Ro Khanna

To require the establishment of a list identifying program areas and administrative practices presenting the greatest risk to the integrity of Federal funds administered by States and local governments.

in committee

Stop Private Equity Harms Resolution

in committee

Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran.

in committee

“Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker. I rise today to highlight the rising danger posed by the unchecked expansion of global nuclear arsenals. As we mark 80 years since the Trinity test, we must confront the urgent need to reverse course before miscalculation or escalation leads to irreversible catastrophe. I include in the Record the following article, 80 Years After Trinity, the Dangers of Nuclear War Have Never Been Higher by Norman Solomon: The dangers of nuclear war have never been higher, but poitical pressure to prevent it is at low ebb. Eighty years after the atomic age began with the Trinity bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, words can't possibly be adequate to describe the extent of global horrors that today's nuclear arsenals are capable of inflicting. But mainstream US media outlets and partisan politics are routinely oblivious to the threat of oblivion Despite the efforts of individuals and groups striving for arms control, the national discourse ignores the likely results of nuclear buildups--which continue to boost the actual risks of annihilation. Pronouncements from the nuclear establishment about a need to ``maintain deterrence'' and ``modernize'' usually go unquestioned as to the underlying assumptions. Senators and representatives praise nuclear systems with components produced in their state or district. Even well-informed and dedicated advocates of halting the arms race are often reduced to arguing for fiscal responsibility. Within the narrow confines of regular ``national security'' debates, the wisest lobbying tactic appears to be a focus on exorbitant costs of ``modernizing'' nuclear weapons. Yet cost-cutting arguments bypass how the weapons push the world closer to doomsday. Northrop Grumman--the contractor for the new Sentinel ICBM, which is meant to replace the current Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles--has racked up such huge cost overruns that the project at times seemed to be in jeopardy of cancellation. Meanwhile, the political response detoured around the unique dangers of ICBMs, which (as land- based missiles vulnerable to attack) remain on hair-trigger, ``use them or lose them'' alert. Given the long record of false alarms, such hypervigilance is a possible tripwire for an accidental apocalypse. ``Getting trapped in an argument about the cheapest way to keep ICBMs operational in their silos is ultimately no-win,'' Daniel Ellsberg and I wrote for The Nation in autumn 2021. We added: ``Better sooner than later, members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won't do that unless peace, arms-control, and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse--and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.'' More than 700 scientists signed a letter last summer going beyond the focus on cost to urge the complete elimination of America's ICBMs. The letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained that ``the US could eliminate the land-based leg of the triad tomorrow and the US public would only be safer for it.'' Progressives working to defund new weapons systems recognize that massive military spending is, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., a ``demonic, destructive suction tube''--depleting enormous resources that should be devoted to meeting human needs instead of destroying lives and threatening human survival. But for typical Congress members of either party, disputes about how to get the most bang for the buck are affirming the arms race rather than impeding it. Certain firms might lose specific contracts if some Strangelovian projects are sufficiently exposed as boondoggles, but the nuclear-arms industry and overall military business remain on a steep upward trajectory. Congresspeople are accustomed to juggling billions of ``defense'' dollars. What they aren't accustomed to acknowledging--and what constituent pressure should demand they face--is that the latest weapons systems further endanger human life on Earth. The history of the last eight decades tells us that Americans will go along with astronomical spending for nuclear weaponry if they believe it makes them safer. Unless we effectively make the case that the opposite [[Page E688]] is true, the nuclear arms race will continue to play out in media and politics as a pricey necessity In recent years, numerous activists and groups have given priority to calling for abolition of nuclear weapons. It's a position that occupies the highest moral ground, famously seized by the Nobel laureate scientist George Wald in a widely reprinted 1969 anti-war speech at MIT. ``Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror,'' he said. ``We have to get rid of those atomic weapons, here and everywhere. We cannot live with them.'' During the past several years, accelerating work ”

2025-07-17 · Defense