Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the most progressive voices in the Senate, is siding with President Trump on defense spending reform, urging the Pentagon to make his restrictions on contractor stock buybacks permanent.
Warren and Sen. Mike Lee, the conservative Utah Republican, sent a joint letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressing him to codify Trump's January executive order that targets defense contractors who fall behind on performance while funneling billions back to shareholders. Fox News Digital obtained the letter, which lays out financial data the senators say proves the policy is already working.
The numbers are hard to argue with. The top 20 publicly traded U.S. defense contractors cut stock buybacks and dividends by $2 billion in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. Capital spending, the money that actually goes toward building weapons and expanding production, rose by $1.2 billion over that same stretch.
Warren and Lee drilled into the books of four of the largest firms: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Combined buybacks and dividends among those four fell from roughly $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025 to about $2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a drop of approximately $1.5 billion. Three of the four reported declines. RTX was the only one whose payouts rose slightly year over year.
For years, taxpayers watched a maddening cycle. The Pentagon handed contractors enormous sums. Weapons programs ran over budget and behind schedule. And the companies posted strong profits, rewarding executives and investors while the troops waited. Trump's executive order was designed to break that cycle by tying contractor incentives to on-time delivery and production improvements rather than short-term financial metrics.
That a senator as far to the left as Warren is praising the results tells you something about how overdue the correction was. This is the same senator who built her brand on confrontation with corporate interests, and who has clashed with the Trump administration on nearly everything else. When the policy works, even the opposition notices.
The administration has racked up a series of policy wins that cut across traditional partisan lines, and this bipartisan letter on defense spending may be among the most telling.
Not every contractor fell in line. Warren and Lee singled out GE Aerospace for increasing its stock buybacks even after the executive order went into effect. The senators cited GE Aerospace as evidence that the executive order alone is not enough, that Congress needs to write the restrictions into law so no future administration can simply reverse them.
That is the purpose of the Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting Act, a bill the two senators are pushing. The legislation would codify the central provisions of Trump's January executive order, including the authority for the Pentagon to restrict buybacks and cap base salaries of executives at underperforming contractors. Key elements of the bill have already been folded into the Senate's version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill that Congress must pass.
In their letter, Warren and Lee framed the stakes in plain terms:
"The Pentagon is handing companies billions, and now potentially trillions, of taxpayer dollars. Congress and the Administration must work together to ensure they fulfill their contractual obligations and enhance national security."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, and GE Aerospace for comment. None had responded at the time of publication.
The Warren-Lee alliance is unusual, but the underlying complaint is not. For years, lawmakers on both sides have raised alarms about cost overruns and delays across major Pentagon weapons programs. The F-35 fighter jet alone became a symbol of a procurement system that rewarded contractors regardless of whether they delivered on time or on budget. The frustration cut across party lines long before Trump acted on it.
Trump's executive order gave the Pentagon new tools: identify contractors falling behind on performance, investment, or production, and restrict stock buybacks and corporate distributions in future contracts during periods of underperformance. The order also directed that executive incentives be tied to delivery and production rather than Wall Street metrics, a shift that goes to the heart of how defense firms compensate their leadership.
The president has shown a willingness to use executive authority to force outcomes across multiple fronts. His confirmation of key cabinet picks through narrow Senate votes demonstrated the same approach: set the direction, then push until the institutions follow.
The senators' own analysis carries a caveat worth noting. They acknowledged that the data does not prove every dollar withheld from shareholders went directly into capital investment. Correlation is not causation. But the direction of the shift, less money to Wall Street, more money into production, is exactly what the executive order was designed to produce, and the first-quarter numbers suggest the incentive structure is bending behavior.
Whether the legislation survives the full NDAA process remains an open question. Defense contractors wield enormous lobbying power on Capitol Hill, and the bill would impose permanent constraints that no company welcomes. The fact that Warren and Lee, two senators who agree on almost nothing else, are jointly pressing Hegseth suggests both sides see political advantage in holding contractors accountable.
The broader political dynamic is worth watching. Trump has consolidated influence within his party in ways that extend well beyond traditional Republican priorities, and drawing progressive support on defense reform only strengthens the case that his agenda reflects common-sense accountability rather than partisan overreach.
Meanwhile, the administration's ability to win over unlikely allies on specific policy fights mirrors what Vice President Vance demonstrated when he walked into a hostile television studio and walked out with the crowd on his side. Substance, delivered with confidence, has a way of crossing lines that ideology alone cannot.
When Elizabeth Warren is backing your policy and the numbers are moving in your direction, the argument is over. The only question left is whether Congress has the spine to make it permanent.