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For the first time in more than half a century, there are no binding restraints on the buildup of the largest nuclear forces on Earth. The New START treaty expired on Feb. 5, 2026, ending the last agreed limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.
New START limited the number of strategic nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could deploy to 1,550 each. It also limited the missiles and bombers those warheads were loaded on, required on-site inspections and data exchanges, barred interference with satellite monitoring, and established a joint commission to discuss disputes. It did not limit the number of nuclear weapons each side could hold in reserve.
With China rapidly building up its nuclear forces, intense rivalry between the United States, China and Russia, and evolving technologies – from precision conventional weapons to artificial intelligence complicating nuclear balances – there is a real potential of an unpredictable three-way nuclear arms competition.
Such a competition could increase the danger of nuclear conflict, which I believe is higher than it has been in decades.
The security of agreed restraint
While the particular numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles an accord specifies may not make an immense difference, nuclear agreements offer important advantages in four key areas:
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Predictability, limiting the pressures to build up nuclear arsenals that come from worst-case analysis of what adversaries might build and the destabilization that unexpected new weapons can bring.
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Transparency, elements such as data exchanges, on-site inspections and limits on interfering with satellite monitoring, giving each side a better ability to understand what is going on with the others’ nuclear forces.
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Reduced first-strike incentives, from banning or limiting particularly dangerous types of weapons.
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Improved relations, through the mere fact that the other side is willing to limit the nuclear forces arrayed against you, which undermines the belief that they are implacably bent on your utter destruction. This reduces the intensity of hostility that can drive crises and escalation.
After 1962’s Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy realized that relying on nuclear deterrence without any agreed nuclear restraints or risk-reduction measures is just too dangerous. He moved quickly to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and put in place a U.S.-Soviet hotline for crisis communication.
He also launched a series of initiatives that led to reductions in defense spending on both sides, cuts in production of nuclear materials for weapons, and even troop pullbacks in Europe. Every subsequent U.S. president has pursued nuclear arms control accords.
Moreover, the countries that have promised not to get nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty want to see the nuclear-armed nations living up to their treaty obligation to negotiate in good faith toward nuclear disarmament. As pressure builds for countries to get their own nuclear weapons, maintaining the nonproliferation regime and getting the non-nuclear countries’ votes for stronger nuclear safeguards or export controls is likely to require the nuclear-armed nations to accept at least some constraints of their own.
Critics of arms control point out that Russia has violated many past accords – and the Trump administration has accused both Russia and China of carrying out illicit nuclear tests, though his administration has not offered solid evidence in public so far. But despite these very real issues, key elements of these agreements were implemented, and they “left the United States safer,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted. More than four-fifths of the nuclear weapons that used to exist in the world have been dismantled.
New limits or buildup?
U.S. Navy via Getty Images
So, what’s next? President Donald Trump ignored Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal that both sides stay within the limits of New START while they explored options for new steps. But Trump said he wants to negotiate a “better” deal on fewer nuclear weapons – a deal that would not only limit U.S. and Russian strategic forces but also China’s much smaller but rapidly growing nuclear forces and Russia’s large force of nonstrategic nuclear weapons – that is, ones for battlefield or regional use.
So far, though, no negotiations on follow-on accords are underway, and the administration has not offered to negotiate about any of the U.S. weapons systems that worry Russia and China.
Moreover, there is strong pressure in Washington to build up U.S. nuclear forces rather than reduce them, to deter both Russia and China – while also dealing with the smaller but still dangerous North Korean nuclear force. The United States has many hundreds of nuclear weapons in storage that could be brought out and put on existing missiles, along with empty missile tubes on submarines that could again be filled with missiles. And the U.S. is developing new weapons, such as a nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile.
Constraints and challenges
In my view, the more than 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons the United States already has deployed – with a major modernization underway – provide a sufficient deterrent to aggression. And if the United States begins to build up, Russia will respond in kind, and China may go even further. Once a multisided buildup is underway, its momentum will be more difficult to reverse.
