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Dear John,
It looks like Project 2025 couldn't take the heat.
The far-right " presidential transition project [[link removed]] " to remake the U.S. officially ended its work [[link removed]] after a backlash against its backwards prescriptions.
But the project's ideas are still out there, and that includes a call for a massive increase in Pentagon spending. And Congress may be all too ready to oblige.
As Lindsay Koshgarian writes, even as violence continues in too many places, there's no justification for a Pentagon budget that looks like World War III [[link removed]] - especially when diverting some of those funds toward climate resilience, housing and jobs could make us so much safer.
That spending is too often rationalized as part of the Pentagon's response to China, but it doesn't have to be that way. Together with the Quincy Institute and Justice is Global, the Institute for Policy Studies released a blueprint for a progressive foreign policy with China. [[link removed]]
At the NPP blog, IPS New Mexico Fellow Aspen Coriz-Romero writes about the latest F-35 jet fighter debacle [[link removed]] , in which an F-35 crashed into a hillside in Albuquerque - roughly $109 million up in flames.
And Hanna Homestead writes about the horrific police killing of Sonya Massey [[link removed]] , reminding us that police killings since 2015 have numbered more than the number of U.S. troops killed in all 20 years of the post-9/11 wars.
The end of Project 2025 is a welcome rebuke to far-right ideals - and a reminder that we still have a long way to go.
In solidarity,
Lindsay, Alliyah, and Hanna
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TRADEOFF: ARMS RACE VS. CLEAN ENERGY JOBS
The U.S. continues to fund wars abroad. Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin just visited the Philippines, where they agreed to boost the country's military by $500 million [[link removed]] yearly for five years–a total of $2.5 billion. That total is enough to create over 14,000 clean energy jobs in the U.S. for one year. In a time of worsening wildfires and frequent heavy floods, the climate crisis is the most urgent threat we face.
The Pentagon is also the world's top institutional greenhouse gas emitter [[link removed]] . Instead of fueling violence against people and our planet, it's time to put our resources toward a livable future for generations to come.
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Photo by Darkest, courty of GoodFon.com [[link removed]]
POLICE CROSS THE LINE (AGAIN)
On July 6, Sonya Massey was shot and killed [[link removed]] by Sangamon County Deputy Sheriff Sean Grayson in her home in Springfield, Illinois.
Sonya Massey’s murder is an egregious yet all too common example of lethal police violence in America, where police-perpetrated killings are a major cause [[link removed]] of violent death. According to the best data available, at least 9,893 [[link removed]] people have been shot and killed by police in America since 2015. For context, approximately 7,000 [[link removed]] U.S. soldiers died in two decades of the Global War on Terror.
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Photo courtesy of @beth_avedon/ X
THE RED LINE
On July 24, thousands gathered outside of the capitol to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, and the Biden administration’s continued military funding in Israel. The demonstrators condemned Netanyahu’s crimes against humanity [[link removed]] by issuing a notice of a ‘citizen's arrest’ against the Israeli Prime Minister.
400 Jewish protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were arrested during a sit-in the day before Netanyahu’s address, demanding the “U.S. enact an immediate weapons embargo on the Israeli government [[link removed]] ,” in light of the 14 billion dollars of U.S aid [[link removed]] going to Israel, following a package the senate passed in April.
Vice President Kamala Harris and around 100 members of congress did not attend the speech. [[link removed]]
“It will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor.”
- Senator Bernie Sanders on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress [[link removed]]
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READ/ WATCH/ LISTEN
There’s No Good Reason To Be Spending Nearly $1 Trillion On Our Military Budget [[link removed]]
Lindsay Koshgarian, In These Times
US Militarization in the Philippines: Abuse of People and Planet [[link removed]]
CODEPINK webinar featuring NPP’s Alliyah Lusuegro
Labor Unions Call On Biden To Halt Military Aid To Israel [[link removed]]
Dave Jamieson, HuffPost
Israel's New Assassination Campaign Could Set Middle East Further Aflame [[link removed]]
Phyllis Bennis, Common Dreams
The Congressional Black Caucus Should Boycott Netanyahu's Speech [[link removed]]
Khury Petersen-Smith, Foreign Policy in Focus
The Three Dimensions of Militarism in the Climate Crisis [[link removed]]
Patrick Bigger, Turning Point
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