We have just two weeks to stop the Trump administration’s disastrous weapons deal with the UAE. Rep. Ilhan Omar has introduced legislation — tell your Congress members to join in! ACT NOW!

Dear John,

This week, as you are reflecting on what you are thankful for, put on the top of your list the tireless work of Representative Ilhan Omar to end U.S. militarism.

For weeks now, we have been asking members of Congress to speak out and act to stop the Trump administration’s dangerous $23 billion weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates that Trump offered in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel. We write to you today with an exciting update: Ilhan Omar in the House and Chris Murphy, Robert Menendez, and Rand Paul in the Senate have introduced legislation! Write to your Senators and Representative now and ask them to join in.

This legislation comes just in time. The thirty-day window for Congress to stop the sale ends on December 10, so we must act quickly. According to the Senate legislation from Murphy, Menendez, and Paul, the Trump administration has circumvented the standard review process, which includes a Congressional review period, in a naked attempt to rush this sale. On top of this, the State Department and the Pentagon have failed to respond to the Senators’ inquiries about the sale. Contact your congresspeople NOW and demand they support the Senate and House legislation to block Trump’s arms deal!

As usual, Rep. Omar is on point in her opposition to the deal. In a press release for her legislation, she points to the UAE’s war crimes in Yemen and Libya, its role in the Darfur genocide, its interference in Sudan’s democracy, and a plethora of other human rights abuses. “Amidst a deadly pandemic,” she says, “we should be investing in our own communities here at home, not selling weapons to help dictators commit human rights abuses.”

We couldn’t agree more with Ilhan and we want more members of Congress to join her!  Contact your senators and representative now!

If Trump’s arms deal — F-35 fighter jets, 14,000 bombs and munitions, and 18 Reaper drones — goes through, it is likely to have disastrous implications for the entire Middle East and the world for decades to come. In fact, it will be the second-largest sale of U.S. drones to a single country in our history. We have seen the effects of pouring weapons into the Middle East and we know who pays the consequences. For the sake of the Yemeni people and so many others in the Middle East, we can’t allow it to happen again. We are grateful to Rep. Omar and her colleagues in the Senate for being the first to act against this deadly deal — but we need many more members of Congress on board. We have only two weeks to convince Congress to block the US-UAE weapons deal. Contact your senators and representative now!

As we go into Thanksgiving, a holiday built on racism, settler-colonialism, and violence, we must pledge to do all that we can to finally bring an end to the endless cycle of profiteering off of suffering and death. Omar, Murphy, Menendez, and Paul have given us the tool. Now it is up to us to get more legislators to join them. Act now!

Toward peace in the Middle East and around the world,
Ariel, Carley, Angela, Ann, Caty, Cody, Danaka, Emily, Farida, Jodie, Kelsey, Koohan, Leila, Leonardo, Maxine, Mary, Medea, Michelle, Nancy, Paki, Teri, and Yousef

P.S. CODEPINK and Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation are starting a Yemen Cultural Series called “Beyond the War”. Tune in on December 17th for a discussion on Yemeni Futurism with Yemeni-Bosnian-US artist Alia Ali. RSVP here.