Ten years ago, two Russian nationals, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, spent a month touring the United States. Their itinerary included stops across the country: New York, Louisiana, California, Colorado. But their focus was not simply a tourist’s curiosity. They were employees of a new agency that had decided to “spread distrust towards the candidates and the [American] political system in general,” as a subsequent federal indictment alleged. They were here to get a feel for how that might work.

The branch of that effort in which Krylova and Bogacheva participated — the effort to amplify disinformation and controversy on social media — had no demonstrable effect on the 2014 or 2016 elections. The other component of Russia’s 2016 effort — the release of material stolen from a senior adviser to the Democratic candidate — may have. But the Russian effort was nonetheless an enormous success, as reflected in new federal documents articulating how that ongoing effort has evolved.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department published an indictment targeting two employees of RT, the media entity controlled by the Russian government that was formerly known as Russia Today. With RT banned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, those employees allegedly funneled $10 million to a U.S.-based media company to have a platform for content they wanted to share. The spending included contracts with well-known social media personalities who created videos for the company that expanded its general audience.

Federal prosecutors also revealed on Thursday that they had seized a number of internet domains that were part of an effort to “covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections,” according to the Justice Department. That announcement documented several proposed prongs of an ongoing influence effort, including one focused on social media content.

Unsurprisingly, both efforts aligned with America’s political right. The company appears to have been Tenet Media, which published videos from popular right-wing commentators such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson. The documentation for the broader influence effort, referred to as “Doppelganger,” explicitly indicates an effort to aid Republicans and the right.

One document details the “Good Old USA Project,” perhaps a reference to the Republican Party’s informal nickname or to party nominee Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Though the party identity and candidate are redacted, it specifies that the intent is to “secure victory of a [Political Party A] candidate ([Candidate A] or one of his current internal party opponents) at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.” Elsewhere, though, the identities are made obvious: Political Party B is described as being in power and seeking to “maintain the current foreign policy priorities” while Party A — the Republicans — are “in opposition” but “have been criticizing these priorities.”

That’s more obvious in another document, delineating a “Guerrilla Media Campaign” in the United States.

“We believe that supporters of the [U.S. Political Party B] are left-wing and far-left globalists who advocate for perversion of traditional moral and religious values,” it reads, including the DOJ’s redactions, “while supporters of the [U.S. Political Party A] are normal people whose priority is to preserve traditions of the American way of life.”

The document articulates the concerns of members of Political Party A, the Republicans, and suggests that they “should be exploited in the course of an information campaign” in the United States.

It’s been somewhat forgotten over the eight years since Russia’s interference effort was first revealed, but amplifying division in this way was the effort’s initial intent. The desired outcome wasn’t necessarily to ensure anyone’s election but, instead, to stoke and heighten internal conflicts in the United States. It wasn’t that Russian actors were injecting new, divisive narratives into the national conversation. It was that they were doing what they could to increase the volume around those narratives.

The indictment of the RT employees alleges how that worked in the more recent effort. “Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-1″ — apparently Tenet — “contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy.” Even when not specifically pro-Russian, boosting this content was “consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine.”

Central to the effort, the new documents suggest, is the issue that Russia focused on back in 2014: race. Among the states with the most targeted social media activity before Trump’s election was Missouri, the state where the Black Lives Matter movement found its footing after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

“It is important that ‘[U.S. Political Party B]’ are also people of color and supporters of ‘affirmative action’ and ‘reverse discrimination’, i.e. infringement on the rights of the white population of the United States,” the “Guerrilla Media Campaign” document notes, “while [U.S. Political Party A] are the victims of discrimination by people of color.” Among the topics that should be highlighted to stoke division, it continued, were “privileges for people of color, perverts and disabled.”

Where the Russians got lucky was in Trump’s response to the 2016 effort. His sympathy for Russia and for Russian President Vladimir Putin was obvious well before Election Day that year. (In retrospect, it’s probably not a coincidence that Russia’s efforts in 2014 followed surprisingly sympathetic responses from prominent Republicans after Russia’s initial Ukraine incursion that year.) It was Trump’s vanity, though, that proved most useful to the Russians.

