The official U.S. position on when it would use nuclear weapons has not been updated since the Biden Administration, which said in its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners.”

This sounds like a “sensible and stabilizing approach,” but it does not exclude the possibility that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons first in a conflict; that is, in a situation where it has not already been the target of a nuclear attack. As Daniel Ellsberg describes in his book The Doomsday Machine, both the U.S. and Russia maintain nuclear weapons ready to use in a first-strike attack “for instant execution” that “would still kill by loss of sunlight and resulting starvation nearly all the humans on earth.”

This “just in case” approach in fact justifies maintaining a hugely expensive first-strike capability that increases the risk of nuclear war.

Currently, the President of the United States is the only person legally authorized to order the launch of U.S. nuclear weapons.

The notion that any one person, regardless of character or party affiliation, could have such vast power to end life on Earth is appalling in the best of times. Giving one person, even an elected official, the power to make a decision that could end the majority of life on Earth is a profound rejection of the most basic moral and democratic principles.

“The 21st century has seen the U.S. and Russia abandon the diplomatic framework developed to control and reduce nuclear arsenals. We need a treaty framework in place to limit existing nuclear arsenals and set a course for reducing the size of those arsenals.

The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, allowing for the proliferation of “missile-defense” systems which encourage arms racing and have a poor record of effectiveness in blocking incoming attacks during tests.

The U.S. and Russia withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019.

In 2020, the U.S. withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, which provided for transparency and international monitoring of its military sites.

After a last-minute renewal at the beginning of the Biden administration, the New Strategic Arms Control Treaty (New START) was allowed to lapse in early 2026, leaving the world without the benefits of decades of collaboration and trust-building between the two countries.

Without diplomatic agreements, even more of the decisions about U.S. nuclear weapons will be up to the discretion of the Russian and American presidents and other top officials with no democratic input or oversight.”

The United States has roughly 1,700 deployed nuclear weapons and another several thousand in reserve. Four hundred of these are on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in underground silos across the Great Plains, ready to be launched within minutes of a presidential order. This alert status — sometimes called hair-trigger alert — increases the chance of a launch in response to a false alarm.

By “de-alerting” these missiles, the U.S. can drastically reduce the very real risk of accidental nuclear war without limiting its ability to respond to a nuclear attack, which is the basis of deterrence. It would set a powerful precedent for other countries to do the same, reducing the risk that the world will be destroyed in a nuclear conflagration stemming from a misinterpretation or false alarm.

The U.S. has committed to “modernizing”–replacing–its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), despite the fact that they increase the risk of accidental nuclear war and a wide range of experts agree they are not essential for U.S. security or deterrence policy.

The new ICBM, the Sentinel missile, is years behind schedule and over 80% over its budget, with a total projected cost over the next 50 years of over $300 billion. Beyond cost concerns, this means that the U.S. is committing to keeping these weapons in its arsenal–another half-century of keeping the world on the edge of nuclear annihilation at any time.

Eliminating the ICBM would save money and make the world a safer place.

We call on our Congressional representatives to assert their authority over U.S. declarations of war and international agreements.

This means supporting War Powers resolutions to take back control of U.S. warmaking and no more blank checks for foreign wars and new weapons systems.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 2021, making nuclear weapons illegal under international law.

We call on Congress to acknowledge this, to affirmi the same compliance with international law that the U.S. demands from other countries and to honor the existing obligation to pursue disarmament under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

U.S. military spending is out of control–the President’s budget proposal this year proposed a $1.5 trillion military budget, a half trillion-dollar jump from the already unconscionable spending levels of previous years.

Meanwhile, millions of people lack adequate health care, education, housing, and struggle to meet their basic needs, and the climate emergency and other environmental crises are worsening.

This is no secret to those in power: President Trump asserted in April 2026 that the U.S. can’t afford to cover childcare, Medicaid, and Medicare, because it’s too busy funding a pointless, destructive war on Iran.

The government and the economy are nothing without the people. Basic human needs must come first.