National Priorities Project

80 years ago, Henry Wallace warned about American fascism. Today, as it rises, we can still counter it. 🎙 Don't miss this powerful discussion next week at Busboys and Poets with the Wallace Global Fund and The Nation Magazine!

Save your spot: https://ips-dc.org/events/counteringamericanfascism/

In 2023, taxpayers in New Mexico paid $49,000,000 for the F-35 program, which time and time again has proved to be a disaster - financially, environmentally, and quite literally.

Where else could that money go in New Mexico? Read more in our latest blog:

Defund the JSF Program, Refund Our Communities! On the afternoon of March 28, 2024, an F35-B Lightning II fighter jet crashed into a hillside in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The nearly brand-new aircraft, demolished and ablaze, was previously worth roughly $109 million. Like many New Mexicans, the costly damage made me wonder...

NATO militaries are some of the biggest polluters in the world.

For our safety, we need to demilitarize and invest in climate.

Will we see you this Saturday in Washington DC for the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival annual assembly and march?

You can learn more here: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/mm2024/

Did you know that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the country? Join the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival annual assembly and march on June 29 to fight poverty, not the poor. Everybody's got a right to live.

SAVE THE DATE: Later this month, many will gather for the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival annual assembly and march in Washington. We hope to see you there!

It's NDAA season. The NDAA sets military spending levels and policies every year.

Did you know that military programs send wish lists to Congress for extra funding? This year's total request of $30,000,000,000 is the same as a SNAP cut proposal for the next ten years.

This year, the National Defense Authorization Act sees again an amendment that would cut the Pentagon budget by $100,000,000,000. That amount could provide public housing to 10 million families in the U.S.

REMINDER: In 2023, U.S. taxpayers paid $110 for deadly immigration enforcement vs. $14 for wildfire management.

Seeking asylum is a human right. This country can do better than denying migrants their rights. Safety should be a guarantee for all.

Did you know that military programs give Congress wishlists, called unfunded priority lists, to ask for more money on top of the billions of dollars they get in their annual budget? This year, that total comes to $30,000,000,000. That is the same amount that would get cut from SNAP for the next ten years, according to a recent proposal in the House farm bill.

Instead of subsidizing military programs that would benefit already wealthy contractors and continue to harm communities at home and abroad, we could keep the $30 billion that feeds families and kids in need.

We stand with the students protesting the slaughter in Gaza. IPS was built on anti-war organizing since opposing the Vietnam War 60 years ago.

Read more here:

We Stand with the Students Protesting the Slaughter in Gaza - Institute for Policy Studies In a dangerous moment for our world and our democracy, we support the movements who are fighting for what's right.

Israel continues its genocidal attacks on Gaza in Rafah. The U.S. is subsidizing this through a $95 billion war spending package that just passed Congress, with $15 billion to Israel.

We must cease all military aid to Israel. Read more here:

Aid to Israel is a moral and legal calamity Washington doesn’t need President Biden still has the power to stop this.

Union workers in the US weapons industry present a paradox for anti-war labor activists, but a history of “conversion” campaigns offers a route through the impasse.

The Problem of the Unionized War Machine

More money for deportations and detentions? No thank you.

This holiday season, like any other, is a time to gather with families and loved ones. However, recent talks of extra border funds – including a boost for the agencies responsible for border detentions and deportations – means that not all families will be reunited. Instead, many more will be separated by these two abusive enforcement agencies.

The Cost of the Holiday Season: Increasing Funds for Border Enforcement Will Separate Families and Take Away From Human Needs The holiday season is all about gathering with loved ones, right? Well, that’s the exact opposite of what extra funds to border enforcement - part of a foreign aid package in the Senate - will do for immigrant communities.

For two months, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have taken 15,000+ Palestinian lives, with unquestioning support from President Biden and most of Congress.

That includes almost $4 billion in direct U.S. military funding to Israel year after year, while taxpayer dollars continue to be diverted here at home from basic human needs like housing, healthcare, and education — and now an extra $14 billion proposed amid these massacres. Among the dead are more than 6,150 children, with over 1,800 children still missing under the rubble.

This administration is out of touch with many millions of Americans who demand a permanent ceasefire.

Hunger Striking for a Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza From left to right: DE State Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton, Bita iuliano (activist, grassroots organizer), Ashik Siddique, Sumaya Awad (author/activist, Adalah Justice Project), Rana Abdelhamid (organizer and former congressional candidate), Cynthia Nixon (actor/director), NY State Assembly Member Zohra...

Gaza is in an ongoing crisis. What are the U.S.'s obligations under international law?

📅 Next Wednesday, don't miss this virtual briefing from and Hani Almadhoun, moderated by IPS scholars and .

Save your spot now!
https://ips-dc.org/events/crisisingaza/

The Pentagon failed its audit, again. For the sixth time in a row. The agency that accounts for half of the federal discretionary budget does not know what it did with the money.

Pentagon Fails Its Sixth Audit There is an entity whose job it is to prevent this sort of abuse: Congress. With each failure at the Pentagon, Congress is failing, too.