In the weeks after the election, reporting slowly began to detail what Russia had been up to. Having won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, Trump was sensitive about any suggestion that his victory wasn’t a mandate proving his popularity. So he forcefully rejected the idea that Russia had aided his campaign, though reporting (and common sense) suggested that this had become one of the country’s aims. He even repeatedly rejected the idea that Russia had tried to interfere in the election at all.

The issue lingered because of a federal investigation seeking to determine whether people on Trump’s campaign or the candidate himself had worked with the Russian actors. Some had: His son and campaign chairman met with a Russian attorney who promised dirt on Trump’s opponent; that same campaign manager later passed internal polling data to a person linked by a bipartisan Senate investigation to Russian intelligence. It also documented the breadth of Russia’s influence effort, including that trip taken by Krylova and Bogacheva a decade ago. But the investigation was ultimately unable to prove direct coordination between Trump and Russian actors.

Trump proclaimed this to be a complete exoneration, proof that (as he had claimed since early 2017) the Russia probe was “a hoax.” Over the years, he and his allies responded to any report about Russia’s efforts with this same simplistic rejoinder: All that Russia stuff was a hoax! This narrative was helped by occasions on which commentators on the left embraced dubious or debunked claims (like that there was a nefarious connection between Trump’s company and a Russian bank, which there wasn’t). But it was more broadly a catchall aimed at waving away any claim about Russian activity as a Democratic fever dream.

The new indictment reinforces that it wasn’t. Russia began trying to influence American politics a decade ago, ultimately finding a sympathetic ally in Trump. Now, instead of trying to make fake personalities who can elevate contentious issues to Russia’s benefit, there’s a stable of Trump-allied voices who already are.

It’s useful to note, too, that Russia’s efforts to move the needle are often even less subtle. On Thursday, apparently in response to the new indictments, Putin announced his endorsement of … Vice President Kamala Harris.

With two months left in the presidential race, former president Donald Trump would prefer to campaign on issues such as inflation and immigration. Vice President Kamala Harris has been centering her campaign on expanding economic opportunity, while seeking to keep abortion rights as a top contrast with Trump.

But a school shooting in the battleground state of Georgia has thrust the issue of gun violence back into the spotlight, elevating — at least for now — a topic that had not been front and center in the matchup.

The immediate political reaction was familiar, signaling dim prospects for any near-term changes to gun laws. But advocates against gun violence said the proximity to the election could focus candidates and voters more urgently on the issue.

“I think in some ways it is a familiar reaction, but also in some ways there’s a lot of differences,” said Monisha Henley, senior vice president of government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, which has endorsed Harris. “We are in a presidential election, so that is an immediate difference. Voters are making their decisions right now on who they think will best represent them up and down the ballot.”

Henley also pointed to the state level, saying she was encouraged by a bipartisan Georgia legislative committee that met Thursday morning to consider gun storage initiatives. The meeting was previously scheduled.

In the hours after Wednesday’s shooting, which killed four people and injured at least nine others, Democrats lamented the regularity of such tragedies and called for new gun restrictions. Republicans focused on portraying the shooting as an act of evil and sidestepped — or outright rejected — questions about policy.

Harris was campaigning in New Hampshire hours after the shooting and began her event by addressing it, at one point telling the crowd she was “going off-script” to speak further about it.

“Our kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential and some part of their big, beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of their classroom. It does not have to be this way,” she said.

“This is one of the many issues that is at stake in this election,” she added.

President Joe Biden, in a statement on the shooting, called on Republicans in Congress to “finally say ‘enough is enough’” and work with Democrats to pass a list of proposals, including an assault-weapons ban. Officials have said the gunman used an “AR-platform-style weapon.”

Trump’s initial comments on the shooting did not mention gun violence. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump referred to the shooting as a “tragic event” and said the victims were “taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster” — a reference to the 14-year-old suspect.

Trump also did not mention gun violence when asked about the shooting during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired Wednesday night. Trump instead used a question about the shooting to reiterate his broader campaign message that he is the best candidate to restore peace at home and abroad.

“It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better,” Trump said. “We’re going to heal our world.”

The shooting has come at a time when violent crime has declined nationally, a fact that Democrats have highlighted as Trump portrays Biden and Harris as soft on criminals.

Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, declined to entertain a reporter’s question at a news conference about the possible policy response to the shooting. Kemp said Georgia has “done a tremendous amount on school safety, but today is not the day for politics or policy.”

Kemp is a crucial ally for Trump in Georgia. Trump has recently sought to patch up his relationship with Kemp after a long-running feud sparked by Kemp’s refusal to help with overturning Trump’s 2020 reelection loss in Georgia.

The state looms large in the November election, especially since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee. In The Washington Post’s polling average across seven battleground states, Georgia has seen the second-largest shift away from Trump since Biden ended his reelection bid in July.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, went on a bus tour of south Georgia last week, looking to show their commitment to contesting smaller communities outside the vote-rich Atlanta area.

It remains to be seen whether Wednesday’s shooting will change how the state’s voters think about gun violence in regard to the November election.

A Quinnipiac University poll of Georgia, conducted from May 30 to June 3, found only 4 percent voters said gun violence was the most important issue in deciding who they will vote for in the presidential contest. That issue was far behind the economy (29 percent) and “preserving democracy” (23 percent).

Aneesa McMillan, a spokeswoman for the gun-control group Giffords, which has also endorsed Harris, said she sees plenty of “political momentum” for the cause in polling that the organization has conducted among battleground state voters. She said it is a “top-of-mind issue that is consistently brought up” by certain voting blocs, including young voters who have “come of age” doing school shooting drills in the classroom.

Both Harris and Trump have extensive records on gun violence.

In 2022, Biden signed into law a bipartisan gun-control measure that was the most significant law of its kind in the past three decades. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act provided funding for mental health services and school security initiatives, while expanding criminal background checks for some gun buyers, among other things.

Harris oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an appointment that Biden gave her about a year ago. At her first campaign event after Biden dropped out, Harris reiterated her support for “red flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.”

In picking Walz — a veteran and hunter — Harris found a running mate who could tap into personal experience to address gun violence. Walz, in his Democratic National Convention speech, said he “know[s] guns.”

“I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress and I got the trophies to prove it,” Walz said. “But I’m also a dad. I believe in the Second Amendment. But I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”

Trump, meanwhile, has pitched himself as “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House” and repeatedly courted the National Rifle Association. Addressing the NRA this year, Trump boasted that as president he resisted “great pressure” to change gun laws.

“We did nothing,” Trump said. “We didn’t yield.”

After a January school shooting in Iowa, Trump called it a “very terrible thing” but added, “we have to get over it.”

NEW YORK — Former president Donald Trump formally endorsed a government spending commission that could give Elon Musk broad responsibilities for auditing federal spending and regulations — a move that reflects a tightening political alliance between the two men with less than nine weeks left until Election Day.

Trump’s advisers have discussed the commission for months, and Musk has publicly expressed interest in it on X, the social media platform he owns. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, expressed his support during a speech in New York on Thursday.

“This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said.

Trump said the new commission would save “trillions of dollars — trillions. It’s massive. For the same service we have right now.” Budget experts have said it is possible a commission could identify tens of billions or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending cuts, but that it is not credible to imagine the commission cutting trillions of dollars without severely affecting federal services.

Trump said Musk has “agreed to head the task force” and credited him for the recommendation of the panel. Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk, who is also a Tesla and Space X executive, endorsed the former president after he was slightly wounded in an attempted assassination in Butler, Pa. Musk has used his social media platform to try to help Trump in ways that have prompted concern from some critics. He recently attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and posted a fake image depicting Harris as a communist, echoing Trump’s disparaging nickname for her, “Comrade Kamala.” He falsely claimed in a message accompanying the fabricated image: “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”

The image appeared to violate X’s own policies on manipulated content, which state that any “media that is significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated, or fabricated” must either be labeled or removed. Days after sharing the image, however, Musk’s original post was still circulating, with nearly 83 million views Thursday.

The close alliance between a major-party presidential nominee and the owner of an influential social media platform stands out, particularly this close to an election and with Musk embroiled in recent controversies. Musk’s allies have also poured millions into America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC.

