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To the Editor:
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have set the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, a warning that we need to take immediate action to prevent catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and Russian President Putin’s repeated references and allusions to nuclear weapons have brought home for many of us the irrefutable fact that we are just one poor decision, accident or misjudgment or reckless leader away from disaster.
But it’s not just Russia: nuclear armed states, including the United States, continue to invest billions of dollars in nuclear arsenals that are new and upgraded. The U.S. is on track to spend $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years replacing every weapon in its nuclear arsenal. The current GOP Congress provided additional funding this year for nuclear weaponry that even the military says it doesn’t want.
We must act fast to put stop guards in place. We can and we should: end the president’s sole authority to start a nuclear war and urge other countries to issue the same stopgaps; issue that America will never be first to start a nuclear war; cancel unwanted new nuclear weapons and reduce nuclear spending; support global nuclear arms control.
Your taxpayer dollars are exactly what your government spends and Doomsday is now 10 seconds closer and counting according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
What you can do is call or write or email your members of Congress and express your concerns. And do it again.
We are already in Climactic Crisis. A nuclear war may not kill the planet but it will kill you and everyone and every living thing on the planet. Please take serious action.

Sincerely,
Karen Mehner
Butler