Fortunately, the United States, Russia and China all have strong national interests in avoiding an unrestrained nuclear race, which would leave all of them poorer and no more secure. While the United States has quite a few nuclear weapons in storage, its nuclear modernization is struggling with enormous delays and cost overruns, and its industrial base is simply not prepared for a major nuclear expansion.
Putin is building a war economy that can churn out a lot of weapons – but he knows his economy is a 10th the size of the U.S.’s, and he wants to focus on rebuilding the conventional forces being chewed up in his war on Ukraine, making nuclear competition a bad idea. China has an economy to match the U.S.’s and an unrivaled manufacturing capacity, but it, too, would be worse off if its buildup provokes a U.S. buildup in response and a collapse of nuclear restraints.
Despite these common interests, finding a path to new accords among at least three parties, rather than two, will not be easy. Coalitions in each capital will have to win arguments that an accord is in their nation’s interest at the same time. The parties will have to address in some way the non-nuclear technologies that affect nuclear balances, and technologies such as cyber weapons and artificial intelligence would be hard to count or verify.
U.S. political polarization might make it very difficult to get a two-thirds vote in the Senate to ratify a treaty – though there are many other possible approaches, from reciprocal political commitments to executive agreements.
Famously unpredictable, Trump might still reverse course and agree to some version of Putin’s proposal for a “strategic pause” in which neither the United States nor Russia would build up its nuclear capabilities for the time being, while talks on next steps were underway. That would have the advantage of offering time to explore the options before new nuclear buildups got locked in.
And that would give him more chance of reaching his oft-stated goal of being the one to bring home a deal to reduce nuclear weapons and the dangers they pose.
Matthew Bunn is a member of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association; is a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences; has consulted for several U.S. national laboratories; and has served on the Academic Alliance of U.S. Strategic Command.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
The president announces an aggressive, controversial policy. Large groups of protesters take to the streets. Government agents open fire and kill protesters.
All of these events, familiar from Minneapolis in 2026, also played out at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970. In my academic writing about the First Amendment, I have described Kent State as a key moment when the government silenced free speech.
In Minneapolis, free speech has weathered the crisis better, as seen in the protests themselves, the public’s responses – and even the protest songs the two events inspired.
Protests and shootings, then and now
In 1970, President Richard Nixon announced he had expanded the Vietnam War by bombing Cambodia. Student anti-war protests, already fervent, intensified.
In Ohio, Gov. James Rhodes deployed the National Guard to quell protests at Kent State University. Monday, May 4, saw a large midday protest on the main campus commons. Students exercised their First Amendment rights by chanting and shouting at the Guard troops, who dispersed protesters with tear gas before regrouping on a nearby hill.
With the nearest remaining protesters 20 yards from the Guard troops and most more than 60 yards away, 28 guardsmen inexplicably fired on students, killing four students and wounding nine others.
After the killings, the government sought to shift blame to the slain students. Nixon stated: “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”
Minneapolis in 2026 presents vivid parallels.
As part of a sweeping campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, President Donald Trump in early January 2026 deployed armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents to Minneapolis.
Many residents protested, exercising their First Amendment rights by using smartphones and whistles to record and call out what they saw as ICE and CBP abuses. On Jan. 7, 2026, an ICE agent shot and killed activist Renee Good in her car. On Jan. 24, two CBP agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti on the street.
The government sought to blame Good and Pretti for their own killings.
Different public reactions
After Kent State, amid bitter conservative opposition to student protesters, most Americans blamed the fallen students for their deaths. When students in New York City protested the Kent State shootings, construction workers attacked and beat the students in what became known as the “hard hat riot.” Afterward, Nixon hosted construction union leaders at the White House, where they gave him an honorary hard hat.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
In contrast, most Americans believe the Trump administration has used excessive force in Minneapolis. Majorities both oppose the federal agents’ actions against protesters and approve of protesting and recording the agents.
The public response to Minneapolis has made a difference. The Trump administration has announced an end to its immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. Trump has backed off attacks on Good and Pretti. Congressional opposition to ICE funding has grown. Overall public support for Trump and his policies has fallen.
