Over the weekend the Russian Federation — which in February again invaded neighboring Ukraine — expanded a list of sanctions against U.S. citizens.
Most of the U.S. citizens were federal lawmakers and some of those federal lawmakers have a history of involvement with, or a significant degree of power over, U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear waste programs run by the Department of Energy.
A selection of such newly sanctioned lawmakers follows:
Rep. Richard Allen (R-Ga.) – Georgia’s 12th congressional district is close to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., across the Georgia state line, so Allen often advocates for the site in Washington, including this week with his colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) – The ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a vocal proponent of the uranium mining interests in his home state, Barrasso has long been against the longstanding practice of importing cheap, Russian uranium to power the U.S. civilian reactor fleet.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) – The U.S. Senator from Ohio who isn’t returning, Brown is a dependable friend to the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, site of the busiest remaining uranium cleanup in the old nuclear weapons complex.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) – California’s third district does not have a nuclear weapons or waste constituency, but Garamendi is a leading antinuclear voice on the House Armed Services Committee who has tried to slam the brakes on the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and, more recently, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plans to build a plutonium pit factory in South Carolina.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) – The boisterous and outspoken senator who wouldn’t allow surplus plutonium into South Carolina without tough, legally enforceable penalties for getting it out, Graham’s deal-making in Washington has profoundly shaped the realities of nuclear weapons and waste programs at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
David Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Power Studies – The retired Air Force lieutenant general has now spent years in advocacy, including for the ground- and air-based legs of the nuclear triad. Known for his parting salutation, “have a great, aerospace-power kind of day!”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) – Washington state’s seventh district is not a nuclear weapons, waste or power hub, but Jayapal, a leading House progressive and the senior whip for the chamber’s majority Democrats is an uncompromising antinuclear advocate, appearing regularly at gatherings of some of the district’s most stridently pro-disarmament non-government groups.
Eileen Drake, president, Aerojet Rocketdyne – Drake leads one of the only companies not owned by Northrop Grumman that can still build a solid rocket motor. Recently blocked by the federal government from a merger with Lockheed Martin, Aerojet Rocketdyne is on tap to build the post-boost propulsion system for Sentinel (née Ground Based Strategic Deterrent).
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) – Kaptur’s 9th district does not include any of the current or former nuclear-weapon sites in the state, but as the chair of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, she has final say on the first draft of the annual budget bills for those sites and all the rest of the active and shuttered Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites in the country.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) – King, who caucuses with the Democrats, chairs the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, hearings of which he peppers with Dr. Strangelove references and mentions of his 1966 senior thesis on nuclear deterrence. In 2021, King invited some disarmament proponents to testify before the subcommittee in the name of diversifying the debate. King was mostly unmoved by their arguments.
Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) – Nevada’s senior U.S. senator and a member of the chamber’s Armed Services Committee, Cortez-Masto keeps a close eye on NNSA’s Nevada National Security Site and advocates constantly for the improvements to the underground, subcritical-explosive plutonium tests conducted there.
Roger Krone, president, Leidos – Leidos has become a fixture at the Hanford Site in Washington and is also part of teams at the NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex and the Office of Environmental Management’s Portsmouth Site.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) – Cooper plans to retire from Congress after his term is up in January and his 5th congressional district eliminated. For now, though, he chairs the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, where he has allowed, and participated in, the open critique of the NNSA’s effort to rebuild a plutonium pit production complex.
Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) – Nevada’s third district includes Las Vegas, the commercial heart of the otherwise sparsely populated state. Vegas, if less so than during the Cold War, is also a nerve center for organizations doing business with the Nevada National Security Site, and with the broader DOE.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) – A pacifistic and antinuclear senator, Markey and his colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, often join forces to hold the DOE’s feet to the fire about defense nuclear spending across the country. Markey also has taken an interest in the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in his home state, wading into a fight about what, in other times, might have been the ordinary practice of discharging radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.
Mark Menezes – Most recently, the deputy secretary of energy during the Donald Trump administration. Menezes was also the undersecretary of energy in the Trump administration, at the top of an organization that at the time included several DOE nuclear programs.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) – The U.S. senator from Ohio who is retiring. Portman worked more or less seamlessly with his colleague Brown when it came to advocacy for uranium cleanup at DOE’s Portsmouth Site — an endeavor that required changes to the law as a fund established for uranium cleanup ran dry earlier this decade.
Rep. Eric Swallwell (D-Calif.) – Swalwell’s district includes the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) – Turner, representing Ohio’s 10th district where the Mounds Laboratory used to be, is the ranking member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee usually brooks no opposition to the continuing modernization, as envisioned since the Barack Obama administration, of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This session, Turner has fought hard against the Biden administration’s decision to halt maintenance on the megaton-capable B83 gravity bomb.
Sen. Ronald Wyden (D-Ore.) – A neighbor of the Hanford Site in Washington State, Wyden is one of Congress’ top whistleblower advocates. He and like-minded lawmakers have slow-rolled top DOE nominees after allegations of contractors retaliating against company whistleblowers at defense-nuclear-cleanup sites. Wyden has also held televised press conferences on Capitol Hill to give some of the weapons complex’s best-known gadflies a platform to share their stories with bigger audiences.
Rep. Charles Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) – Tennessee’s third district is among the most nuclear in the nation and Fleischman has had its back in Congress for the past decade, advocating from the Appropriations Committee to keep the funding taps open for cleanup at the Oak Ridge Site and for construction at Y-12.
Russia invaded Ukraine Feb. 24 claiming, among other things, that the Kremlin wants to rid the country of what it called Ukrainian Nazis, who according to Moscow oppress ethnic Russians in a nation run by a Jewish president). Russian forces have made few territorial gains in the 90 days or so since the invasion began and the capital Kyiv remained in Ukrainian hands.
