Shawna Link

Let’s make the world a better place! Be the Change! Also find me at @shawnadlink.bsky.social 🌊💙💚 🌻 ☮️

[Igor Sushko @igorsushko]

💥 3 distinct missile strikes on the Voronezh electronics factory critical to Russian missile production.
Ukraine has not disclosed the missile system used.
Russian claims diverge - British Storm Shadow or American AGM-188 cruise missiles.

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

Breaking WaPo:

The Trump Justice Department took the extraordinary step of seeking to force reporters for The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal to testify before a federal grand jury — but withdrew the subpoenas after they were challenged by the news organizations. https://t.co/SIiM8y8koW

[Jessica Tarlov @JessicaTarlov]

Everything is going great.

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Kasparov: Anti-Putin opposition carries the same virus. They say stop the war because you can't win, not because invading a neighbor is wrong. The moral case drops to third, fourth place.

Russians who opposed the war on principle from day one were a vanishing minority. 2/

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Kasparov: Drones hit the Urals, Petersburg, barely noticed, but Moscow? The imperial reflex snapped. Citizens asking why someone drags their city into a war between Ukraine and Russia

That question is the virus at its purest. Moscow sees itself as above the war it launched 1/

[Adam Klasfeld @KlasfeldReports]

It's now a judicial finding by a GWB appointee that the Trump DOJ has a "well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President's political and personal adversaries."

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Then why did your boss commute the 20 year prison sentence of Philip Esformes, the Florida health care executive convicted of a $1.3 billion Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme, after just 14 months served?

Why had he pardoned more than 70 fraudsters?

[Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney]

JUST IN: The 7th Circuit has denied the Trump administration's effort to expedite its appeal of the order denying access to Wisconsin's voter rolls.

DOJ had claimed urgency with votes fast approaching.

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Alexander Browder, a 17-year-old London teenager, has become Russia's youngest ever sanctions target. He has built a database exposing the crypto networks helping Russia and other rogue states dodge Western sanctions.

In March, @Alexbrowder_ published a report for the Henry Jackson Society think tank, describing money-laundering mechanisms involving cryptocurrencies and estimating the scale of such operations by Russia, Iran, and North Korea at around $350 billion.

▪️ Cryptocurrency as a sanctions-evasion tool

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a stable asset. This may be a currency, such as the ruble. This avoids the sharp price fluctuations typical of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, making the token convenient for payments and transfers.

According to Alexander Browder, this stability made the A7A5 stablecoin a useful instrument for sanctions evasion. The ruble-pegged token allowed payments to be conducted outside the banking system, which has been blocked for Russia by Western sanctions.

Alexander described A7A5 as one of the West's biggest challenges in the fight against money laundering. According to the British Foreign Office, more than $90 billion passed through the stablecoin network linked to the token in the past year alone.

That figure is comparable to roughly half of Russia's annual military spending. In late May, London imposed sanctions on 18 platforms in several countries, accusing them of creating shadow financial systems to circumvent restrictions.

▪️ Russia's response

On June 2, the Russian foreign ministry added Browder and four other British citizens to its sanctions list. They were accused of "slander and spreading false information." The teenager was banned from entering Russia.

Browder himself took the move calmly. According to him, the sanctions have become a badge of honor and proof that his investigation has "touched a nerve."

By the way, Alexander is the son of financier and human rights advocate William Browder @Billbrowder, CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital. His lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison in 2009 after exposing a major tax fraud scheme. Browder Sr. is an outspoken critic of Putin and the initiator of the Magnitsky Act.

According to Alexander, it was his father's story that inspired him to pursue investigations. He believes that today's schemes for financing war through cryptocurrencies require a new, younger generation of analysts.

📹: DW

[Alexander Browder @Alexbrowder_]

It was great to go on Newsmax TV to discuss sanctions evasion through cryptocurrency.

[Alexander Browder @Alexbrowder_]

Proud to be the first high school student in the world to ever be sanctioned by an authoritarian regime for uncovering corruption. It just proves that the work I’ve done to expose Russias sanctions evasion stablecoin, A7A5, has touched a raw nerve.

https://t.co/b0voHBkqG7

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

ALERT: Another challenge against Trump's $1.7 billion slush fund

23 Democratic state attorneys general ask federal judge in Miami to probe "scheme" by Team Trump to "deceive the court"

They ask court to "rectify the fraud perpetrated upon the Court & deter future misconduct"

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

Even for Trump, going with "It was vandals" is extraordinarily stupid.

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

We’re back to the DOGE era. How many people will he fire who turn out to be essential?

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

APPLEBAUM: What Russians do is they put out not one lie, but million lies, or not one explanation, but one after another.

It's a propaganda technique. They just flood people with massive, contradictory stories, and sooner or later, people won't pay attention to anything at all.

And there's so much information all the time that people eventually just tune out, and they say, "I don't know what's true, I don't know what's not true, I don't believe anything, I'm not going to engage in this issue, I'm not going to get angry about it, I just don't want to know anything at all."

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Does he believe this shit?

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) has issued memo to US Secret Service announcing a probe of "waste, fraud and abuse" in the Trump White House ballroom project

Blumenthal asks agency to turn over records on the reported $352 million in Secret Service funds "redirected" to Ballroom

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

A new book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan contends that Trump ran in 2024 for one reason above all: “This was about staying out of prison.” https://t.co/tiWqJrmDWc

[Acyn @Acyn]

Leavitt: The vandalism is very real. Despite what Tim Walz wants to say. There have actually been six arrests at the Reflecting Pool where, again, these deranged individuals—many of them longtime donors to the Democratic Party, to Barack Obama, to ActBlue—have been vandalizing and desecrating our federal monument, one of the most beautiful monuments in the world: The Reflecting Pool. 

And that’s why President Trump is not going to stop with this effort. They’re not only holding those people accountable, but they’re going to fix the pool and continue to make it beautiful after this despicable vandalism, just in time to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday next week.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Time for Russian occupiers to go home.