WILPF EB/SF NEWS MAY 2026

WILPF NEWS

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

East Bay and San Francisco Branches

Work to Advance Peace, Justice and Human Rights

May 2026

To join with your local WILPF activists, come to one of our monthly meetings of the East Bay and San Francisco branches. Our next meeting is Saturday, June 13^th from 10am-noon. Reply to this email for details.

Fundamentally, if you want to know what a nation values, don’t listen to its rhetoric, follow how it spends its money. A country’s budget shows you what is a priority, and what is not.

In the lead-up to the President’s budget release, Donald Trump made the trade-offs painfully clear. “We’re fighting wars… It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.” Keep this in mind as you consider the budget numbers the President delivered just days later to Congress and the American people.

The President is calling for $1.5 trillion in military spending during a single year, FY 2027, which begins on October 1, 2026. According to the Office of Management and Budget, this represents an increase of $45 billion, or 42% over the current year’s historically high budget of $1 trillion. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget for its core nuclear weapons activities will jump a full 35%. Specifically, the core nuclear weapons activities funding will rise more than $7 billion to $27.5 billion.

The work at NNSA and its nuclear weapons complex sites, like Livermore Lab, create and build nuclear bombs and warheads capable of inflicting mass nuclear death and destruction at a moment’s notice. The NNSA budget increase will support “seven simultaneous warhead modification programs” [read as new nuclear weapons] as well as upgrading and building new nuclear warhead “production facilities, including the capability to produce 80 pits [plutonium bomb cores] per year as close to 2030 as possible.”

If these historic highs are sustained at NNSA and the Pentagon alike, the Defense Budget will add about $6 trillion to the federal deficit over the coming decade. It’s all about our government’s priorities, not the necessities of our people.

Excerpt by Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley Cares Their website has much more information about this topic and what actions you can take to protest this massive buildup of nuclear weapons, and specifically the plans to build more plutonium pits at Livermore and around the country.

SAY NO TO NEW PLUTONIUM PIT PRODUCTION

A plutonium pit is the softball-sized bomb core that begins the chain reaction in every modern US thermonuclear weapon. Currently, there is no demonstrated need for new plutonium pits to ensure the safety or reliability of the existing US nuclear weapons stockpile. In fact, these new pits will be for entirely new nuclear weapons. This kind of production involving extremely dangerous radioactive materials puts workers and nearby communities at risk.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nationwide plutonium pit production plan, in which Livermore Lab will be doing plutonium pit support work, held its Livermore public hearing on the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the plan.

The community of Livermore had the opportunity to give oral comments at NNSA’s public hearing in Livermore on May 12. Tri-Valley CAREs, along with members of other organizations, gave powerful oral comments. With 50 people in the room and nearly 30 comments (all in opposition to the plan), the sentiment was clear – people do not want more plutonium coming to Livermore for plutonium pit work and do not support this plan for two plutonium pit factories and hundreds of plutonium shipments a year on our highways.

There were hearings held recently in 5 cities around the country to allow public comments on the entire PEIS (Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement). Three WILPF members from the East Bay and San Francisco branches spoke at those hearings.

Among the speakers in Livermore was Anne Henny, representing WILPF East Bay and San Francisco branches.

Here is Anne’s statement:

Good evening, my name is Anne Henny. I’m here representing the San Francisco and East Bay branches of Women’s internation League for Peace and Freedom, or WILPF, which has been working worldwide since 1915 for real peace, human rights, and protection of our planet. In grade school I learned about the global nuclear arms race and, with a child’s honesty, understood that nuclear weapons cannot make us safe or bring lasting peace. In college I traveled to Hiroshima and met atomic bombing survivors. Later I went to the United Nations in New York and Geneva on a peace internship to study non-proliferation and multilateral disarmament negations—which continue to this day.

Here are our main comments on the PEIS:

PURPOSE AND NEED: the proposed pit production is NOT needed-– new pits would escalate, not reduce, global nuclear stockpiles and risks. The Union of Concerned Scientists reported in May 2025 that the US has enough plutonium pits stockpiled to maintain the safety and reliability of its existing arsenal—so new pits would be used in new-generation nuclear weapons. This leads us in the WRONG direction, making our world less secure.
ALTERNATIVES: The PEIS does not provide a reasonable range of alternatives as required by law. Most crucially, the PEIS fails to analyze a true No Action alternative—that is, a no new plutonium pit production alternative. Absent that baseline information, how can the public possibly know or measure the potential impacts of new plutonium pit production? They CANNOT. To meet the letter and spirit of the law, a genuine No Action Alternative Analysis MUST be provided.
IMPACTS: The Draft PEIS does not adequately analyze the impacts at all sites involved in pit production. For Livermore specifically, the PEIS must clearly disclose the quantities of pit production support related work including any new or increased radioactive, mixed, hazardous, or liquid waste. Workers and families in our region deserve to know all of the risks, including worst-case accident scenarios, and how much radioactive material and waste will be transported through our communities.

