The 2026 midterm elections sent an unmistakable message across New Hampshire and the country. Voters are demanding a government that actually centers the needs and interests of working class people.
Now comes the hard part: keeping the pressure on.
In the coming months, we will inevitably hear rhetoric from both sides of the aisle urging moderation. Politicians will remind us that actions to meaningfully address the crises facing our communities are simply unattainable. We will be told, as we often are, that universal healthcare, affordable housing, quality education and ambitious climate action are “too expensive.”
Yet somehow, no matter the state of the economy, there is always enough money for another military base, another weapons contract, another foreign intervention — and today, a live-streamed genocide. While the Trump administration’s proposed military budget for FY2027 would push military spending to an astronomical, unprecedented $1.5 trillion, we are constantly told to accept scarcity for everything except war.
Let’s consider what federal military spending actually costs our state. Every year, New Hampshire taxpayers contribute up to $5.2 billion to the Department of Defense — an amount roughly equal to a third of our entire state budget. $5 billion is enough to cover the costs of solar electricity for each household in our state for the next 23 years. It is enough to fund public housing for over 150,000 people for five years. Or it could support the salaries of 5,300 elementary school teachers for a decade, when Granite State schools face staggering staffing shortages.
This misallocation of resources happens in our backyard. Last year alone, the Pentagon spent $2.6 billion on defense contracts within New Hampshire. That same amount could fund full, four-year scholarships for 160,000 Granite State students to attend UNH, eliminating financial barriers to an institution with some of the highest in-state tuition in the country. Meanwhile, an estimated 32,000 Granite Staters remain at risk of losing Medicaid. Protecting their healthcare access would cost barely one-tenth of what the Pentagon funnels into local defense contractors.
BAE systems recently announced an additional $85 million to develop and test advanced defense technologies in the Granite State. The same BAE systems manufactures mobile artillery systems routinely used to fire shells on civilians in Gaza. It is one of the companies making billions from the U.S.-Israel war in Iran, according to the BBC, while households face the costs.
And the instruments of violence used abroad are linked to repression our own communities experience. New Hampshire law enforcement agencies have received $3.1 million worth of surplus federal military equipment over the past decade, including hundreds of rifles. This is in a state where, last December, an unarmed Black man named Nickenley Turenne was shot and killed for carrying a flashlight three police officers mistook for a gun. This is in the only New England state where police departments joined task-force agreements with ICE.
Imagine what our communities would look like if even a fraction of resources spent on militarism and destruction were invested into what we need to live: housing, healthcare, clean energy, education.
Instead, corporate lobbyists, fossil fuel companies and weapons manufacturers spend boundless sums of money protecting a political system that works extraordinarily well (for them) at the expense of our working families, our environment and the lives of millions affected by U.S.-funded violence worldwide.
Voters did not turn out historic election results just to watch elected officials from both parties default to business as usual. We voted for a world where our tax dollars support life, not destruction; a world where we aren’t subsidizing wars and defense contractors while families struggle to pay for groceries and young people cannot envision futures in the Granite State.
With new leadership taking office at both the state and federal levels, our constituent responsibilities cannot end at the ballot box. We must pressure our Congressional delegation to vote No on the bloated military funding increase in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (which more than doubles military spending from 2021 levels, even as the Pentagon has never passed an audit). We must urge our U.S. Representatives to co-sponsor the Block the Bombs Act (H.R.3565) and stop costly weapons transfers enabling human rights atrocities abroad. And we must advocate for bold legislation like Rep. Delia Ramirez’s Reimagining Safety Act, which would direct federal funding away from the government’s inhumane immigrant detention regime and into programs working families rely on.
At the state level, change is made possible through our engagement. That means regularly contacting our elected officials, submitting public testimony to the legislature, and demanding that lawmakers deliver on voters’ agenda of affordability and care for people and the planet.
Granite Staters gave our elected leaders a mandate, and now we must demand that they see it through.
Ilinca Drondoe, from Bedford, has a BA in Peace & Justice Studies from Wellesley College and is currently pursuing an MA in Geography. She is the former co-chair of the NH Legislative Youth Advisory Council. Her research and advocacy focus on the intersection of environmental justice and antimilitarism.