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!

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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 10 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which 13 people were killed and 33 were injured.

1. Sunday, August 9, 2026: Mexica, Texas

2. Tuesday, August 11. 2026: Winfield, Kansas

3. Tuesday, August 11. 2026: Wilmington, Delaware

4. Friday, August 14, 2026: Lake City, Michigan

5. Saturday, August 15, 2026: Kansas City, Missouri

6. Saturday, August 15, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

7. Saturday, August 15, 2026: Houston, Texas

8. Saturday, August 15, 2026: Lexington, Kentucky

9. Saturday, August 15, 2026: Petersburg, Virginia

10. Sunday, August 16, 2026: Hartford, Connecticut

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• Last month, the head of Belgium’s diamond industry presented Donald Trump with a gift: a specially made 18-karat gold ring worth an estimated $25,000, celebrating Trump’s two terms in office. Four weeks later, his administration approved a tariff exemption worth billions of dollars to Belgium’s diamond industry.

• An Iranian assassination threat against Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which Trump flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft. At the same time, the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, and the crew and staff continued, still at risk.

  

• The Florida-based beef company, Corte Argentino USA LLC, recalled over 29,600 pounds of raw beef imported from Argentina this week that were delivered into Florida and Texas without a follow-up inspection after arriving in the US, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

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A new memo from the United States Department of Justice appeared overnight, which attempts to give President Donald Trump sweeping new authority to hide his communications with anyone from public view, allowing anyone who Trump designates to be an “adviser” to shield their communications from the public or Congressional inquiry.

The memo, signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, defines “private advisers” broadly in an attempt to include anyone who speaks to the president at any time. Gaiser also makes a specific point to enumerate all of the many ways that would constitute this new Trump-imposed caveat of protected communication.

“For the purposes of this memorandum, we use the term ‘private advisers’ to include anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch, whether they be members of the public, state officials, or employees of other branches of the federal government,” pontificates Gaiser, as he attempts to grossly manipulate Constitutional law principles to suit Trump’s site-specific immunity needs.

There are several reasons why the Trump administration would literally attempt to create privilege doctrine out of thin air, and the impending power shift in November as Democrats attempt to take control of both the US House and Senate is first among them. When the Democrats regain power after the November midterms, they will immediately launch investigations into the Trump administration and issue subpoenas for everyone who has been in contact with Donald Trump, or even just in his orbit.

The memo, frantically issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel last night, attempts to rewrite the boundaries of presidential executive privilege, just in time for the Democrats in Congress to start issuing subpoenas in the fall. While this new legal guidance is not legally binding, it will give the Trump administration an argument in the Courts for delaying compliance. While this new directive may not be legally binding in the long run, it will serve its short-term purpose — to tie up the subpoenas and delay any testimony or fact-finding long enough for Trump to find another excuse.

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Another reason for issuing this legal protocol for the Department of Justice is to serve as a roadmap for where the agency is heading in terms of defending or pursuing legal cases. The Trump administration recently responded to a lawsuit filed by the American Bar Association (ABA) in which Trump’s Department of Justice brazenly subpoenaed law firms in an attempt to block the ABA’s request for communications between the White House and Trump’s outside lawyer Boris Epshteyn.

Executive privilege has long been asserted for lawyers directly employed by the White House, but this new opinion concludes that executive privilege can apply to presidential communications with private advisers so long as three things occur: “the conversation relates to official presidential decision-making; involves or reflects communications with the [p]resident or his direct advisers, and the communications are confidential.” The impending ABA case, which is headed to the US Supreme Court on appeal, deals directly with this issue.

On July 21st, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the convictions of Peter Navarro, former senior White House aide in President Donald Trump’s first administration. In United States v. Navarro, that DC Circuit panel reaffirmed that the president alone holds executive privilege, and that a mistaken belief of non-compliance with a congressional subpoena will not defend against contempt of Congress charges.

The convictions involved two counts of criminal contempt of Congress and held that “privilege must be claimed by the [p]resident (current or former) or an official authorized by the [p]resident to claim it.” The panel court also rejected Navarro’s argument that his good-faith mistaken belief that executive privilege was invoked could excuse his non-compliance with a congressional subpoena, based on the legal definition of “willfulness” under Section 192, which requires only a deliberate default, not a correct understanding of the validity of the subpoena.

This opinion significantly raises the stakes surrounding both the assertion of executive privilege and decisions regarding compliance with congressional subpoenas. Given the potential shift of political power in Congress this fall, this slip opinion could serve as a last-ditch effort to stave off prosecutions while Donald Trump is still in office and still able to persuade Americans that he is being unjustly prosecuted. As for proof that Donald Trump is aware of the stakes in November and is closely paying attention to what is coming and making his own plans, there you have it.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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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!

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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 12 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which nine people were killed and 51 were injured.

1. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Portland, Oregon

2. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Dunn, North Carolina

3. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Huntsville, Alabama

4. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Yonkers, New York

5. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Greensboro, North Carolina

6. Sunday, August 2, 2026: Rochester, New York

7. Monday, August 3, 2026: Oak Park, Michigan

8. Monday, August 3, 2026: Boston, Massachusetts

9. Monday, August 3, 2026: Norfolk, Virginia

10. Monday, August 3, 2026: Raleigh, North Carolina

11. Tuesday, August 4. 2026: Pensacola, Florida

12. Friday, August 7, 2026: Tulsa, Oklahoma

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• A new report from Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee this week confirms that more than a dozen bankers at JPMorganChase, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank were aware of suspicious transactions made by Jeffrey Epstein as far back as 2002.

• The Trump administration abruptly terminated tens of millions in funding this week for groups teaching children and teenagers about how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in specific states that did not vote for Trump in 2024.

• The judge hearing the antitrust case seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger issued a preliminary scheduling order this week to start in March 2027, which is a substantial delay in the merger for Paramount.

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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!

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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 eight separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which five people were killed and 36 were injured.