Musk helped create the super PAC, which had raised $8.7 million as of June 30, according to public filings. Donors include wealthy business executives, such as former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, Palantir co-founder and Austin-based tech investor Joe Lonsdale, and Sequoia Capital investor Shaun Maguire.

Musk’s growing role in Trump’s orbit reflects his broader move to the right, a tack that has sometimes involved promoting fringe conspiracy theories. This past week, Musk posted and then deleted a post referencing an interview that Tucker Carlson did with podcaster Darryl Cooper. That interview received widespread backlash after Cooper promoted falsehoods about World War II and the Nazis.

Now, the growing ties between Musk and Trump are set to be cemented through a governing body that would likely put Musk at the center of U.S. policymaking, if Trump wins a second term. Despite potential conflicts of interest with his sprawling business empire, Musk would either chair or help lead an independent commission that would comb through thousands of federal programs and formally recommend which ones to cut, according to the plan long discussed by Trump and many of his top advisers. Cuts to government spending would likely need congressional approval, but cuts to government regulations could often be at least attempted by Trump unilaterally, should he win the 2024 election.

Trump advisers have for months eyed the commission as a way to publicly identify billions of dollars of unnecessary federal spending, reprising an idea from the Reagan administration. The plan has gained traction among Trump advisers as the former president has embraced increasingly aggressive plans to approve trillions of dollars in new tax cuts with no clear proposal for how to pay for them. (Budget experts say the commission could identify hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts, but the former president’s tax cuts would likely still increase the national debt, even with new revenue from his plan to massively increase tariff duties.)

Trump aide Brian Hughes told reporters before Trump’s speech on Thursday that Musk “has literally made history-changing work,” building more efficient systems and that the former president is excited by the possibility of appointing the Tesla CEO to the position.

“How that commission ultimately gets staffed and directed is yet to come but what I think you’ll hear today is a reaffirmation that President Trump loves the idea and will work with Mr. Musk and others to ensure that we have it in place and really analyze the functionality of our government,” Hughes said.

In a post on X Thursday, Musk said he looks forward to “serving America if the opportunity arises.”

“No pay, no title, no recognition is needed,” he said in a message to his roughly 196 million followers, referencing the commission.

But Musk’s companies have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and other subsidies, and he has been critical of the regulatory push from federal agencies under President Joe Biden. Under Biden, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have advanced investigations into Tesla’s marketing of its driver-assistance technologies. Musk has also been critical of Biden’s electric vehicle subsidies, which he has said benefit his competitors more than Tesla.

Steve Moore, who pitched the former president on the idea, said Musk would be “absolutely perfect” to run the commission. Among the other names that could be considered for the commission are Fred Smith, the former CEO of FedEx, and Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, said two people familiar with the idea, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Last month, Musk hosted a conversation with Trump on X that was initially marred by technical errors. The conversation, described as “unscripted with no limits on subject matter” mainly stuck to topics that Trump appeared comfortable with. Musk praised the former president for his response to the attempted assassination, telling him, “You can’t fake bravery under such circumstances.”

Trump asked Musk last year if he was interested in purchasing Truth Social. Musk reinstated Trump on the X platform in 2022, after the former president was banned following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Trump has posted on the site occasionally, he still primarily uses Truth Social.

Stein reported from Washington and Thadani from San Francisco.

Former president Donald Trump, in a speech Thursday to Jewish Republicans, repeatedly denigrated Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats and warned, without evidence, that Israel “will no longer exist” if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes president.

Trump has long questioned how Jewish Americans could vote for Democrats, even as polls show they support the party by wide margins, and Trump’s rhetoric toward the voting bloc is criticized as antisemitic.

“I don’t understand how anybody can support them — and I say it constantly — if you had them to support and you were Jewish, you have to have your head examined,” Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition. “They’ve been very bad to you.”

Trump addressed the group live via satellite as it held its annual leadership summit in Las Vegas, days after the bodies of six Israeli hostages — including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin — were recovered in Gaza. The hostages were taken by Hamas in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Trump said Thursday that Harris and President Joe Biden have “sought to cast blame for these deaths on Israel,” though both condemned Hamas in separate statements on the recovery of Goldberg-Polin’s body. Neither statement criticized Israel. In discussing the matter, Trump initially appeared to misstate Goldberg-Polin’s last name as “Goldman.”

