Two of the Hill’s most notable nuclear doves on Tuesday pressed for passage of their newly refiled bill to ban the United States from using nuclear weapons to start a war.
“In about the same time as it takes President Trump to launch a tweet, he could also order America’s armed forces to launch a nuclear first strike, and that cannot be allowed to happen,” Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said in a joint press conference on Capitol Hill with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). “No human being should have the sole authority to initiate an unprovoked nuclear war. Not any American president, and certainly not President Donald Trump.”
Markey spoke only a few days after he filed the upper chamber’s version of the 2019 no-first-use bill, officially known as S.200: A bill to prohibit the conduct of a first-use nuclear strike absent a declaration of war by Congress.
Markey and Lieu, no fans of Trump, filed the first iteration of the legislation in 2016 in the 114th Congress. They have now filed it in every Congress since, though it never got a vote on the floor of either chamber, or even a committee vote. The measure has since become one of the pillars of the Democratic Parrty’s nuclear orthodoxy, such as it is.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), who earlier this month announced she would explore a bid for president, adopted no first use as one of her three nuclear policy positions during a speech at American University in Washington in December.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), now chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has also voiced support for no first use.
In Wednesday’s presser, Lieu said the no-first-use bill “corrects the longstanding constitutional defect” nuclear weapons create. The lawmaker said allowing the president sole authority to use nuclear weapons at a time of his choosing, currently including a first strike, circumvents Congress’ constitutional power to authorize war.
Markey’s version of the bill has 12 co-sponsors, none of them Republicans. Lieu’s version of the bill, filed Jan. 17, has 46 co-sponsors, including one Republican: Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.). Jones is in failing health and entered hospice care recently, his office announced Saturday.
The bills are now in the Foreign Affairs committees of their respective chambers, where committee leaders had not scheduled hearings on them at deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