1. Sunday, July 26, 2026: Grand Haven, Michigan

2. Sunday, July 26, 2026: Seattle, Washington

3. Sunday, July 26, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

4. Sunday, July 26, 2026: Memphis, Tennessee

5. Monday, July 27, 2026: Jacksonville, Florida

6. Thursday, July 30, 2026: Dayton, Ohio

7. Saturday, August 1, 2026: Twin Falls, Ohio

8. Saturday, August 1, 2026: Jacksonville, Florida

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• American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages. The conflict, now in its sixth month, halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that previously served as a delivery route for a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas.

• The Trump administration plans to end a program that gives $3.6 billion in subsidies to blunt increases in premiums for the Medicare prescription plans, known as Part D, that will leave many seniors facing higher rates for their prescription coverage in 2026.

• Citing “irreparable harm,” the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the president’s executive order seeking restrictions on voting by mail to take effect ahead of the Midterm Election, following its previous restriction by a federal appeals court. (The order, which Trump signed in March, calls on the US Postal Service to restrict the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that have not complied with the Trump administration’s directive to disclose an entire list of eligible voters for the state.)

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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!

Upgrade to Paid Now

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 14 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which 12 people were killed and 82 were injured.

1. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Kansas City, Missouri

2. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Baltimore, Maryland

3. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Tucson, Arizona

4. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Minneapolis, Minnesota

5. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Denmark, Tennessee

6. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Asheville, North Carolina

7. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

8. Sunday, July 19, 2026: Minneapolis, Minnesota

9. Monday, July 20, 2026: Denver, Colorado

10. Wednesday, July 22, 2026: Dallas, Texas

11. Wednesday, July 22, 2026: Atlanta, Georgia

12. Friday, July 24, 2026: Grand Haven, Michigan

13. Saturday, July 25, 2026: San Francisco, California

14. Sunday, July 26, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

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• Two political action committees affiliated with President Donald Trump paid nearly $8 million in legal bills over the first six months of this year, paying law firms that have been defending him in personal and political court fights that have trailed him through 18 months of his second term.

• Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking survivor and advocate Liz Stein testified and spoke on Capitol Hill this week, urging senators to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination for US Attorney General, and she criticized the Department of Justice for failing to implement the Epstein Files Transparency Act properly.

• Donald Trump is widely expected to announce an agreement allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich nuclear fuel in a deal that includes concessions critics say would make it easier for the kingdom to develop nuclear weapons and one that comes as Trump and his family have strengthened their business ties to Saudi Arabia during his second term.

• Last week, documents were published publicly via a court case filed by a group of California researchers challenging various federal agencies that have canceled Biden-era funding, which proved Donald Trump specifically withheld federal funding for education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term, as political retribution.

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Earlier this year, the Stop Insider Trading Act was cultivated and pushed by Republican House Administration Chair Bryan Steil and would have prohibited members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from buying any new stocks. It would have allowed them to keep the stocks they already own, as well as buy and sell diversified investment funds.

This latest agreement was birthed from a movement at the end of last year by some Democrats and a few Republicans to create a stricter consensus bill, which would require lawmakers to sell off all of their stocks within 90 days of taking office to ensure that no one could make more votes to benefit their current stock portfolio.

A discharge petition on the stricter consensus bill was filed by Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna at the end of last year and earned 84 signatures, including 15 Republicans, which would have been enough to tip the scales and force a floor vote if most Democrats had gotten on board. Ultimately, that bill lost momentum as Democrats also demanded that any stock-trading ban also include top executive branch officials like the president and vice president.

“If Republicans were serious about cleaning up corruption in this town, they would start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told reporters last week. By the beginning of this week, House Republicans went on the attack when Luna told the press that “Hakeem Jeffries killed the discharge petition.”

What Democrats did was actually introduce their own legislation into the bill, which would have included executive branch positions in the ban against stock trading. At that point, House Republicans turned what began as an honest, bipartisan attempt to curb stock trading abuse by members of Congress into a completely unrelated voter-ID bill that will have no support from Democrats.

As it stands now, H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, would restrict members of Congress, their spouses, and their children from purchasing new individual stocks while in office. But this version of legislation falls short of other initial proposed legislation that would require all elected officials to divest from all stock holdings while in office.

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The bill with the new amendments also fails to ban congressional insider trading outright, and it does not address the abuse of insider trading by a sitting president and vice president, or any executive branch officers or Cabinet members. The final way in which Republicans intend to “kill the bill” is to pass portions of Trump’s SAVE America Act, and House Republicans have amended H.R. 7008 to include the addition of H.R. 9368, the Voter ID Act, which would implement all of the same restrictive voter ID provisions from the comprehensive version of the SAVE Act.

Here’s the truth that no Republican will mutter out loud — the Congressional “insider trading bill” was dead the second Democrats rolled Trump into the group of people who could no longer manipulate the stock market. At this moment in time, very few members of the Republican Party are willing to stand up against Trump on any issue, so they have tanked the bill with this ridiculous “voter ID amendment” and then blamed Democrats for rewriting the bill and then sinking it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sums it up perfectly: “Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week. They say we are voting on an ‘insider trading’ bill, but have snuck in massive SAVE Act-style voter suppression measures to it.” AOC continues, “This is a GOP effort to sabotage national mail-in voting, disguised as a trading ban. I’m voting NO.”

“If [the] GOP were at all serious about the insider trading issue, they would put it up on its own for a vote,” says AOC. “They know adding voter suppression to it will sabotage the effort to ban insider trading, she continues. “That’s exactly why they’re doing it this way. Don’t fall for it. Spread the word.”

It would be amazing if all of the constituents in Republican Districts would call their representatives’ local offices and tell them they see right through this scheme, you know, to add an even greater sense of “Beware the Ides of March” foreboding and overwhelming doom as the Midterm elections approach. Right now, please send this article to everyone to make sure we are doing our part to spread the word.

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

Make a One Time SHERO Tribute Now

Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

Share SHERO

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!

Upgrade to Paid Now

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 13 separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, in which 12 people were killed and 47 were injured.

