Right now, Donald Trump could start a nuclear war on a whim, and no one could stop him.<\/p>\n
Under any circumstances, the prospect of nuclear war is terrifying, the deadly consequences irreversible. Yet with a single order, the president – any president – could effectively declare a nuclear war that would wipe out entire nations, including our own.<\/p>\n
More worrying still, our current president has shown an alarming willingness to engage in aggression instead of diplomacy – particularly towards nations like Iran and China, as well as countries whose citizens have now been banned from traveling to the U.S. under an overbroad, dog-whistle executive order.<\/p>\n
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Trump has almost gleefully exercised his right to threaten nuclear war.<\/p>\n
He made boastful remarks about nuclear might throughout his campaign. And just recently, he called for a new push to put America at the \u201ctop of the pack<\/a>\u201d when it comes to nuclear weapons capability (as though we weren\u2019t already).<\/p>\n Going against decades of precedent, not to mention hard-won diplomatic treaties reached with countries like Russia and Iran, Trump has enthusiastically declared that we should expand, not reduce, our nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n Already, just a tiny amount of our nuclear stockpile would be enough to blow up the world several times over. We\u2019d probably even have enough left over to decimate most of the seven Earth-like planets in the Trappist-1 solar system that NASA recently discovered.<\/a><\/p>\n Surely the horrors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the devastation after the nuclear power plant leak at Fukushima, should warn us against the danger of nuclear fallout. The disaster at Three Mile Island<\/a> wasn\u2019t exactly a small lab accident, either.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost impossible to comprehend millions of people being obliterated from the face of the earth simultaneously, in the blink of an eye. Especially at the whim of just one American who happens to have access to a certain red button.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Representative Ted Lieu and Senator Ed Markey have introduced legislation prohibiting the sitting president from unilaterally declaring nuclear war without a prior act of Congress. They call it the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017.<\/p>\n