SHERO on Sunday

A lightning-fast recap of the week's most significant political and legal events for June 15th - 21st, 2026, before we are on to the next!

A piece of the new “American Flag Blue” paint peels off from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool on June 18, 2026, in Washington, DC, and the algae levels also spiked days after the renovation, which cost nearly $16 million. (Photo by Christine Kao/via Getty Images)

Welcome to the Sunday Recap, where you can quickly check in to review the week with minimal time commitment and ensure you don’t miss a thing. Each snippet includes several links to credible and free sources, providing more details for those who want to delve deeper into any issue. This kind of newsletter model, which provides free, reliable, independent journalism that connects the political and legal dots for everyone, only works if subscribers support our work with paid subscriptions. There is a lot to cover for this week, so let’s get started!

Gun Violence This Week

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 11 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, where four people were killed, and 52 were injured.

1. Sunday, June 14, 2026: Lexington, Mississippi

2. Sunday, June 14, 2026: Columbia, South Carolina

3. Monday, June 15, 2026: Lithonia, Georgia

4. Tuesday, June 16, 2026: Kansas City, Missouri

5. Wednesday, June 17, 2026: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

6. Wednesday, June 17, 2026: Amarillo, Texas

7. Thursday, June 19: 2026: Chicago, Illinois

8. Thursday, June 19: 2026: Kansas City, Missouri

9. Thursday, June 19: 2026: Milwaukee, Wisconsin

10. Thursday, June 19: 2026: Kansas City, Missouri

11. Friday, June 20, 2026: Hanover, Maryland

• Last month, Donald Trump’s financial disclosures showed he made over 3,400 trades worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the first fiscal quarter of 2026, which is unprecedented for a sitting president. Last week, a closed-door vote failed to stop it. For more on this issue, read: Trump and his Stock Advantage.

• A series of talking points, sent to Trump supporters and Republican Members of Congress this week by the White House, informed supporters that Donald Trump has accomplished his goals in the war with Iran despite the details of an initial agreement remaining unclear and negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program still to be held.

• Five months after the demolition of the White House East Wing, Donald Trump claimed that the project to build a massive ballroom and a bunker in its place would cost up to $400 million and that private donors would pay for it all.

• But a detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the contractor, more than three weeks before Trump’s comments, estimated the total construction cost at $600 million, with more than half coming from taxpayers, according to a copy of the contractor’s estimate.

• Senate lawmakers have tucked a provision into the Senate Armed Services Committee’s defense policy bill that would withhold 75% of Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until lawmakers receive the documentation concerning the deadly bombing of an Iranian girls' school in February and full videos of lethal strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the waters off Latin America.