Russia

The New York Times is reporting on a series of new “newspaper” sites that are popping up across America. With names like D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and the Miami Chronicle, Russian disinformation experts have put up what are pretending to be American newspapers. They steal content from local papers and national news sites like Reuters, then toss in the occasional pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine, anti-Democrat articles. So far, there’s been no response from our government to this blatant attempt to influence the 2024 election by misleading American voters, and doing anything may be difficult as they’re hosted on Russian servers and outside the reach of US law. Putin was deeply involved in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump — to the point that Robert Mueller indicted nearly two dozen Russians for election interference — and they tried again with a major social media presence in 2020. With Ukraine in the balance (and Medvedev saying last week that they would be taking part of Poland next) expect Moscow to be vigorous in their efforts to get their agent, Trump, back into the White House.