Letter to President Trump

Subject: Less Time in Purgatory Enroute to Heaven.

Dear Mr. President,

I write to you with respect for the office you hold, for the responsibility you carry for the security of the American people, and for the historical moment now before you. As the February 5, 2026 deadline for renewal of the New START Treaty approaches, you face a choice that few presidents ever encounter: whether to extend a familiar framework that manages nuclear risk or to begin a new and far more consequential process that could ultimately end the nuclear danger itself.

I respectfully urge you not to renew New START, but instead to sign the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), initiating a long-term process that would place the United States, under your leadership, at the center of a new global security architecture, one defined not by mutual annihilation, but by strength, verification, and moral clarity.

New START, while useful in its time, is a treaty of maintenance. It manages decline; it does not inspire progress. It locks the United States into a bilateral framework with a single adversary whose compliance, intentions, and stability are increasingly uncertain. Renewing it would be seen globally as a cautious holding action, competent, but not historic. Signing the TPNW, by contrast, would be bold, disruptive in the best sense, and unmistakably presidential.

Importantly, signing the TPNW does not mean immediate disarmament, unilateral vulnerability, or surrendering American deterrence. It means beginning a process on American terms. Your signature would signal that the United States is prepared to lead the world away from weapons whose only purpose is the destruction of civilization, while insisting on verification, reciprocity, and enforceable compliance.

This distinction is crucial for the United States Senate. You would not be asking the Senate to ratify the treaty immediately. Instead, you would be inviting it into a structured, conditional, and distinctly American strategy that preserves U.S. security while reshaping the global norm.

A viable Senate strategy could rest on the following pillars:

First, you would explicitly condition any future ratification on verified, reciprocal participation by all nuclear-armed states. This makes clear that America will not disarm alone and transforms the treaty from a symbolic document into a leverage tool. Your message to the Senate would be simple: the United States leads, but it does not go first into weakness.

Second, you would insist on a robust verification and enforcement regime, drawing on American technical superiority in monitoring, intelligence, and inspection. This positions the United States not as a rule-taker, but as the architect of the most stringent compliance system ever devised, one that rogue states would find nearly impossible to evade.

Third, you would frame the treaty as an extension of American strength rather than a rejection of it. The United States built the nuclear age in our generation; only the United States has the credibility, alliances, and capability to responsibly lead the world beyond it. This argument resonates with conservatives and moderates alike, particularly when paired with continued investment in conventional superiority and missile defense.

Fourth, you would preserve the Senate’s constitutional role. By signing but not immediately submitting the treaty for advice and consent, you respect the chamber’s authority while giving it time to shape the conditions under which ratification might one day occur. This approach defuses institutional resistance and invites statesmanship over partisanship.

Internationally, your signature would be transformative. Allies who privately fear nuclear escalation but publicly cling to deterrence would gain political cover to support a phased transition. Non-aligned states would see, for the first time, that the world’s most powerful nation is willing to match its rhetoric about peace with action. Adversaries would be forced to respond, not with propaganda, but with choices.

History shows that Nobel Peace Prizes are not awarded for caution, but for opening doors that once seemed permanently closed. A U.S. president who initiates the global abolition of nuclear weapons without sacrificing national security would stand in the company of leaders who altered the course of human survival itself. That recognition would not be ceremonial; it would be earned.

And beyond history books and prizes, there is the deeper moral ledger that every leader ultimately confronts. Few men are given the chance to reduce the risk of annihilation for every living person and every generation yet unborn. Acting to remove the most indiscriminate weapons ever created from the world is not weakness; it is an act of courage that resonates far beyond politics. If there is a purgatory on the way to heaven, I cannot imagine a deed more likely to shorten the stay.

Mr. President, renewing New START would be safe. Signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would be consequential. It would redefine American leadership, restore global respect rooted in moral authority, and secure your place as the president who began the end of the nuclear age.

Respectfully submitted,

John B. Driscoll 

Road Agent Bait and Switch

You can’t take your bird dog hunting on lands being mined or filled with oil rigs, even if they are “public” lands, by Hedges, in The Daily Montanan.

