SHERO on Sunday

Welcome to a lightning-fast comprehensive recap of the week's biggest events for November 11th -November 17th, 2024.

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

There were six separate mass shooting incidents in the United States this past week, where nine people were killed and 26 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, November 10, 2024: Laurel, Mississippi

2. Sunday, November 10, 2024: Atlanta, Georgia

3. Sunday, November 10, 2024: Wichita, Kansas

4. Sunday, November 10, 2024: Tuskegee, Alabama

5. Friday, November 15, 2024: National City, California

6. Saturday, November 16, 2024: Lancaster, California

• Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Smith’s office has been evaluating the best path for winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump, as the Justice Department’s longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime.

• Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), say Twitter (X) changed its algorithm to promote Elon Musk and Republican posts leading up to the election: "The date at which [the spike] in engagement occurs coincides with Elon Musk's formal endorsement of Donald Trump on 13th July 2024."

  

• A woman who is challenging Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban and six-week ban, is arguing the bans are a violation of the right to privacy and self-determination, and is requesting class-action status for those who may become pregnant, but are unable to access abortions.

• House Republicans will hold onto a thin majority, and while the chamber’s exact partisan divide is still to be determined as votes are tallied in a handful of states, the results of 435 House races nationwide have produced hardly any change to the makeup of the chamber.

• Trump is expected to nominate Senator Marco “Little Marco” Rubio (R-FL) as US Secretary of State and has asked Representative Mike Waltz to be his White House National Security Advisor. (The NSA post does not require Senate confirmation.)

• Trump is expected to name Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new agency focused on regulating spending, called the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), an acronym that is a frat boy shout out to cryptocurrency.

• The Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers, and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.

• Donald Trump has nominated Fox News pundit Pete Hegseth as his US Secretary of Defense; overseeing a budget of roughly $850 billion and roughly 3 million service members and personnel serving in the nation’s oldest-running agency, while the US is embroiled in global conflicts in a period of escalating tensions.