RT editor-in-chief covertly recruited US influencers to spread pro-Kremlin messages, says treasury department
The US treasury department announced sanctions against the Russian state media network RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, and nine others affiliated with the network over what it said were efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential election.
It said that beginning in early 2024, RT executives began a “nefarious effort to covertly recruit unwitting American influencers in support of their malign influence campaign”.
Simonovna Simonyan is a “central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts” and allowed RT to used a front company to disguise its own involvement or the involvement of the Russian government in content meant to influence US audience, the department said.
Other RT employees included in the latest sanctions are the network’s deputy editor-in-chief, Elizaveta Yuryevna Brodskaia, who the US said has reported to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin; deputy editor-in-chief Anton Sergeyvich Anisimov, who the US said “conducts activities on behalf of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB); deputy director of RT English-language broadcasting Andrey Vladimirovich Kiyashko; digital media projects manager Konstantin Kalashnikov; and Elena Mikhaylovna Afanasyeva, who the US said “covertly interacted with prominent US social media influencers under the cover of a fake persona”.
Key events
When Kamala Harris mentioned Donald Trump during her campaign speech in New Hampshire, a member of the audience shouted “Lock him up”.
Harris responded by saying that “the courts will handle that and we’ll handle November”.
Kamala Harris says she will make the US tax code “more fair” while also prioritizing investment and innovation.
“Billionaires and big corporations must pay their fair share in taxes,” she tells her supporters. “That’s why I support a billionaire minimum tax and corporations paying their fair share.”
She says that while her administration will ensure that the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, it will also tax capital gains “at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders and small businesses”.
If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan. Because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth, and it creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger.
Kamala Harris says she will also invest in small businesses and innovators throughout America, noting that “talent exists everywhere in our country” but that not everyone has access to the financing, venture capital or expert advice.
She says that if elected, her administration will expand access to venture capital, support innovation hubs and business incubators, and increase federal contracts with small businesses. Small businesses in rural communities will be a particular focus, she says.
Kamala Harris says she will also help existing small businesses to grow, by providing low- and no-interest loans to small businesses that want to expand.
She also pledges to “cut the red tape that can make starting and growing a small business more difficult than it needs to be”.
For example, Harris says she will make it cheaper and easier for small businesses to file their taxes.
Let’s just take away some of the bureaucracy in the process to make it easier for people to actually do something that’s going to benefit our entire economy.
Kamala Harris moves on to talking about what she calls an “opportunity economy”, which she envisions is a one “where everyone can compete and have a real chance to succeed”.
She says America’s small businesses are an “essential foundation to our entire economy” and that she wants to see 25m new small business applications by the end of her first term, if she is elected.
To help achieve this, Harris says she will lower the cost of starting a new business. It costs about $40,000 to start a new business, she says, and the current tax deduction for a startup is just $5,000.
Harris proposes to expand the tax deduction for startups to $50,000, which she says is essentially “a tax cut for starting a small business”.
Harris says Georgia school shooting ‘a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies’
Kamala Harris, speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, begins her remarks by talking about the high school shooting in Georgia.
“We’re still gathering information about what happened, but we know that there were multiple fatalities and injuries,” Harris told her supporters. “Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families.”
She said Wednesday’s shooting is “a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies”, adding that it is “outrageous” that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether they will come home alive.
It’s senseless. It is. We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.
Harris speaks at campaign event in New Hampshire
Kamala Harris has just taken to the stage at a campaign event outside a brewery in New Hampshire, where she is reportedly expected to announce her economic plans including a smaller increase in taxes on capital gains.
Harris is speaking from behind bulletproof glass enclosure, after the Secret Service added protective measures for outdoor campaign events in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July.
Joe Biden is preparing to announce that he will formally block Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9bn acquisition of US Steel, according to the Washington Post.
Biden had promised to block the acquisition of US Steel, once the world’s largest company and which played a key role in the nation’s industrialization, by a Japanese company and to keep US Steel as a “totally American-owned, American-operated” company.
US Steel warned earlier today that a failure to merge with Nippon Steel would put thousands of American union jobs at risk, and signaled that it would close some steel mills and potentially move its headquarters out of Pennsylvania, a critical election battleground state.
Harris to break with Biden on capital gains tax – reports
Kamala Harris is planning to propose a less drastic increase in the top capital gains tax rate, breaking with a plan that Joe Biden outlined in his budget blueprint earlier this year, according to a report.
Harris’s advisers have been discussing the move behind the scenes in recent days, according to the Wall Street Journal. The top rate under discussion is 28% but could change, the report says.
Harris plans to announce her plans in an upcoming economic speech in New Hampshire this afternoon, according to CNN.
The White House has released a statement from Joe Biden on the high school shooting in Georgia.
The president said he and the first lady, Jill, are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short because of “senseless gun violence”.
What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart.
“We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he added. He said he was closely coordinating with officials at the federal, state and local level.