1. Sunday, July 12, 2026: East St. Louis, Illinois

2. Sunday, July 12, 2026: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

3. Sunday, July 12, 2026: Florence, South Carolina

4. Sunday, July 12, 2026: Philadelphia, Mississippi

5. Monday, July 13, 2026: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

6. Monday, July 13, 2026: Exmore, Virginia

7. Tuesday, July 14, 2026: Louisville, Kentucky

8. Thursday, July 16, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

9. Thursday, July 16, 2026: Dallas, Texas

10. Thursday, July 16, 2026: Shreveport, Louisiana

11. Friday, July 17, 2026: Detroit, Michigan

12. Saturday, July 18, 2026: Rockford, Illinois

13. Saturday, July 18, 2026: Newark, Delaware

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• Federal agents were directed in recent days not to investigate the ICE killings of innocent civilians to ensure that evidence would not be used to prosecute DHS agents implicated in those murders.

• A new analysis from oil and gas consultancy SIA Energy has revealed that countries are forging a new energy path, sourcing renewable and electric vehicle technologies from China, as a result of Trump’s illegal war in Iran.

• Israel’s defense and finance ministers announced plans this week for three illegal settlements in Gaza and more than $400 million in funding to expand construction in the occupied West Bank, as Israel’s military commander for the region celebrated violent outposts as his “security partners.” With national elections scheduled for 27 October, Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is racing to expand control of land in occupied Palestine and drive out Palestinians before its mandate expires.

• Republicans in North Carolina, who control state and county election boards, have attempted to move early voting sites off college campuses, which would reduce Sunday voting in a blatant attempt to make it harder for students and Black voters to cast ballots, and this week, they got caught. For more on this:

• Ken Kies, the Internal Revenue Service’s acting chief counsel and Treasury Department assistant secretary for tax policy, was forced out this week from his role after refusing White House demands to participate in tax auditsthat would violate a law prohibiting the president, vice president and other ​White House officials from ordering the IRS to “conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any ​particular taxpayer.”

• The Secret Handshake, the anonymous art protest group that creates public art along the National Mall for political commentary, including the statues of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, was back at work this year with a new installation on the National Mall aimed at Donald Trump and the Iran War.

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Republicans in North Carolina, who control state and county election boards, have attempted to move early voting sites off college campuses, which would reduce Sunday voting in a blatant attempt to make it harder for students and Black voters to cast ballots.

Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina stripped Democratic Governor Josh Stein of responsibility for overseeing state and county election boards in 2024. They replaced him with North Carolina State Auditor and Trump loyalist Dave Boliek. Under Boliek and his appointed lackey, Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse, the state board of elections and all 100 county election boards have switched to GOP majorities, which ratified legislation shifting the majority of the state board and all 100 county election boards from Democratic to Republican control.

In counties with heavy GOP majorities like Jackson, Pasquotank, and Wake Counties, Republicans at the state level used tactics, employed by Woodhouse, to pressure local election officials to move early voting sites away from college campuses. Last week, according to reports by the local news organization The Daily Advance, a recent text message between Woodhouse and Larry Beatty, the Republican chairman of the five-member Pasquotank Board of Elections, revealed the crux of the Republican strategy to turn down the liberal vote in the Midterms.

Dallas Woodhouse, the former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, earned a salary of $110,000 to serve as an election “liaison” with the county boards. Boliek positioned Woodhouse to influence and control election workers within the Research Triangle, a region home to three powerhouse universities rife with liberal and independent voters.

Woodhouse and Boliek worked to ensure that the new Jackson County Board of Elections would shut down a polling place on campus at Western Carolina University. In the Triangle, the Wake County Board of Elections also recently voted to eliminate a longtime early voting site at North Carolina State’s Student Union and to move it to a remote part of campus, which was also helpful.

“Drop Sunday,” texted Woodhouse to Chair Larry Beatty, in an effort to pressure county board members to reduce their early voting locations, a move that Republicans believe will directly help their party win the election.

“Don’t let them have a vote,” read another text message from Dallas Woodhouse to Bill Thompson, the Republican Chairman of the Jackson County Board, regarding an upcoming vote of the county board on a new early-voting plan, according to records obtained by another news outlet, NC Local. Woodhouse also gave Thompson instructions on how to respond to questions from a local reporter.

“Go ahead and tell Lynn Bonner when she calls that there are concerns by you, local party members people in Raleigh that opening a new site and closing a long standing one in A general is bad practice. This has nothing to do with voting or not voting on campus,” read the text from Woodhouse to Thompson. “If you want text her this and anybody else who needs a quote,” Woodhouse continued, including Bonner’s cell phone number.

Woodhouse continued to sell his proposition to Thompson via text: “There are strong feeling[sic] among people in the local party, community members and folks in Raleigh that it is unwise to close that Rec center site that has been used for nearly two decades by community members and open a new site that has never been used in a high stakes general election. The concern is less about where the new site is, but the appropriateness and wisdom of closing a long standing community site the public has long vote at. It’s just not an operationally sound move.”

Ultimately, Thompson and fellow board member Jay Pavey said they were pressured by leaders at the state level at that June meeting to vote against a plan to have a campus-based early voting site at Western Carolina University. Pavey cited “pressure from Raleigh” before breaking with his party to join the board’s two Democratic members in favor of a plan to bring a site back on campus.

On May 28, Woodhouse flexed his power again when he sent a text to Thompson that also addressed Christian Frailey, chief counsel of the North Carolina Republican Party, and Gail Debnam, a Jackson County resident and former board member who Woodhouse said was interested in again serving on the Jackson board, after a new position became available days earlier.

“Christian: Gail Debnam, former Jackson BOE chair is rejoining the Jackson County Board. Please help her with the paperwork,” the text reads. “We will get it to the NCSBE and they may have to call a special meeting for the appointment (FYI, does anybody have Wes’s actual resignation letter?)”

“Gail understands we can’t shut down the Cullowee [sic] Rec center to move to the Health and Human Services [sic] building. The four sites in the primary worked fine and we want that to the status Quo going forward. Gail, thanks for your willingness.”

