President Trump’s decision to restart nuclear weapons testing as a warning to Moscow is being cheered by his Republican allies in Congress, while Democrats fume over what they describe as a dangerous and misguided retaliation.

It’s an unsurprising public divide and represents another example of how partisan positioning has Congress speaking on opposite sides of national security and foreign policy issues.

While Republicans are praising Trump for pushing back on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling, Democrats are questioning the utility, safety, financing and precedent of such a step.

“It would be a mistake for us to do this because we have nothing, we have very little to gain,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee with oversight of America’s nuclear arsenal.

“If we did a test and then China decided, OK, I'm going to start testing. They'll start testing their nuclear weapons, then their strategic forces capability gets much better,” Kelly told reporters Thursday. “We have zero to gain. This would be a gift to China.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another member of the subcommittee, questioned why Republicans are not concerned over how much money is required to carry out the president’s directive if their focus is on lowering federal spending.

“The Department of Defense has a long history of understating costs and claiming shorter timelines for these giant nuclear programs. They sell Congress on a rosy picture of how it will all work out,” she said.

“As soon as Congress signs on the dotted line, the costs start going up, and the time to completion stalls, rolling further and further out … Republicans should be just as outraged as Democrats over the DOD's lack of honesty about how this program is operating.”

But Republicans are standing resolutely with the president, who announced his decision to resume nuclear weapons testing in a Truth Social post Thursday morning in South........

© The Hill