Dear John,

Last week, the president told an audience of hundreds of military generals and admirals from around the world that our cities should be military “training grounds.”

This is a bald authoritarian power grab.

In June, the Trump Pentagon spent millions on a military parade on the streets of Washington D.C. Now, with the current and threatened deployment of troops in Washington D.C., Memphis, Portland, OR, and Chicago, that parade looks less like a vanity project and more like a test case.

This is simple: There is no place for the military on our city streets.

The militarization of our streets is the signature policy of this administration. This week, we collaborated with In These Times to show that if Trump’s deportation force were a military, it would be the 13th largest in the world.

There’s a simple way to stop this: Congress should withhold funding.

The military parade cost millions of taxpayer dollars, as I wrote in Newsweek in June. The deployment of troops to U.S. cities is costing millions more, as NPP’s Hanna Homestead found for The Intercept in August. Congress can quite simply forbid using federal funds for these deployments.

The current government shutdown presents an opportunity: Members of Congress should challenge the $1 trillion Pentagon budget that the administration is using to deploy troops to U.S. cities, and the $170 billion in deportation funding that is sending masked invaders to terrorize immigrant communities.

As the Trump Pentagon prepares to make more of our cities into military “training grounds,” this is a consolidation of power by an authoritarian regime that we simply can’t afford.

In solidarity,

Alliyah, Hanna and Lindsay

TRADEOFF: WEAPONS AND WAR VS. MEDICAID

During a government shutdown, we’re seeing American resources be used to help boost militarism at home and abroad instead of helping communities truly be safe. Recently, the U.S. lethally struck boats off Venezuela, killing civilians, and deployed troops to the Caribbean due to an alleged “war on drug cartels.” And across many U.S. cities, 35,000 troops and counting are on the ground. According to a new poll conducted by NPR, Americans broadly don’t support the president's National Guard deployments. Notably, Pentagon funding and activities are among those that can continue undisturbed during the shutdown.

While Pentagon spending soars, 17 million people are at risk of losing health insurance due to GOP cuts to Medicaid in the Big Ugly Bill - and cuts from the Big Ugly Bill and the failure to extend certain ACA healthcare subsidies could result in 51,000 preventable deaths. True safety means we invest in the health of our communities rather than funneling taxpayer dollars to violent control of our streets and endless wars.

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Photo courtesy of Andriy Blokhin (Shutterstock)

FEDERAL WORKERS ARE STILL UNDER ATTACK

Even before the ongoing government shutdown and Trump's threats of additional mass firings of federal workers, the Trump administration fired two fair housing lawyers for whistleblowing. According to The Guardian, prior to their termination, the lawyers reported to a member of Congress that they were being blocked from enforcing fair housing law. One of the lawyers, Paul Osadebe, reported that Trump administration officials told him "this is why we’re firing you, because you spoke out. They are as blatant as can be about it.” Osadebe wrote an op-ed earlier this year for IPS’ Inequality.org about how he would not voluntarily leave his federal job.

This is the latest attack from the administration on federal workers after rounds of indiscriminate firings earlier this year, ostensibly to save federal dollars. But as we showed earlier this year, if the administration were really interested in saving taxpayer dollars, they would have taken a hard look at Pentagon contracts, which cost $414 billion, compared to $271 billion for all federal workers across all agencies in FY 2022.

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Photo courtesy of Feleecia Guillen

"NO TROOPS, NO ICE!" AT NYC CLIMATE WEEK

On September 20, NPP partner and climate powerhouse 350.org organized the Make Billionaires Pay march during NYC Climate week. Around 25,000 people marched the streets calling to shut down billionaires, polluters, and fascists and to protect migrants, our planet, and our futures.

Climate activists also demanded an end to the bloated Pentagon spending and war profiteering. NPP co-sponsored the “Drawing the Line At the Pentagon, For the Planet” mini-summit hosted by CODEPINK which expanded on the connections of climate and militarism, featuring speakers protesting military airshows and the genocide in Gaza.

Here are three ways the climate crisis and the Pentagon are connected:

As the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter in the world, the Pentagon pollutes our airs and waters and extracts from the land.
Pentagon spending crowds out investments we need for climate.
War and environmental breakdown drive ecocide, forced displacement, and political instability.

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“Total waste of money.”

“Could’ve been an email.”

“...An inane message of little merit.”

– Comments to Politico by current and former Pentagon officials, about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s in-person speech to hundreds of admirals and generals