Mission Accomplished: President Trump Gets NATO Members to Spend More on Defense

“President Trump’s intense pressure on fellow NATO member countries to spend more on defense paid off Thursday with countries committing to spend $33 billion this year,” S.A. Miller reports in The Washington Times. “NATO members also committed to accelerating the timetable to reach the agreed upon spending level of 2 percent of GDP, Mr. Trump said at a press conference at the NATO summit in Brussels.”

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In The Hill, Buck Sexton writes that America’s commitment to our NATO friends is unwavering. President Trump’s goal is "trying to shake things up and a get a better deal for the American taxpayer — and encourage NATO to be more of an alliance than a dependency.”

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“Many of the people in major federal safety-net programs could work but don’t, according to a new White House study,” Joseph Lawler reports in the Washington Examiner. “The analysis, published Thursday by the Council of Economic Advisers, helps provide a basis for the Trump administration’s push for ‘welfare reform’ in the form of more work requirements for safety-net programs.”

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“When I visit Chicagoland Friday, I will deliver an important message to the hardworking men and women of Illinois, on behalf of President Donald Trump: Our agenda is delivering results for the Land of Lincoln and we're just getting started,” Vice President Mike Pence writes in Chicago’s Daily Herald.

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In MarketWatch, Jeffry Bartash reports that “initial jobless claims, a tracker of sorts for layoffs in the U.S., sank in the first week of July toward the lowest levels in almost 50 years,” according to the Department of Labor. Bartash explains that the unusually low number of layoffs reflects the healthiest U.S. jobs market in decades.