Nuclear deterrence only works—until it doesn’t. We cannot build REAL peace by continuing to invest precious resources—resources that are desperately needed to meet human needs—in weapons of mass destruction. The world needs nuclear disarmament, not MORE nuclear weapons. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

On May 14^th in Santa Fe, New Mexico, two WILPF women, Arla S. Ertz and Regina Sneed, gave public comments on the PEIS plan.

Here are Arla’s comments:

Many who have already commented here, and no doubt in other venues, have presented you with detailed factual information pertinent to the issue at hand in these hearings, so I need not repeat any of that information, however compelling it may be. Rather, I am here to implore you to reach down inside yourself as you weigh the impact of your decision regarding pit production expansion. As you look into your heart of hearts, realize and know that proceeding with plutonium pit production will not protect or defend our nation, but instead will damage—or even destroy—it. Pit production will harm the earth, air, water, plants, animals, and your fellow human beings—all of us. Here in New Mexico, we are acutely and painfully aware that the waste, including plutonium, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which sits majestically above us, has already trickled into the historic, and we hope life-sustaining, Rio Grande, causing alarming contamination. We are aware that this impacts agriculture, drinking water, recreation, and more as the river flows to lands below, including Native territory. I am aware that you may feel bound by a congressional mandate to proceed. But as you make your decision about the negative impacts of your action, depending on the decision you make with the power that you hold, please be mindful that just as members of the military are not to follow orders that they know are wrong, so must you act from your conscience and make your decision based on affirming life, not contamination, pollution, and harm. Remember that production of plutonium pits is illegal under international law ever since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into force on January, 22, 2021. So honor what is sacred—the earth, nature, human beings, and life itself—in your deliberations, for if you don’t, surely, your soul will shrivel like a raisin in the sun. Thank you for deeply and truly considering our comments with the utmost seriousness.

Regina commented virtually during the Santa Fe hearing. Here are her comments:

My name is Regina Sneed with the San Francisco Branch of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a proud Navy family member, an Affiliate member of Veterans for Peace and a grassroots advocacy team member with the Friends Committee on National Legislation. All of these organizations that I volunteer with are opposed to wars and the militarization of our economy with excessive military spending which includes this expansion of production of plutonium pits to use in missiles which are part of a failed deterrence strategy. We have no need for production of any plutonium pits. We should be spending money on social needs. I am here tonight offering my comments virtually because there was no virtual option available at the Livermore hearing. Also that hearing was held in a winery on the eastern side of the city instead of the community space available at the lab which would have been accessible by public transportation. The winery location discouraged participation. I also want to request that our comments be included in the report p, perhaps in one of many appendixes that will apparently be needed.

This is personal for me. My first experience with the arms race was an evacuation drill. We did not duck and cover at Pearl Harbor Elementary, we were marched out to waiting grey Navy buses that stopped short of transporting us to a bomb shelter. In Navy housing in Monterey my neighbors who were students at the Post Graduate School disappeared. I was told not to speak about it in town. Later I found out it was the Cuban missile crisis. These experiences led me to work to abolish nuclear weapons with organizations concerned with nuclear disarmament since the 1980’s. Let’s have more nuclear free zones, remember them.

Now I have a few comments in opposition and will submit written comments with my specific concerns about waste disposal, worker safety, lab security, transportation risks and community safety. First non action alternative is not included in part because there is a Congressional mandate to produce up to 80 pits per year by 2030. So even a no action alternative produces new pits. A May 28, 2025 report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists indicates that we have enough plutonium pits stockpiled and the new pits are not needed and are going to be used on new weapons that we do not need nor can we afford them. The United States is a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty. This new pit production is inconsistent with arms reduction under this treaty. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight.

CALL TO ACTION! HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HELP!

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is accepting written comments until July 16 by submitting comments via email to: PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov

Include the document number: DOE/EIS-0573

As a resource to help you comment and encourage widespread comment-making in your community, Tri Valley CARE’s, along with other lawsuit plaintiff Nuclear Watch New Mexico, as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other groups from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, created a website that is now live!

Your PEIS central hub for information and action: https://pitpeis.com/

To help you write comments:

Find a SLIDE SET HERE that explains this issue well.

TALKING POINTS HERE

SEND IN YOUR WRITTEN COMMENTS BY JULY 16th

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