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nuclear weapons
Stop Waiting on the 25th Amendment to Save Us From Trump
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk and the only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America are making bank on it.
Jun 08, 2026
In a famous fable a group of mice discuss the catastrophic death toll from the local cat. One mouse has an epiphany—“We simply have to put a collar with a bell on the cat, and we’ll be warned every time she draws near.” The mice erupt in celebration. But suddenly one doleful rodent interrupts the celebrants with a shy question: "Who’s going to bell the cat?"
As an avid reader of lefty alternative media essays, I would venture that “bell the cat” polemics have become a prominent strategy employed by far too many writers. We bell cats in our daydreams, and then write about it with a triumphant brushing of the hands. How many pieces have we all read that call for removing President Donald Trump via the 25th Amendment?
I, personally, am easily convinced that Donald J Trump is... uh... unfit. His twitchy little evil finger on the so-called nuclear button defines a new plateau of dystopian absurdity that no past writer of dark fiction could have ever imagined. Do we need to clarify just how close to the stroke of doomsday this vapid monster brings us daily? His genocidal intent; his criminal impulses; his senseless drivel; his delusional narcissism; his racism; his sexism; and his urge to brag, attack, and threaten ought to make him a prime candidate for a golden sunset behind bars.
Most of the calls for the 25th Amendment rather coalesce around the aesthetics of Trump’s alleged mental decline—his malapropisms; his stumbling gait; his ridiculous boasting about “acing” a dementia screening exam; his late-night posting binges of misspelled, all-caps incoherent rage; his nodding off to sleep in meetings; and the sheer sight of his grotesque, sneering, confused, melting jowls seem to be enough of an argument.
In the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors.
Some calls for the 25th Amendment solution merely focus on Trump’s dwindling physical health—his mysterious hospital visits; his bruises; his enormously swollen ankles; his tiny eye slits peering in a senile, comatose manner from the drooping folds of a face that precariously hovers somewhere between a living visage and a death mask.
It seems odd, however, to argue that Trump ought to be seen as a broken shell of a man, eaten from the inside by diseases associated with aging. Do we really want him removed from office because of illness, or because he has spearheaded an assault against the environment, a new age of unregulated capitalist plunder, a total commitment to eviscerate human rights, and the intent to wage war as a matter of reflexive masculinist expression? Where have US bombs fallen, and where will they imminently rain down on hapless civilians?
Are Mogadishu and Copenhagen on the list? Havana? Have we blown Cuba up yet, or is that just a coming attraction scheduled for August or November? Donald J Trump’s trembling, tiny phallic finger nuzzling the button of eternal extinction seems like a surefire image to summon massive levels of public panic, to send hysterical crowds into the streets as if the Chicxulub Meteor had been scheduled for an encore. But in the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors. We have guardrails, constitutional guarantees—like the oft mentioned 25th Amendment. Why go crazy in an existential panic, when the Constitution has our back?
The 25th Amendment is not some hoary remnant of our overly esteemed Founding Fathers. No such Revolutionary War icons stared wisely into the crystal ball of future contingencies, and asked the question, “What do we do when a batshit lunatic captures the presidency?” No, the Founding Fathers had not imagined a president as being anything other than a generic advocate for the interests of the wealthy—a role that carried an implicit assumption of sanity in their constitutional eyes. The 25th Amendment was passed by congress in 1965, and ratified in 1967, perhaps inspired by the unraveling, warmongering man of the moment, Lyndon Baines Johnson. But more likely, the amendment shuffled itself into the Constitution as a matter of legislative busywork, a footnote barely acknowledged at the time. The 25th gives some clarity as to when the vice president steps into a presidential role, usually for a day or two when a presidential colonoscopy creates a window of momentary confusion. Congress voted on the amendment only two years after JFK’s assassination—fearful politicians had, one imagines, a lurking sense of unpredictable events.
