ACTION ALERT: $71 Billion for the
Pentagon’s Dangerous, Unnecessary Nukes?!
Nuclear Threat Watch / Win Without War
(May 21, 2026) — The human and economic costs of Trump’s illegal war on Iran are devastating for people across the world.
But there’s another cost that should alarm us all, too: A war that Trump and Hegseth allege was waged to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation has actually pushed the world closer to nuclear catastrophe. While Trump has withdrawn from diplomatic agreements like the Iran Nuclear Deal and let New START lapse, experts suggest that conflicts like the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will only push more governments toward world-ending weapons. [1] That’s all before you count the additional $71.4 billion Trump’s gunning to pour into the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
It’s the start of a new global arms race that could drag the world back toward the brink of catastrophe.
That’s why our team is digging in on an ambitious, multi-pronged, and crucially important campaign to avoid a doomsday scenario: Derail any attempts to fan the flames of nuclear proliferation by authorizing new weapons, urge every DC decision-maker who will listen to support diplomacy over war, and fight tooth-and-nail to block every effort to pad the Pentagon budget with more money for more dangerous, unnecessary, and unaffordable weapons.
Just months ago, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at just 85 seconds away from “midnight.” That’s closer to nuclear catastrophe than the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, and the start of the nuclear arms race in 1953.
Since the Trump administration incited a regional war in the Middle East, the dangers have only increased — and the clock is ticking down faster. It’s a war Trump launched alongside another nuclear power in the Israeli government — a program which the United States has NEVER officially acknowledged — meaning that right now MULTIPLE nuclear-armed countries are actively at or terrifyingly close to war.
The good news is that we’ve helped build a coalition of powerful members of Congress willing to push back. That includes Rep. Joaquín Castro, who recently led 30 lawmakers in demanding an end to ambiguity around the Israeli military’s nuclear capabilities, and Senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley, who introduced legislation that would deny the Trump administration funds for its misguided plans to restart nuclear testing.
It’s a crucial start, but we need to go further, because our work is cut out for us if we’re going to push Congress to block the $71 BILLION Trump has earmarked for nuclear weapons programs in this year’s Pentagon budget request.
But that’s exactly what we’re set to do. Avoiding nuclear annihilation demands a 24/7/365 effort, and carrying out our campaigns to build a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons will take incredible resources.
We owe it to ourselves and future generations to stop this nuclear nightmare from unfolding further.
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “How the Iran War undermines the nuclear nonproliferation regime“
