Dear friends --
1. Please help recruit organizations and businesses, and individuals to join us in opposing plutonium pit production at LANL! We can't do this without your help!
Opposition is growing. Eight businesses and 34 individuals have joined in the past 11 days. While this is encouraging it is still slow. If those who have endorsed the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" at StopTheBomb.org recruited just one other person, business or organization, it would be a game-changer. For reference, the list of signatories is here.
2. Emergency gathering at the Truman St. gate of Kirtland Air Force Base tomorrow, April 7, at 11 am (map).
Stop the War Machine and allied organizations are calling on everyone who would like to make a statement about Trump's war on Iran to join them at the above location and time. Please go if you can, or attend another protest. In our opinion, we need to focus on activating our congressional delegation.
We have been closely following this horrendous war but apart from the work of Steve Starr on our board we not been able to do that much about it.
We have also not been forwarding any of the news and commentary we follow and discuss among ourselves, or offering our own views. We assume you have your own sources of information and are keeping abreast of events through independent sources at least to some extent.
Now, many of us here have come to the conclusion that "President Trump's" mental condition has significantly deteriorated since this war began.
(I am using the quotation marks to remind us that, without wanting to lessen Trump's personal responsibility, what is happening is also the product of the people around him, who play a large role in controlling what he sees and hears and thinks.)
We believe Trump (and all we might mean by "Trump," in quotes) are by now truly mad -- more visibly crazy than he was (or they were) last week or last month or last year. There is now an clearly evident, urgent need for intervention of some kind. The lives of millions of people, not just thousands, are at stake. Trump now, more than ever, has threatened those lives directly, starting tomorrow.
No administration has ever invoked the 25th Amendment. It unlikely this one will either. Absent more substantive triggers than Trump's increasingly unhinged tirades (on Easter no less) it won't happen, and it wouldn't happen fast enough even in the best case.
It has probably occurred to you that if or when Trump realizes he has already lost the midterms, one of the remaining constraints on his actions will be gone.
As citizens we are not left with any straightforward ways to stop this war (or any of the empire's wars). We need to mobilize. Tomorrow's protest/press conference/gathering is a good place to start, or re-start as the case may be.
Remember, the members of the New Mexico delegation are federal officials of a kind. They are our representatives in government and they share some responsibility for what happens there. They need to step up to the plate now. They haven't done that yet and they won't do it unless we "ask" them in a very firm manner, with our physical presence.
3. Some of us will be at the Santa Fe City Council meeting tomorrow. Public comment generally occurs around 7 pm. We are asking the Council to oppose plutonium pit production at LANL.
They've done it before. See especially resolutions 2003-64, 2005-39, 2006-104, and 2008-17. We hope to have a draft resolution in hand tomorrow but we are suddenly in demand from many quarters, so we'll see. If not, we will soon and tomorrow's comments will be part of preparing the field.
As you know, LANL has been asked to double its pit production quota in future years (Bulletin 374: LANL required to at least double plutonium pit production, new plutonium facility planned..." Feb 27, 2026) ("LANL may be asked to double plutonium pit production, per federal memo," Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 27; Federal memo urges increased plutonium pit production at LANL," Albuquerque Journal, Mar 1, 2026)
Now, as of this past weekend, we have learned that Trump's NNSA has asked Congress to nearly double LANL's pit production budget for next year as well, from $1.272 billion to $2.423 billion. At LANL, the overall warhead budget is being increased to $6.05 billion, more than a third. The total budget for LANL, including nonproliferation and cleanup, will probably soon be $7 billion.
While housing costs, traffic congestion, labor shortages, worker risks, and water consumption are probably the most obvious local impacts of all this on the region, the moral and political impacts of being the world’s best-funded facility for weapons of mass destruction are in our view even more serious and far-reaching. We are becoming the nation’s nuclear weapons colony, with all that implies for our future. You just thought it was bad before.
As with the war, we all must decide whether we are going to take a stand or not. Having a merely private opinion is not enough.
4. A new Santa Fe Reporter ad will appear this coming Wednesday, April 8: "Gigantic expansion would make Los Alamos nuclear weapons megacenter, Grandiose plans for nuclear weapons, plutonium expansion not yet authorized or funded; local opposition growing – will you join?"
5. We will be hosting a community resistance meeting in Santa Fe on Tuesday April 14 at St. John's United Methodist Church at 6:00 pm. Mark your calendars.
In solidarity,
Greg Mello
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