The 25th Amendment, however, also creates a new protocol for the permanent removal of an unfit president—the vice-president along with the members of the Cabinet must vote to toss the leader out of office with a simple majority. From there, the decision to remove an unfit president passes to both houses of Congress where a two-thirds majority of each chamber must vote to remove the spiraling executive. In other words (at least in Trump’s case), a collection of morally deformed misfits must pool their distaste for the unravelling psychopath who appointed them. And then a collection of party sycophants must rise up against the leader who fills their trembling hearts with utter terror.
Maybe you believe that Trump should be removed because he is: 1) corrupt, 2) demented, 3) insane, 4) stupid, and 5) evil. Obviously, while all of these allegations rest on mountains of evidence; none of it resonates with a single cabinet member. The 25th Amendment is not a public plebiscite. You and I might easily agree that tearing up the White House to build a ballroom-bomb-shelter for a nuclear fetishizing war criminal might be an awful idea. But so what? The 25th Amendment is a private matter, a means of protection for the ruling class. If a president goes cuckoo for coco-puffs, the oligarchs can set things right. One might aptly assume that none of Trump’s shenanigans trouble the billionaire class.
So you and I do not get a vote according to 25th Amendment protocol. Here is an abbreviated list of those authorized to vote: 1) RFK Jr., 2) Linda McMahon, 3) Howard Lutnick, 4) Doug Burgum, 5) Chris Wright, 6) Pete Hegseth, 7) Marco Rubio... and so forth. If you believe that any of these names might vote to remove Trump, I suggest that you hurry (if you still have medical insurance) to take The Montreal Cognitive Assessment.
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk. The only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America make bank on Trump’s presidency. The oil executives, nuclear weapons manufacturers, planet destroying Big Tech moguls, insurance profiteers, and chemical poisoners are carving up the Earth like famished vultures alighting on a putrid carcass. If these predators don’t care about Trump’s decaying brain, it really doesn’t matter what you and I believe.
There is a means of removal—a real one, not a self-indulgent fantasy. It is called The 3.5% Rule, a theory that argues that regime change requires massive resistance involving 3.5% of the population taking to the streets until a resolution has been reached. It involves daily mobilization, not a two hour street festival every two months. In the US that means at least 11 million angry, undeterred resistors willing to endure a measure of personal inconvenience. It involves blocking traffic, getting arrested, boycotts, strikes, and international connections. We should be calling for foreign nationals to boycott and divest from US corporations. Or we can day dream about the 25th Amendment until Trump dies and hands over the throne to JD Vance.
As a general theme, we US citizens have far too much faith in alleged democratic process, and far too little passion for collective agency.
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Markey Demands Trump Cancel Plan to Give Private Companies Enough Plutonium to Build 2,000 Nuclear Bombs
"Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme," wrote Democratic Sen. Ed Markey.
Jun 02, 2026
A prominent US senator on Tuesday implored President Donald Trump to cancel his administration's plan to give private companies enough plutonium to build around 2,000 nuclear bombs, warning the move raises "serious weapons proliferation concerns" along with potentially massive safety issues and conflicts of interest.
"If implemented, this would be the first time the US government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Trump. "I urge you to cancel this misguided scheme."
The New York Times reported last week that the US Department of Energy currently has "more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it."
But last May, Trump signed an executive order halting the dilution program and instructing his energy secretary to "establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies."
Last Tuesday, the Energy Department said it has entered into "advanced negotiations" with five nuclear energy companies—Oklo, Flibe Energy, Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, and Standard Nuclear—to potentially distribute the Cold War-era plutonium.
Markey noted in his letter that Energy Secretary Chris Wright previously served on the board of Oklo, a California-based nuclear technology company whose stock price jumped in response to the department's announcement.
"I am concerned that your administration is moving forward with plans to give plutonium to Oklo not because this makes
sense for the United States, but because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company's interest. Secretary Wright's close ties to the company present an appearance of impropriety."