Biden’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown strained during the war. The president said Monday he does not think Netanyahu is doing enough to strike a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.

Trump did not mention Netanyahu in his speech Thursday but claimed without evidence — as he has before — that the war would not have started if he were still president. He also again expressed some impatience with how long the war has taken. Discussing the war in April, Trump said he would tell Netanyahu to “get it over with” and “get back to normalcy.”

“I will support Israel’s right to win,” Trump told the RJC. “It’s a war on terror, and we will win fast. You have to win and you have to win fast.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, denounced Trump’s repeated criticism of Jewish Americans who vote Democratic.

“This is antisemitism, plain and simple, and if any other elected official or candidate said these things even once — let alone on a nearly daily basis — they would be condemned as antisemitic,” Soifer said in a statement.

Despite Trump’s comments to the contrary, Harris has repeatedly expressed support for the existence of Israel and its right to defend itself, including during her Democratic National Convention speech last month. She has also spoken out against the human suffering in Gaza amid the Israel counteroffensive and emphasized the urgent need for a cease-fire deal.

“President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” Harris said in her DNC speech.

Trump, on Thursday, exaggerated what the implications would be if Harris wins in November.

“You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president … Israel will no longer exist,” he said.

Trump received an enthusiastic response Thursday as he addressed the RJC after being introduced by Miriam Adelson, the billionaire and Republican megadonor. She told the GOP Republicans gathered in Las Vegas that Trump is “our best friend” and that she is “eagerly awaiting for him to enter the White House and to save the Jewish people.”

Jewish voters continue to overwhelmingly favor Democrats, according to polling. The group supported Biden over Trump 70 percent to 27 percent in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter survey.

Trump suggested Thursday, without evidence, that he was “probably around the 50 percent mark” with Jewish voters — and once more criticized Jewish Americans who do not support him.

“Who are the 50 percent of Jewish people that are voting for these people that hate Israel and don’t like the Jewish people?” Trump asked, pushing false claims about voters who oppose him.

On Wednesday morning, a student walked into Georgia’s Apalachee High School and opened fire with a rifle, killing two students and two instructors. The incident is numbing in its familiarity, from the weapon choice to the shooting location to the death toll. Even the most acutely emotional aspect to the story — the students reaching out to parents to offer what both feared might be their last messages — were familiar. These stories are ones we’ve heard over and over again.

Just because these elements are familiar, though, doesn’t mean they are less powerful or less important. Nor should we let the familiarity of kids endangered at school distract from a more mundane aspect of the shooting: that American kids are much more at risk from gun violence than kids in other countries. More at risk, in fact, than people in other countries in general.

Take Western Europe. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington compiles data on causes of death around the world, including in America’s peer countries in Europe. From 2004 to 2021 (the most recent year for which IHME data are available), more Europeans were killed by firearms than were American kids. But far more U.S. kids than European kids were shot to death, with five American kids dying for each European child.

In fact, several states saw more children killed by guns in 2021 than the number of kids killed by firearms in Europe that year. Georgia was among them. (Data for 2023 on the charts that follow are provisional.)

These are raw counts, not relative totals. There were 437 million residents in the countries included in IHME’s Western Europe data in 2021, about 92 million of them under age 20. There were about 262 million Americans under 18 in 2023, including about 8.5 million in Georgia that year. But more Georgia children than European kids were killed by firearms.

The states shown above are those that had the most kids killed by firearms over the last 20 years. Georgia is America’s eighth most populous state; it had the fifth most kids shot to death over that period, more than 1,400 of them.

Many of those killed by firearms in Europe took their own lives. If we exclude suicides to look only at homicides and accidental deaths, we see that fewer Europeans overall than American kids are killed by firearms. American kids are almost twice as likely as European adults to be killed by a firearm when we exclude suicides. They are nearly 22 times more likely to be killed by a firearm than Europeans under 20.

Thanks in part to a surge in shooting deaths that accompanied the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, firearms recently became the most common cause of children’s deaths in the United States. School shootings are only a small subset of those deaths. But exceptional tragedies like the one that unfolded in Georgia on Wednesday are a moment to consider how unexceptional it is when American kids are killed by firearms.