Sponsors (2)
The bill seeks to lower nuclear risks and strengthen verification/community norms while increasing Congressional control over testing, but it imposes verification costs, may limit U.S. military flexibility and rapid response, and risks strategic disadvantages if other states do not reciprocate.
All Americans: The bill aims to reduce the overall risk of nuclear use (accidental or deliberate) by treating nuclear weapons as an existential threat and advancing arms‑control diplomacy and verification.
Taxpayers and the international community: The bill strengthens nonproliferation norms by pushing CTBT/CTBTO support, expanded IAEA access, and other verification measures, making clandestine testing or fissile production harder to conceal.
Federal employees and military: The bill preserves routine, non‑yield-producing stockpile stewardship activities (surveillance, safety, and maintenance), allowing core technical work on the arsenal to continue.
Military personnel and taxpayers: If rivals do not reciprocate, binding limits or freezes could create strategic gaps and reduce U.S. flexibility, risking a perceived or real strategic disadvantage.
Military personnel and federal decisionmakers: Requiring Congressional approval before any explosive test could delay or block an urgently needed test in a crisis, reducing rapid operational flexibility.
Taxpayers and federal budgets: Sustained negotiation, verification, and treaty‑implementation efforts will require diplomatic, technical, and inspection funding paid by taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Bars federal funds for any explosive nuclear weapons test with yield after FY2025 unless the President reports stockpile changes and Congress approves the test; urges broad multilateral arms‑control diplomacy.
Introduced December 4, 2025 by Edward John Markey · Last progress December 4, 2025
Prohibits federal funds from being used to conduct any explosive nuclear weapons test that produces a yield after FY2025 unless the President submits an addendum reporting changes to the nuclear stockpile and Congress passes a joint resolution approving the test. It preserves routine stockpile stewardship activities that do not produce yield. Also declares findings about the dangers of nuclear weapons and directs U.S. policy toward renewed, multilateral arms‑control diplomacy: resuming inspections, pursuing verifiable freezes and ceilings on weapons and delivery systems (using August 2, 2019 levels as a reference), seeking no‑first‑use transparency, limiting destabilizing systems, encouraging CTBT ratification, and urging restraint on new warhead designs while negotiating reciprocal commitments from other nuclear-armed states.