Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook

Together with Prime Minister @MarkJCarney, we participated in a practice with the @PWHL_Ottawa Charge. Great to see Finnish representation on the team: defender Ronja Savolainen, goaltender Sanni Ahola and assistant coach Juuso Toivola. – Vierailimme pääministeri Carneyn kanssa Ottawa Chargen jääharjoituksissa. Hienoa tavata suomalaisvahvistukset puolustaja Ronja Savolainen, maalivahti Sanni Ahola sekä apuvalmentaja Juuso Toivola. – Vi besökte Ottawa Charges isträning tillsammans med premiärminister Carney. Roligt att se finska inslag i laget: backen Ronja Savolainen, målvakten Sanni Ahola och assisterande tränaren Juuso Toivola.

Eight minutes of @AmbRice46 worth your time -

I suspect there are quite a few politicians sitting in various corners of Europe and North America who are rather anxious these days about the prospect of information emerging in the coming weeks and months regarding how they received funds, channelled through the Hungarian government and Hungarian state-financed organisations, to conduct subversive political activities in their home countries. And yes, Orbán himself has in all likelihood received a substantial portion of this money directly from Russia — primarily through Gazprom. The evidence for the broader Kremlin-Hungary nexus has grown dramatically in recent weeks. A major consortium of investigative journalists published transcripts of phone calls between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Russian officials, strongly suggesting that Budapest functioned as a fifth column within the EU with Szijjártó allegedly coordinating with Moscow to undermine sanctions and sharing intelligence on Ukraine's EU accession process. Szijjártó himself visited Moscow no fewer than 16 times following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The financial architecture underpinning this relationship is also becoming clearer. Investigative reporting has traced Orbán-linked financial forces specifically connected to Hungarian state-affiliated banks to the financing of far-right parties elsewhere in Europe, including Marine Le Pen's campaign in France and Spain's Vox party. The money trail does not appear to run directly from Gazprom to Orbán to foreign parties, but rather through a layered system of Hungarian state intermediaries. The deeper Russian connection comes via energy deals: between 2011 and 2015, Hungarian gas purchases were routed through an opaque intermediary company, MET International, with both Russian and Hungarian ownership and documented ties to Putin's inner circle and Orbán's government. This brings us to CPAC Hungary. Magyar has now confirmed publicly what many suspected: CPAC was paid for by the Hungarian state. In his words, "the state should never have financed them in the first place — it was a crime." The same applies to related institutions such as the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which served as a key vehicle for spreading Orbán's ideological influence across Europe and beyond. I am not suggesting that every politician who attended CPAC Hungary knowingly received Russian-linked funds. But the financing chain is now confirmed — Hungarian taxpayers' money, quite possibly supplemented by Russian energy revenues, was used to host and cultivate a global network of like-minded politicians. If I were a journalist in any country whose politicians attended those events, that would seem a rather pressing line of inquiry. The urgency of that inquiry is underscored by what is reportedly happening right now. According to Magyar's international press conference, Szijjártó has barricaded himself with close colleagues and is actively destroying and shredding documents specifically evidence relating to sanctions against Russia. If accurate, this is not the behaviour of an innocent man. It is the behaviour of someone who knows exactly what those documents contain and who those documents implicate. One hopes the new Hungarian government moves fast enough to secure what remains.

Finnish President @alexstubb discusses the "mathematics" of the Russia-Ukraine War with @ConStelz @BrookingsInst. Watch the full conversation: brookings.edu/events/rebalan…

This is horrific. A U.S. citizen describes the facility her husband was brought to while he waited for a deportation flight. Dozens of people crammed into tiny cells, a "chain of people vomiting" from filthy toilets, no medical care, and only one meal per day. It's unacceptable.

“Mark and I message each other pretty much every day, whether about hockey, the Blue Jays.. but mostly about NATO.. and trying to save the world.” - Finnish President Alexander Stubb

This statement will go into the history books when the full story of the Trump admin's dealings to benefit Putin is told

NEW: @ProPublica just revealed details from inside a fortified room at the Justice Department after the 2020 election. The last line of defense against Trump's efforts to overturn his loss held. Those officials are now gone – and people who aided Trump’s efforts took over. ⬇️

Ossoff: "The president apparently promised pardons for the entire WH staff, which I guess is the kind of thing you do when you run the WH like a casino. Now, maybe the West Wing is too busy placing Kashi and Polymarket bets on the war to care, but American are getting hurt ... in Donald Trump’s America, the rich get tax cuts, the well-connected get stock tips, and everybody else makes sacrifices."

