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Mystery at center of Graceland sale and Kouri Richins speaks from jail: Morning Rundown

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 amid his bid to enter a new team into the sport. And the Utah grief author accused in her husband’s fatal poisoning makes her first statements.

Here’s what to know today.

Trump team looks 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 set the Republican Party’s national platform. The goal is to stop the party’s right flank from trying to push the official Republican National Committee 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 conversations throughout the party about culture war-infused policies and that they have been watching and engaged in some state-level races for spots on the RNC’s Platform Committee.

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The official also noted that it’s not unusual for people most closely aligned with the president to get key convention roles. However, one longtime RNC member said the involvement of Trump’s allies in the selection of platform committee members is “definitely out of the ordinary from past experiences.”

One big consideration is that the RNC didn’t make adjustments to its platform in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. But that means some platform fights that could have played out four years ago are now spilling over into this year’s election cycle. Two big issues that the party is paying more attention to: abortion and same-sex marriage.  

Read the full story here.

Company at the center of Graceland battle is a mystery

Hours after a Tennessee judge blocked the foreclosure sale of Graceland , Elvis Presley’s famed Memphis estate, a huge question in the case remains. Who exactly is trying to take the property? Presley’s family doesn’t know nor does the judge overseeing the fight.

A representative for Naussany Investments & Private Lending wasn’t in the courtroom for yesterday’s hearing. In fact, it has been difficult to figure out much about the company or who runs it. NBC News searched multiple public record databases and found nothing. Documents provided for street addresses for the company match post offices and post office 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.

When 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 succeed in the legal battle.

Where home buying is the most difficult, county by county

The current home buying market can feel like one head fake after the next, from bidding wars replete with all-cash offers to homes that arrive on Zillow or Redfin already under contract. Not to mention, counterintuitive. If mortgage rates are high and demand is low, why are prices still high? And how does my situation compare to others — is it worse? Better?

To simplify the math, NBC News’ data graphics team built the NBC News Home Buyer Index. We 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 make up a single number, on a scale of 0 to 100, that answers the question “how hard do I have it?” (Right now, the U.S. is at 82, which is pretty bad). Data reporter Jasmine Cui shares four key takeaways from our April report:

🏡 $92,000:  The yearly income needed to buy the median home in today’s market — and that number is closer to $100,000 if you want the kind of low-interest, low-down payment loan first-time homebuyers seek, experts say.

📍 Everything, everywhere:  Home buying may be “local,” but its challenges are anything but. Twenty-six states are represented among the 100 counties where it’s most difficult to buy a home.

💰 Beyond cost:  And 43 of those counties have median list prices below the national average — showing that price isn’t the only factor making home buying difficult.

⛰️ Colorado’s rocky peaks:  At the top of April’s difficulty index are three Colorado counties: Routt, Garfield and Mesa. In Routt County’s Steamboat Springs, buyers face a housing boom so intense that even high earners can’t afford homes.

See where your county ranks  in the Home Buyer Index, and  see more takeaways  from the report.

Mario Andretti says F1 owner vowed to block his team

Legendary racer Mario Andretti said he clashed with Greg Maffei, CEO of Formula 1’s owner Liberty Media, at a recent event in Miami over a blocked bid to become F1’s 11th team. NBC News senior political reporter Sahil Kapur spoke to Andretti about the exchange, which happened a few days after Andretti visited Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress. Lawmakers have accused Formula 1 of engaging in anti-competitive practices by denying Andretti’s application.

During an event last weekend, Andretti said he was talking to Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali about why he went to Washington. Then, Maffei “broke into the conversation,” Andretti said, “and [Maffei] said: ‘Mario, I want to tell you that I will do everything in my power to see that Michael never enters Formula 1.’” Maffei was referring to Andretti’s son, Michael Andretti — chairman and CEO of Andretti Global and the one leading the company’s bid 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 author makes first comments since arrest in husband’s murder

The Utah mother accused of spiking her husband’s cocktail with a fatal dose of fentanyl 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 asserted her innocence. “You took an innocent mom away from her babies,” she said. “This means war.”

And in recent months, Richins’ lawyers have withdrawn from her case, a decision she said 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 say she gave him a Moscow mule spiked with a lethal dose of fentanyl. One year after her husband’s death, Richins released a children’s book that sought to comfort children who had lost loved ones.  

Politics in Brief

Immigration: The Biden administration is finalizing details of a new executive action that would let the president temporarily shut down the southern border to migrants if necessary.

Deepfake robocall fallout: The political consultant who admitted that he was behind a robocall impersonating President Joe Biden before the January presidential primary in New Hampshire has been indicted .

Want more politics news? Sign up for From the Politics Desk to get exclusive reporting and analysis delivered to your inbox every weekday evening.  Subscribe here.

Staff Pick: Hundreds of mountain goats were flown to a new home. Very few survived.

