Your First Look at Today's Top Stories

Having trouble viewing this email? View the web version.

Friday, August 1, 2025

Trump Issues Modifications to Tariff Policy

Financial Times: Donald Trump has reimposed tariffs on dozens of trading partners as the US president pushed the world’s biggest economy into a new era of global trade competition. In an executive order published on Thursday evening, Trump adjusted the tariffs of many nations to match the levels he threatened in letters he had recently sent to them, while lowering rates for other countries to formalise recent deals (Financial Times). From the new executive order released last night: I have determined that it is necessary and appropriate to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 14257 by imposing additional ad valorem duties on goods of certain trading partners at the rates set forth in Annex I to this order… Included in the latest Executive Order is an Annex with a summary of reciprocal tariffs by nation. Switzerland, notably, is at 39 percent, while goods from the European Union is at either zero percent or 15 percent—depending on the category of goods (White House).

Trump and Tariffs: Lessons Learned From the First Six Months of Trump’s Term

What is notable is the number of sceptics and even outright critics of tariffs who have either shifted their opinion entirely or have at least modified their critique. Hugh Hewitt: In June, the United States collected $27 billion dollars in tariff revenue on goods imported into the country. That number is expected to increase this month —we will know for sure in a few days. Hold on to those numbers for a bit while considering the context in which they appear…. President Trump also ran on upending the international trading system through the imposition of tariffs on almost every country doing business with the U.S. Skeptics of this set of claims were everywhere. June’s tariff receipts in the U.S. set a monthly record of $27 billion. July’s number is expected to increase. “[W]e could expect that that could be well over $300 billion by the end of the year,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared earlier in July. (By contrast, total tariff revenue for the U.S. was $77 billion in calendar year 2024.) Bessent added that he estimates tariff revenue to the Treasury to top “2.8 trillion over 10 years,” “which we think is probably low….” A decade ago the U.S. collected $35 billion in tariffs annually. That’s quite a contrast: $35 billion into the U.S. treasury from tariffs in 2015; $300 billion estimated in 2025 (Fox News).

Special Envoy Witkoff and Ambassador Huckabee to Visit Gaza and GHF Food Distribution Centers

All this as Israel deals with both the legitimate challenges of helping a civilian population with barbaric Islamic terrorists nestled in with them and the PR challenges born out of the blood libel image put out by the New York Times—fueling an international outcry. Politico: Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will visit Gaza on Friday to inspect aid distribution sites and meet with Gazans, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday, amid intensifying global criticism of the humanitarian crisis in the region. The administration officials’ planned trip into the besieged Gaza Strip comes amid escalating pressure both globally and from within MAGA circles to intervene, as well as a string of declarations from U.S. allies who plan to support Palestinian statehood ahead of a United Nations General Assembly meeting in September…. According to Leavitt, Witkoff and Huckabee had a “very productive meeting” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Thursday, where they discussed food and aid deliveries into Gaza. Witkoff and Huckabee are set to brief President Donald Trump after their visit “to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region,” Leavitt said (Politico). Katie Pavlich: Your regular reminder that when Israel completely disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005, including digging up Jewish graves, they left thousands of productive green houses to the Palestinians – nearly a billion dollar produce industry. They were immediately destroyed (Pavlich).