The Pentagon just failed its sixth audit in a row, leading to some choice excuses from top brass. Here are some of the funniest:

Pentagon Fails 6th Audit in a Row and Their Excuses Are Hilarious There's "progress sort of beneath the surface of a pass fail," said the Pentagon Comptroller

For far too long, the U.S. has prioritized war, deportation, and policing at the cost of human needs.

This NEW fact sheet from our researchers is a powerful one-stop resource documenting what we lose when we over-fund militarism.

FACT SHEET: Invest in Communities, Not Violence - Institute for Policy Studies Here’s how legislators have splurged on militarism, and what could happen if those funds instead benefited people and communities.

According to new polls, the public is wary of providing a blank check to the Pentagon and its allies in industry. Over 80% of Americans believe that the Pentagon should not receive additional funds unless and until it can pass an audit — which it has yet to do despite being required to do so by law since 1990.

There is strong public support for holding the Pentagon and its contractors accountable The Pentagon and the arms industry are benefitting from a flood of new funding tied to fears of Russia and China and the Biden administration’s policies of sending tens of billions in U.S. military…

The United States is home to roughly 18 million veterans, which is just about 1 in 14 adults.

When we look at spending on war and militarization, we also think about spending on veterans. We think of veterans’ programs as part of war spending because without wars - and without the most powerful standing army in history - there would be no veterans or veterans’ programs. And of course, the best thing we can do for our troops is to never send them to war in the first place.

On Veterans Day, Let’s Care for Veterans and Our Communities Even though they often come up short, the U.S. has a good thing in its veterans’ programs. Veterans deserve this level of care and dignity - in fact, we all do. 

🇺🇸 It’s not new that the U.S. prioritizes militarization—war, policing, detention, deportation—above human needs. But most of us aren’t aware of the level of disparity between funding life and funding violence.

📈 Our team has spent decades on research tracking U.S. spending on militarization—and what societal needs we could meet if we divested from weapons and war.

👆Our new fact sheet from sums up recent years of sweeping findings into one page as a free resource for movements. Find it at the link in our bio!

💰NEW: Instead of funding war crimes, we could be meeting societal needs.

🏛️ On October 20, the White House released details of a massive $105 billion funding request for Israel’s war on Gaza, the war in Ukraine, other wars that haven’t even begun, and further militarizing our own southern border.

💸 This is on top of the $886 billion that the White House has already requested for military spending this year—one of the largest U.S. military budgets in history.

⚖️ We closely analyzed this funding request and found a wide variety of urgent needs we could fund at home with this amount of money.

⚠️ When the majority of U.S. adults already agree we should decrease military spending to invest in human needs—and the majority of U.S. voters across party lines want to see a ceasefire now in Gaza—these spending choices are both irresponsible and unpopular.

👆 Read more of the analysis by Lindsay Koshgarian in our stories and bio.

President Biden has requested $105 BILLION of our taxpayer dollars to fund the U.S. war machine at home and abroad, including more military funding for Israel, and deadly border security funding.

We could spend that money on life instead.

Israeli military strikes have killed over 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,500 children.

Our government is considering billions more to the Israeli government to inflict ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

How dare our tax dollars be used for this mass violence? We demand .

Last year was the deadliest year on record for migrants at our southern border. Further militarizing our already deadly border to the tune of $7.8 billion—rather than providing public housing, education & healthcare to our communities—is unacceptable. We demand safety for all.

Our communities look to the government to meet our needs, from healthcare to education, & are often met with the same refrain: “We don’t have the money.”

Yet when it comes to war, surveillance, & border enforcement, the resources are limitless. $58 billion more for the Pentagon!

From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!

It is time to stop the civilian suffering and death. The U.S. must push for an urgent ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.

NPP at IPS Joins Calls for a Ceasefire in Israel and Occupied Palestine “A ceasefire is the only way to stop innocent suffering,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

In defiance of international norms and rules, U.S. officials are claiming exclusive control over a large area of the central Pacific Ocean that is comparable in size to the United States.

US flouts international law with Pacific military claims Officials argue that Washington has the authority to block enemy navies from an area 'nearly as large as the continental United States.'

More than 80% of four-star officers retiring from the U.S. armed forces go on to work in the defense industry, a new study has found, underscoring the close relationship between top U.S. brass and government-contracted companies that has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Over 80 percent of four-star retirees are employed in defense industry The findings underscore a close relationship between the U.S. defense sector and its top military brass, a trend that has drawn scrutiny in Congress.

Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”

Codenamed "GAMECHANGER", an AI program helps the military make sense of its own “byzantine” and “tedious” bureaucracy.

Pentagon’s Budget Is So Bloated That It Needs an AI Program to Navigate It The Pentagon budget is so bloated that the Department of Defense built an AI program called GAMECHANGER to make sense of all its policies.

President Joe Biden’s administration has taken a cruel weapon—the cluster bomb—off the shelf and sent it to Ukraine to be used in the war against Russia. The White House’s decision to transfer the bombs to Ukraine both escalates the already horrific war and legitimizes a weapon that has no place in our world.

Opinion | Cluster Bombs Are as Outdated as War The Biden Administration’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is out of step with the rest of the world.