Today
Senate will challenge Trump's ability to use nuclear weapons whenever he wants
http://www.businessinsider.com/senat...proval-2017-11
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...clear-weapons/
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-nuclea...ongress-710653
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....0.Wf84ngsYB9M
TRUMP COULD CREATE NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST IN FIVE MINUTES; CONGRESS IS NOW TRYING TO STOP THAT
This week, Congress is asking the long overdue question of just how easy it would be for the president to blow up the world on his own.
For the first time in over 40 years, Congress is holding hearings on Tuesdayabout the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons.
The reasons for the revived interest should be clear.
First, President Trump has threatened to use nuclear weapons, especially against North Korea, in a wider range of scenarios than his predecessors—not just to retaliate against a North Korean first strike or to pre-empt an imminent strike, but simply to prevent Pyongyang from testing or deploying a ballistic missile that has the range to theoretically hit the United States.
Second, Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is holding the hearing, has publicly said that Trump lacks the “stability” or “competence” to be president and has likened his White House to “an adult day-care center.”
This combination—Trump’s drastic rhetoric and his unsuitability for high office—has sparked much of the year’s mounting dread, in and out of Congress.
Everyone knows that the president’s powers include the ability to blow up the world, but few have explored—in part because they’d rather not know—the degree to which the president can do this on his own.
One fact that the hearings will bring out, if they are useful and probing, is that while the president can’t launch nuclear weapons entirely on his own, he can do it without consulting or gaining consensus from anybody.
His senior advisers—including the “grown-ups in the room,” such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, or Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser—play no role in the chain of authority.