Starmer and Macron Are Fools: Rewarding Terror and Feeding More Terror

The U.K. Prime Minister and the French President’s public decision to support “Palestinian statehood” at the U.N. meetings in September will only make matters worse—for both Israelis and those within the Gaza strip. Mark Dubowitz: The UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state would, of course, be largely symbolic. They cannot wish a new nation into existence. Palestinian state will only come about through a negotiated two-state solution with Israel – one which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis reeling from decades of Palestinian terrorism reject. But if Hamas – the current authoritarian power in Gaza – were to be destroyed than the dynamics change. Why, then, do Western leaders – repeatedly – throw Hamas a lifeline? The sad reality is that the enablers of the sufferings of Gazans are not in Jerusalem, but in France, the United Kingdom, the United States and any number of countries where thoughtless empathy – detached from facts, history, and responsibility – has replaced strategic, compassionate thinking…. But who is really to blame when innocent Gazans, deployed by Hamas as human shields, are killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes? The answer from the West – in one voice – must be: Hamas. Instead, European nations, France above all others, has shown an almost compulsive need to virtue signal on this issue. Macron’s decision to support recognition of a Palestinian state – at the precise moment Hamas is torturing Israeli hostages underground – is complicity, not diplomacy. Israel’s Arab neighbors do the same… Hamas survives on Western weakness. If the world wants the suffering in Gaza to end, nothing less than a total inversion of the narrative is necessary: no statehood without recognition of Israel, no aid without disarmament, no more lies about who is to blame. It’s time the free world stopped giving Hamas what it wants (Daily Mail).

Victims of UK Grooming Gangs Were Then Victimized by Police

A new report from the BBC adds another layer to an already deeply disturbing story: Five women who were exploited by grooming gangs in Rotherham as children say they were also abused by police officers in the town at the time. One says she was raped from the age of 12 by a serving South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer in a marked police car. He would threaten to hand her back to the gang if she did not comply, she says. “In a world where you were being abused so much, being raped once [by a police officer] was a lot easier than multiple rapes [by the gang] and I think he knew that,” she tells the BBC…. “From the evidence we read and heard, the majority of victims identified their perpetrators as being of Pakistani heritage,” Prof Jay told us (BBC). Charlie Kirk: So in the UK: -Authorities ignored migrant grooming and rape gangs because prosecuting them might lead to accusations of racism. -Victims of Pakistani rape gangs who went to the police were instead raped again by the police themselves (who were of Pakistani origin).-In other cases, police leaked the accusations of victims to perpetrators, who then threatened the victims…. (Kirk). Telegraph: Record numbers of foreign sex offenders and violent criminals are being held in jails in England and Wales, the first official data by nationality has revealed. Some 1,731 foreign-national sex offenders were in prison as of June this year, up by 9.9 per cent in 12 months. The rate of increase was nearly three times that of Britons, with the number imprisoned for sex offences up 3.8 per cent, according to data published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on Thursday. The number of foreign violent offenders held in jails is also at its highest since records began a decade ago. It has risen by 8.8 per cent in a year to 3,250, nearly double the rate of 4.8 per cent for Britons imprisoned for violence (Telegraph).

Newly Declassified Material Ties Soros to Clinton’s Russiagate Plan; “This is the smoking gun evidence inside Durham annex”

That quote is from John Solomon, who continued: If it is authenticated by further investigation it means liberal mega donor George Soros’ team knew the whole Clinton plan for Russiagate hoax four days before FBI opened up probe. And so did Obama, Brennan, and Comey (Solomon). The hope was that the FBI will put more oil into the fire.” Just the News: The revelations, including intercepted purported communications from Leonard Benardo, a top official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and communications by Clinton foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, provide new insight into information that the U.S. intelligence community received in July 2016 – just before the FBI launched its politicized Crossfire Hurricane investigation…. The Durham classified annex also assessed that “it is a logical deduction [REDACTED] [Julianne] Smith was, at minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia” and that the communications reviewed by the special counsel “certainly lends at least some credence that such a plan existed.” Benardo is the senior vice president of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, founded by leftwing billionaire George Soros and now currently chaired by his son Alex Soros (Just the News). Matt Taibbi, starting with a quote from the newly released material: “[The Democratic Party’s] opposition is focused on discrediting Trump…. [a]mong other things, the Clinton staff, with support from special services, is preparing scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the ‘Russian Mafia.” Again, that’s from March, 2016, long before the official trigger for the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump. There’s more where this came from, and at minimum it all should have been included as background to future analyses. You know the cliche about Russia being a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”? This is looking like a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up (Racket).