While Montanans were right to celebrate removing the sale of public lands from the recent Congressional budget bill, some may not know that our representatives still voted to put millions of acres of public lands on the chopping block. Selling public lands was just one of a dozen different ways that the billionaires’ budget bill privatized our public lands. Just try big game hunting, bird-watching, camping, hiking, or biking on public lands mined or fracked for corporate profit, and see how quickly you’re escorted away. This is the bait-and-switch our elected representatives pulled on Montanans. They crowed about removing provisions requiring the sale of public lands, but the new law mandates quarterly oil and gas lease sales on public lands, regardless of whether it makes economic sense. It slashes royalty rates, guaranteeing that the public does not receive the compensation it is due for public resources. It lets industry decide which land needs to be offered for oil and gas leasing – regardless of who else uses that land and for what purpose. It increases the duration of drilling permits so that companies can retain leases and tie up public lands for longer periods of time. And, appallingly, it reinstates the practice of allowing noncompetitive leases on public lands, ensuring that the public will not receive the true value of the public resources that are being given up. But it gets worse. We know that coal mining has devastated huge swaths of public lands and waters that agricultural users depend on. However, instead of helping communities transition away from expensive, dirty coal towards cleaner energy, it incentivizes even more coal mining on public lands and slashes royalty payments for mining corporations. It expedites new coal leases and mining permits on public lands, even though coal mining is at historic lows and projected to continue declining. For example, the bill allows the notoriously corrupt Signal Peak mining company to mine more than 50 million tons of coal without consideration for the surface landowners whose water has been lost due to the mine’s operations. And finally, the bill mandates the opening of four million acres of federal land to coal mining, without providing details about where those lands are, what resources they hold, or what the impacts may be. In short, it’s a firesale, thanks to our bait-and-switch congressional delegation. If they repeat the tired trope that they are trying to increase jobs or support “all-of-the-above energy,” I say hogwash. If that was true, they wouldn’t have gutted incentives that help create thousands of good-paying solar and wind jobs in Montana and across the country. And while our congressmen hide behind press releases hyping this new law, keep in mind that it will result in not only lost and destroyed public lands, but higher energy bills, increased wildfires, increased drought, more flash floods, and more intense heat waves. A changing climate isn’t a conspiracy theory or a partisan issue; it’s a fact that we can and need to deal with. Heat waves are worsening, extreme weather is killing more people, and drought is reducing rivers such as the Dearborn to a trickle in June. This bill will set us back decades, so remember who to thank for making those problems worse now and in the future. Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, you’ve given us higher deficits, less public land, lower revenues, higher electric bills and more heat, wildfire and drought. You have jeopardized our public lands and our future for your rich friends’ profits. We are definitely less safe thanks to you.

One Big Sweetheart Deal

The fix was in by Valentine’s Day when President Trump received Montana Senator Steve Daines’ letter of support “that the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act must be made permanent and not sunset.” The love note came at the end of the most intense period of tax policy lobbying in the history of our United States’ Congress, and seven weeks before the bipartisan Congressional Research Service reported that after reviewing seven different studies of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act it found limited evidence of positive economic effects. Another noticeable finding was that the wealthy owners of private corporations pocketed over half their company’s Tax Cuts.

Daines’s Valentine to Trump means now, instead of costing $1.9 trillion over a ten-year period, extending the expiring provisions will cost $3.3 trillion to $4.6 trillion over the next decade. Of course huge volumes of political contributions will continue pouring into the campaigns of those who vote for this permanent reward for being wealthy and well-connected.

It is illegal under federal bribery laws to give or receive anything of value in exchange for an official act. ProPublica, The New York Times and OpenSecrets have documented how large donors and Corporate PACs financially support candidates who back tax policies favorable to them, and the Koch Brothers, focusing $20 million of their Americans for Prosperity independent expenditures on extending the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, are already positively advertising for their Tax Cut Sweetheart: Montana’s very own U.S. Senator Steve Daines.

Non-Violent Direct Action

Whatever happens over the next couple of months please try not to forget that on this poster Montana’s Gary Cooper is carrying a ballot, not a gun. I’ve decided to fuss around to severely reduce and fade my internet presence. You’ll be able to know about future Electric Bison episodes as a (secure) free subscriber, or by once in a while checking the YouTube Channel: Earthwarrior7. If both Substack and YouTube are silenced, check the Telegram Channel: Electric Bison. 

Tap ‘er light.

Recognizing Courage

Our “old smokejumpers” coffee group always met at the Red Atlas on Tuesday’s at 10AM. At one meeting, sometime before the Covid pandemic caused us to stop meeting out of care for each other, Jack Atkins told us he wouldn’t be coming the following week for personal reasons. Then on national television, most of the rest of us saw Jack, with his wife Elaine, accept a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor from President Donald Trump for their son Travis who was killed in action in Iraq on June 1, 2007. When he got back the next week, we didn’t say much about it, except to ask, “Did President Trump treat you respectfully?” With the answer, “Yes,” we went back to entertaining each other with smokejumper stories.

This Monday, November 18, 2024, Colonel Ray Read, Director of the Montana Military Museum, called and asked me to arrange placement of Army Staff Sergeant Travis A Atkins citation into Montana’s Congressional Medal of Honor Grove west of Helena, at Fort Harrison, home of the First Special Service Force, the Devil’s Brigade. This morning I received word from Jack that he and his wife will have no objection.

