Oath Keepers’ Rhodes guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has been convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s election, handing the Justice Department a major victory in its massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. A Washington, D.C., jury on Tuesday found Rhodes guilty of sedition after three days of deliberations. The nearly two-month-long trial showcased the far-right extremist group’s efforts to keep Republican Donald Trump in the White House at all costs. An attorney for Rhodes says they intend to appeal. Rhodes was also convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, but acquitted of two other conspiracy charges.
Trump’s dinner disaster sparks new rules for his campaign
Donald Trump is betting he can win his way back to the White House by reviving the outsider appeal that fueled his success in 2016. But his dinner with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and a rapper who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies is demonstrating the risks of that approach as Trump vies for his party’s nomination once again. Amid stinging criticism from fellow Republicans, Trump’s campaign is now putting new protocols in place to try to prevent a repeat. People familiar with the plans say that only those approved and carefully checked will be allowed to meet with him in his Mar-a-Lago club.
Chinese spaceship with 3 aboard docks with space station
Three Chinese astronauts have docked with their country’s space station, where they will overlap for several days with the three-member crew already onboard and expand the facility to its maximum size. The latest crew includes veteran of a 2005 space mission and two first-time astronauts. Their spaceship blasted off atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:08 p.m. Tuesday. They docked with the Tiangong station at 5:42 a.m. Wednesday. The six-month mission will be the last in the construction phase of China’s space station. The station’s third and final module docked with the station earlier this month, one of the last steps in China’s effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit.
NATO renews membership vow to Ukraine, pledges arms and aid
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says war-torn Ukraine will one day become a member of the world’s largest security alliance. It’s a commitment that NATO leaders made to Ukraine 14 years ago. But some say it led in part to Russia’s invasion. Stoltenberg’s remarks came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his NATO counterparts gathered Tuesday in Romania to drum up urgently needed support for Ukraine, including deliveries of electrical components for its devastated electricity network. Ukraine’s grid has been battered since early October by targeted Russian strikes. Some countries also promised military aid, including artillery and armored vehicles.
NASA cancels greenhouse gas monitoring satellite due to cost
NASA is canceling a planned satellite that was going to intensely monitor greenhouse gases over the Americas because it got too costly and complicated. But the space agency says it will still be watching human-caused carbon pollution but in different ways. Tuesday’s NASA announcement says that its GeoCarb mission, which was designed to monitor carbon dioxide, methane and how plant life changes over North and South America is now looking to cost more than $600 million. It was budgeted at $166 million.
Justice Department intervenes for struggling water system
The Justice Department is making a rare intervention to try to bring improvements in the beleaguered water system in the Mississippi capital city. The Jackson system nearly collapsed in late summer and continues to struggle. The department filed a proposal Tuesday to appoint a third-party manager for the system. That is meant to be an interim measure while the federal government, the city of Jackson and the Mississippi State Department of Health try to negotiate a judicially enforceable consent decree to achieve long-term sustainability of the system and the city’s compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act and other relevant laws.
Virginia Walmart mass shooting survivor files $50M lawsuit
A Walmart employee who survived the mass shooting at a store in Virginia has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the company. Employee Donya Prioleau claims in her lawsuit that Walmart continued to employ the shooter “who had known propensities for violence, threats and strange behavior.” The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Chesapeake Circuit Court. Walmart, which is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment. Prioleau’s suit alleges that she has experienced post-traumatic stress disorder from witnessing the rampage in the store’s breakroom. Police said that store supervisor Andre Bing fatally shot six employees and wounded several others. Police said he died at the scene from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Biden, Macron ready to talk Ukraine, trade in state visit
French President Emmanuel Macron will be the guest for the first state visit of Joe Biden’s presidency. The event this week is a revival of diplomatic pageantry that had been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden-Macron relationship has turned around from its choppy start. Macron briefly recalled France’s ambassador to the United States last year after the White House announced a deal to sell nuclear submarines to Australia that undermined a contract that France had to sell diesel-powered submarines. Today, Macron has become one of Biden’s most forward-facing European allies in the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
By wire sources