Stop Trump & Netanyahu’s War With Iran
3/16/2026
The coming days may be the most important moment yet in this fight to stop the Iran war. We’ve been in the streets, in the halls of Congress, and in your inboxes through all of it — and we won’t rest until the war is over. But what is coming now is the money vote. And if we lose this one, the war gets a green light that will make it much harder to stop this war.
The Trump administration is preparing a supplemental war funding request for Congress. But they are still figuring out how many billions to ask for. Early reports were estimating a supplemental request could come in around $50 billion, but this week we’re hearing that figure could go as high as as $100 billion! Pentagon officials told senators this week that just the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion. Speaker Johnson asked about the size of the supplemental bill this week, shrugged and said: “We don’t know the scope of it yet.”
The human cost of this war is not abstract. The United Nations refugee agency — the UNHCR, the same body that coordinates disaster relief for displaced people around the world — reported just today that 3.2 million people inside Iran have been forced from their homes since the bombing began. [1] That’s not a projection. That’s now. Add to that the over 1,300 civilians killed, including at least 200 children. This is what we are being asked to fund.
And here is what’s really worrying us about this vote: some Democrats who said they oppose this war are now open to voting yes. Our D.C. team was just in a meeting with a long-time ally and key senator who expressed deep concerns that we do not have all the votes – even from some democrats who supported the recent War Powers Resolutions.
The reasoning sounds sensible to some people. We’re already in it. We have to make sure the troops are funded. We can use the money as leverage — make Trump spell out his goals first. Senate Whip Dick Durbin said he won’t rule out backing the funding, saying he wants to “make sure our military is safe.” Senator Elissa Slotkin said, “I don’t rule anything out. I mean, we’re in it.” Senator Gary Peters says he wants to see a “plan” and an “exit strategy” before he decides.
Critically, neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries — the top Democrats in the Senate and House — has clearly stated that they will vote no. Jeffries told Meet the Press last Sunday that he’d “cross that bridge when we get to it.” That is not leadership. That is a door left open.
This is a trap we’ve seen before. But come on folks, this is the Trump administration. A plan? An exit strategy? The idea that this administration — which has treated the Constitution as a suggestion and Congress as a minor inconvenience — will hold itself to a bill’s set of war aims because Democrats asked nicely before writing a check is, to put it nicely, wishful thinking. You don’t get accountability from Donald Trump by funding him. You get more war.
Republicans are reportedly looking to attach “sweeteners” to the bill, including wildfire aid and billions in tariff relief for farmers, to make the funding harder to vote against. These are real needs — which is exactly why they’re being used as bait. Voting yes on a $50-100 billion war package, for a war that has already killed over one thousand civilians, including hundreds of children, because it comes with wildfire relief isn’t a reasonable or ethical trade-off. It’s an endorsement of the war in different clothing. One flipped vote for this makes the next one easier. We need to hold the line. The 60-vote threshold in the Senate is the wall. We can’t let it crack.
We’re not done fighting on war powers and against any authorization for this war — those battles are still coming, and they matter. But right now, today, blocking the money is the sharpest tool we have. Peace Action has been fighting to stop wars before they can take root for decades. We know how this goes when Congress folds. We know what it means when the money flows.
This is a moment when all that we do counts.
Let’s seize this moment before more innocent lives are shattered.
Thank you for taking action today!
