Dear Progressive Reader,

On January 27, the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which annually reviews the world’s threats, moved the hands of the iconic “Doomsday Clock” to eighty-five seconds before midnight—the closest it has ever been. In 2017, following President Donald Trump’s first Inauguration, the hands were moved to two-and-one-half-minutes to midnight. Since that time, threats to human survival have increased dramatically. As then-president of the Bulletin Rachel Bronson told me at the time, “[We] look at two fundamental questions: Are we safer or at greater risk than we were at this time last year? And how are we doing compared to history?”

In the announcement of this year’s advance of the clock’s hands, the Bulletin cited the need for “urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI, and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats.” In a press release, Nobel-Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa noted, “Without facts, there is no truth. Without truth, there is no trust. And without these, the radical collaboration this moment demands is impossible . . . . Nuclear threats, climate collapse, AI risks: none can be addressed without first rebuilding our shared reality. The clock is ticking.”

Over the past year, the Trump Administration has taken numerous actions to help accelerate the threats brought about the clock’s advance. In May 2025, Trump issued four Executive Orders calling for increased deployment of nuclear power technology, at home and abroad. Rules and guidelines for licensing were streamlined, and in August eleven companies were selected to bid on developing this technology. These firms are known for their work on “microreactors”—a technology that is backed by billionaires like Bill Gates, but which comes with many unknowns and potential risks.

Later in the year, Trump also announced plans for ramping up the testing of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In late October, the President posted on his social media platform, “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons . . . . That process will begin immediately,” but provided few other details. As Jim Carrier wrote on our website, “Trump’s plan to revive nuclear weapons testing threatens to undermine decades of progress.” The plan, he notes, “to test U.S. nuclear weapons by exploding them will likely cost millions of dollars, risk radioactive leaks, and inflame an international arms race.”

The Bulletin, this year, also highlighted dangers created by alternative intelligence (AI) – both in replacing humans at the controls and in its potential use in developing pathogens for chemical and biological warfare (which is internationally prohibited under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. Not to mention the fact that it is also a scary and very bad idea). As the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board noted this week, “This year featured degraded capacity to respond to biological events, further development and pursuit of biological weapons, poorly restrained synthetic biology activities, increasingly convergent AI and biology, and the specter of life-ending mirror biology.” But, as David Rosen reported for our website a couple of years ago, “Blowing past dire problems with privacy, intellectual property, and racial bias, artificial intelligence continues its creep into our lives and institutions.”

Finally, the notion of AI being used in our national defense, only harkens back to a series of movies that have warned us of such potential risks. The 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project told of a super-computer that was built to replace humans in deciding when to launch a war. Needless to say, it did not go well. Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, another warning came in the 1983 film War Games, where an enterprising high school student was able to hack into a Defense Department computer using a dial-up modem. Same problem. Same warning. But as Pete Seeger reminded us his 1955 folksong “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” (the lyrics of which were actually inspired by an old Ukrainian Cossack folksong “Koloda-Duda” as I described in a previous newsletter): “When will we ever learn?”

The climate crisis was added several years ago to the Bulletin’s growing list of reasons for the clock’s advance. This year, the scientists point out: “In the United States, the Trump Administration’s agenda—which seeks to systematically repeal targets and policies, as well as decimate funding for climate change mitigation and science, among other things—is the most aggressive, comprehensive, and consequential climate policy rollback that the authoritative Climate Action Tracker has ever analyzed.” They conclude their statement with the clear view that “Reducing the threat of climate catastrophe requires actions both to reduce the cause and to deal with the damage of climate change. . . . Equally important in the fight against climate change is renewed reliance on science that tracks and guides emission reduction and mitigation efforts.” But the Trump Administration continues its race in the other direction as the Union of Concerned Scientists points out in a recent exhaustive report. And as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, explained last May in releasing a new report on Trump and science, “Since January, Trump has launched an unprecedented, illegal, and outrageous attack on science and scientists. Trump is not only denying scientific truth but actively seeking to undermine it.”

This week on our website, Sarah Lahm reports from the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, following the tragic Killing of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection officers; and Melinda Tuhus brings news of a victory in the campaign against Avelo airlines and its use in deportation flights. Plus, Sam Stein chronicles his recent time in a Palestinian village in the West Bank being displaced for an Israeli settlement, Terrance Sullivan writes about the upending of civil rights enforcement under the Trump Administration, and Josh Silver pens an op-ed on the importance of the Community Reinvestment Act, which Trump currently seeks to weaken.

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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