The senator also expressed opposition to the plan on its merits, warning that "the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists."
"Your plan—which would provide US companies with plutonium from US military stocks and subsidize them both to reprocess plutonium domestically and export reprocessing technology—would reverse our successful nonproliferation policy," Markey wrote. "The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves."
Trump wants to give 2,000 nuclear bombs worth of weapons-ready plutonium to private companies including Oklo, where Energy Secretary Wright served on the board. This is a clear conflict of interest and dangerous for our security. Trump must cancel this plan now. pic.twitter.com/rIZnLSpZJe
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) June 2, 2026
Nuclear experts have raised similar concerns about the Trump administration's plan to transfer weapons-grade plutonium into the hands of private, for-profit corporations.
"Plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing have a poor track record when introduced in civilian nuclear energy programs," Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist who headed the Energy Department during the Obama administration, wrote last year, warning that transfer schemes such as the one put forth by Trump would "produce new radioactive waste streams that must be managed" and "elevate the risk of a safety or security incident at a nuclear facility."
In a social media post last week, Markey condemned the Trump administration's plan in scathing terms, writing that "using plutonium for nuclear power is stupid and dangerous."
"This material is used in nukes, and it’s too unsafe for widespread commercial use. Do we want Iran using plutonium in its reactor? No," Markey wrote. "Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme."
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The US and Israel Make a Farce of Landmark UN Nuclear Conference
As the US-Israeli war on Iran actively unravels 50 years of progress toward nuclear nonproliferation, this moment perfectly captured the backwardness of international nuclear policy.
May 29, 2026
Less than three weeks after President Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” on Truth Social, representatives of the United States—the only country to ever deploy nuclear weapons on another country—took the mic at the United Nations headquarters to lecture the rest of the world about nuclear-weapons safety. As the US-Israeli war on Iran actively unravels 50 years of progress toward nuclear nonproliferation, this moment perfectly captured the backwardness of international nuclear policy.
From April 27 to May 22, representatives of over 200 countries and diplomatic organizations convened at the UN headquarters in New York City for the 11th review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Signed in 1970, the NPT remains the pièce de résistance of international nuclear policy, and poses three main rules: States that do not have nuclear weapons will not seek to acquire them; states that do possess nuclear weapons will commit to disarmament instead of engaging in arms races; and all states have the right to utilize nuclear energy. These conferences are held by the UN roughly every five years to ensure the treaty’s tenets are upheld and encourage debate on any possible updates.
This year’s conference, if not the NPT itself, was a farce from the beginning thanks to the United States and Israel. Within the first three hours of the first meeting on April 27, the United States condemned Iran—a country it was actively attacking—for pursuing peaceful enrichment of uranium, the right to which it is guaranteed under the third tenet of the NPT.
From that point on, the contradictions only became more embarrassing. The United Kingdom and France, two other nuclear-armed states, immediately joined the United States in condemning the representative of non-nuclear Iran who had just been elected a vice president of the conference.
When the Africa Group—composed of 54 African nations—used the NPT conference as a platform to call for a new nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, that should be seen as perhaps the most promising proposal to come out of the conference.
When they attacked Iran in February, the United States and Israel sent a clear message to the world that utterly extinguishes any legitimacy of the NPT: The treaty-defined right to peaceful enrichment is a myth, and nuclear-armed states like the United States and Israel will wage wars of aggression and destruction to ensure the nuclear balance of power remains in their favor.
This message is just a reiteration of what the world has known since the beginning of the War on Terror, if not before: As long as the United States is involved, diplomacy is dead. Colin Powell killed it with his speech to the UN Security Council about fictitious WMDs in Iraq. Barack Obama killed it by bombing and seizing $30 billion from Libya, which had already abolished its nuclear weapons program and signed the NPT. And now Donald Trump has killed it again by attacking Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including nuclear facilities which are protected under the NPT.
