Your First Look at Today's Top Stories

Having trouble viewing this email? View the web version.

Monday, July 28, 2025

Trump Announces Trade Deal With EU: “The biggest deal ever”

Financial Times: The agreement was struck following a meeting on Sunday between US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. The deal marks a victory for Trump, who has spent months forcing America’s trading partners into bruising negotiations by threatening steep tariffs, although the terms are in line with what Brussels had told EU member states to prepare for. “This is probably the biggest deal ever reached in any capacity, trade or beyond trade,” Trump said as he announced the agreement (Financial Times). More from FT: There is no hiding the fact the EU was rolled over by the Trump juggernaut, said one ambassador. “Trump worked out exactly where our pain threshold is” (Financial Times). Sarah Arnold of Townhall: The move comes in response to what Trump called one of the “largest trade deficits” between the U.S. and the EU, criticizing Europe’s failure to strike a fair deal by the earlier July 9 deadline. Even before talks began, von der Leyen acknowledged Trump’s reputation, telling him directly he is “known as a tough negotiator and dealmaker”—a nod to the kind of leadership that prioritizes American interests at the bargaining table. “The European Union is going to agree to purchase from the United States $750 billion worth of energy,” Trump said. “They are going to agree to invest into the United States $600 billion more than they’re investing already” (Townhall). Axios: Europe’s economy was reeling before Trump took office. Still, White House trade policy has targeted its most dominant sectors, including auto manufacturing. German carmakers — Mercedes, BMW and Audi — have been subject to a 25% tariff rate since April, while other goods faced a blanket 10% tariff. By the numbers: As a bloc, the EU is America’s top trading partner, with more than $600 billion worth of goods imported from European nations last year. The U.S. exported slightly more than half of that sum, with $370 billion worth of goods sent to Europe in 2024. That trade deficit has been one source of Trump’s frustration with Europe since taking office (Axios).

A Week to Watch: Key Economic Numbers to Be Released

The economic metrics will be used to assess the strength of the economy under Trump 2.0. Watch for a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) report on Wednesday, jobs reports on Tuesday and Wednesday and numbers from the Fed on inflation on Thursday. Axios, picking up w a quote from ING economist James Knightley: “I can’t think of a week that has seen such a concentration of A-list events,” Knightley said. On tap this week: •GDP. The economy shrunk in the first quarter because of tariffs, even as underlying figures pointed to healthy activity. Expect the opposite dynamic in the Q2 GDP report (out Wednesday). The economy likely resumed growing in the April-June period as imports normalized, though under the hood, it might look weaker than the headline implies as households start to feel trade effects. • Jobs: There will be new data on job vacancies, layoffs and quits (Tuesday) and private sector hiring (Wednesday) — all in the lead-up to the July government payroll report (Friday). “If I had to pick one data release, I would say that the employment report is probably the most important,” says Marco Casiraghi, an economist at Evercore ISI — adding that the set of labor reports will show “if cracks in the labor market are finally showing up.” • Inflation: The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, alongside spending and income figures, will be released on Thursday (Axios).

Responding to Humanitarian Aid Alarms in Gaza

Johnnie Moore, now with the Gaza Health Foundation: Since we began our operations in May, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has repeatedly called for the U.N. and its affiliate agencies to combine efforts with us to feed the people of Gaza. We have a shared goal of delivering food to the people who need it and our organization has the delivery mechanism to achieve this because of the level of security we provide. Unfortunately, we have been met not only with silence but with smears. Rather than acknowledging the broader systemic failures affecting all aid groups, U.N. spokespeople and U.N.-aligned organizations have attacked the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for its association with Israel and falsely cast us as endangering needy people in Gaza. These efforts to deflect blame are disingenuous and dangerous. Such claims erode public trust in humanitarian organizations and distract from the real priority: getting food to civilians in need (Wall Street Journal). New York Sun: Rejecting claims of mass starvation in Gaza as a “false campaign promoted by Hamas,” Israel’s Defense Forces announced it is temporarily pausing some military actions in the strip to create humanitarian corridors to enable safe movement of United Nations convoys delivering food aid. Following huge blowback of Israel’s attempts to deliver aid to Gaza through its American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Israel relented over the weekend on its limitations for routes used by United Nations’ and other aid trucks entering Gaza (New York Sun).

