The Biden administration announced the opening of a new munitions production facility in Texas that will help to manufacture the 155-millimeter artillery rounds used in Ukraine and elsewhere.
The plant will be operated by General Dynamics and produce casings for nearly 30,000 artillery shells per month, according to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
The new facility “will significantly increase our country’s ability to manufacture parts that are used to produce artillery ammunition,” Kirby told reporters on May 29.
“These 155-millimeter shells and, of course, the guns that go with them, have absolutely made a significant impact on Ukraine’s ability to repel Russian attacks.”
The Biden administration has delivered millions of 155-millimeter shells to Ukraine since 2022, largely through presidential drawdown authorities, which directly transfer the rounds to Ukraine from the United States’ own stockpiles.
The continued flow of such rounds to Ukraine, which has at times fired thousands in a day, has led to increasing concern among U.S. military leadership that the United States might face its own shortages.
Last year, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said that demand for the rounds had pushed production to “the absolute edge of defense-industrial capacity.”
Kirby expressed optimism that the new facility would begin to correct that trend. He noted that the Biden administration had doubled its production of the rounds since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and will likely have more than quintupled it by the close of 2025.
“When Russia invaded Ukraine back in [20]22, the United States was producing about 14,000 155 millimeter artillery shells every month,” Kirby said.
“We’re already now having more than double that number and we expect to double it again. We’re on track to manufacture 100,000 155 millimeter artillery shells per month, by the end of next year.”
Kirby added that the Mesquite site will employ hundreds of American workers, and contribute to the growth of the defense-industrial base.
—Andrew Thornebrooke
![Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during his so-called hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 29, 2024. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F05%2F30%2Fid5659344-GettyImages-2154639686-1200x739.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
JURY DELIBERATES
Jurors in the trial against former President Donald Trump convened on Wednesday after a long day of closing arguments.
Justice Juan Merchan spent more than an hour giving the jury procedural and legal instructions and definitions, and then the deliberations began.
Merchan reminded jurors of principles of fairness and reasonable doubt, that they couldn’t read anything into the defendant not testifying, and that they could not consider or speculate about sentencing. That was the judge’s role.
Then he explained the charged crimes: 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
The crime requires intent to commit or conceal another crime—election of a person to public office by unlawful means.
Each and every juror needs to agree on whether Trump engaged in such a conspiracy, but not on the “unlawful means.”
The judge explained that the unlawful means could be Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), falsification of other business records, or violation of tax laws, briefly outlining the terms of those laws.
Merchan also defined for jurors accessorial liability: Trump did not have to falsify documents himself and could be criminally liable if he solicited, requested, commanded, importuned, or intentionally engaged another person to aid the crime.
Witness and ex-lawyer Michael Cohen is considered an accomplice in this case, meaning the jury cannot convict Trump based only on Cohen’s testimony unless it is supported by corroborating evidence.
Evidence of Trump’s presence alone does not show that he engaged in a conspiracy. Jurors would need to find that he engaged in or caused the unlawful conduct in order to find him guilty, the judge explained.
By around 3 p.m., jurors made one request for the instructions to be repeated, and another request for some testimony readback.
Jurors requested portions of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s and Cohen’s testimonies, seemingly to check testimony concerning any involvement in the alleged scheme on Trump’s part.
The jurors have no set deadline to return a verdict, and one could come as soon as this week or as long as weeks down the road. Experts have already made wide-ranging predictions on the outcome of the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
You can read the full jury instructions here.
BOOKMARKS
Donald Trump has a 58 percent chance of victory in the 2024 election according to election reporting service Decision Desk. Its early forecast predicts that Trump will capture 282 electoral votes, leaving Joe Biden with 256.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he will make another play to institute school choice legislation in that state. The announcement comes after several Republican lawmakers who opposed school choice in that state lost their seats in primary elections.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he will not recuse himself from cases related to Donald Trump or Jan. 6 events. Some Democrat lawmakers had urged him to recuse himself in response to an upside-down American flag and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag being flown on his property.
A top Israeli military official has said he expects the war in Gaza to last at least until the end of the year. Tzachi Hanegb, Israel’s national security adviser, says it will take seven more months of fighting “to shore up our achievement and realize what we define as the destruction of Hamas.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Philadelphia on May 29 in an effort to bolster support for his campaign in the black community. The visit coincides with the launch of a Biden support group “Black Voters for Biden-Harris.”