Urge Your U.S. Representative: Stop Spending on Nuclear Weapons April 15, 2025

April is Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Month of Action, and today, on Tax Day, we are calling on our members to speak out against the dangerous and unjust misuse of our tax dollars.

Every year, PSR tracks how much our country spends on nuclear weapons programs — and the numbers are staggering. This week, PSR-LA Co-President Dr. Bob Dodge released the Community Cost Calculator, which reveals how much of your hard-earned tax dollars go toward maintaining and expanding a nuclear arsenal that must never be used.

In Fiscal Year 2025, the U.S. spent more than $110 billion on nuclear weapons programs. That’s $324.43 for every person in the United States. In Los Angeles County alone, taxpayers contributed more than $3.2 billion. And this is only a piece of the United States’ massive defense spending which is proposed by President Trump to increase to $1 trillion in FY26. This is in addition to the concessions made to increase spending for the Pentagon and the militarization of our southern border in current budget reconciliation negotiations. These are resources that could be directed toward urgent priorities such as housing, clean water, and climate adaptation, not to mention healthcare – particularly as Medicaid is under attack in Congress.

Nuclear weapons continue to threaten our survival. We know that even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger a global famine putting up to 2 billion lives at risk. Meanwhile, the communities most harmed by these expenditures are the same ones that are underserved in healthcare, burdened by environmental injustice, and underinvested in education and infrastructure.

This month, PSR is taking action and we are asking you to join us.

Visit this website to calculate your community’s nuclear weapons cost and write your U.S. Representative. Urge them to oppose continued nuclear weapons spending and to invest instead in the real needs of their constituents.

In addition, don’t miss this opportunity to double your donation to PSR. Thanks to a generous match from members of our board, your contributions will be doubled through the end of April, up to $20,000. We have already received some generous gifts, and we hope that during this important moment you will support our work confronting the gravest threats to health.