SHERO on Sunday

Welcome to a lightning-fast comprehensive recap of the week's biggest events for June 3rd - 9th, 2024.

An American and French flag sit side-by-side on a beach at Normandy, France on June 6, 2024, the anniversary of the D-Day landing in World War II. (Photo by Chiara Benilli/via Getty Images)

Welcome everyone 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 will now provide free, reliable independent journalism that connects the political and legal dots to everyone, only works if subscribers support our work with paid subscriptions. Consider upgrading your weekend by investing in SHERO today. Thanks for being a SHERO supporter!

Gun Violence This Week

There were 15 separate mass shooting incidents in the United States this past week, where 11 people were killed and 84 were injured. 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. 

1. Sunday, June 2: 2024: Louisville, Kentucky

2. Sunday, June 2: 2024: St. Louis, Missouri

3. Sunday, June 2: 2024: Newport News, Virginia

4. Sunday, June 2: 2024: Pensacola, Florida

5. Sunday, June 2: 2024: Akron, Ohio

6. Sunday, June 2: 2024: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

7. Monday, June 3, 2024: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

8. Monday, June 3, 2024: Triangle, Virginia

9. Monday, June 3, 2024: Memphis, Tennessee

10. Thursday, June 6, 2024: Kansas City, Missouri

11. Friday, June 7, 2024: St. Louis, Missouri

12. Friday, June 7, 2024: Compton, California

13. Friday, June 7, 2024: Seabrook, South Carolina

14. Saturday, June 8, 2024: Charlotte, North Carolina

15. Saturday, June 8, 2024: Sioux Falls, South Dakota

• The US has a far higher rate of maternal mortality than other peer wealthy nations, and an extraordinary disparity between white and Black Americans, according to a new brief released by the Commonwealth Fund.

• Financial disclosures made by the US House and Senate show the MAGA group, Conservative Partnership Institute, provided at least 21 luxury retreats for Senators and Representatives between 2021 and 2024 to prepare Republicans for instituting a more streamlined Trump agenda in 2024. For more on this, read:

• The addresses and phone numbers of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's family members were posted to a doxxing website this week after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in connection with a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election.

• Tesla's shares fell nearly 30% this year and have fallen by more than 50% since their 2021 high, wiping out some $600 billion in market value as CEO Elon Musk has struggled with fierce competition and falling sales.

• Claudia Sheinbaum won a landslide victory to become Mexico's first female president last Sunday, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador whose popularity among the poor helped drive Sheinbaum’s triumph.

• Former top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday strongly denied suppressing the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak in China, telling lawmakers he never influenced research on the origins of the virus.

  In his first time addressing the allegations publicly since a 14-hour hearing held behind closed doors in January, Fauci also reiterated that he believes the most likely origin of the pandemic was animal-to-human transmission.

• On Monday, Ohio State Representative Al Cutrona (R-Canfield) introduced Ohio House Bill 622, that seeks to defund public libraries if so-called “harmful” materials aren’t removed or hidden from the public. This latest bill is intended to work in tandem with the latest Republican attempt to criminalize the distribution of books that have been deemed "obscene."

• A jury was seated on Monday in the federal gun case against the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

• The CFO for the Epoch Times — an outlet founded by Chinese dissidents that became a prominent right-wing media outlet that trafficked in conspiracy theories — was charged on Monday with laundering at least $67 million in illegally obtained funds.

• On Tuesday, President Biden unveiled a new executive order tightening asylum limits at the US-Mexico border that will temporarily bar undocumented immigrants who enter the US at the southern border from obtaining asylum, except in certain cases, and make it easier for US Border Patrol agents to deport these people quickly.

  

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which sought to stoke religious tensions in India and erode human rights and muzzle the press, lost its majority on Tuesday after a 47-day election marathon, meaning the party would have to rely on allies to form a government.

• US Attorney General Merrick Garland gave defiant testimony on Tuesday, saying he would not allow politics to interfere with Department of Justice independent criminal investigations, and accused Republicans in Congress of peddling conspiracy theories that could endanger law enforcement.

• All but two Senate Republicans voted to block the Right to Contraception Act on Wednesday, refusing to protect that right after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the right to abortion.

  

• On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), placating Donald Trump and the right-wing of his caucus, appointed Scott Perry (R-LA) and Ronny Jackson (R-TX) to fill two open slots on the House Intelligence Committee, granting MAGA loyalists regular access to sensitive, highly classified government material.

  Perry is currently under federal investigation over his and Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election. In 2022, a Department of Defense investigation found that Jackson had gotten regularly drunk and abused subordinates during his service as rear admiral.

  

• The Supreme Court sided with Native American tribes on Thursday in a dispute with the federal government over the cost of health care when tribes run programs in their own communities.

• On Thursday, a federal judge ordered Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, to report to prison by July 1 for his conviction on defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee.

• Trump attended a fundraiser on Thursday, hosted by two tech venture capitalists in San Francisco — David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya — at a high-dollar event expected to draw Silicon Valley investors turned off by the Biden administration's policies.

• The Georgia Court of Appeals halted proceedings in Trump's 2020 election case on Thursday while it reviews a trial judge's ruling that allows Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case.

• Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday in an airstrike that it said targeted and killed Hamas fighters inside, while a Hamas official said 40 people including women and children were killed as they sheltered.

• Leaders, veterans and visitors from around the world paid tribute on Thursday to the D-Day generation in ceremonies on and around the Normandy beaches where the Allies landed exactly 80 years ago.

• Justice Clarence Thomas belatedly acknowledged that Republican billionaire Harlan Crow paid for Thomas’ accommodations during trips in 2019 to Bali and Sonoma County, in a disclosure that was made public on Friday that comes amid unprecedented scrutiny of the Supreme Court and the wealthy benefactors close to the justices.

---

Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.

Paid subscriptions and one-time tributes embedded in each article allow me to keep publishing critical and informative work that is sometimes made available to the public — thank you. If you like this piece and want to support independent journalism further, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription or gift subscription, or donate as much as you like today.