously target use of the financial system by those engaged in fraud of the U.S. government.

Secretary Bessent has extended the Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) within Minnesota that covers two counties, Hennepin and Ramsey.

All financial transactions over a $3,000 limit are subject to increased reporting requirements and scrutiny from the U.S. treasury.  {citation}

The measure is intended to identify any person who attempts to transfer funds obtained by fraud who operate in the region to take advantage of HHS funding programs. “Treasury promised to follow the money, and that is exactly what we are doing,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “We will continue to give law enforcement critical tools to trace criminal networks that siphon taxpayer dollars and move them overseas.  The Trump Administration will not allow criminals to profit from programs intended to help vulnerable Americans.”

Additionally, the Treasury Department has now concluded the 90-day assessment laid out in an executive order titled “Restoring Integrity to America’s Financial System,” on May 19 and directed the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, FDIC, National Credit Union Administration and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to strengthen customer identification and due-diligence rules and to reassess how banks weigh credit risk for borrowers without work authorization. 

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The article itself is weak sauce in the extreme, “according to new U.S. intelligence reports that posit possible scenarios” blah, blah, blah…  You know the routine.

However, that said, there is a general alignment of intent that tracks this narrative as expressed by the Wall Street Journal.

CTH doesn’t try to convince anyone. Convincing is an endless quest. However, if you just look at the datapoints that have surfaced since June 11th, there is a greater likelihood of some kind of western kinetic activity that can be carried out in order to stimulate more opposition to Russia.  Some form of false flag operation.

That approach would track with what we have witnessed in the past two months as Ukraine makes public claims in media that are expressly opposite of the action they are taking.  CTH has been pointing this out along the way.  It is prudent to notice things, particularly when those things can be consequential to the interests of EU-controllled intelligence.

WASHINGTON—Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test NATO’s resolve with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years, according to new U.S. intelligence reports that posit possible scenarios ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion.

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President Trump signed several executive orders today on the topic of computer chip manufacturing, birthright citizenship and birth tourism.   The media questions begin at 7:30 of the video below.

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Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn finally dropped their opposition to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche advancing the nomination with a judiciary committee vote 12-10 along party lines.

Senator Chuck Grassley navigated a pathway out of the committee with an agreement by AAG Blanche that an IRS lawsuit settlement agreement between the DOJ and Trump attorneys would not create a J6 victim’s compensation fund.

The $1.8 billion settlement between the IRS and lawyers representing President Trump for leaking the candidates’ personal tax returns still remains at the heart of the matter. What Donald Trump and the Trump Organization plan to do with the settlement is unknown, hence the political consternation about the settlement remains in place.

WASHINGTON DC – […] Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said ahead of the vote that Cornyn and Tillis’ concerns about the fund “and the IRS settlement were shared by many, including this senator.” He added that the changes Blanche made “put this issue to bed once and for all.”

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What we can take away from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) index on manufacturing [Data Here]: overall, the U.S. manufacturing sector is continuing to expand significantly.  The current index of 55.6 percent in July is 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent), when we were trying to recover from the COVID-19 shutdowns and supply chain problems.

PMI – The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row. (A Manufacturing PMI^® above 47.5 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index expanded for the seventh consecutive month after four straight readings in contraction, registering 56.7 percent, up 0.7 percentage point compared to June’s figure of 56 percent.

The July reading of the Production Index (58.5 percent) is 6.3 percentage points higher than the 52.2 percent recorded in June and the highest figure since November 2021 (60.5 percent). The Prices Index remained in expansion (or ‘increasing’ territory), registering 71.1 percent, a 1.9-percentage point decrease from June’s reading of 73 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 55 percent, up 4.5 percentage points compared to the 50.5 percent recorded in June.

The Employment Index reading of 52.8 percent is up 3.1 percentage points from June’s figure of 49.7 percent, putting the index in expansion territory for the first time in 33 months.” (source)

All that data and a couple of bucks will buy you a cup of coffee, but here’s what it means in common speak.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Fox News Lara Trump for an extensive discussion on his role and responsibilities in the Trump administration.

In the second segment, Rubio actually touched on something many have been curious about regarding his changed perspectives and positions.  It is still annoying that no one has ever asked him directly, ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘

The two video segments and transcript are below:

[Transcript] – QUESTION: Secretary, great to have you back. Thank you so much.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Glad to be back. It’s been a while.

QUESTION: Yeah. There’s so much to talk about, but I want to start with Cuba.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.

QUESTION: This has been of particular interest to the State Department right now. You guys released a 100-page report on Cuba, calling it, “The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” And this report talks about the fact that Cuba’s goal essentially is to erase the United States from the Earth. It also details a Cuban spy network that’s been undermining American interests. How did we get to a place where Cuba has become so much of a threat – it feels like again – to the United States?

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