                      OFFICIAL CITATION

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, March 3, 1863, has awarded in the name of the Congressional Medal of Honor to

STAFF SERGEANT TRAVIS W. ATKINS United States Army 

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:

“While manning a static observation post in the town of Abu Samak, Iraq, Staff Sergeant Atkins, was notified that four suspicious individuals, walking in two pairs, were crossing an intersection not far from his position. Staff Sergeant Atkins immediately moved his squad to interdict the individuals. One of the individuals began behaving erratically, prompting Staff Sergeant Atkins to disembark from his patrol vehicle and approach to conduct a search. Both individuals responded belligerently toward Staff Sergeant Atkins, who then engaged the individual he had intended to search in hand-to-hand combat. Staff Sergeant Atkins tried to wrestle the insurgent’s arms behind his back. When he noticed the insurgent was reaching for something under his clothes, Staff Sergeant Atkins immediately wrapped him in a bear hug and threw him to the ground, away from his fellow soldiers. Staff Sergeant Atkins maintained his hold on the insurgent, placing his body on top of him, further sheltering his patrol. With Staff Sergeant Atkins on top of him, the insurgent detonated a bomb strapped to his body, killing Staff Sergeant Atkins. Staff Sergeant Atkins acted with complete disregard for his own safety. In this critical and selfless act of valor, Staff Sergeant Atkins saved the lives of the three other soldiers who were with him and gallantly gave his life for his country. Staff Sergeant Atkins' undaunted courage, warrior spirit, and steadfast devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the 2d Brigade Combat Team, and the United States Army.”

Precision Engagement

That’s SGT Frank Vukasin of Great Falls, Montana, bundled in his winter coat, while using his frozen fingers to jam another eight-round clip into his M-1 rifle and kneeling for the ages. Next to him lie two dead white-clad German soldiers. In 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, this was precision engagement. As soon as he reloaded, he’d be back on his feet maneuvering again through the Ardennes Forest on this flat battle-field, rather than remaining stationary as would have been the case in the trench of a WWI battle-line. He could pour out a 30 to 40 rounds-per-minute rate of fire in place of the slower rate WWI infantry rifle, the more accurate M1903 Springfield with its single-shot bolt-action.

A history of Black Eagle, Montana, families says Vukasin had been working in the Anaconda Company Refinery when he got drafted. After surviving the war and returning  home, he and his brother traded up through a couple of Black Eagle saloons. He once got a gig as an actor with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges in that poolroom scene of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In the years after his wife passed he made his living as a gambler. He died in January 1995 and is buried in Highland Cemetery among hundreds of fellow veterans, not too far from Charlie Russell.

Since 1996, the word battle-field has been replaced by the word battle-space, a multi-dimension civilian and military sphere ranged by every kind of weapon, including weaponized lying and demeaning of truth-telling. Battle-space can be fully ranged with doctored images, honey trap pornography, destructive and instructive movies, and bad or good art and writing, using targeted new media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and hundreds of variations being sought and linked by like-minded groups.  

The iconic photo of Vukasin in The Bulge serves as an early example of weaponizing images in battle-space. Eight years after Vukasin died, his photograph taken by a U.S. Army Signal Corps cameraman and preserved by our National Archives, was used by the NRA to narrate its firearms oriented point of view. The picture, properly sourced and credited, belongs to all of us, each for our own reasons, as I am using it here to ask a question: “Did anyone care then or now whether SGT Vukasin was a Republican or a Democrat? No! We cared that he was a calm and courageous American soldier who could shoot straight.

That’s because during WWII our leaders did everything possible to bring us together, instead of doing everything possible to aggravate divisions that split us from each other to  disempower us. Fear is being used to harden our hearts. Whether or not we order Pizza with anchovies and who we talk to on FaceBook help to precisely target messages to our minds, which is far better than an enemy’s bullet to our brains. Now we are where we’ve come to be, and only by learning and relearning in our best respective ways will we recover from the November 5, 2024, battle-space defeat of our country.

On the cold winter night we were making inquiries in Black Eagle the waitress in “Borres” told my friend Magoo and I, “The name’s pronounced ‘Vukaaasin.’ When my father was alive, he could tell you everything. He knew all those guys. There were a lot of bars around here. When they came back from the war they all hit the bars. Sorry, I can’t help you more!”

MT 2 Concession Statement

 

Commissioner Downing, congratulations on a clean win. I did my effort in the best way I knew how and have no regrets. Tough job ahead of you. Good luck. Sincerely, John B Driscoll

In the Primary Election 100,411 votes were cast for the nine Republican Candidates and 40,290 (or 28.6%) were cast for the four Democrats. 129,315 more Eastern Montanans voted in the General Election, and 91,631 (or 33.9%) voted for me.