Reduce nuclear weapons program spending by $2 billion
Federal budget
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Nuclear weapons spending is appropriated by Congress. Contractor lobbying is a documented force keeping it high. The top eleven companies working on the new intercontinental ballistic missile spent more than $119 million on lobbying in 2019 and 2020 and employed 380 lobbyists. Northrop Grumman helped kill a 2019 amendment that would have required the Pentagon to study alternatives to the $13.3 billion replacement program it went on to win. Owners have begun contesting this activity: the School Sisters of Notre Dame asked Northrop Grumman shareholders in 2023 to require an annual report on aligning the company's political activities with its human rights policy. The controlling obstacle sits deeper than lobbying. The Pentagon and successive administrations of both parties hold a doctrinal commitment to full nuclear modernization. The Biden administration's first budget carried the Trump program forward almost unchanged at more than $43 billion a year. That consensus of government would sustain the spending even if contractor lobbying stopped.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People (brochure), Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, 2024
- Inside the ICBM Lobby: Special Interests Or the National Interest?, Arms Control Association, 2021-05
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Proposal 6, Northrop Grumman 2023 Annual Meeting (School Sisters of Notre Dame Cooperative Investment Fund), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR), 2023-05
- Biden Continues Trump Nuclear Funding, Arms Control Association, 2021-07
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates the religious shareholders filing human rights and political activities proposals at the major nuclear weapons contractors and organized the 2026 investor letter to five of them.
IASJ Shareholder Proposals, Investor Advocates for Social Justice
Filed the first shareholder proposal asking a bank to address the risks of financing nuclear weapons, at PNC Financial Services in 2021, following the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
2 campaigns on record
Annually conduct an evaluation and issue a public report describing the alignment of the company's political activities, including direct and indirect lobbying and political and electioneering expenditures, with its human rights policy, listing and explaining instances of misalignment and stating whether and how they have been or will be addressed.
Result: 20.0 percent in favor at the May 17, 2023 annual meeting: 24,027,963 for, 95,937,437 against, 1,728,014 abstentions and 13,719,402 broker non-votes. It was Proposal 6 on the ballot and was not approved.
IASJ Shareholder Proposals, Investor Advocates for Social Justice
Issue a report assessing how effective the bank's Environmental and Social Risk Management systems are at managing the risks of lending to, investing in and financing the nuclear weapons industry, covering existing financing and its human rights impacts, the legal, financial, regulatory and reputational risks, and whether and how PNC plans to reduce that exposure.
With Sisters of the Humility of Mary
Result: 7.95 percent in favor at the April 27, 2021 annual meeting: 26,540,293 for, 307,230,915 against, 6,159,791 abstentions and 34,770,252 broker non-votes. It was item 4 on the ballot and was not approved. Investor Advocates for Social Justice reported it as 7.9 percent.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.