Biden also called on Republicans in Congress to work with Democrats to pass “common-sense” gun safety legislation, adding:
We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks and end immunity for gun manufacturers. These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart.
Merrick Garland also spoke about the shooting at a Georgia high school, and said the FBI were on scene to assist local law enforcement.
The US attorney general said he is “devastated for the families who have been affected by this terrible tragedy”.
Multiple people were reported killed and about 30 others injured in the Wednesday morning shooting at Apalachee high school in Barrow county, 50 miles north-east of Atlanta.
RT editor-in-chief covertly recruited US influencers to spread pro-Kremlin messages, says treasury department
The US treasury department announced sanctions against the Russian state media network RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, and nine others affiliated with the network over what it said were efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential election.
It said that beginning in early 2024, RT executives began a “nefarious effort to covertly recruit unwitting American influencers in support of their malign influence campaign”.
Simonovna Simonyan is a “central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts” and allowed RT to used a front company to disguise its own involvement or the involvement of the Russian government in content meant to influence US audience, the department said.
Other RT employees included in the latest sanctions are the network’s deputy editor-in-chief, Elizaveta Yuryevna Brodskaia, who the US said has reported to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin; deputy editor-in-chief Anton Sergeyvich Anisimov, who the US said “conducts activities on behalf of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB); deputy director of RT English-language broadcasting Andrey Vladimirovich Kiyashko; digital media projects manager Konstantin Kalashnikov; and Elena Mikhaylovna Afanasyeva, who the US said “covertly interacted with prominent US social media influencers under the cover of a fake persona”.
Merrick Garland warned that Russia is not the only foreign power seeking to interfere in US elections.
The US attorney general noted that the US intelligence community recently pointed to “increasingly aggressive Iranian activity” during this election cycle.
“The justice department’s message is clear,” he said:
We have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government. We will be relentlessly aggressive, encountering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran, as well as China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.
Merrick Garland says Americans have right to know ‘when foreign power attempts to exploit’ US
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, speaking before a meeting of the justice department’s election threats taskforce, said the American people “are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country … to send around its own propaganda”.
Garland accused the Russian government of using the state-backed media outlet RT to “direct disinformation and propaganda” in the wake of Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.
As part of that effort, RT and its employees implemented a nearly $10m scheme to direct a Tennessee-based company to contract US-based social media influencers to disseminate content “deemed favorable to the Russian government”, he said.
In a separate enforcement action, the justice department is seizing 32 internet domains that it alleges the Russian government has used “to engage in a covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country’s elections”, he said.
US sanctions leading names at RT, Russian state media, amid accusations of election interference
Joanna Walters
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has accused Russian state media outlet RT and its employees of implementing a scheme to direct a US company to disseminate material that is favorable to the Russian government.
Garland is holding a press conference right now announcing sanctions for election meddling.
This includes announcing indictments against two senior editors at RT for alleged money laundering.
He said that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “inner circle” directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation “as part of a program to influence the 2024 election” for president in the US.
The White House press briefing is now due to begin at 1.45pm ET in the west wing, pushed back from the previous schedule for the event, of 1.30pm ET.
It’s highly likely that when it does begin the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, will address the shooting at a high school in Georgia, details of which are still unfolding.
The White House put out a comment quickly after reports began coming through. Those reports say there have been casualties, some believed fatal, and law enforcement say a suspect is in custody. Further details and official confirmation of reports are still awaited, but the White House said that Joe Biden had been informed.
Interim summary
Hello, live blog readers, it’s never a dull day when there’s an election, especially one as pivotal as the 2024 presidential election. We’ll bring you news developments as they happen, so stick with the Guardian.
Here’s where things stand:
The US plans to accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the election by using Kremlin-run media and other online platforms to target US voters with disinformation, according to reports. The Biden administration will reportedly announce a series of actions later today in connection with such allegations.
A top strategist to the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will brief Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign on Labour’s election-winning strategy, according to a report. Deborah Mattinson, Starmer’s polling expert who was his director of strategy while he was leader of the opposition, will reportedly travel to Washington DC next week.
A fundraising event for some of the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, aiming to prevent the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump, was scheduled to take place today at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey – but has been postponed indefinitely.
Kamala Harris will travel to Pittsburgh on Thursday to prepare for next week’s presidential debate, according to multiple reports. The US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president will spend the final days leading up to the debate on 10 September in Pittsburgh, the reports say, where she will also hold informal meetings with voters in the battleground of Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.
National polls for the US presidential race have been upended ever since Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden to run against Donald Trump. While Biden was trailing the Republican former president nationally and in many crucial swing states, Harris has gained about three points in national polls since becoming the nominee. The Guardian’s poll tracker assesses polls over a rolling 10-day period. It now has Harris leading nationally by about two points.
A Republican anti-Donald Trump group is targeting disaffected Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in a new $11.5m ad campaign that will play in key battleground states. The ad buy, by Republican Voters Against Trump, targets voters in swing states and features former Trump voters explaining why they plan to vote for Harris in November.
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