The Wall St. Journal reported Friday that President Joe Biden’s nuclear posture review will call for canceling both a planned nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile slated to use a modified W80-4 warhead and a life extension program for the megaton-capable B83 gravity bomb.
The Journal also reported that the Biden posture review would not declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons was to deter or, if necessary, respond to a nuclear attack. Disarmament advocates had pushed for the policy, which Biden personally endorsed as a presidential candidate in an essay published in Foreign Affairs during the campaign.
A federal jury convincted Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), the dean of Nebraska’s House delegation, of lying to the FBI about illegal contributions to his 2016 campaign for Congress, media reported this week. Jurors voted to convict the nine-term congressman on three counts, each of which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
Fortenberry’s second district includes neither Offutt Air Force base, in the state’s first congressional district, nor the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos spread across the rural western part of the state in its third district. Fortenberry does have a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, though not on that body’s defense or energy and water subcommittees, which write first drafts of spending bills for the Pentagon and the Department of Energy each year.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the minority leader in the House, has called on Fortenberry to resign. Fortenberry has said he will appeal the ruling in the U.S. District court for the Central District of California.
Even before the U.S. took a firm stance on the Russian military’s violence against civilians in Ukraine this week, its embassy in Kyiv accused Moscow of violating the rules of war when it shelled a nuclear power plant, according to a recent social media post.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February its forces have “destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday. “Based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.”
Among Ukraine’s critical infrastructure targeted by Moscow in recent weeks is the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia plant in the country’s eastern reaches. The U.S.’s Kyiv embassy contended in a March 4 Tweet that targeting a nuclear power plant constitutes a war crime.
“Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” the embassy account said. Russia seized Zaporizhzhia March 3. Fighting around the plant caused a fire at a nearby training building, but as of Friday, there had been no radiological releases at the site.
Meanwhile Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) told Reuters Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is trying to send a group of experts to Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, which Russian forces also captured earlier this month. So far, IAEA has yet to work out an agreement with both Kyiv and Moscow to make that happen.
