John,

Our neighbors are watching their loved ones being slaughtered in Lebanon and Palestine with U.S. tax dollars and weapons. With our government’s help, Israel’s government is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity including burning people alive, bombing hospitals, starving people, and killing aid workers.

Since last October, our government has sent $18 billion to fund the ethnic cleansing and extermination of Palestinians. And each year Congress overwhelmingly passes yet another record-breaking military budget—this year it topped $886 billion, with half of that lining the pockets of military contractors. This budget is impossible to justify when our neighbors are struggling to put food on the table, fighting to keep a roof over their heads, and rationing their medication.

Why do we always have money for war, but not enough to feed the poor, as Tupac Shakur wrote decades ago? Part of the problem is the deep ties between lawmakers and the weapons industry. The organization Corporate Accountability explains: “The [weapons] industry employed 858 lobbyists in 2022—more than one for every member of Congress.”¹ Most Secretaries of Defense come directly from this industry, which has spent $250 million on lobbying and $56 million in direct campaign donations between 2022 and 2024.

Corporations like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin spend millions to re-elect Congresspeople who serve on committees that determine military funding. Many of those same members of Congress and their spouses also invest directly in weapons contractor stocks, so when they vote to send more bombs or send our loved ones to war, they profit personally. That’s why I introduced the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act.

Please add your name if you agree: Lawmakers should not be profiting financially when they vote to support wars and weapons manufacturing. It’s time to ban members of Congress from investing in weapons contractors.

It’s shameful that my colleagues continue to funnel billions of U.S. tax dollars to the very same military contractors that many of them are invested in and taking campaign donations from.

If passed, the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act will prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from having any financial interests in corporations that do business with the U.S. Department of Defense—including banning members from trading defense stocks.

Members of Congress were elected to serve the public, not to serve their stock portfolios. They shouldn’t be able to use their positions of power to get rich while voting to pass more funding to bomb innocent civilians.

Unfortunately, the weapons industry exerts incredible influence not just in our political system, but also in our education system. Many U.S. universities have boards of trustees that include military corporations’ executives, who have been pressuring schools to crack down on campus speech and suppress anti-war student efforts.

We can’t let our institutions prioritize the profits of military corporations over people’s needs. I support the long-overdue dismantling of our country’s military-industrial complex so that we can finally put a stop to forever wars and reinvest into providing our communities with the resources they need and deserve.

Please sign on to support the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act as one necessary step in the push to ensure our government divests from war and death and instead invests in life.

Thank you for continuing to demand better from our government. I will continue to fight like hell to rein in military spending and corporate greed, invest in working families, and work towards a future that values diplomacy and peace over the military industrial complex.

In solidarity,

Rashida

¹ Corporate accountability and the military industrial complex