SHERO on Sunday

Here's your lightning-fast comprehensive rundown of the week's biggest events for December 30th- January 5th, 2024.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returns to her seat after being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House on January 4, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Biden is awarding 19 recipients with the nation's highest civilian honor. (Photo by Tom Brenner/via Getty Images)

Welcome to the Sunday Recap, where you can quickly check in to review the week with a minimal time commitment, and make sure you did not miss anything. There are also several links within each snippet to give you more detail from credible and free sources if you want to dive deeper on any issue.

Quick reminder: this kind of newsletter model, which provides free, reliable independent journalism that connects the political and legal dots for everyone, works only if subscribers support our work with paid subscriptions. Consider upgrading your weekend by investing in SHERO today. THANK YOU for being a SHERO supporter — I appreciate you!

Gun Violence This Week

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 503 mass shootings in the United States in 2024. Here at SHERO, we document all mass shooting incidents for the week every Sunday, so please take a moment to review them and remember to keep up the fight for sensible gun reform. There were nine separate mass shooting incidents in the United States this past week, where six people were killed and 48 were injured.

1. Monday, December 30, 2024: Rochester, New York

2. Monday, December 30, 2024: Bronx, New York

3. Tuesday, December 31, 2024: Oakland, California

4. Tuesday, December 31, 2024: Natchez, Mississippi

5. Wednesday, January 1, 2025: Dallas, Texas

6. Wednesday, January 1, 2025: Kankakee, Illinois

7. Wednesday, January 1, 2025: Queens, New York

8. Wednesday, January 1, 2025: New Orleans, Louisiana

9. Friday, January 3, 2024: Washington, District of Columbia

• A handful of off-year state elections are taking place in 2025, and are especially important to combat this helpless feeling as Donald Trump takes office again. Don't lose focus, there is still MAJOR work to be done leading into the next Midterm Election. More information on these races can be found here.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook will personally donate $1 million to Donald Trump's inaugural committee, reflecting a long, collaborative relationship between Trump and Cook that included many meetings during Trump's first term, and dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month. Other CEOs and companies — including Ford, General Motors, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Uber, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Kraken, Coinbase, AT&T, Charter Communications, Stanley Black & Decker, Intuit, Charter Communications, Pratt Industries and The PhRMA trade group (which includes Pfizer, Merck, Abbvie and Johnson &Johnson) — have all made substantial donations in their efforts to flatter the incoming administration.

• Donald Trump will attempt to have his Cabinet appointees confirmed in the next few weeks, once he is sworn in on January 20, 2025. In order to keep track of these nominees, bookmark this article from SHERO here:

• Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States and the US Surgeon General now wants a warning label on alcohol similar to the one on cigarettes. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s newest Advisory suggests that even small amounts of alcohol could be harmful and may increase your risk of developing cancer.

• Even though Donald Trump has preemptively asked the United States Supreme Court to block a law from going into effect that will essentially ban TikTok in the US unless its owner, ByteDance, is sold to a company outside of China. That law is set to take effect later this month.