Free speech in protests, recordings and songs
What has caused people to view the killings in Minneapolis so differently from Kent State? One big factor, I believe, is how free speech has shaped the public response.
The Minneapolis protests themselves have sent the public a more focused message than what emerged from the student protests against the Vietnam War.
Anti-war protests in 1970 targeted military action on the other side of the world. Organizers had to plan and coordinate through in-person meetings and word of mouth. Student protesters needed the institutional news media to convey their views to the public.
In contrast, the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis target government action at the protesters’ doorsteps. Organizers can use local networks and social media to plan, coordinate and communicate directly with the public. The protests have succeeded in deepening public opposition to ICE.
In addition, the American people have witnessed the Minneapolis shootings.
Kent State produced a famous photograph of a surviving student’s anguish but only hazy, chaotic video of the shootings.
In contrast, widely circulated video evidence showed the Minneapolis killings in horrifying detail. Within days of each shooting, news organizations had compiled detailed visual timelines, often based on recordings by protesters and observers, that sharply contradicted government accounts of what happened to Good and Pretti.
Finally, consider two popular protest songs that emerged from Kent State and Minneapolis: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis.”
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded, pressed and released “Ohio” with remarkable speed for 1970. The vinyl single reached record stores and radio stations on June 4, a month after the Kent State shootings. The song peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard chart two months later.
Neil Young’s lyrics described the Kent State events in mythic terms, warning of “tin soldiers” and telling young Americans: “We’re finally on our own.” Young did not describe the shootings in detail. The song does not name Kent State, the National Guard or the fallen students. Instead, it presents the events as symbolic of a broader generational conflict over the Vietnam War.
Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis” on Jan. 28, 2026 – just four days after CBP agents killed Pretti. Two days later, the song topped streaming charts worldwide.
The internet and social media let Springsteen document Minneapolis, almost in real time, for a mass audience. Springsteen’s lyrics balance symbolism with specificity, naming not just “King Trump” but also victims Pretti and Good, key Trump officials Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, main Minneapolis artery Nicollet Avenue, and the protesters’ “whistles and phones,” before fading on a chant of “ICE out!”
Critics offer compelling arguments that 21st-century mass communication degrades social relationships, elections and culture. In Minneapolis, disinformation has muddied crucial facts about the protests and killings.
At the same time, Minneapolis has shown how networked communication can promote free speech. Through focused protests, recordings of government action, and viral popular culture, today’s public can get fuller, clearer information to help critically assess government actions.
Gregory P. Magarian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
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A pro-Israel group is wading into nearly a dozen contentious House primaries as it tries to shape the Democratic Party’s approach to the controversial issue.
The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which backs pro-Israel Democrats, is endorsing 11 House candidates, including several in expensive and crowded primaries the party must win in order to retake the House. The group’s initial endorsement list was shared first with POLITICO.
DMFI, first launched in 2019, is one of several groups across the political spectrum looking to influence the party’s views on Israel, even as its military operations in Gaza have divided the Democratic Party and become an early litmus test for both 2026 congressional candidates and 2028 presidential hopefuls.
The endorsements include candidates in six battleground races and five more in safe-blue, but crowded, Democratic primaries. They are backing moderate state Rep. Shannon Bird over progressive state Rep. Manny Rutinel for the right to face Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) in a swingy Colorado district.
In New York, the group is backing Cait Conley, who has entered a crowded primary to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in a district which Kamala Harris won by a one-point margin in 2024. In Texas, DMFI has endorsed police officer Johnny Garcia in a wide-open primary for the newly drawn, red-leaning seat.
DMFI is backing a pair of candidates in two of the four most competitive seats in Pennsylvania — Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who will face off against Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), and former TV anchor Janelle Stelson, who is also on track to run against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). And in Virginia, former Rep. Elaine Luria picked up the group’s support as she vies to take on her former opponent, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).
The other candidates who are receiving DMFI’s endorsement are all running in crowded primaries in safe blue seats: Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo, who is running to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.); Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is running to replace Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is running for Senate; and former Obama administration official Maura Sullivan, who is running to replace Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), who is running for the Senate.