Watching Gazan News Coverage and Blood Libel From the BBC

Jonathan Conricus: Credit to Hamas media department for running a very successful influence campaign regarding “famine in Gaza”. My interview on @bbc is perhaps the best testament to how synchronized western media is with Hamas talking points. Pile the pressure on Israel. Not a single word about Hamas (Conricus). Melanie Phillips: The BBC’s obsession with demonising and delegitimising Israel has reached pathological proportions. This week, it gave pride of place on its flagship radio show Today to ever-more twisted accusations and blood libels casting Israel as an evil and murderous state, including the claim by a British surgeon working in Gaza that the Israel Defence Forces were playing a game in shooting Gazan boys in the food queues by targeting a different part of their body every day. The broadcasting behemoth could scarcely contain its excitement as reporters and interviewees joined in chorusing that “a reckoning was coming” with the imminent end of the war in Gaza, after which Israel’s “war crimes” would be revealed, and that the case for declaring a Palestine state was therefore now overwhelming…. The IDF’s aid division, COGAT, says that recently nearly 4,500 trucks entered the Strip with supplies, including flour for bakeries and 2,500 tons of baby food and high-calorie special food for children. The key point, however, is that 950 trucks have been stuck inside Gaza because the United Nations and its agencies are refusing to distribute the food and other aid they are carrying. The GHF has implored the global agency to help distribute these supplies around the Strip, but the UN has refused (Phillips). More from Melanie: The picture that launched the global blood libel that Israel was starving Gazan children to death now stands revealed by the wonderful David Collier @mishtal as a fraud perpetrated by the western media, including @BBCNews @nytimes and @guardian. The starvation lie is the latest in their decades-long attempt to delegitimise and destroy the tiny Jewish state. No-one should ever trust any of their reporting about Israel and Gaza (Phillips).

US Birthrate Reaches Record Low

We’re now at 1.6 live childbirths per woman, well below the 2.1. needed to sustain our population: The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all. The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data. Alarmed by recent drops, the Trump administration has taken steps to increase falling birth rates, like issuing an executive order in February meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization and backing the idea of “baby bonuses” that might encourage more couples to have kids (CBS News). Live Action: Yet even as births continue to decline, abortions continue to rise. Data released from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute in 2024 showed that an estimated 1,038,100 preborn children in America were killed by abortion in 2023 — a figure that is difficult to accurately calculate, since many abortions are now done via the abortion pill, which can be discreetly sent through the mail without any doctor oversight or proper reporting. This is equivalent to nearly one-third the number of total births for the year — a significant percentage, as populations are falling below the replacement rate (Live Action).

Closing: The Nation’s Largest Abortion Facility

Planned Parenthood’s facility in Houston is some 78,000 sq. ft. and was once the largest abortion facility in the western hemisphere. Life News: The closures, set for September 30, come amid financial pressures and political challenges, leaving four other Houston-area clinics to be acquired by Planned Parenthood’s largest Texas affiliate. With Texas having banned abortions for a few years now, and President trump signing the bill to defund the abortion giant, its two main sources of funding have dried up. Shawn Carney, CEO of the pro-life group 40 Days for Life, expressed “both personal and professional elation” at the shuttering of the Prevention Park and Southwest centers, noting the mega-facility’s closure as a significant blow to Planned Parenthood’s operations. “This is massive news for the pro-life movement and shows the direction that Planned Parenthood is going, which is down,” Carney said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. He highlighted the facility’s history, stating that 40 Days for Life has prayed and held vigils outside the Houston mega-facility since 2006, offering alternatives like free ultrasounds. “Countless people have gone out, offered alternatives. We’ve had pro-life buses outside to do free ultrasounds,” he said, adding that the “behemoth” facility once provided late-term abortions (Life News). In 2018, Live Action revealed the macabre practice of sale of human remains in in Houston: Undercover investigators posing as fetal tissue buyers asked technicians at the Houston Planned Parenthood mega-abortion facility if there were any “fresh specimens” they could evaluate. A Planned Parenthood employee laughed and said, “We had a really long day and they’re all mixed up together in a bag.” She said if she’d been given a warning about the buyers’ visit, she “would have saved something” for them to see before freezing the dead bodies. After some discussion, the Planned Parenthood employees decided to open the freezer to extract the body of a 20-week twin from early in the day to demonstrate how “intact” the “specimen” was — in other words, how many organs of the five-month-old preborn baby were not mutilated beyond recognition when the child was killed in the abortion (Live Action).