In another message the same day, Woodhouse sent a County Board of Elections application to Jackson County Republican Chair Justin Castle and Thompson confirming: “the new member. needs to fill this out and send to ncgop or me.” 

Now that this information has been made public, Democrats in North Carolina are concerned by the moves just ahead of a huge Midterm election. As a result of the many proposed changes, which have all failed to earn unanimous votes from the county boards, more than a dozen local issues are in dispute and will be resolved in August by the State Board of Elections, which also has a Republican majority appointed by Mr. Boliek.

Dallas Woodhouse resigned on Monday due to the leaked texts in an effort to save the work he and Boliek had already accomplished, but the issue of whether Woodhouse was able to actually do any irreparable harm this close to a major election is something that we won’t be able to answer clearly until after the election. Until then, we will have to take solace in the fact that on one day in May, a good ole boy from North Carolina, who was heavy into local Republican politics and looking to get further, stood up to the Trump carpetbaggers and refused to put party over country. Little miracles. 

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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A new analysis from oil and gas consultancy SIA Energy has revealed that countries are forging a new energy path, sourcing renewable and electric vehicle technologies from China. Between January and May of this year, China exported more than 2 million electric passenger vehicles, with nearly half of those exports occurring in April and May. “If China’s car industry were handing out a salesman of the year award for 2026, President Trump would be a leading contender,” a SIA Energy note on the report reads.

According to the International Energy Agency, global electric vehicle use last year helped the world avoid consuming about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day. (For reference, the daily crude oil production of Nigeria is 1.56 million barrels per day. ) In 2025, electric car sales grew 20% globally, exceeding 20 million and meaning that one-quarter of all new cars sold were electric vehicles.

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Europe saw the strongest growth among major electric vehicle (EV) markets, primarily due to the European Union’s (EU) fuel economy and CO2 standards. Ultimately, in 2025, electric vehicles accounted for nearly 55% of all car sales. Some countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, which is the largest EV market in the region, have already announced plans to expand or extend EV tax incentives as part of their response to the current energy crisis.

The initial oil crisis of the 1970s prompted the introduction of fuel-efficiency standards, which resulted in nearly a doubling of the fuel economy of conventional cars between 1975 and today. Trump’s war in Iran has only hastened the consumer movement toward electric vehicles as the price of oil has continued to skyrocket all year. Based on average oil prices in April, the annual fuel cost savings from driving an EV in the European Union grew substantially due to soaring gas prices.

Natural gas has long been considered a transitional solution to move away from dependence on coal and oil, but the ongoing fighting in Iran has underscored the risks of that proposition in the long term. “The Gulf seemed like a safe space [for sourcing natural gas], and then this happened,” says Fareed Mohamedi, managing director at SIA Energy.

Asian natural gas prices shot up over 100% from pre-war levels at their peak in March, and in recent months, countries like the Philippines and Tuvalu have faced their own war-triggered energy crises, in which governments have been forced to close schools and offices and ration fossil fuel supplies. But countries like Pakistan, which have focused their resources on investing in solar and batteries, have been able to reduce their oil and natural gas imports, which has ultimately saved the country billions of dollars.

The following is a statement from Alice Harrison, who is the Senior Director at Secure Energy Project:

“Pakistan has spent the last few years quietly building resilience to the very scenario the energy sector most feared: the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz. This will significantly soften the blow from the current energy crisis, which will hit Asia hardest.

The financial impact of Pakistan’s solar transition is stark. By February 2026, the country had avoided more than USD 12 billion in oil and gas imports that would otherwise have been needed to meet domestic energy demand. At this year’s expected market prices, Pakistan could save a further USD 6.3 billion by the end of the year.

The geopolitical context makes these savings even more significant. Pakistan imports a large share of both LNG and oil through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical and contested energy chokepoints. In 2024, despite reducing its reliance, Pakistan still ranked third globally in LNG dependence on Hormuz-transiting cargoes as a share of total consumption and fifth for oil. Any sustained disruption to the strait would send immediate shockwaves through Pakistan’s energy system.

Solar has quietly changed that calculus. As rooftop panels spread across homes, farms, and factories, demand for LNG has fallen. The clearest signal sits in Pakistan’s long-term LNG contracts, where some shipments have been diverted to international markets, and the government has been actively renegotiating terms as solar-driven displacement reduces the need for imported volumes. Without the growth of distributed solar, Pakistan would be far more exposed to the supply disruptions and price shocks now rippling out of the Middle East.”

Other countries like the Philippines — which are more directly affected by the War in Iran — are making a substantial shift toward solar and have imported more than $400 million in solar panels from February to May, an increase of 139% from a year ago.

The Iran war has come on the heels of a four-year energy crisis initially spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and this has only reinforced the dangers of relying on imported fossil fuels, says Kaushik Deb, who leads the India Team at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. “What this crisis is doing is kind of creating the need for this energy transition to happen much faster.”

Chinese solar and battery imports have changed the calculus for investments in global renewable projects, says Dele Kuti, global head of energy and infrastructure for Standard Bank, the largest bank in Africa. Kuti confirmed that in 2025, Standard Bank’s financing of renewable energy power projects outpaced that for nonrenewable power projects by a ratio of 8 to 1. “The Chinese crashed the market!” Kuti says. “We started looking at - when it comes to solar projects - it’s actually not bad from a cost perspective.” 

What is clear is that other countries are diligently seeking alternatives to natural gas and oil, and their pace is hastened by the immediacy of shortages caused by the War in Iran. While the United States continues to rely on outdated principles that show no growth in science or humanity, the rest of the world is scrambling to sustain its own country’s energy needs, and it seems that China is the only superpower to get this economic message.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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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!

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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

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• 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.

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Happy Monday, everyone! I wanted to let you know that I will be taking the holiday week off, but this felt like the perfect moment for a playlist with just the right mixed vibe of angst and hope. You can listen to it on iTunes or via Spotify here.

