by Danny Hall, Lead Capitol Hill Representative & Faith Community Outreach Coordinator
There are moments in a movement when the ground shifts — not all at once, not with fireworks or headlines, but with a quiet, unmistakable sense that something long believed to be beyond reach is beginning to take shape.
This week, we reached one of those moments.
50 members of Congress have now signed onto H. Res. 317, the Back from the Brink resolution calling for a new approach to how we keep people safe from nuclear danger — one grounded in realism, human dignity, and the belief that every life is worth protecting.
50 voices.
50 districts.
50 leaders willing to say publicly what millions of people across this country already know in their bones:
The world we inherited is not the world we want to pass on.
A Milestone in a Darkening Moment
Let’s be honest about the world we’re standing in.
New START — the last remaining arms‑control treaty between the United States and Russia — has now officially expired. For the first time in more than half a century, the world’s two largest nuclear powers are operating with no binding limits and no verification mechanisms.
There is open talk of resuming explosive nuclear testing — something that would ignite a global arms race overnight.
Destabilizing technologies are spreading faster than our political system can comprehend them:
- AI‑driven command and control that compresses decision time
- cyber vulnerabilities that make false alarms more likely
- weaponized satellites that threaten early‑warning systems
- missile defense systems that encourage adversaries to build more weapons
This is not stability.
This is not safety.
This is a world walking a tightrope in the dark — a system held together by luck, and luck is not a security strategy.
And yet, in this moment of profound uncertainty, something else is happening too.
People are stepping forward.
Communities are organizing.
And members of Congress — 50 of them — are choosing to lead.
The Story We’ve Been Told — and the Truth We Know
For decades, we’ve been told a story:
that nuclear weapons keep us safe.
But the truth is the opposite.
Nuclear weapons are not our security — they are our greatest risk.
Every day they exist, we live one miscalculation, one false alarm, one cyber breach, one human error, one irrational presidential decision away from catastrophe.
And underneath the nuclear system is a deeper logic — a logic that says some lives are expendable.
A logic that treats human beings as disposable.
Because the federal budget that pours trillions into weapons that could end human civilization is the same budget:
- cutting Medicaid
- cutting food assistance
- funding ICE raids
- telling millions of Americans that we “can’t afford” basic human needs
We are told these weapons are for our safety — while the very people they claim to protect are left hungry, uninsured, and afraid.
That is not security.
That is moral failure.
And that is why elimination is not idealism.
It is survival.
It is dignity.
It is justice.
And…it is rationality.
The world we built our nuclear assumptions on is gone.
The post-Cold War nuclear security environment is not the environment we inhabit today.
The technical knowledge, verification tools, and monitoring practices developed over decades of arms control remain essential — but they can no longer be the endpoint. They must become the scaffolding for building a new security architecture that reflects 21st‑century realities.
In that architecture, a world free of nuclear weapons is not an aspiration but a long‑term security necessity — the only proportionate response to a world this tightly wired and this dangerously unpredictable.
It’s why elimination is strategic realism.
Why H. Res. 317 Matters
H. Res. 317 is not just another resolution.
It is the clearest, most comprehensive statement in Congress today about what a responsible nuclear policy must look like in the 21st century.
It does something Washington almost never does:
It calls for actively pursuing a world free of nuclear weapons as a national security imperative.
Not a dream.
Not a slogan.
A national security imperative.
And it gives members of Congress a principled, realistic way to step into leadership — to acknowledge the fragility of deterrence, the urgency of the moment, and the need for a long‑term strategy that actually matches the risks we face.
50 members have already taken that step.
And that is a foundation we are going to build on.
The Next 50
If the first 50 were about proving that leadership is possible, the next 50 will be about proving that leadership is contagious.
We know what comes next:
- More members stepping forward as the reality of the post–New START world sinks in
- More communities raising their voices
- More conversations that make deterrence’s fragility impossible to ignore
- More champions emerging — not just signing on, but speaking out, recruitifng colleagues, and shifting the political weather
The next 50 cosponsors will not come from Washington alone.
They will come from you — from the drumbeat of constituents who refuse to let this issue fade into the background.
We’ve Been Here Before — and We Know How This Story Ends
If anyone needs a reminder of what ordinary people can do, we only have to look to our own history.
Every major movement in this country — civil rights, women’s suffrage, marriage equality — was built by people who were told their goals were unrealistic.
People who were told to wait.
People who were told the system would never change.
But they didn’t wait.
They organized.
They built power.
They changed the political weather.
And that is exactly what we are doing now.
We are not powerless in the face of nuclear weapons.
We are powerful because we are many.
We are powerful because we are persistent.
And we are powerful because we believe — deeply — that every human life has value, and none of us are disposable.
50 members of Congress have already stepped forward.
The next 50 are within reach.
Let’s keep going.
Let’s keep building.
Let’s keep expanding what is possible.
And let’s bring this country — and this world — back from the brink.
For more information on how to support the “Back from the Brink” resolutions, including H. Res. 317, head to: preventnuclearwar.org/bftb-congressional-resolutions/