With the United States as the presiding power, treaties and territorial sovereignty can be torn up at any time. These are the exact political conditions that led a country like North Korea to avoid signing the NPT altogether and develop nuclear weapons. If there is no incentive of safety for following the rules, then it becomes perfectly rational to not follow them.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the United States-based nuclear watchdog that hosts the famous “Doomsday Clock,” quickly responded to the fact that the legitimacy of the NPT was disintegrating in real time at the UN. Before the conference ended, they published the bluntly titled report Iran’s Positions at the NPT Review Conference Are Rational. Ignoring Them Would Weaken the Treaty. With this report, the international nuclear experts at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are practically begging on their knees for the United States to adopt a nuclear policy that isn’t hellbent on illegal wars, mass punishment of civilians, and nullifying of international treaties.
There was good news at the NPT conference too. Although the illegal, bloodthirsty US-Israeli war on Iran has threatened the survival of the nonproliferation policy pushed by the UN, some non-nuclear states used the conference to propose more modest nuclear treaties that may ultimately prove to be more reliable.
In addition to the NPT, there are international treaties establishing “nuclear free zones” in five regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, signed in 1967; the South Pacific, signed in 1985; Southeast Asia, signed in 1995; Africa, signed in 1996; and Central Asia, signed in 2006. The Treaty of Tlatelolco, covering Latin America and the Caribbean, even predates the NPT by three years. These nuclear-free zones have arguably outperformed the NPT in producing nuclear-free outcomes in their respective sections of the globe.
Simply put, these treaties are underrated. Over the past 50 years, the United States has spread its nuclear arsenal to NATO allies including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. And just earlier this spring, Japan’s prime minister floated the possibility of hosting nuclear weapons on behalf of the United States too. Likewise, Russia stations nuclear weapons in its neighbor Belarus. This form of proliferation, dubbed “nuclear sharing,” is essentially a violation of the NPT—it puts nuclear weapons in states that otherwise wouldn’t have them. But while nuclear powers have destroyed the legitimacy of the NPT by engaging in nuclear sharing arms races, non-nuclear countries have shown real leadership on nuclear policy by establishing these nuclear-free zones that effectively and reliably curtail proliferation.
So when the Africa Group—composed of 54 African nations—used the NPT conference as a platform to call for a new nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, that should be seen as perhaps the most promising proposal to come out of the conference. With this suggestion, the Africa Group is stating the obvious: The United States and Israel, with their land-theft operation in Lebanon and their war of terror on Iran, are starting and escalating conflicts in the Middle East faster than the rest of the world can keep up with. The international community might as well try to keep nuclear weapons out of these conflicts.
There’s one problem with this proposal, and it’s not Iran’s alleged nuclear program.
Israel is reported to possess at least 90 nuclear warheads. Unlike Iran, Israel is not a cooperating party to the NPT, so its nuclear arsenal is not monitored by international watchdogs like the International Atomic Energy Agency. To this day, the United States does not acknowledge that Israel’s weapons exist at all.
A nuclear free zone in the Middle East will not be actualized any time soon because Israel is already violating it. But with this proposal the Africa Group is forcing the hand of the US and allies regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal. This isn’t an adversarial action at all; it’s a necessary, good-faith move toward nuclear policy that is honest and proven to work. That same week, 30 members of Congress signed a letter demanding the United States acknowledge Israel’s warheads.
Even as the United States falsely claims to be eliminating a nuclear threat in the Middle East, it is simultaneously creating a new nuclear threat by proposing to station warheads in Japan, escalating toward a new war with China. Every single one of these escalations brings the world closer not only to all-out nuclear war, but also to imperialist wars of aggression backed by nuclear arsenals, such as the imperialist wars on Iraq, Libya, and Iran.
In 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu, then a member of the Zionist parliament for the Likud party, warned that Iran may develop a nuclear bomb within three to five years. The United States, its media, and its allies have believed and peddled these lies for over 30 years, but the rest of the world has caught up.
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