Nuclear Weapons Now: The Threat and the Opportunity
On Sunday at 12:30 at the South Church, Ira Helfand, MD, co-winner of the 1985 and 2017 Nobel Peace Prizes with organizations he helped to lead, and I participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the NH Peace with Justice Advocates, NH UCC, and the Back from the Brink Movement highlighting the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons and the historic opportunity to advance a serious effort towards nuclear disarmament.
The event coincided with the updating of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock, which was just recently set to 85 seconds until midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe. Jon B. Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “In 2025, it was almost impossible to identify a nuclear issue that got better. More states are relying more intently on nuclear weapons, multiple states are openly talking about using nuclear weapons for not only deterrence but for coercion. Hundreds of billions are being spent to modernize and expand nuclear arsenals all over the world, and more and more non-nuclear states are considering whether they should acquire their own nuclear weapons or are hedging their nuclear bets.”
At the same time the clock moved forward, the New START Treaty, the last remaining agreement limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, officially expired.
President Trump is openly floating a return to explosive nuclear testing. He made a sweetheart deal with OpenAI to allow the use of artificial intelligence in our weapons systems. And, he still holds the sole authority to launch a nuclear weapon, without approval from Congress.
No one should have that power. Especially not Donald Trump. Especially not when he’s waging a disastrous war against Iran.
When I think about the danger of nuclear weapons, I don’t think about movies or history books. I think about my friends in the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs. I think about downwinders and veterans who have lived for decades with cancers, displacement, and trauma because our government treated entire communities as expendable.
The threats we face are not hypothetical. They are our past and they are our present, and if we don’t act now, they may end our future.
Too many politicians chase the trending topics and lose focus on pressing issues when they’re not in the headlines or splashed across their social media feeds.
I’m running for Congress because I refuse to look away from the most serious responsibilities we have: protecting human life and preventing global catastrophe.
You can watch a full recording of the event from February in Durham here:
