Nuclear Weapons:
Budget: Record $1 trillion military budget. Now Trump wants a reconciliation bill that adds $350 billion. He also wants the “Save America” voter suppression Act attached to it which is bound to be ruled not proper by the Senate parliamentarian (reconciliation bills are supposed to deal only with the budget). This could lead to a crisis of some kind.
Favorable polling for Trump is going down with the war in Iran and economic impacts. Will voter suppression will be the only thing that keeps Republicans in control of Congress?
There is also talk of $80 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in Iran.
Defense Authorization Act:
- Passed by House, Senate is considering.
- Hard line House congressional Trumpers want the Save America Act attached to the DAA. That would kill its passage in the Senate and probably won’t happen.
- Proposed 180 pits per year by 2050.
- Numerically expands the US nuclear weapons stockpile to deal with the alleged China threat. This will probably result in MIRVing of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and more warheads on already MIRVed sub-launched warheads.
- Proposes to more closely integrate US and Israeli military and guarantee $3 billion per year to Israeli military.
Overall trend very bad. Welcome to the new nuclear arms race.
Plutonium pit production:
- Public comments due July 16. See PitPEIS.com
- The South Carolina Environmental Law Project submitted a letter to NNSA/DOE demanding release of the new JASON pit life study, DOE’s “Special Study” of NNSA’s troubled plutonium pit production program, and LANL’s new Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis. Related, we demanded that the Pit Production PEIS comment period be extended for 30 days from the time they are released. There is no expectation that DOE/NNSA will do so but we need our opposition to this lack of transparency on the record. See our press release at nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Plaintiffs-Demand-Release-of-Critical-Documents-and-Extension-of-Public-Comment-Period-on-Expanded-Plutonium-Bomb-Core-Production.pdf
- Related to seismic issues at LANL, excellent New York Times article July 10, 2026, nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/nuclear-bomb-energy-department-lab.html By Alicia Inez Guzmán, U.S. Underestimates Peril if Los Alamos Were to Leak Plutonium, Study Says
Other/Related (applies to nuclear weapons programs as well): nytimes.com/2026/07/01/climate/nrc-radiation-regulation-nuclear-overhaul.html U.S. to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday proposed overhauling its safety rules for radiation exposure from nuclear power plants, saying that the current regulations are too costly and go beyond what is needed to protect human health. The N.R.C. would keep its existing limits on the maximum amount of radiation that workers and the public can receive each year. But it is proposing to eliminate a principle in place for decades that said nuclear-plant operators should keep radiation exposure “as low as reasonably achievable.” In some cases, that meant regulators could order plants to install additional equipment to drive radiation exposure far below the legal limits.
Accelerating Arms Race: reuters.com/world/lithuania-agrees-remove-constitutional-ban-nuclear-weapons-2026-07-02/ Lithuania moves to end nuclear weapon ban as ‘situation getting worse’
Lithuania’s parliamentary parties have agreed on a plan to lift a constitutional ban on nuclear weapons and foreign military bases in the Baltic nation, the president said, in a sign of how Russia is resetting security calculations in the region. The move — a major legal overhaul which will need two-thirds majorities in two parliamentary votes to go through — would remove prohibitions put in place more than three decades ago after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union.