On a 2018 reporting assignment in Washington state, I was awestruck by the strange sight of blindfolded mountain goats being flown beneath helicopters. The scene was part of a project to move 325 nonnative goats away from the Olympic Mountains to boost numbers in their home range in the nearby Cascades. Ever since, I've been curious about the creatures' fate. Years later, we now know few survived — a sobering outcome that has brought attention to a broader threat to the species. —  Evan Bush,  science reporter

In Case You Missed It

• The second human case of bird flu linked to dairy cows in the U.S. was found in Michigan.
• The families of Israeli women taken hostage Oct. 7 released a disturbing video of five female soldiers being captured by Hamas militants.
• ADHD cases have risen considerably in the U.S., a new study found. The study’s lead author, a statistician at the CDC, said there are a few reasons for the increase.
• A Black man’s home in San Francisco was set on fire weeks after he reported receiving racially threatening packages.

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Elizabeth Robinson is a newsletter editor for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.

How do tornadoes form? Explaining the severe weather after dozens of recent Iowa tornadoes

Iowa’s recent bouts of severe weather, including at least two dozen tornadoes that struck Iowa and devastated Minden in late April, raise questions about what causes a tornado.

And among what tornadoes excel at, including causing destruction, is evading researchers’ ability to understand it.

Here is a simplified explanation of how a tornado is formed during severe weather.

What conditions are needed for a tornado to form? Here’s how one expert explains it.

First, let’s understand some terminology.

An updraft is a “rising column of air” and a downdraft is a “column of air pushing downward,” according to the National Weather Service .

For tornadoes to form, we need thunderstorms, which have very strong updrafts and downdrafts, said Bill Gallus, a professor in the department of Geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State University.

But there’s something else needed for a tornado to form: Quickly increasing wind speeds at increasing heights, and an increase in the different directions of those winds, he said.

These changes in wind can be described as wind shear, which creates a “rolling motion in the air.”

“If we have these changes in wind as you go up, we have rolling motion in the atmosphere,” Gallus said. “And then if we get a thunderstorm, we have both really rapidly rising air and sinking air and what that does is it tilts the rolling motion, so that it basically becomes the kind of rotation that we see in a tornado.”

So, there has been a tilt. Is that what becomes a tornado?

Cue stretching, which is needed “to speed up the spinning into a strong enough wind to be considered a tornado,” Gallus said in an email to the Register.

This occurs when the thunderstorm’s updraft is quickly lifting air upward, “especially at the bottom of the cloud or even a bit below,” he said.

All that quickly rising air triggers more air to rush inward to replace it.

“We call this converging winds, and it causes the spin to rapidly increase in intensity in the same way an ice skater spins much faster when they bring their arms inward,” Gallus said in the email. “So, the tilting helps get the right kind of spinning air below the thunderstorm cloud, and then this converging of winds helps to increase that spin into possibly a strong enough swirling to be a tornado.”

There’s scientific debate whether it’s the updraft or downdraft created by thunderstorms that causes tilting so that a tornado is formed, Gallus said.

In fact, Gallus teaches numerous theories exploring what exactly in a thunderstorm allows a tornado to form.

“Really, it takes a thunderstorm to create the kind of motions needed to turn that pretty gentle rolling that happens on any day where you have wind shear to be able to tilt that down to the ground and stretch it so that it spins really fast,” he said.

Why haven't researchers fully figured out tornadoes? Several factors are at play, including the danger a tornado poses to those intending to study it get too close, he explained.

“Tornadoes almost have a mind of their own,” Gallus said. “They do everything they can so that we can't learn much about them.”

What is a tornado?

Tornadoes are "violently rotating columns of air" in contact with the ground, according to NWS . The humidity in Iowa means as tornadoes form, we see a cloud form inside of them, Gallus explained. That’s a funnel cloud.

In drier parts of America, a tornado may be visible because of the dirt and debris it kicks up and carries upward into it, he said.

Is it muggy or sticky in Iowa? Here's what to look for when you're checking the weather

Where are tornadoes most likely to occur?

Tornadoes can occur anywhere in the U.S.,  according to the National Weather Service . Tornadoes are “most common in the central plains east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Appalachians.”

Tornado Alley, which covers portions of the Great Plains and Midwest, experiences “a higher propensity for tornadic development” because all the key ingredients to form one are found there, said Justin Glisan, state climatologist of Iowa in an email to the Register.

“These include the meeting of cold, drier air from Canada and warm, moist air moving north from the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.

More: How long do tornadoes last? Answering Iowans' common questions about twisters.

Tornado Alley is shifting east, according to one study on tornadoes that have occurred and future predictions from climate models, Gallus explained.

While not a “drastic” shift, what does this mean for Iowa?

Iowa is considered part of Tornado Alley currently. This shift means that, generally, eastern Iowa and places "a bit" east are “starting to join in the fight,” he said.

“So, it's almost like the zone of lots of tornadoes is getting broader,” Gallus said. “It's not really shifting enough to change Iowa from being in Tornado Alley to be out of Tornado Alley. Just kind of changing where we sit in the alley.”

Paris Barraza is a trending and general assignment reporter at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at  [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.