Donald Trump allies are getting involved in the fight to shape the Republican Party’s platform. Racing legend Mario Andretti recalls a clash with a Formula 1 owner during his attempt to enter the sport with a new team. And the funeral writer from Utah, accused of her husband’s fatal poisoning, makes her first statements.
Here’s what you need to know today.
Trump The team is trying to shift the GOP platform and keep out the party’s right flank
Allies of former President Donald Trump are quietly getting involved in little-noticed fights over who will serve on the committee to determine the Republican Party’s national platform. The goal is to prevent the party’s right flank from trying to push the Republican National Committee’s official platform too far to the right, according to nine people familiar with what’s happening in states across the country.
A Trump campaign official acknowledged that there are ongoing conversations across the party about policies steeped in culture wars and that they have been watching and involved in a number of state-level races for spots on the RNC’s Platform Committee.
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The official also noted that it is not unusual for people most closely associated with the president to be given important congressional roles. However, a longtime RNC member said the involvement of Trump’s allies in the selection of platform committee members is “absolutely extraordinary given past experience.”
A big consideration is that the RNC made no adjustments to its platform in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. But that means some platform battles that could have happened four years ago are now spilling over into this year’s election cycle. Two major issues that the party is paying more attention to: abortion and gay marriage.
Read the full story here.
The party at the center of the battle in Graceland is a mystery
Hours after a Tennessee judge blocked Graceland’s foreclosure sale, Elvis Presley’s famous estate in Memphis, remains in high demand. Who exactly is trying to seize the property? Presley’s family doesn’t know, and the judge overseeing the fight doesn’t know either.
A representative of Naussany Investments & Private Lending was not present in court yesterday. In fact, it was difficult to find out much about the company or who runs it. NBC News searched multiple public records databases and found nothing. The documents provided for company street addresses correspond to post offices and PO boxes. Emails to addresses claiming to be people associated with the company also added to the mystery. Here’s what our reporters know – or rather, what they don’t know.
In blocking the sale of Graceland, the Shelby County Chancery Court judge presiding over the case said Riley Keough, one of Presley’s granddaughters, would likely prevail in the legal battle.
Where buying a house is most difficult, by province
Today’s home buying market can feel like one headline after another, from bidding wars full of cash offers to homes arriving on Zillow or Redfin already under contract. Not to mention: counter-intuitive. If mortgage rates are high and demand is low, why are prices still high? And how does my situation compare to that of others: is it worse? Better?
To simplify the math, the NBC News data graphics team created the NBC News Home Buyer Index. We’ve developed a new metric that measures how difficult it is to buy a home, based on four categories: cost, competition, scarcity and economic instability. Together these form one number, on a scale from 0 to 100, that answers the question “how difficult am I?” (Right now the US is at 82, which is pretty bad). Data reporter Jasmine Cui shares four key insights from our April report:
🏡$92,000: The annual income needed to buy the average home in today’s market — and that number is closer to $100,000 if you want the kind of low-interest, low-down payment loans that first-time homebuyers are looking for, experts say.
📍 Everything, everywhere: Buying a home can be ‘local’, but the challenges are anything but. Twenty-six states are represented among the 100 counties where it is most difficult to buy a home.
💰 In addition to the costs: And 43 of those counties have average list prices that are below the national average, showing that price isn’t the only factor that makes buying a home difficult.
⛰️ Colorado’s Rocky Peaks: Topping the April difficulty index are three Colorado counties: Routt, Garfield and Mesa. In Steamboat Springs, Routt County, buyers are facing a housing boom so intense that even high earners can’t afford homes.
See where your province scores in the homebuyer index, and see more takeaways from the report.
Mario Andretti says F1 owner promised to block his team
Legendary racer Mario Andretti said he clashed with Greg Maffei, CEO of Formula 1 owner Liberty Media, over a blocked bid to become F1’s 11th team at a recent event in Miami. Sahil Kapur, senior political reporter for NBC News, spoke with Andretti about the exchange, which took place a few days after Andretti visited Washington DC to meet with members of Congress. Lawmakers have accused Formula 1 of engaging in anti-competitive practices by refusing Andretti’s application.
At an event last weekend, Andretti said he spoke to Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali about why he was going to Washington. Then “Maffei interrupted the conversation,” Andretti said, “and [Maffei] said: ‘Mario, I want to tell you that I will do everything in my power to ensure that Michael never gets into Formula 1.’” Maffei was referring to Andretti’s son, Michael Andretti – chairman and CEO of Andretti Global and the one leading the company’s attempt to enter the sport.
However, a source close to Liberty Media said the incident occurred differently than Andretti described it. Read the exclusive story here.
Utah grief writer makes first comments since arrest about husband’s murder
The Utah mother accused of adding a lethal dose of fentanyl to her husband’s cocktail is speaking out for the first time since her arrest. In a series of statements provided exclusively to ‘Dateline,’ 34-year-old Kouri Richins criticized prosecutors in the case and claimed her innocence. “You took an innocent mother from her babies,” she said. “This means war.”
And in recent months, Richins’ attorneys have withdrawn from her case, a decision she says was “forced,” “not my choice” and “not a personal choice of any counsel on my defense team.” Here’s what else Richins said about the case against her.
Richins is charged with aggravated murder and other crimes in the 2022 death of her husband, Eric Richins, who died after prosecutors said she gave him a Moscow mule spiked with a lethal dose of fentanyl. A year after her husband’s death, Richins released a children’s book that comforted children who had lost loved ones.
Politics in brief
Immigration: The Biden administration does finalizing the details of a new executive action This would allow the president to temporarily close the southern border to migrants if necessary.
Deepfake robocall fallout: The political consultant who admitted he was behind a robocall posing as President Joe Biden before New Hampshire’s January presidential primaries has been indicted.
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Personnel choice: Hundreds of mountain goats were flown to a new home. Very few survived.
While on a reporting assignment in Washington State in 2018, I was impressed by the strange sight of blindfolded mountain goats being flown under helicopters. The scene was part of a project to remove 325 non-native goats from the Olympic Mountains to increase numbers in their habitat in the nearby Cascades. Since then I have been curious about the fate of the creatures. Years later, we now know that few survived – a sobering outcome that has drawn attention to a wider threat to the species. — Evan Bush science reporter
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