SHERO on Sunday

A lightning-fast recap of the week's most significant political and legal events for July 6th - 12th, 2026, before we are on to the next!

(Lorenzo Salgado Araujo worked hard for 35 years to send all three of his American citizen sons to college. He was driving to work through a popular neighborhood when ICE agents killed him. He was shot in the abdomen and lay moaning while no agents helped him. He had no criminal record. He was shot and killed by ICE agents.)

Lindsey Graham has died from “a brief and sudden illness” after returning from Ukraine on Saturday. He was 71.

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 21 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which 12 people were killed and 99 were injured.

1. Sunday, July 5, 2026: St. Louis, Missouri

2. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Rittman, Ohio

3. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Pensacola, Florida

4. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

5. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Boston, Massachusetts

6. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Aliquippa, Pennsylvania

7. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Fort Wayne, Indiana

8. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Boston, Massachusetts

9. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Grand Rapids, Michigan

10. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Gary, Indiana

11. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Bakersfield, California

12. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Los Angeles, California

13. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Raleigh, North Carolina

14. Sunday, July 5, 2026: Buffalo, New York

15. Monday, July 6, 2026: Minneapolis, Minnesota

16. Monday, July 6, 2026: Providence, Rhode Island

17. Monday, July 6, 2026: Seattle, Washington

18. Monday, July 6, 2026: Chesapeake, Virginia

19. Monday, July 6, 2026: Cleveland, Ohio

20. Thursday, July 9, 2026: Savannah, Georgia

21. Friday, July 10, 2026: Lehigh Acres, Florida

22. Friday, July 10, 2026: Atlanta, Georgia

• Federal officials are refusing to release the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who fatally shot a Mexican man during a traffic stop in Houston, and scrutiny of the shooting is growing especially, after authorities said the man killed was not the person ICE was trying to find.

• The Trump administration has tapped former geochemist Matthew Wielicki, who has railed against “climate alarmism” and calls himself an “Earth science professor-in-exile,” to oversee the federal government’s flagship report about climate impacts on the US. Wielicki, who will now lead the nation’s Global Change Research Program, lacks formal training in climate science.

• Federal judges have spent a full year overwhelmingly rejecting ICE’s effort to lock up people the Trump administration is seeking to deport — finding a combination of illegality, unconstitutionality, incompetence and cruelty at a shocking scale.

• The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7 billion of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.125 billion into boosting coal, which is pushing up Americans’ bills.

• FBI Director Kash Patel has been demanding special perks from bureau employees during his taxpayer-funded travels throughout the country, including helicopter tours and jet ski excursions, according to whistleblower accounts given to Democrats in Congress.

• Trump administration appointees have overruled moves by career Department of Justice attorneys who had proposed suits or launched reviews to assess how the company mergers and acquisitions might lead to unfair price gouging for both consumers and taxpayers.