Dear Progressive Reader,

On Friday, Pranay Vaddi, a top arms control official at the National Security Council, said that “The United States may have to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons in coming years to deter growing threats from Russia, China, and other adversaries.” These frightening comments came during a speech to a group called the Arms Control Association, whose mission is to “eliminate the threats posed by the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

The speech comes at a time when the U.S. government is continuing its efforts to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal. As Vice President under Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden was the chief spokesperson for this strategy of “modernization.” But at that time, the plan was expressed as “modernizing [the] arsenal [rather than] expanding it.” This potential new initiative, as outlined by Vaddi, would be, as The New York Times points out, “an epochal shift, and one fraught with dangers that many Americans thought they had left behind at the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

The Progressive has long been an advocate for total disarmament and an elimination of nuclear weapons from the arsenal of dispute resolution. In our August/September 2023 issue, Jim Carrier wrote, “In the next five years, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to complete five warhead modernization programs, build at least six new major facilities, and rebuild numerous other facilities.” Carrier titled his article “Playing With Fire.” In the wake of last year’s very popular film Oppenheimer, one would hope the U.S. population would be aware of the dangers of nuclear weapons. In the Book of Luke (23:34) Jesus is quoted as saying “forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” As physicist Curtis Asplund points out in a recent op-ed, in 2024, nearly eight decades since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we do not have that excuse.

Last week, Donald J. Trump became the first former U.S. President ever convicted of felony crimes. This week, cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates the ways in which the Trump team are trying to spin that verdict, and Bill Lueders opines to the Trump defenders, “Knock it off!” As Lueders explains, “Calling the trial illegitimate and fraudulent just because you don't like the result puts our entire justice system at stake.” And Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, explains why Justice Samuel Alito’s ant-government flag flying should matter to all of us. (An incident that was also cleverly portrayed by Mark Fiore last week.)

Elsewhere on our website this week, Sarah Baum reports from the student encampments at two different New York universities last month, and how the media got the story wrong. Stephen Zunes looks at how 2024 might be a repeat of 1968 as a Democratic President faces student protests over an unpopular foreign war. And, Atef Said pens an op-ed on the successes so far of the student protests against the war in Gaza. Also, Mike Ervin writes on the importance of accessible housing; Jeff Abbott describes Mexico’s election of the country’s first woman president; and Maurice Cunningham chronicles the rightwing movement “Moms for Liberty” and its agenda.

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first publication of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. I remember, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when the real 1984 came and went, and many made comparisons to the book’s predictions for our future. Then, shortly after the signing of the USA Patriot Act during the presidency of George W. Bush, T-shirts and bumper stickers began to appear that read “1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual” (or similar variations). Now, as Donald Trump again contends for the White House, numerous publications (including our own) have raised questions about the agenda of a Trump second term. It seems we have moved beyond the question of an “instruction manual” as groups like Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are working to create specific plans to implement “on day one.” The phrase “knowledge is power” was used by Thomas Jefferson, but we must use that knowledge for it to be powerful. As I wrote in a review of a series of books in 2018, “Can it happen here? These books serve to remind us that it already has, and now it is our imperative to respond.”

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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