This holiday is typically difficult for me as it reminds me of my idyllic childhood summers in Lincoln, Nebraska, with my Dad, which always culminated in the most amazing fireworks display over Holmes Lake. But on this, the 250th year of our Nation’s Birth, I have decided to embrace the holiday and take it back for myself and for our country. Instead of dreading it and closing all the blinds, I will celebrate with my best friend, who makes everything better.

I have made a point to use the explicit versions for every song because I mean nearly every swear contained within them, so proceed with the appropriate level of caution. This playlist is the result—a site-specific, forced Fourth of July celebration that rewrites reality while still embodying our time. Be safe and have a wonderful holiday!

I recommend that you use headphones.

Listen to it on iTunes or via Spotify here.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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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. SHERO will be taking next week off to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation, but will be back at it after the holiday!

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!

Upgrade to Paid Now

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 eight separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, where six people were killed, and 33 were injured.

1. Sunday, June 21, 2026: Dallas, Texas

2. Sunday, June 21, 2026: Manhattan, New York

3. Sunday, June 21, 2026: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

4. Sunday, June 21, 2026: Petersburg, Virginia

5. Tuesday, June 23, 2026: Palm Beach, Florida

6. Thursday, June 25: 2026: Houston, Texas

7. Saturday, June 27: 2026: Marshall, Texas

8. Saturday, June 27: 2026: Boston, Massachusetts

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• The Justice Department released an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel this week that reflects the Trump administration’s intention to strip back more civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities, which have been in place for decades. The memo, a preliminary, standalone document containing a written legal interpretation issued by Department of Justice attorneys intended to guide the Executive Branch on complex constitutional and statutory questions, argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support. For more on this pressing issue, read:

• The Pentagon needs $80 billion to cover costs from the Iran War, in addition to other non-war-related bills, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg told lawmakers in phone calls this week. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has yet to make a formal request to Congress, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, including on Monday evening.

• Workforce cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began on Monday, after acting Director Bill Pulte was directed to “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office” and return some personnel to their home agencies.

• The Trump administration threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds on Monday from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, meant to go into effect just before the Midterm Elections.

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It appears Donald Trump has found his patsy at the Parks Service, who is willing to help sell his version of how the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument was actually damaged. Even though the real culprit is nature, and anyone with an elementary understanding of standing water could tell you that creating a “fountain clean” appearance with no running water is a bad idea, Trump insists on being the victim in every scenario, even his own negligence.

What the Trump administration is trying to sell is that errant vandals with an anti-MAGA agenda cut a liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with a sharp knife or razor earlier this month. As a result, the foam sealant, which was installed as part of a $16 million rehabilitation project, according to Frank Lands, a top official at the National Park Service.

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Mr. Lands went so far as to digitally sign a statement to that effect that was notarized and submitted to the US District Court on Wednesday. According to Lands, the Department of the Interior reported the “June 9 incident” involving the alleged vandalism to the US Park Police. Lands’ testimony was submitted to the court late on Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by a nonprofit organization to halt the Trump administration’s work on the reflecting pool.

Read Frank Lands’ full testimony here:

According to Lands, the police report indicates damage to the pool, “including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor and destruction of delaminating surface material.” Roughly 70 fence post tops were also allegedly “thrown” into the pool, Lands also testified, without any explanation of how he saw those items actually deposited into the pool. Lands’ testimony above states that he alleges the vandalism he never actually saw occurred on June 9, 2026.

On June 24, the United States Park Service issued the following statement on social media with an accompanying video of an alleged “incident” involving vandalism:

“On BULLETIN/BOLO: The United States Park Police is seeking assistance in identifying the individual depicted here in connection with a Destruction of Government Property investigation. The incident occurred on June 19, 2026, at approximately 3:36 p.m. at the Reflecting Pool on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Anyone with information regarding the identity of this individual is asked to contact the United States Park Police Tip Line: USPP_TIPline@nps.gov or (202) 379-4877”

This testimony by a park official is the first time the Republican administration has offered any specific details concerning the reflecting pool, as Trump and other officials have continued their baseless claims against assorted “vandals” who had used razors and box cutters to slice a 350-foot gash in the liner, in addition to other problems. Six people have been arrested, Trump said this week in a Truth Social post, without providing any details about the arrests.

One man arrested was David Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, who owned a company that made composite and used to build watercraft. Hearn a former Olympic canoe racer, said he stopped by the pool during his 64-mile bike ride Friday to see what was going on and says he reached into the pool because he wanted to examine the peeling new coating.

Hearn said he briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker instructed him to do so. But, he was then detained by National Guard troops and Park Police for five hours before being released Friday night. “I’m a curious citizen,” Hearn said in a telephone interview. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”

Ladies and gentlemen of this public jury, I present to you the most important piece of evidence in this case, that has been purposely overlooked by the Trump administration. On May 7, 2026, after the reflecting pool was painted and sealed and before it was refilled with water as part of a renovation project, Donald Trump’s motorcade drove over the surface area. Here is a local NBC affiliate confirming the bizarre event when it happened:

It’s going to be very hard for the Trump administration to prove the problems with the reflecting pool stem solely from vandalism that has never been witnessed or proven. When you add to that the damage inflicted on the liner and the pool’s foundation when Donald Trump instructed his Secret Service motorcade to drive over the surface, you have no credible argument left that the supposed vandalism was the only contributing factor for the damage.

What’s more, the National Park System, at the direction of President Donald Trump, bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Green Water Services of Brookfield, Ohio. Green Water Services is owned by John J. Cafaro, who has previously donated to Trump.

In May, the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) filed a lawsuit against the US Department of the Interior (DOI) over the Trump administration’s plans to paint the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue. Attorneys for the TCLF argue that the resurfacing of the historic pool is “unlawful” and that it should be restored to its original color until the administration follows congressionally mandated procedures to do the work.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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The Justice Department released an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel this week that reflects the Trump administration’s intention to strip back more civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities, which have been in place for decades. The memo, which is a preliminary, standalone document containing a written legal interpretation issued by Department of Justice attorneys that is meant to guide the Executive Branch on complex constitutional and statutory questions, argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support.