“Americans die of treatable conditions at nearly twice the rate as Spaniards, French, Japanese and Australians,” but Trump wants to divert huge sums from healthcare to vastly increase the military to fight his pointless wars. trib.al/UnLdoUR

@MichaelBroecker @faznet Big congrats an @HeleneBubrowski, eine feine Journalistin und lange schon Freundin der Clüvers.

Die @faznet bekommt nicht nur endlich eine Herausgeberin, sondern die beste Journalistin, die ich je kennengelernt habe. Und dazu einen feinen Menschen, der interne Politik und Eitelkeiten fremd sind. Sie wird mir fehlen als Korrektiv und Counterpart. Als Freundin bleibt sie ♥️

16 years. So many friends of mine fought for a long time for this this to happen against the odds. They failed, learned and kept the faith. Quite a few left Hungary. Today, they finally succeeded. Congratulations. The process of reconciliation & de-Orbanification can start. 🇭🇺

Twenty one hours was twenty hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate

Your weekend reading on the impacts of the war with Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz on areas other than oil, refined products, and LNG: 1. Helium - key for semiconductors:nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/… 2. Sulfur - essential for copper: mwi.westpoint.edu/the-chokepoint… 3. Aluminum - critical for the military: mwi.westpoint.edu/the-foundation… All of these markets and supply chains have been deeply impacted. Our next one will come out on Fertilizer next week.

News flash to the Donald: Fertilizer prices are not set by monopolists, but on the free market by supply and demand. And you have just slashed the global supply by your illegal and idiotic War on Iran. So listen up MAGA: The GOP once stood for free markets, balanced budgets, sound money and rigorous observance of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. If you can't see that Trump is the sworn enemy of all four of those principles, then you are blind as a bat.

For years, Canada sent 70 cents of every defence dollar straight to the United States. Mark Carney just told Parliament that stops now. The room gave him a standing ovation. It is a striking thing to get a standing ovation for announcing that your country will stop subsidising someone else’s arms industry. But that is where Canada is in 2025. Carney’s case is blunt: the United States is “beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contributions to collective security.”   And MAGA is celebrating. Winning. Always winning. USA, USA. Somewhere a man in a red hat is pumping his fist. Let me explain what is actually happening, because clearly no one has bothered. In ten months, the United States has torched eighty years of alliance architecture that its own soldiers, diplomats and taxpayers built from the rubble of the Second World War. Eighty years. Gone. Detonated, with a smile, by people who genuinely believe this is genius. Canada is not drifting away. Canada is leaving. Europe is not hedging. Europe is building a defence industry specifically designed to cut Washington out. Allies are not quietly grumbling over dinner. They are signing contracts with other people. And the MAGA faithful are cheering every single step of it, because someone told them this is what dominance looks like. It is not dominance. It is a man burning down his own house and whooping at the flames. The saddest part is not that America is losing its allies. The saddest part is that half the country thinks that is the point.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Stay connected, Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

Trump promised his top officials pardons before he leaves office, according to the WSJ. We knew he'd do this. But telling people ahead of time provides an incentive for them to break the law—including abusing power and grifting. Crime spree! wsj.com/politics/polic…

Right now, the conversation isn’t about nuclear programs, or free and fair elections in Iran. It's about reopening a body of water that was open before this war started. Chalk that up as a win for Tehran.

We fought and lost a war in Iran so that both the Iranians and the Russians could make far more money from oil—the Iranians from tolls, the Russians from higher prices and the end of sanctions. That isn’t just strategic defeat; it’s self-destructive foolishness at a level unknown to military history.

Trump is now attacking immigrants who are lawfully in the US but not yet citizens, denying them publicly subsidized housing, commercial driver’s licenses, and access to bank and business loans. Their US citizen family members are also hurt. trib.al/Z61b2PM