; and (ii) is operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (B) Since the United States signed the CTBT, confidence has grown in the science-based Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan of the Department of Energy, which forms the basis of annual certifications to the President regarding the continual safety, security, and effectiveness of the United States nuclear deterrent in the absence of nuclear testing, leading former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz to remark in 2015 that lab directors today now state that they certainly understand much more about how nuclear weapons work than during the period of nuclear testing . (7) Despite the progress made to reduce the number and role of, and risks posed by, nuclear weapons, and to halt the Cold War-era nuclear arms race, tensions between countries that possess nuclear weapons are on the rise, key nuclear risk reduction treaties are under threat, significant stockpiles of weapons-usable fissile material remain, and a qualitative global nuclear arms race is now underway with each of the countries that possess nuclear weapons spending tens of billions of dollars each year to maintain and improve their arsenals. (8) The United States and the Russian Federation are both pursuing the development of destabilizing types of nuclear weapons, including new lower-yield nuclear weapons that are more usable, and the People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have each taken concerning steps to diversify their more modest, but nonetheless very deadly, nuclear arsenals. (9) Since January 2017, President Donald Trump has taken the following actions, which have run counter to the objectives of the Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament (commonly referred to as CEND ) initiative that his administration launched in 2018: (A) The release of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review on February 5, 2018, which lowered the threshold for nuclear weapons use and called for the development of the following new nuclear weapons: (i) A low-yield warhead on a submarine-launched