Both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act have long been interpreted to require that states provide services to Americans with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate and that “institutionalization” should always be a last resort.

In 1999, Olmstead v. L.C., tested these well-established protections at the Supreme Court level, when two women with mental disabilities sued Georgia, arguing that the state had failed its obligation to provide services that would allow them to return to their communities and that it had continued to violate their Civil Rights by institutionalizing the women instead.

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The US Supreme Court agreed that states have a legal responsibility to provide support that integrates disabled Americans into their communities, and for the last three decades, courts across the country upheld that interpretation. This new legal memo in question — drafted by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel Lanora Pettit — argues that federal law prohibits discrimination based on disability, but does not impose an “integration mandate” on states to provide these community services.

Pettit’s missive states that the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision “held only that a state cannot institutionalize such patients without justification, [but] what counts as adequate justification remains an open question.” This memo also arrives as a new case, Texas v. Kennedy, is making its way through the courts, essentially serving as a conduit for challenging the integration mandate on states.

Last week, the Trump administration announced that the Special Education arm of the Department of Education would now be overseen by Health and Human Services Director Robert Kennedy, Jr. Based on how far this US Supreme Court is willing to strip away more well-established legal rights for those with disabilites, this next ruling out of Texas could carve out enough room for the Trump administration to make further strides in denying funding moving forward and creating a privatized institutional, setting much like prisons.

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This memo has dropped as Republicans have also passed deep cuts to Medicaid, which is the primary source of funding for community-based services on which many disabled Americans rely. In 2023, 8.4 million Americans were receiving home and community-based services through Medicaid. The caveat in the federal disability law requiring home or community-based services first, whenever appropriate, remains a major obstacle to large-scale institutionalization of the unhoused.

A footnote in the Justice Department’s new memo (see below) argues these laws have “contributed” to the rise in chronic homelessness, rather than acting as a deterrent for Donald Trump to privatize institutions and sell the contract to the highest bidder. This Justice Department memo is just another piece of Trump’s bigger election promise to crack down on homelessness that began with an Executive Order on July 24, 2025, intended to make it easier for state and local governments to police the unhoused. Trump’s solution — involuntary institutionalization.

While this memo does not represent established law — Congress makes laws, not the Executive — it does give us a clearer sense of where the Trump administration will be headed next in its “Rollback of Rights and Profit Tour.” Despite setting up what appears to be a legal road map for the Department of Justice in moving forward, Pettit herself acknowledged that her legal theory may not be easily embraced by the courts, saying: “We recognize that this view of Olmstead‘s import is out of step with the common understanding of that decision within the federal courts.”

One thing remains clear: Donald Trump is removing any obstacles on his end by continuing to strip away agency employees, meant to help serve the unhoused and disabled communities. Now we have to wait and see if Donald Trump’s Supreme Court is willing to deliver on more Civil Rights violations by allowing Republicans to chip away further at established law.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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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!

Upgrade to Paid Now

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

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• 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.

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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, an unprecedented yield for a sitting president. During the first three months of this year alone, Trump’s investment accounts traded between $212 million and $695 million in stocks and other securities, and the president’s accounts made 2,346 purchases and 1,296 sales.

On January 6, President Trump purchased up to $ 1 million in Nvidia stock, and the following week, his administration loosened export controls so that Nvidia could sell its chips to China, boosting the company’s stock and ultimately benefiting the president. The disclosure also showed a purchase of tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock in Robinhood and the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY). On April 6, the Treasury Department announced it would implement the new Trump accounts program with BNY and Robinhood. Since the Treasury’s announcement, stocks in both companies have risen.

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The most common transactions were trades valued at between $15,001 and $50,000, with 998 purchases and 393 sales falling in that range. The highest value ranges from $5,000,001 to $25 million, including four sales of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and a Vanguard ETF. The data shows that technology firms were the most frequently bought and sold, followed by financial, consumer, industrial, and healthcare companies. The transactions involving tech companies included at least $43 million in purchases and $24 million in sales.

At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee two weeks ago, Senator Warren pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether President Donald Trump’s stock trades pose a conflict of interest, highlighting Secretary Bessent’s previous statements in support of a congressional stock trading ban.

Senator Warren highlighted that President Trump signed the 113-page ethics disclosure, which publicly lists all of his individual stock trades, and that those trades occurred while the President was making decisions affecting those stocks. Despite Secretary Bessent’s previous public support for a congressional stock trading ban, he defended the President’s trades, stating, “President Trump is not sitting in the Oval Office engaging in a high-frequency trading strategy. Clearly, he had an outside manager who was doing that.”

In response, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for an investigation into “potential insider trading” based on the sheer volume of the trades and the timing of certain transactions that appear to be a strategy by Mr. Trump’s money managers to reduce his tax bill. One investment professional who reviewed the transactions confirmed they had “never seen a strategy out there that would warrant that amount of trading.” Despite all of this, the Trump Organization continues to use the same mantra that it has had since his first tenure in the White House, that the portfolio is managed by “independent third-party investment managers.”

Last week, Senate Republicans quietly killed Warren’s amendment, which would have barred the Pentagon from investing in companies tied to President Donald Trump, his Cabinet, or their families. But, the amendment failed 14-13 on a party-line vote during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s closed-door markup of its $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act, according to a committee vote tally released on Wednesday.

While Republicans claim that they have officially rejected a partisan attack on Trump that would have undermined support for the bill, the truth is that they have been protecting the president’s personal fiscal interests since his first term. In March of 2020, SHERO published an article detailing Trump’s investment accounts and how he stood to benefit from stock market gains in areas that would be directly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Read How Trump Could Profit From Coronavirus Testing here.

At that time, I argued that despite independent companies making mass investments in many corporations at once for all of its trust accounts, and the process “appearing” to be blind and independent, I argued then that there was a huge conflict with a president who could still create massive shifts in the stock market with his unchecked policy changes that started over 10 years ago. I remain steadfast in this legal perspective, despite Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s attempt to shift away from his previous narrative in order to protect Donald Trump now. 