“The vast majority of Americans support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and understand the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said former Rep. Kathy Manning, who serves on the DMFI PAC board. “If you’re running in a competitive district, you need Democrats, you need independents, you need Republicans.”
Several groups, including DMFI and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, are boosting pro-Israel candidates with significant outside spending. The two groups have often overlapped in their endorsements, but AIPAC supports Democrats and Republicans — and has drawn the ire of progressives. DMFI, for its part, is focused on regaining a Democratic congressional majority.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, dropped more than $38 million on independent expenditures in 2024, while DMFI spent about $4.3 million. DMFI President Brian Romick said the group expects to be spending “comfortably” in the “seven-figures again” in 2026 but declined to elaborate further on the plans.
In Illinois, among the first primaries next month, DMFI and AIPAC appear aligned in their preferred candidates. DMFI announced it is backing former Rep. Melissa Bean, who is running to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who is running for the Senate, and Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who is vying to replace Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), another Senate candidate.
Bean and Miller have also attracted attention for their connections to AIPAC. Their primary opponents in both races have accused them of benefiting from AIPAC’s spending, concealed by shell super PACs that are boosting them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in positive TV spending. But DMFI has not yet endorsed in Illinois’ 9th District, another contentious primary to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky that AIPAC appears to have waded into.
Earlier this month, AIPAC triggered a wave of criticism and frustration, even from its own allies, for spending $2 million to sink former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a congressional special election in New Jersey. The group’s spending backfired, eliminating Malinowski, but failing to lift up its preferred candidate. Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza, ultimately won.
Romick and Manning declined to comment on AIPAC’s strategy, with the former congresswoman noting DMFI is “a distinctly different and separate organization.”
In 2024, DMFI and AIPAC targeted former Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in 2024, both of whom lost their primaries to pro-Israel candidates. Romick demurred on whether DMFI planned to target any Democratic incumbents in 2026, adding that it is going “to take these primaries as they come and see if things develop.”
Jessica Piper contributed reporting.
Politics
President Donald Trump didn’t just take his feud with Maryland governor and possible 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful Wes Moore into the gutter this week. He turned to the toilet.
In a series of social media posts Monday and Tuesday, Trump blasted Moore for what he deemed an inept response to a sewage spill that sent hundreds of millions of gallons of raw waste into the Potomac River beginning four weeks ago.
“There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social, saying that it’s time for the federal government to step in. “I cannot allow incompetent Local ‘Leadership’ to turn the River in the Heart of Washington into a Disaster Zone.”
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president is worried that the Potomac River will carry the stench of excrement during the July 4 celebration of the country’s semiquincentennial that Trump has been planning since returning to office.
“He is worried about that. Which is why the federal government wants to fix it, and we hope that the local authorities will cooperate with us in doing so,” Leavitt said in response to a reporter’s question during the White House press briefing.
It’s not the first time Trump has turned poop into a political weapon. In fact, the president who complains regularly about low-flow toilet standards has a long list of scatological gripes that have become one of the few areas where his administration is seeking additional environmental protections as it aggressively rolls back dozens of climate, air and water pollution rules.
It was on the sewage-fouled beaches of San Diego that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin marked his first Earth Day as the nation’s top environmental regulator. The administration has put concerted effort into pressuring Mexico to do more to stem the tide of raw sewage pollution flowing across the border from Tijuana, which for years has dirtied beaches and sickened residents and Navy SEALs who train nearby.
And during Trump’s first term, it was San Francisco’s long-running sewer overflow problem that EPA targeted for enforcement after the president groused about the city’s large homeless population — a move that California leaders saw as politically charged.
Now as Trump feuds with Moore, the nation’s only Black governor, less than two weeks after excluding him from a White House dinner for the National Governor’s Association, the image of millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing into the nation’s capital offered another level of political punch altogether. The situation comes as Moore is pushing to redraw Maryland’s congressional lines to counter Trump’s red-state redistricting.
