Renew U.S. Leadership on Nuclear Disarmament

On February 5, 2026, New START expired. It was the last treaty limiting the deployed nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, and for the first time in more than half a century the world’s two largest nuclear powers now operate under no agreed limits at all.¹ The United States is in the middle of an across-the-board modernization of its arsenal,² and in October 2025 the President announced the country would resume nuclear weapons testing, reversing a moratorium on explosive tests in place since 1992.³ In January 2026 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest to catastrophe in its history.⁴ Washington is walking away from the table instead of leading the way back to it.

I support two measures from Representative Jim McGovern that would put the United States back in the lead. His resolution, H.Res.317, urges the country to return to arms-control negotiations and work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.⁵ His HALT Act, H.R.6465, would make it U.S. policy to seek a verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons, and it would bar federal funds for any explosive nuclear test unless the President reports to Congress and Congress votes to approve it.⁶ I would cosponsor both.

The resolution and the HALT Act

H.Res.317, “Urging the United States to lead the world back from the brink of nuclear war and halt and reverse the nuclear arms race,” was introduced by McGovern on April 9, 2025 and referred to the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees.⁵ It calls on the United States to negotiate in good faith with all nuclear-armed states, conclude new agreements with Russia and engage China on risk reduction, renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, end the Cold War “hair trigger” alert posture, rein in the production of new warheads, and preserve the moratorium on nuclear testing.⁷

The HALT Act, formally the Hastening Arms Limitations Talks Act of 2025, was introduced by McGovern on December 4, 2025.⁶⁸ It sets U.S. policy to lead “a 21st century global nuclear freeze movement” and to pursue a verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and further deployment of all nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles, a follow-on agreement to New START, a no-first-use commitment, and ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Its one binding provision prohibits spending any federal funds to conduct or prepare for an explosive nuclear test that produces a yield, unless the President first reports to Congress on the condition of the stockpile and Congress passes a joint resolution approving the test.⁶

Where Massachusetts stands

Massachusetts has helped lead this effort. As of July 2026, six of the state’s eight other House members have cosponsored H.Res.317, alongside its author: Richard Neal, Lori Trahan, Katherine Clark, Ayanna Pressley, Stephen Lynch, and William Keating.⁹ Representative Jake Auchincloss, who represents this district, is not among them. Cosponsorship is the plainest way a member signals support for a bill, and on a resolution most of the delegation has joined, our representative has not added his name.

What I will do

When I am in Congress, I will cosponsor H.Res.317 and the HALT Act, and I will vote against funding new explosive nuclear tests and destabilizing new warheads. Diplomacy is not weakness. The nations that built these weapons are the ones responsible for controlling them, and the United States should be leading that work, not abandoning it. The Congressional Budget Office projects that sustaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal will cost $946 billion over the decade from 2025 to 2034, money that would be far better spent at home.¹⁰ For more, see Cut the Pentagon Budget.

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