Regardless of the failure to curtail Donald Trump’s ability to maneuver favorably in the US Stock Market, given his current position of power, we cannot continue to make the same mistakes with the next administration. The only way the people will have the power to make gains in this specific area is to take control of the US House and Senate in November. Until then, I will leave you with a perfect line of questioning from Elizabeth Warren (see image above), who has never stopped trying to hold Trump and his cronies accountable. 

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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Just two days after a credible report alleging that White House Advisor Stephen Miller bragged about the idea of suspending habeas corpus in cases involving immigration, the House Oversight Committee has launched a formal investigation into the matter.

While the written demand involves information from meetings involving Vice President JD Vance and Deputy White House Chief Stephen Miller, all Trump officials who have “advocated for invoking the Insurrection Act and/or suspending Habeas Corpus.

“All memoranda regarding the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and all memoranda regarding the Insurrection Act, as well as any documents, records, and communications regarding the invocation of the Insurrection Act or the suspension of habeas corpus,” have now been included in the list of demands sought by Democrats.

Read the full letter from Ranking Member Robert Garcia here.

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These latest allegations against the Trump administration stem from a “secret memo” sent last spring by arch-conservative attorney Will Scharf, who serves as the White House Staff Secretary. The covert briefing memo, sent on April 29th of last year to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, relayed the growing unease in the West Wing about Stephen Miller, a powerful force behind Trump’s immigration policies, who allegedly advocated suspending legal rights in deportation cases. Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo ultimately served to warn against bypassing the rule of law in favor of quick results in the immigration courts.

Read the entire memo here.

The memo reveals that the Trump administration has been seriously exploring limiting due-process rights for people without United States Citizenship. Habeas corpus, which is Latin for “you have the body,” is a judicial order forcing law enforcement authorities to produce a prisoner they are holding, and to justify the prisoner’s continued confinement in a federal court. Also called the “Great Writ,” this legal policy dates back to 1215, when the Magna Carta was signed, and it was established to guarantee protection from the king arbitrarily disappearing subjects to secret dungeons without just cause or due process.

Calling it: “an egregious violation of the Constitution,” the inquiry alleges that Stephen Miller “advocated for the illegal suspension of fundamental civil liberties as the Administration considered suspending habeas corpus rights and invoking the Insurrection Act to suppress peaceful protests in Minneapolis.” Wednesday’s formal inquiry from Representative Garcia has also directed that all documents and records concerning this eventuality should be turned over by the White House to the Oversight Committee by a July 1 deadline.

Garcia goes on to explain in his statement that“Oversight Democrats are investigating the systematic violations of the Constitution by the Trump Administration through its mass deportation campaign [and] the Administration’s willingness to use violence against civilians, lack of oversight for violations of civil rights, and violations of court orders are widely documented.”

Garcia references this “new reporting” that also alleges the Trump administration considered far more egregious violations of the US Constitution, and that senior White House staff, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller, advocated for the illegal suspension of fundamental civil liberties as the Administration considered suspending habeas corpus rights and invoking the Insurrection Act to suppress peaceful protests in Minneapolis.”

Garcia also accuses Donald Trump and his team of working to defy and undermine the US Constitution, saying: “In light of this disclosure, we demand that you immediately provide records and documents which outline a draft plan by senior members of the Administration to effectively subvert the Constitution on a massive scale.”

What is perhaps most revealing about this secret memo and its guidelines for further repressing liberties in the courts is that someone within the Trump administration had to have leaked or disclosed its existence to the press. We can only hope that more people within Trump’s administration fear the extent to which Miller and Vance seem to be willing to go to suppress the rule of law.

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

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Paid subscriptions 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 you want to further support independent journalism, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.

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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.

Here in Washington, DC, we are intently watching the weather and have been praying to God that she would bless us all with the most massive thunder and lightning storms, the likes of which have never been seen around these parts, just in time for Donald Trump’s Birthday Party. It would be the perfect ending to a terrible week for Donald Trump, both in the courts and in the reflecting pools.

I woke up this morning to an alert from the city that there would be a massive fireworks display at 11:30 pm tonight on the mall and that we should all expect it to be very loud. If that whole debacle got scrapped due to a natural deluge, I wouldn’t be mad about it. Please add that one to your prayers, too.

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. There is a lot to cover for this week, so let’s get started!

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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 seven separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, where 14 people were killed, and 50 were injured.

1. Sunday, June 7, 2026: Cleveland, Ohio

2. Monday, June 8, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

3. Monday, June 8, 2026: Denmark, South Carolina

4. Tuesday, June 9, 2026: Trenton, New Jersey

5. Tuesday, June 9, 2026: Livonia, Michigan

6. Thursday, June 11: 2026: Cleveland, Ohio

7. Friday, June 12, 2026: Midland, Texas

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• The Washington Monument Reflecting Pool was re-filled this week, after substantial repairs that ultimately cost taxpayers $14.2 million, but clumps of green algae continue to float throughout the water, coating several areas of the bottom of the pool, including the east and west ends, near the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.

• According to National Park Service documents posted earlier this month, the Trump administration is quickly moving forward on the 250-foot-tall triumphal arch meant to fete a king, as officials lay more groundwork to begin actual construction on the grotesque plan, sharing additional documents that reveal an aggressive schedule meant to finish work before Trump’s term ends. The public comment section of the proposal online is officially open until June 15, 2026, so you can voice your opinion and be on the right side of history. For instructions on how to do this, click the link embedded in the post below:

• According to a new Economist/YouGov poll this week, a record 63% of Americans disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the economy, and a majority of Americans see the US economy headed in the wrong direction.

• Days after musical acts canceled, officials from Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Oregon confirmed they won’t officially send a delegation to Trump's 250th birthday celebration this summer, and Pennsylvania and Washington remain uncommitted.

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According to National Park Service documents posted earlier this month, the Trump administration is quickly moving forward on the 250-foot-tall triumphal arch meant to fete a king, as officials lay more groundwork to begin actual construction on the grotesque plan, sharing additional documents that reveal an aggressive schedule meant to finish work before Trump’s term ends.

