Details on Georgia school shooting suspect. And Russian media hired American influencers

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The FBI had received a prior warning about the 14-year-old accused of shooting dead two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the agency said in X. Authorities received several anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified time and place. Those threats contained images of guns. The FBI says it identified and interviewed the suspect, then 13, and his father. The father said they owned 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 keep an eye on him, but there was no probable cause for arrest or any further law enforcement action at the time. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the teen would be charged with murder and tried as an adult.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department will appear in federal court today for what could be the final hearing in his election interference case before the November election. This year, voters will decide the winner of the presidency and, by extension, Trump’s legal fate. A D.C. grand jury indicted Trump for actions that resulted in the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. If he regains the White House, he is expected to order the Justice Department’s new leaders to drop the landmark case.

• Trump claims new accusation is election interferencesaying it violates a Justice Department policy about taking big steps too close to an election, NPR’s Carrie Johnson tells me. Up firstJudge Tanya Chutkan will have to figure out how to draw the line between which of Trump’s actions in the White House were part of his presidential duties and which were done as a candidate for office. Johnson says there’s no way this will be resolved before the election and it might not come to trial until next year because of the possibility of the Supreme Court intervening.

Federal officials accuse Russia of using unwitting American right-wing influencers to spread Kremlin propaganda. The U.S. Justice Department yesterday charged two employees of RT, the Russian state-run media outlet, with participating in the scheme. Investigators say they helped post online videos that racked up 16 million views on YouTube and other social media platforms. The employees named in the indictment are Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva.

• The goal appears to be to amplify issues such as immigration, inflation and undermine support for Ukraine without any direction. According to NPR’s Shannon Bond, RT was behind the videos. The indictment says employees funneled nearly $10 million to a Tennessee company to make the alleged scheme work. The company’s name wasn’t mentioned, but the details match one called Tenet Media. The Russian employees allegedly had a great deal of control over the content, allowing them to push very specific angles that reflected Kremlin narratives.

Today’s listening

Grammy-winning folk duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have made a career out of singing about tough times. Now, they’re living out one of their songs. Four years ago, a tornado destroyed their Nashville recording studio, upending their career and their lives. But they’ve turned the disaster into inspiration with their new album. Forestnamed for his studio, which was once trashed. “In order to keep from going crazy, we had to make some art or we would just forget what kind of people we were,” Welch said in Morning Edition.

Image presentation

Over the past decade, photographer David Herasimtschuk has captured images of forests throughout the Pacific Northwest.which documents the inhabitants of the last remaining primary ecosystems. From salamanders and salmon to bears and pumas, his photographs illustrate not only the beauty of forests and the creatures that inhabit them, but also the symbiotic relationships that are vital to the well-being of the planet.

3 things you should know before traveling

1. Australian breakdancer Raygun has apologized for the backlash that his performance at the Paris Olympics sparked against the breakdancing community.
2. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican whose criticism of Trump cost her her seat in Congresssaid he will vote for Vice President Harris in the November election.
3. Diana Oganesyan went viral after an air sirenused to warn Ukraine of Russian attacks, began to moan and the young singer spontaneously began to harmonize with the alarm.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

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