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Today’s top stories
The FBI had a warning about the 14-year-old accused of shooting two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the agency said on X. In May 2023, authorities received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unknown location and time. Those threats included images of guns. The FBI says it identified and questioned the then-13-year-old suspect and his father. The father said they had hunting weapons, but the teen did not have unsupervised access to them. The boy denied making the online threats. The sheriff’s office alerted local schools to monitor him, but there was no probable cause for an arrest or further police action at the time. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the teen would be charged with murder and tried as an adult.
Police and first responders respond to an incident at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday after a shooting was reported.
Christian Monterrosa/AFP via Getty Images
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Christian Monterrosa/AFP via Getty Images
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department will appear in federal court today. for what may be the final hearing in his election interference case before the November election. This year, voters will decide the winner of the presidency – and with it Trump’s legal fate. A grand jury indictment in Washington accuses Trump of committing acts that led to the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. If he retakes the White House, he is expected to instruct the new heads of the Justice Department to drop the landmark case.
- 🎧 Trump claims the new charges are election interferenceand said it violated Justice Department policy to take big steps too close to an election, says NPR’s Carrie Johnson FirstJudge Tanya Chutkan will have to figure out how to draw the line between Trump’s actions in the White House that were part of his duties as president and those he took as a candidate for office. Johnson says there’s no way that can be resolved before the election and that it may not come to court until next year because of potential Supreme Court involvement.
Federal officials accuse Russia of unwittingly using right-wing American influencers to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the November presidential election. Yesterday, the Justice Department filed charges against two employees of Russia’s state broadcaster RT over the plot. Investigators say they helped publish online videos that have been viewed 16 million times on YouTube and other social media platforms. The employees named in the indictment are Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva.
- 🎧 The aim seems to be to amplify issues such as immigration, inflation and undermine support for Ukraine, without any indication that RT was behind the videos, says NPR’s Shannon Bond. The indictment says the operatives wired nearly $10 million to a Tennessee company to get the alleged plot off the ground. The company was not named, but details are consistent with a company called Tenet Media. The Russian operatives allegedly had a great deal of control over the content, which allowed them to push through very specific approaches that resembled the Kremlin’s narratives.
Listen today
David Rawlings and Gillian Welch perform at the Class of 2021 Medal Ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee on May 1, 2022.
Terry Wyatt/Getty Images North America
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Terry Wyatt/Getty Images North America
Grammy-winning folk duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have made a career out of singing about hard times. Now they’re living one of their songs. Four years ago, a tornado destroyed their recording studio in Nashville and turned their career and life upside down. But with their new album, they’ve turned the disaster into inspiration. Forestnamed after her once destroyed studio. “In order not to go crazy, we had to actually make art, otherwise we would have simply forgotten what kind of people we were,” Welch said on Morning edition.
Picture show
From mosses to mountain lions, the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth temperate forests provide the complexity and conditions needed to support high biodiversity. The Northwest Forest Plan has protected these ancient ecosystems over the past 30 years and helped improve forest management in Oregon, Washington, and California. The plan was developed in response to decades of unsustainable logging practices and has helped restore forest ecosystems in 17 national forests.
David Herasimtschuk
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David Herasimtschuk
For the past decade, photographer David Herasimtschuk has captured images of forests in the Pacific Northwestdocumenting the inhabitants of the last remaining native tree ecosystems. From salamanders and salmon to bears and mountain lions, his photographs not only reveal the beauty of the forests and the creatures that call them home, but also the symbiotic relationships that are vital to the well-being of the planet.
3 things you should know before your trip
Australian Rachael Gunn, known as B-Girl Raygun, competes in the Round Robin Battle in the breakdancing competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France on August 9, 2024. Her performance sparked laughter and criticism and now Gunn is responding.
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Frank Franklin/AP/AP
- Australian breakdancer Raygun has apologized for the negative reactions her performance at the Paris Olympics provoked in the breakdancing community.
- Former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican whose criticism of Trump cost her her seat in Congresssaid she would vote for Vice President Harris in the November election.
- Diana Oganesyan went viral after an air sirenwhich warns Ukraine of Russian attacks, began to wail, and the young singer spontaneously started singing along in the choir.
This newsletter was published by Susanne Nuyen.