With the latest round of published plans, the administration envisions 20 hours of construction per day on the arch year-round to complete the project before the end of Trump’s last term. Construction experts say that the timeline — which would involve two 10-hour daily shifts — is unusually aggressive for a nonemergency project.

After spending last week touring Washington, DC, with family, I can tell you that the funding cuts to the National Park Service are on full display. The Jefferson Memorial was practically unattended, with garbage strewn all about, and the World War II Memorial had several burnt-out lights throughout the display. The White House, which is completely obscured from the front by giant fences meant to keep out the very people who fund the place.

You can almost always see the back of the White House from a distance on Constitution is completely barricaded and blocked for Trump’s massive UFC fight night on the South Lawn, planned for his birthday. Now, all that is visible from this once majestic view of pure Americana, is a string of rented toilets and stage scaffolding that could choke the Empire State Building. Add to that National Guard Services Members who stand around in useless packs of four, talking in large clusters like it’s lunchtime at Trump High, and the cost of this Trump arch becomes maddening.

Luckily, the public comment section of the proposal online is officially open until June 15, 2026, so you can voice your opinion and read others, most of which are incredibly negative. You can read the other public comments on the Trump Arch here.

If you are tempted to think this is a waste of time, I will remind you of our wonderful work trolling the Trump administration’s IRS slush fund for fascists, which I know led to the decision for the Trump administration to abandon the plan due to public backlash.

Here are some key facts for you to ponder before you make your comment:

🏛️At 250-feet-tall (76-meters), this new monument would be the world’s largest arch, which would be taller than the two largest triumphal arches in the world: one in Pyongyang, North Korea, and the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City.

🏛️The arch design, which has already gotten early approval from the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all appointed by Donald Trump, will drastically alter the city, obscuring the sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery.

🏛️The two federal panels meant to oversee these projects are both controlled by Trump, and his allies have rushed the project through reviews without the proper review or approval.

🏛️Congress has not authorized the construction of a memorial arch on the proposed site, which is a critical first step required by statute before the government can move forward to construct a memorial on that land, and proceeding with the construction of the arch would be unlawful.

🏛️Using taxpayer funding, Donald Trump has already demolished the White House East Wing, decided unilaterally to renovate the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool at great expense, and undertaken other construction projects without going through the usual legally required reviews or seeking approval from Congress.

🏛️The Park Service said the project would require large cranes, including one that may be 320 feet tall and another that could be as high as 300 feet. The planned site for the arch is on a flight path to nearby Reagan National Airport, where planes sometimes fly at around 500 feet, raising major safety concerns.

🏛️ To rush the project’s completion, the arch will be clad in concrete with granite, unlike the nearby Lincoln Memorial and other monuments, which were constructed with natural stone like marble and limestone.

These are just a few key reasons why construction of Trump’s arch should be halted, but it won’t happen without massive public pressure. Click on the form below to submit your comments on Trump’s Triumphant Arch, as you only have five more days to put your name and opinion on public record officially opposing this egregious abuse of power and misappropriation of tax dollars.

Let’s do our part to overwhelm the public comments section and make logical and legal arguments as to why this construction should be halted immediately. Be sure to share this across all your socials as well, so we can make that number of comments tick upward to high, forcing the Trump administration to face the massive public backlash before Trump officials can really move on to any construction in the District.

UPDATE: I sent in my comment and it was really easy, so join me!

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

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In the grand tradition of “take my advice, I’m not using it,” I have decided to take the entire next week off to tend to some personal matters and to reunite with some long-lost family. My cousin, who is my hero, is a librarian at a high school in Nebraska, and she will come to visit, and I will get the pleasure of showing her the nation’s capital for the first time. I can’t tell you how much fun we used to have spending every summer, joined at the hip, in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

I used to demand that we play “office” every summer as we moved the tables in her playroom to look like desks and pretended to take phone calls and write invoices. She just reminded me that we used to make her little brother and our younger boy cousin our secretaries, and we complained about who got stuck with which one, and about their work output, all the time. 😂 SHERO will resume the week after next, and I’m sure I will miss you more than you will miss me. 

Welcome to the Sunday Recap, with links to more information if you want it, where you can quickly check in to review the week with a minimal time commitment and ensure you do not miss a thing. 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. This was a terrible week for the Trump administration so let’s dig in!

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 nine separate mass shooting events in the United States this past week, where four people were killed, and 38 were injured.

1. Sunday, May 24, 2026: Thibodaux, Louisiana

2. Sunday, May 24, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

3. Sunday, May 24, 2026: Louisville, Kentucky

4. Monday, May 25, 2026: Chicago, Illinois

5. Monday, May 25, 2026: St. Louis, Missouri

6. Monday, May 25, 2026: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

7. Tuesday, May 26, 2026: Dallas, Texas

8. Tuesday, May 26, 2026: Cincinnati, Ohio

9. Thursday, May 28, 2026: St. Louis, Missouri

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• Republican Senate Candidate (GA) Derek Dooley, who was awarded more than $27 million in a lucrative state contract, has surged into second place in the Republican primary after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp toured the state with him.

• The Trump administration authorized contractors to run heavy machinery over a 1,000-year-old geoglyph in Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, marring the image with a roughly 50-foot-wide scrape. (As an Arizona girl born and raised, I can’t express my outrage enough on this one.)

• White House Officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump’s portrait, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on US currency in more than 150 years. (Try not to throw up, please.)

• The 80% increase in Trump’s deportation flights is accelerating the climate crisis by emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide.

• Department of Justice Immigration Courts are using the unprecedented tactic of fast-tracking immigrants’ hearings through massive “mega master” calendar hearings, which include 100 or more people at a time, to deport people without lawyers faster.

• The no-bid contract for the reflecting Washington Monument reflecting pool repairs, which circumvented federal procurement laws and is already underway, generated an inflated profit margin for the contractor, whom Trump claimed to have chosen before changing his story.

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