Update:

While peace campaigners contacted Warren’s office Tuesday asking her to reject the NDAA, the Massachusetts senator has not released a statement.

Fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion of this piece, a Sen­ate spokesper­son for Eliz­a­beth War­ren con­tact­ed In These Times with the fol­low­ing com­ment: ​“I just saw your piece on the NDAA. She does not sup­port this lev­el of defense fund­ing and does not plan to vote in favor of the NDAA.”

War­ren then tweet­ed the fol­low­ing remarks: ​“The Pentagon’s bud­get has been too large for too long. I can­not sup­port a defense bill that’s a $738 bil­lion Christ­mas present to giant defense con­trac­tors & under­mines our val­ues and security.”

Ear­li­er:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) is the only 2020 pres­i­den­tial hope­ful who has pledged to vote against — and loud­ly denounced — the Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 bil­lion mil­i­tary spend­ing bill that would mark a $22 bil­lion increase over last year. The oth­er fron­trun­ner in the Sen­ate, Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑Mass.), serves on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, which is tasked with nego­ti­at­ing the con­tents of the bill, but has so far remained silent on how she will vote. None of the oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in Con­gress — Sen. Cory Book­er (N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Michael Ben­net (Colo.) and Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii) — have indi­cat­ed their vot­ing inten­tion, either.

The ini­tial House ver­sion of the NDAA includ­ed cer­tain restric­tions on how mil­i­tary spend­ing could be used, includ­ing mea­sures pro­hibit­ing the allo­ca­tion of funds to an unau­tho­rized war with Iran and stop­ping U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port for the war on Yemen. But a new com­pro­mise bill, released Mon­day, strips these out. While the com­pro­mise offers some con­ces­sions, such as paid parental leave for some fed­er­al work­ers, peace cam­paign­ers char­ac­ter­ize it as a win for the Right. The House and Sen­ate are expect­ed to vote as soon as this week on the bill, which includes autho­riza­tion for Trump’s pro­posed ​“space force” as part of the compromise.

Erik Sper­ling, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Just For­eign Pol­i­cy, an anti­war orga­ni­za­tion, tells In These Times the bill is dan­ger­ous, fail­ing to rein in the mil­i­tary in any mean­ing­ful way. ​“This NDAA does noth­ing to end our role in the hor­rif­ic war in Yemen, does­n’t explic­it­ly defund unau­tho­rized war with Iran, does­n’t repeal the Iraq Autho­riza­tion for Use of Mil­i­tary Force, and among many oth­er poli­cies that ratch­et up the new Cold War with Rus­sia and Chi­na, does­n’t ban dan­ger­ous low-yield nukes that will con­tribute to a new arms race.”

Just For­eign Pol­i­cy is part of a coali­tion of anti­war orga­ni­za­tions that is con­tact­ing law­mak­ers in the House and Sen­ate, ask­ing them to vote no on the bill.

So far, few have pub­licly pledged to vote no on the leg­is­la­tion. On Decem­ber 9, Sanders and Rep. Ro Khan­na (D‑Calif.) released a state­ment reject­ing the NDAA as a bill of ​“aston­ish­ing moral cow­ardice.” The state­ment declares, ​“Con­gress should have used this Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act to stop our end­less wars. Instead, this bill does noth­ing to rein in out-of-con­trol mil­i­tary spending.”

“Every mem­ber of Con­gress should vote against this mea­sure,” the state­ment con­tin­ues. ​“There is no press­ing rea­son for Con­gress to show­er Trump, his Sau­di friends, and the Pen­ta­gon con­trac­tors of the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex with this $738-bil­lion tax­pay­er give­away right now.”

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), Prami­la Jaya­pal (D‑Wash.), Rashi­da Tlaib (D‑Mich.), Mark Pocan (D‑Wis.) and Gwen Moore (D‑Wis.) have also pledged to vote against the bill, accord­ing to Sper­ling, who says Just For­eign Pol­i­cy spoke direct­ly to their staff.

Sev­er­al of the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, includ­ing War­ren and Sanders, pre­vi­ous­ly pushed for reforms to the NDAA that are not includ­ed in the lat­est ver­sion. But none except Sanders has pub­licly com­mit­ted to vot­ing no.

While peace cam­paign­ers con­tact­ed Warren’s office Tues­day ask­ing her to reject the NDAA, the Mass­a­chu­setts sen­a­tor has not released a state­ment. She vot­ed in favor of the NDAA for 2018, which gave Trump a big­ger war bud­get than he had ini­tial­ly request­ed, but vot­ed no to the NDAA for 2019. Sanders has reject­ed every NDAA under Trump.

Sper­ling said that even if War­ren ends up vot­ing against the bill, it’s impor­tant for politi­cians to come out ear­ly — and strong­ly — against the NDAA. ​“It’s not only impor­tant to vote the right way, but to come out with a strong state­ment and show lead­er­ship ear­ly. Mem­bers of Con­gress are look­ing for guid­ance from the major nation­al polit­i­cal lead­ers, and sit­ting on the side­line can send the sig­nal that defeat­ing end­less war is not a priority.”

War­ren did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.