Major Nuclear Arms Treaty Expires, and Federal Prosecutor in Minnesota Says ‘This Job Sucks’
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, February 5th. Here's what we're covering.
The statement that I shall now read is being issued simultaneously in Moscow and Washington. Washington, 12 o'clock, Moscow, 7 p.m.
Back in the early 1970s, President Nixon made history, announcing he was working toward a nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The two sides are taking this course in the conviction that it will create more favorable conditions for further negotiations to limit all strategic arms.
That treaty ushered in a new era where the world's superpowers acknowledged there was a danger to letting the arms race spin out of control.
In the decades since... The risk of a nuclear attack...
has gone up. The U.S. signed on to a series of updated treaties. The most recent was under Obama in 2010.
I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.
That was called the New START Treaty. Mr. President, just one more thing.
You said three weeks on this. Is it going to expire? If it expires, it expires.
What are the implications of the nuclear arms treaty expiration?
We'll do a better agreement.
But as of today, it has expired. And so for the first time since 1972, the U.S. and Russia have no limits on the size of their arsenals. Many experts agree with what the Trump administration has argued, that the treaty was in need of updates. It needed to cover more types of weapons, and more countries needed to sign on, etc. But the complete absence of an arms control agreement comes at the very moment world leaders are considering expanding their capabilities. Russia has done test launches to prepare for nuclear weapons in space and a test of an underwater drone that could detonate a warhead and trigger a radioactive tsunami. China now has the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, trying to rival Moscow and Washington.
And Japan, South Korea and Turkey, which are non-nuclear countries, are now discussing whether they need to change course. Some countries in Europe are wondering the same, feeling like they can no longer rely on the U.S. for protection and might need their own weapons. Analysts say this all leaves the Trump administration with a choice. It can push ahead with its own larger arsenal and specialized weapons to keep pace, or it can try and negotiate a new deal. That would require Trump pushing on Moscow, though, and it would require China to engage on the topic, which it has so far refused to do. For now, two of the U.S. 's leading nuclear experts have warned that, quote, "...nuclear weapons are back with a vengeance."
In Minnesota this week, a federal prosecutor was in court in front of a judge when she made a pretty wild statement. Julie Lee was being grilled about why the Trump administration has been ignoring court orders to release immigrants who shouldn't have been detained. And in response, she said, quote, What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. Lee said her office was so slammed with immigration cases that she wished the judge would just hold her in contempt of court so that she could get some sleep. The next day, she was fired from her position. But her dramatic outburst points to the chaos that Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown has triggered in the court system. not just in Minnesota but across the country.
The surge of arrests has meant a flood of cases. Lee said that in the last few weeks, she personally found herself overseeing about 90 of them. The backlog has left scores of immigrants stuck in detention in violation of judicial orders and their constitutional rights.
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