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Prior Bulletin (376): Reminder: Zoom workshop and discussion tonight, Tuesday April 14, 6 - 8 pm MDT: "The Accelerating Nuclear Arms Race -- What We Can Do" (04/14/2026)
This Bulletin in a nutshell
This Administration aims to greatly accelerate the development and production of nuclear weapons. We aim to stop them.
We urge you to attend one of these workshops if you can:
- Monday April 27: In-person workshop from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Road (map), regarding the upcoming DOE pit production hearings
Then, we hope you will attend these hearings, as you are able (more details at this link):
- South Carolina: May 5, 2026 – North Augusta Community Center, North Augusta, SC.
- Missouri: May 7, 2026 – Hillcrest Community Center, Kansas City, MO.
- California: May 12, 2026 – Garré Vineyard & Winery, Livermore, CA.
- New Mexico: May 14, 2026 – Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, Santa Fe, NM.
- Washington, D.C.: May 20, 2026 – 2:00-5:00 p.m. (2:30 start) at Southwest Library, Washington, DC.
All hearings besides Washington, DC will feature an open house/poster session from 5:00-5:30 p.m. local time, followed by the formal hearing from 5:30-8:00 p.m. The DC hearing starts 3 hours earlier than the others.
Virtual options are available for the SC and NM meetings, which are particularly important, especially for New Mexicans.
There are many ways to help prepare for these spectacles. Contact us. Hundreds of businesses, organizations, and individuals have registered their resistance to building a pit factory at LANL. Others would resist if a) they knew about what is going on and b) they knew how to stand with others. We need your help to reach them. We have defeated pit production before. Together, we can make nuclear resistance visible, and powerful.
Dear friends and colleagues --
We have written quite a bit this year regarding the Trump Administration's NEW plans to accelerate nuclear weapons development and delivery in press releases and in bulletins. These are the most up-to-date explanations we have right now. These analyses and others have led to quite a few press accounts (here and here).
There is no point in repeating those explanations here.
In this Bulletin, we are urging you to attend the above workshops and hearings.
You can find some basic background specifically about these important hearings in this press release, with its links: "NNSA produces draft environmental impact statement for producing nuclear weapons cores ("pits"); public hearings set," Apr 10, 2026
For more background on some of the issues themselves, see this 2024 presentation, prepared for a debate we organized at the National Press Club.
Other "featured" briefings can be found on our pit page.
Shall we enable, by our silence, Trump's "historic investment" in global nuclear domination?
The remarkably hawkish nuclear weapons ideologues now in place all across the relevant upper levels of the executive branch have produced a "historically" large fiscal year (FY) 2027 budget request for nuclear warheads. (See: "Trump's budget proposes "a historic investment" in nuclear warheads, Discretionary spending on nuclear warheads would rise 35%; seven new warheads are now under development and production," Apr 3, 2026.)
The Department of Energy's (DOE's) warhead agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), is now working on seven warheads simultaneously. They have vowed to pick up the pace.
Of the $27.4 billion (B) proposed for nuclear warheads in NNSA's FY2027 budget, $10.4 B (38%) is to be spent in New Mexico next year, assuming NNSA is funded at the requested level as is likely.
New Mexico is the recipient of far more nuclear warhead spending than any other state. There is nowhere else in the world where so much nuclear warhead money is spent. [Note 1]
New Mexico also holds the negative distinction of housing more nuclear weapons than any other place on the planet, at the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex, KUMMSC).
The purpose of NNSA's "historic investment" is not just to maintain the huge U.S. nuclear arsenal. It is rather "to forge a nuclear security enterprise with the agility and resilience to prevail in an era of renewed great power competition," and to do so as fast as possible. (See: "Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance:" Nuclear agency outlines ambitious near-term goals for nuclear warheads, labs, factories, and operations; Pit production at Los Alamos to be at least doubled if not tripled; other NNSA sites to help Los Alamos do so, details TBD, Feb 23, 2026.)
Congress, for its part, has done little so far but egg the administration on. The questions coming from the Senate Armed Services Committee two days ago (4/20/26) were essentially directed toward whether NNSA was going fast enough (video; the discussion regarding plutonium warhead cores ["pits"] starting at 41:00 was typical).
Everything we have seen so far this year from the Administration is aimed at getting more nuclear weapons into the hands of the Chief Executive, as fast as possible. The "as fast as possible" part includes, and to a great extent requires, pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
A lot of people have not absorbed the reality that, right now, the missions of the nuclear warhead complex are established by Donald Trump, first and foremost.
LANL's budget for nuclear weapons is currently slated to rise by almost 40% in a single year. [Note 2]
The primary purpose of this huge funding increase is to facilitate plutonium pit production, NNSA's largest program. Pit production is now LANL's signature mission.
LANL pit production funding is slated to increase by 83% next year (or 87% if a new plutonium engineering office building is included, as it should be). That is, pit production spending at LANL will nearly double, to $2.42 B (including the new $89 million office building, one of several new buildings planned).
LANL's new pit mission is by far the largest capital project in New Mexico history, as we have often explained. It's going to cost about $30 B to set up this factory, mas o minus.
This is not "just another bad project." It is the Mother of Bad Projects.
Remember, LANL (and Sandia) work for Donald Trump. LANL is 100% owned by DOE, which is run by Chris Wright, Trump's Secretary of Energy.
The transformation of LANL is Donald Trump's biggest project in northern New Mexico.
Nuclear weapons are not fictional.
This is much harder to understand than it appears. We only think we understand the reality. The new warheads and bombs being developed are many times as powerful as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unverified stories have emerged over this past weekend that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine rebuffed a request from Donald Trump to consider using nuclear weapons against Iran (see Andrew Napolitano interview with Scott Ritter, 13:46-18:00; Larry Johnson column of April 21). Since the end of World War II, presidents have considered, and threatened, nuclear weapons use many times, so this particular incident, if true, would not be surprising under the present circumstances. The Iran War is not going well for the United States.
The point is that the risk of nuclear war is quite real, especially under this highly-volatile president.
What can citizens do about this? The short answer is: a lot.
It starts with showing up, and that is what we are urging you to do. Don't let Trump write the future economic and social history of northern New Mexico.
Greg Mello, for the Study Group
Notes:
1. Given a total gross state product of $153 B in 2025, we can estimate that NNSA's nuclear warhead spending directly comprises 6 or 7 cents of every dollar spent in New Mexico, and much more if secondary spending is included. The next-most nuclear-warhead-dependent U.S. state is South Carolina, where less than half a cent of every dollar spent comes directly from warhead spending, about one-eighth as much as in New Mexico.
2. Not considering the unknown amount of funding at LANL from last year's reconciliation bill (the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"), LANL's nuclear weapons spending is slated to rise from $4.34 B this year to $6.03 B next year, an increase of 39%.
