1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I'm writing as a constituent and as a new member of Voices for Primates Advocacy, a group dedicated to educating the public about the treatment of primates worldwide and turning that awareness into action. Our first campaign is in support of the PRIMATE Act (H.R. 8471), the bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Steube and Titus that would ban the importation of monkeys destined for U.S. laboratories, and I hope I can count on you to co-sponsor it. It's still legal today to import monkeys captured from the wild, separate them from their families, crate them, and ship them across continents into a research pipeline that has been tied to documented wildlife trafficking and welfare abuses. Last year alone, more than 22,000 primates were brought into the U.S. this way. This bill wouldn't end biomedical research; it would simply close off a supply chain built on suffering, and it would reduce the pressure that supply chain puts on wild long-tailed macaque populations, whose numbers are declining in part because of this very demand. I care about this because I believe how we treat the most vulnerable among us, even the ones who can't advocate for themselves, says something real about who we are as a community. I've followed your work long enough to know you feel the same way. You've built a record of standing up for people and causes that don't have power of their own, and of being willing to look past your own experience to understand someone else's pain. In this case, the "little guy" is a monkey in a crate on a cargo plane, and I don't think that's a stretch for you at all. It's a rare thing to find a bill with real bipartisan legs and a real chance at doing good, and I'd love to see you help lead on it. Thank you for considering this, and thank you for the work you already do on behalf of Washington's 7th District.