Dear Friends,
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL PODCAST, OR ON INDIVIDUAL LINKS BELOW:
(01:47) America’s nuclear test victims – LISTEN (9 minutes long)
(11:05) What Jesus would say to Trump – LISTEN (11 minutes)
(23:55) Preparing to steal the 2026 election – LISTEN (6 minutes)
(30:14) Voting matters or they wouldn’t try to take it away – LISTEN (2 1/2 minutes)
(34:58) Yay, I get to be compost – LISTEN (9 1/2 minutes)
(44:26) US and Russia ruin chance for a plastics treaty – LISTEN (4 1/2 minutes)
(50:31) One school takes on government meddling – LISTEN (4 1/2 minutes)
(54:58) Beware Democratic Party fundraising scams – LISTEN (6 1/2 minutes)
Sadly, here’s something on which nearly all of us can agree: Our government lies.
One of the most egregious lies came into renewed focus last month when the Republican Congress did something I support., approving compensation for Idahoans poisoned by above-ground nuclear tests detonated in Nevada between 1951 and 1962.
Americans have been lied to by our federal government so often it’s easy to understand why people don’t trust politicians. The lie I want to talk about today (and during the first segment of this week’s radio show and podcast) happened during and after America’s first nuclear test, called Trinity, denoted on July 16, 1945, in central New Mexico.
Here’s a “photo” depicting a particularly heartbreaking impact of that lie. (Real photo or fake? After much digging and unearthing conflicting views, I’m going with “fake.” Regardless, the image powerfully captures the essence of what happened that day.)
A group of thirteen-year-old girls, camping about 40 miles away, woke when the bomb went off. A few hours later, as white flakes of radioactive dust began to fall, they played in the water, even smearing the toxic flakes on their faces.
One of the girls, Barbara Kent, later wrote, “[A] huge cloud appeared overhead, along with strange lights in the sky. It hurt our eyes to look up. The whole sky turned strange, as if an intense sun had come out.”
Barbara Kent and all her friends developed cancer. Every sweet little girl in that group, except Kent, died before turning thirty. That’s Barbara in the center of the photo below (this one’s real), toying with the flakes of radioactive ash falling on her and her friends.
Thousands of New Mexicans lived within 40 miles of the blast. Some lived as close as 12 miles. No one was warned. No one was evacuated. In fact, no one was informed even after the test, as radioactive ash continued to land on homes, crops, animals, water, and people.
When it was no longer possible to hide the fact that something huge had happened, government officials trotted out the big lie. They told people there’d been an explosion at a dump. Everything was under control. There was nothing to worry about.
Kent says she didn’t learn the truth until many years later.
The tests moved from New Mexico to Nevada, where over the course of eleven years, 100 above-ground explosions were detonated before the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed by the US, USSR, and Britain moved testing underground. (That created its own set of problems. But that’s a separate conversation.)
Decades passed before victims of the blasts received a measure of justice. In 1990, Congress established the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to provide relief to victims in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Idaho was not included in RECA, an injustice that finally was rectified last month in the Big Budget Bill. Idahoans exposed to radioactive fallout are now eligible for limited compensation.
“So Ed,” you ask. “Why dredge up this sorry chapter of America’s past?”
Because the nuclear tragedies of the American West, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, should goad us and our leaders to take profound and immediate action to step back from the nuclear brink.
And this is important: as devastating as was the Trinity blast, today’s nuclear weapons are hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful! That level of destruction is almost impossible for our minds to grasp.
As a broadcaster, podcaster, and blogger, I try to mix it up, punctuate the bad stuff with genuine good-news stories. Of all the existential threats I feel driven to cover as a journalist, the nuclear threat disturbs me the most.
What can you do? Here are three suggestions:
1. Go to campaign events for Congressional candidates and ask them to prioritize nuclear disarmament in their message and, if elected, in their work. (In Iowa, we used to have lawmakers who were strong advocates for peace and nuclear disarmament: Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Berkley Bedell, and Republican Rep. Jim Leach.)
2. Watch First We Bombed New Mexico. Check out the trailer here. Share it with others.
3. Join a local peace group. In Iowa, there’s Catholic Peace Ministry and Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility. (Thanks to both groups for helping to sponsor this platform.) I’d also recommend Iowa Peace Network and American Friends Service Committee.
Thank you for reading, listening, and taking action.
Ed Fallon
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In addition to our PODCAST, listen to the Fallon Forum on these affiliates:
– KHOI 89.1 FM (Ames, Iowa)
– KICI.LP 105.3 FM (Iowa City, Iowa)
– WHIV 102.3 FM (New Orleans, Louisiana)
– KPIP-LP, 94.7 FM (Fayette, Missouri)
– KCEI 90.1 FM (Taos, New Mexico)
– KRFP 90.3 FM (Moscow, Idaho)
– WGRN 94.1 FM (Columbus, Ohio)