Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
An abstract grid wall of shipping containers, unevenly arranged with some jutting out, all decorated in the colors and patterns of the USA flag. A prominent percentage sign overlays the grid.

Tariffs on Trial: The Supreme Court’s Hidden Battle for Balance

Paramount-WBD Deal: Antitrust, Consumers, and the Future of Media

Paramount-WBD Deal: Antitrust, Consumers, and the Future of Media

Donald Trump isn’t joking about a third term

Donald Trump isn’t joking about a third term

Have Males Always been the Problem?

Have Males Always been the Problem?

Two containers, one with a U.S. flag and another with Canada's flag.

Just the Facts: U.S.–Canada Tariff War Escalates As Trump Raises Stakes

Does the foreign aid package include millions of dollars for pensions in Ukraine?

Man waving U.S. and Ukrainian flags

A man supporting Ukraine funding demonstrates outside the U.S. Capitol before the House passed the foreign aid package on April 20

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin Watch
By Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin WatchMay 10, 2024
Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin Watch
See More Writings by author

This fact brief was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Does the April 2024 U.S. foreign aid package include millions of dollars for pensions in Ukraine?

No.

The $95 billion U.S. aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan prohibits funds from being allocated to pensions in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden signed the package into law April 24, 2024.

Ukraine gets $61 billion for its war with Russia, including $14 billion for buying weapons.

Also included is $8 billion in economic support that “may include budget support,” none of which “may be made available for the reimbursement of pensions.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, said on Wisconsin talk radio that the law includes “millions” for pensions in Ukraine.

His office, pointing to a U.S. State Department news release, told Wisconsin Watch that Tiffany meant to say that previous U.S. aid packages funded Ukrainian pensions.

A top Ukrainian official warned in December that Ukraine might have to stop making pension payments if foreign assistance wasn’t provided soon.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

US Congress Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.

omny.fm Guest: Congressman Tom Tiffany - The Meg Ellefson Show 042524 - The Meg Ellefson Show

U.S. State Department The United States Funds Economic Survey of Ukraine for Sustainable Recovery

Financial Times Ukraine warns of pension and salary delays without western aid

Latest news

Hardliners vs. Loyalists: Republicans Divide Over Mamdani Moment
Ethics & Leadership

Hardliners vs. Loyalists: Republicans Divide Over Mamdani Moment

Rebuilding Democracy in the Age of Brain Rot
Media & Technology

Rebuilding Democracy in the Age of Brain Rot

Trump's Clemency for Giuliani et al is Another Effort to Whitewash History and Damage Democracy
Ethics & Leadership

Trump's Clemency for Giuliani et al is Another Effort to Whitewash History and Damage Democracy

What the Success Academy Scandal Says About the Charter School Model
Education

What the Success Academy Scandal Says About the Charter School Model

Read More

Two people looking at computer screens with data.

A call to rethink AI governance argues that the real danger isn’t what AI might do—but what we’ll fail to do with it. Meet TFWM: The Future We’ll Miss.

Getty Images, Cravetiger

The Future We’ll Miss: Political Inaction Holds Back AI's Benefits

We’re all familiar with the motivating cry of “YOLO” right before you do something on the edge of stupidity and exhilaration.

We’ve all seen the “TL;DR” section that shares the key takeaways from a long article.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Need To Rethink the Way We Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children

We Need To Rethink the Way We Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children

November 20 marks World Children’s Day, marking the adoption of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child. While great strides have been made in many areas, we are failing one of the declaration’s key provisions: to “protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.”

Sexual violence against children is a public health crisis that keeps escalating, thanks in no small part to the internet, with hundreds of millions of children falling victim to online sexual violence annually. Addressing sexual violence against children only once it materializes is not enough, nor does it respect the rights of the child to be protected from violence. We need to reframe the way we think about child protection and start preventing sexual violence against children holistically.

Keep ReadingShow less
Teen Vogue Changed How a Generation Saw Politics and Inclusion. That Era Could Be Over.

Teen Vogue editors Kaitlyn McNab, left, and Aiyana Ishmael, right. Both were laid off as Condé Nast announced that Teen Vogue would be absorbed into the Vogue brand.

J. Countess, Phillip Faraone; Getty Images

Teen Vogue Changed How a Generation Saw Politics and Inclusion. That Era Could Be Over.

For the last decade, Teen Vogue has been an unexpected source of some of the most searing progressive political analysis in American media. It’s a pivot the publication began in April 2016 when Elaine Welteroth took over as leader. She became the publication’s second editor in chief, and the second Black person ever to hold that title under the publishing giant Condé Nast.

Previously focused mostly on teen style trends and celebrity red carpet looks, the magazine’s website soon included headlines like “Trauma From Slavery Can Actually Be Passed Down Through Your Genes” and “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America.” Readers took notice: Between January 2016 and January 2017, web traffic reportedly grew from 2.9 million U.S. visitors to 7.9 million.

Keep ReadingShow less
People voting at booths.

AI is reshaping politics like social media did for Obama. From relational organizing to deepfakes, explore how technology will define the 2026 elections.

Getty Images, adamkaz

Who Will Be the First American Candidate To Harness AI

Social media has been a familiar, even mundane, part of life for nearly two decades. It can be easy to forget it was not always that way.

In 2008, social media was just emerging into the mainstream. Facebook reached 100 million users that summer. And a singular candidate was integrating social media into his political campaign: Barack Obama. His campaign’s use of social media was so bracingly innovative, so impactful, that it was viewed by journalist David Talbot and others as the strategy that enabled the first term Senator to win the White House.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025