Connor Burbridge: Jack Reed says he opposed the war. His votes tell another story
Senator Jack Reed says that he “opposed Trump’s reckless Iran war from the start,” and wants to hold “President Trump accountable.” These are laudable aims—but they are only partial truths.
In fact, Trump could never have waged his illegal and ill-conceived war on Iran without the money Senator Reed personally delivered. Take the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets forth policies and authorizes appropriations for the Department of Defense. Senator Reed wrote significant portions of the bill, which authorized the Trump administration to spend a record-breaking $901 billion on the United States military.
Senator Reed subsequently voted that bill into law, joining about half of the Democratic senators, but not progressive stalwarts like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Murphy, who had the courage and foresight to condemn the grotesque level of spending. Senator Ron Wyden said at the time, ‘I cannot support a bill that increases military spending by tens of billions of dollars and fails to include guardrails against Donald Trump and Hegseth’s authoritarian abuses.’ Worse yet, the 2026 NDAA gave Trump $8 billion more than his administration even requested.
If not for the 2026 NDAA, Trump could never have taken the United States into another unconstitutional forever war that has taken the lives of 18 American soldiers and injured hundreds more, cost roughly $40 billion in direct military spending, and cost consumers more than $75 billion in artificially inflated prices.
Rather than learn from the 2026 NDAA catastrophe, Senator Reed has doubled down on his relationship with the military-industrial complex. Reed again played a central role in drafting the 2027 NDAA, a bill which would give Trump roughly $1.15 trillion (that’s trillion with a “T”). The bill, which represents an annual spending increase of over $200 billion, would more than cover the entire cost of the illegal war with Iran. Think about the message that sends to the rogue Trump administration: wage a disastrous war and emerge with an even larger military slush fund.
What is more, the bill would further entangle our military with Israel’s, committing to bilateral “research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements and an unprecedented integration of the US and Israeli weapons industries.” With cratering public support for weapons transfers to Israel, the NDAA seeks to smuggle the weapons to avoid public scrutiny quietly.
Senator Reed voted favorably on this bill out of committee and is likely to support it on the full Senate floor. In the senator’s own words, this bill “strengthens national defense and enhances oversight and accountability.” Senator Reed’s promise to hold Trump accountable, then, is only true if one sees a blank check and integration of our military with Israel’s as accountability.
Most Rhode Islanders do not.
Most Rhode Islanders want to reinvest our bloated military spending into things that matter to our state, like our crumbling infrastructure and primary healthcare crises. They are tired of the forever wars and want a senator who will instead spend that money fighting for Rhode Island values via programs like universal healthcare, an equal education amendment, and a Green New Deal.