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Boasts: “1,000 more troops are retreating”

It’s true that troops have been withdrawn. But that is because a measure of law and order has been restored. They are not “retreating” in the face of lawlessness, rioting and general mayhem. Jim Geraghty: Last night, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass boasted on X that the moves were a result of her pressure. “Another win for Los Angeles tonight: 1,000 more troops are retreating. We will continue this pressure until ALL troops are out of L.A.” So far, there’s no word on whether Bass’s call to remove all troops from Los Angeles means to include Los Angeles Air Force Base, which is just outside the city limits, south of Los Angeles International Airport. Bass is not the first leader of a dangerous, unstable region who has attempted to force the U.S. military to retreat. But Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi could not be reached for comment (National Review).

Cincinnati Leaders Under Fire for Morally Bankrupt Response to Beating

The horrific beating that left a man and woman gravely injured spurred this response from Cincinnati Councilwoman Victoria Parks: “They asked for that beatdown … I am grateful for the whole story.” Ed Morrissey: The reaction to the incident on the part of leftists is clearly motivated by their view of what race relations should look like. Since the offenders were black and the victims white, it is either a non-story or another example of racial justice being done. Had the races been reversed, we would be in a long national conversation on how evil white people are and the city fathers and mothers would be calling for life in prison (Hot Air). Victor Davis Hanson goes through a litany of indicators of cultural concern: the media and authorities did their best to either hide or play down the violence. City leaders, the chief of police, and the media variously blamed the mass black-on-white violence on 1) social media, 2) the original one-on-one dispute, 3) alcohol, 4) the lack of civilian intervention to stop the violence, and 5) a festival atmosphere—anything except endemic racial hatred shown toward whites from the crowd of black youth. Six, had a gang of white toughs beat middle-aged African-Americans senseless, recorded it, and cheered on the violence, there would have been immediate national outrage. Nor did anyone wish to raise the taboo topic of inordinate black crime rates, disproportionate to respective demographic realities. In rare interracial violent crimes, the asymmetrical ratio of black-on-white versus white-on-black assaults ranges from three to five times greater. Seven, the quiet of the left-wing media to the reprehensible violence stands in marked contrast with their usual rush-to-judgment racialism in two near-simultaneous incidents (American Greatness).

HHS Open Data Plan Published—Giving Patients Access to Their Own Health Records

HHS: “Since the Trump Administration began, HHS has more than tripled the number of datasets on HealthData.gov—from approximately 3,000 in January 2025 to over 10,000 today,” said Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, who leads technology and innovation programs at the agency. “Using data, AI, and regulatory reform, HHS will increase public transparency and leverage information to Make America Healthy Again.”These initiatives, led by the HHS Chief Data Officer (CDO), align with the OPEN Government Data Act and the broader goals of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act) signed by President Trump in January 2019.“Open Data will serve as the foundation for radical transparency, innovation, accountability, and public trust,” said Dr. Kristen Honey, HHS Chief Data Officer (CDO). “HHS Open Data is not just about numbers; it’s about empowering people, fostering trust, and driving real-world impact” (HHS). David Sacks, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar: “Patients are finally able to have access to their own medical records” (White House).

10.

White House Announces Reestablishment of Presidential Physical Fitness Test

The standards for physical fitness were launched under President Eisenhower in 1956. They were abandoned by President Obama in 2012 (History: HHS) President Trump is framing our need for health in the context of our semiquincentennial: As the United States prepares to celebrate its semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026, we must address the threat to the vitality and longevity of our country that is posed by America’s declining health and physical fitness. For far too long, the physical and mental health of the American people has been neglected. Rates of obesity, chronic disease, inactivity, and poor nutrition are at crisis levels, particularly among our children. These trends weaken our economy, military readiness, academic performance, and national morale. President Eisenhower recognized this issue when he created the President’s Council on Youth Fitness in response to reports on the poor state of youth fitness in America. As President-elect, John F. Kennedy famously published an essay titled “The Soft American,” which outlined the imperative for improved health in order to maintain a strong and vital America. During my first term, I renamed the council the “President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition” and directed the development of a National Youth Sports Strategy, among other activities. My Administration has taken decisive action to reverse this health crisis (White House). The announcement: Rapid Response. The administration is getting practical with making America healthy again.

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.