Newly declassified documents from the Durham report suggest Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved the Russia-collusion narrative to distract from her email scandal. President Trump’s trade deadline arrives, hitting countries like India, Brazil, and Canada with steep new tariffs while South Korea secures a last-minute deal. A Daily Wire exclusive reveals that Massachusetts police are being trained to view the parental rights group Moms for Liberty as a “hate group,” based on SPLC designations.
It’s Friday, August 1, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
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Russiagate Points to Hillary Clinton
Topline: Newly declassified documents from the Durham report, released by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday, suggest the Obama-era FBI ignored intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign approved a plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia to distract from her email server scandal.
The declassified annex shows the Obama administration received intelligence in 2016 that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to smear her rival Donald Trump by linking him to Russia. The goal was reportedly to derail the FBI’s investigation into her unauthorized use of a private email server. The plan allegedly involved Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, and the firm Fusion GPS hiring former British spy Christopher Steele to create the narrative.
According to the documents, high-ranking Obama officials were made aware of the Clinton plan. CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey on the matter in a White House meeting on August 3, 2016. The CIA later sent an investigative referral to the FBI about the “purported Clinton campaign plan.”
In a heavily redacted section, the annex reveals that the CIA prepared a written assessment in 2017 and “did not assess … the … memoranda … to be the product of Russian fabrications.” In other words, the agency found the intelligence regarding the Clinton plan to be credible. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that he has made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. In a statement, Senator Grassley called the affair “one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.”
Trump’s Tariff Deadline Arrives
Topline: The White House updated its tariff plan on Thursday evening, hours before President Trump’s deadline for new trade agreements was set to kick in.
The new plan pushes the implementation of tariffs on most countries back a week from August 1 to August 7 to give Customs and Border Patrol officials time to adjust to the new levies leveled at dozens of countries. The new plan also reveals a host of tariff rates that are set to kick in.
India will now be hit with a 25% tariff, plus an additional secondary tariff for continuing to buy Russian oil. “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The move prompted Indian state refiners to pause all purchases of Russian oil.
Brazil was hit with sanctions and a 50% tariff, the largest of all, due to its large trade deficit and what Trump calls the political persecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Canada, America’s second-largest trading partner, now faces a 35% tariff that took effect at midnight on August 1. The president linked the failure to secure a deal with Canada’s recent announcement that it would back a Palestinian state.
There were also several deals made as Trump’s August 1 deadline approached. The U.S. finalized a major agreement with South Korea, which includes a 15% tariff on Korean imports in exchange for a $350 billion investment in American businesses and the purchase of an additional $100 billion in natural gas. A deal was also reached with Pakistan.
Mexico was the only country granted an extension as border security negotiations continue.
Massachusetts Police Trained That ‘Moms for Liberty’ Is a Hate Group
Topline: A Daily Wire exclusive reveals that police training materials in Massachusetts list the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty as a “hate group,” citing the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center as a source.
Moms for Liberty obtained the training materials from the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee through a Freedom of Information request. The documents list the parental rights group in a section on hate groups alongside neo-Nazi organizations and “Antifa.” The training cites the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has labeled Moms for Liberty an “anti-government extremist” group, as its source.
“It’s crazy that we are in a time when Moms for Liberty is listed in this training … with neo-Nazi groups, with Antifa,” Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told Morning Wire. “Moms for Liberty is here to show up at school board meetings … Antifa is burning down whole cities. … These two are not equivalent.”
The training materials claim that Moms for Liberty uses “parents rights as a vehicle to attack public education and make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students.” The training links to biased PBS articles attacking the group, while simultaneously linking to an article that describes the violent extremist group “Antifa” as a “relatively small” threat. Descovich noted that despite the official training, local police officers often approach her members to quietly offer their support.