“It’s a great political issue. Nobody wants sewage in the water — that is true of Democrats and Republicans,” said Mae Stevens, a water infrastructure lobbyist who previously served as an environment staffer for Democratic former Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
Asked about the president’s longstanding interest in sewage pollution, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the administration would not allow “the failures of local and state Democrats to diminish the quality of life for millions of Americans.”
The source of the spill is the Potomac Interceptor sewer line, which partially collapsed Jan. 19 near Cabin John, Maryland, amid frigid winter temperatures, releasing nearly 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater in the first five days. Operating since constructed in 1964, the 54-mile line carries wastewater from D.C. suburbs as far away as Dulles Airport to a treatment plant in southern Washington.
DC Water, the utility that operates the line, has been making emergency repairs to the broken interceptor, but the effort will take four to six more weeks. After that, crews will need to get to work on an already-planned rehabilitation project, which could take a further nine or 10 months, DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis said.
Though the spill captured the nation’s attention only this week, local environmentalists have been sounding the alarm from the beginning.
“It’s certainly a big ecological problem and an incredible threat to public health to have raw sewage splashing around and on shorelines,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy, a conservation group. “We don’t need partisan politics getting in the way. This crisis is just too serious.”
Officials in Maryland, which is technically responsible for the Potomac River, responded “within hours” of the initial spill, said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Moore. But the interceptor falls under EPA’s regulatory purview, according to the governor’s office, accusing the agency that’s lost thousands of staff under Trump of failing to take action.
“For the last four weeks, the Trump Administration has failed to act, shirking its responsibility and putting people’s health at risk,” Moussa said in a statement. “Notably, the president’s own EPA explicitly refused to participate in the major legislative hearing about the cleanup last Friday.”
Zeldin shot back at that accusation on Tuesday afternoon.
“At no point in the lead up to today had DC Water or the state of Maryland requested EPA to take over their responsibilities, and EPA has continued to offer its full support to state and local leaders from the onset,” Zeldin said in a post on X.
Funding woes and ‘really poor infrastructure’
Water experts say the sewage spill is a symptom of a larger problem: Aging sewer pipes and water lines nationwide are in desperate need of repairs, but cash-strapped local governments are struggling to pay for them.
The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed to slash federal funding for water projects. Last year, the White House proposed a 90 percent cut to EPA’s State Revolving Funds, the water sector’s largest source of federal dollars. The Senate ultimately rejected the cut in a spending bill that Trump signed into law last month.
But extra water funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law is set to run out this fall, and experts warn of a coming funding cliff at the same time as extreme weather and AI data centers put more pressure on existing pipes, sewers and treatment plants.
“We’ve got really poor infrastructure. A lot of these pipes, especially on the East Coast, were built decades ago,” said Jon Mueller, a visiting associate law professor at the University of Maryland. “I think it’s unfortunate that it takes a disaster like this to get people to focus on the problem.”
It’s not yet clear how much the Potomac spill will cost, but the broader rehabilitation project for the interceptor sewer system’s “most vulnerable sections” is $625 million, said DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis. The utility has been coordinating with EPA, she added.
“Just last week, we hosted the Assistant Administrator for Water for a tour of the site and briefing on the project and the progress made to date,” Lewis said in a statement.
Although officials say the worst of the spill has been contained and that it has not impacted drinking water supplies, 243.5 million gallons of sewage overflows have been reported thus far.
Environmental advocates are worried about long-term implications for the river, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary and the subject of decades of cleanup efforts.
Earlier this month, University of Maryland researchers recorded extremely high concentrations of bacteria, including a strain that resists antibiotics, tied to the spill. By springtime, that could render parts of the water unsafe for boating, canoeing and fishing.
Dean Naujoks, who leads the environmental group Potomac Riverkeeper, said he hopes Trump’s involvement could improve what he described as a “botched” cleanup process by DC Water. But he cast blame as well on EPA, describing the agency as essentially missing in action.
“We can’t get a hold of [EPA]. I have no idea what they’re doing,” Naujoks said. “The squabble between Trump and Gov. Moore has focused more of the attention on accountability, which I think is a good thing.”
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