Celebrating the End of the Gender Mutilation Clinics

President Trump’s executive orders have had real and meaningful impact in protecting children. Aubrey Harris: It’s one thing for a president to sign an executive order, and it’s another for that executive order to actually mean something. This week we found out that President Donald Trump’s order “protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation” does mean something. In late June, the FBI launched investigations into three children’s hospitals: Boston Children’ Hospital, Children’s Hospital Colorado, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, following Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement that the Trump administration would be enforcing a federal statute that outlaws female genital mutilation…. Needless to say, the closing of American transgender clinics for minors is a step that’s long overdue merely from a scientific point of view (much less from a common-sense perspective), and it should be a feather in the cap of this administration that it’s finally getting it done. This is just the beginning of the road. As Mary Rice Hasson, the director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told the Catholic News Agency, “not one of these programs has acknowledged the harm done on their watch …. They are shuttering these programs for fear of losing federal funds but have not repudiated the barbaric practices that masquerade as ‘gender care.’” Not only is decisive congressional action needed to make this a change that lasts longer than Trump’s four-year term, but the doctors and medical institutions involved in the mutilation of children need to admit that they were wrong to walk down this path in the first place. That’s a goal that may take years and require reshaping and purging our medical institutions, but it’s worth pursuing for the safety and health of our children (Spectator).

In the Basement: Democrats Polling at Lowest Numbers in Over Three Decades

According to a new poll from the Wall Street Journal: The new survey finds that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party—the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990 and 30 percentage points higher than the 33% who hold a favorable view. That is a far weaker assessment than voters give to either President Trump or the Republican Party, who are viewed more unfavorably than favorably by 7 points and 11 points, respectively. A mere 8% of voters view the Democrats “very favorably,” compared with 19% who show that level of enthusiasm for the GOP. “The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who worked on the Journal survey with Republican Tony Fabrizio. “Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems….” Now, more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats, a significant change in the structure of the electorate—and a rarity in politics. Republicans last year built their first durable lead in more than three decades in party identification, and they have maintained that lead today. In the new Journal survey, more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats by 1 percentage point, and the GOP led by 4 points in the April poll (Wall Street Journal). David Strom: If there is one thing that all the polls show, it is that Democrats are in deep trouble. Nobody likes them, including Democrats. I know lifelong Democrats who made regular, monthly donations–basically a tithe–who cut the party off because they are so angry (Hot Air).

Interpreting the Release of Material From DNI Tulsi Gabbard

Victor Davis Hanson thinks it’s unlikely that that we’ll see legal consequences for senior Obama-era officials. But it’s important nonetheless that the country learns what really happened—and the impact it had on our nation’s political history.. VDH: They bushwhacked the 2017 presidential transition. They hamstrung the Trump presidency. And they may well have hurt Trump’s 2020 election bid. Summed up, here is the damage caused by the Trump-Putin collusion lies: 1. They emboldened “experts” in 2020 to again lie blatantly and shamelessly to the American people that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was yet another fake product of Russian interference to help reelect Trump. 2. The media were equally guilty. Journalists partnered with current and ex-Obama appointees by disseminating fake documents like the Steele dossier and working with giants like Twitter and Facebook. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI and social media sought to censor accurate news stories that the laptop was indeed authentic and already verified as such by the FBI. 3. These operations may have had serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Dictatorial Russia is an adversary of the U.S…. Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy. But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth (Townhall).

10.

Freed Israeli Hostage of Hamas Finishes Final Stage of Tour de France

Ofer Calderon celebrating how very good it is to be alive with the team from Israel. Times of Israel: Former hostage Ofer Calderon, a longtime cyclist, joined as a special guest of Israel-Premier Tech, the country’s professional cycling team, at the final stage of the 2025 Tour de France along the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Calderon was taken hostage on October 7 from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with two of his four children. His children were released during the November 2023 ceasefire, and he was released home more than a year later, in February 2025. “I’m still in shock that I’m here on a bike at the Tour de France,” says Calderon. “I’ve never been to Paris, certainly not on a bicycle… I’m so emotional to be here with the team. But I’m also torn: this joy can’t be complete because, alongside all these emotions, it’s very hard to deal with what’s happening to me and to all the people of Israel…. (Times of Israel). Winning the tour for the fourth time was the dominant Slovenian Tadej Pogačar riding for UAE Team Emirates-XRG: “Just speechless to win the Tour de France. This one feels especially amazing,” he said. “Just super proud that I can wear this yellow jersey” (NBC). Cycling News: [Pogačar] lit up the final stage of the 2025 Tour de France to cap off a near-perfect race and claim his fourth overall title. With four stage wins and another yellow jersey, the world champion moved equal with Chris Froome on four Tour wins, only behind the four all-time greats who have five titles in the all-time list (Cycling News).

SUBSCRIPTION INFO: This newsletter is never sent unsolicited. It is only sent to people who signed up from one of the Salem Media Group network of websites. We respect and value your time and privacy.
Unsubscribe from The Daybreak Insider
6400 N. Belt Line Rd., Suite 200, Irving, TX 75063
Copyright © 2025 Salem Media Group and its Content Providers. All rights reserved.