The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which comes with a total sticker price of just over $900 billion, includes $800 million in aid to Ukraine over the next two years. The money continues funding the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays American companies to make weapons for Ukraine's military.

This is an obvious far cry from the $175 billion the U.S. sent under the Biden administration, but the point is that it's more than the zero we were promised.

To quote President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Gen. Mike Flynn, "Why?" Especially after the world just got the receipts for something any analyst with a heartbeat already suspected: that Ukrainian officials close to Volodymyr Zelensky are getting rich off the war through kickback scandals.

NATO/Europe

The new NDAA also authorizes the Baltic Security Initiative and provides $175 million to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia's defense. These three are NATO nations, and it looks like this allocation is arriving just in time. On Thursday, NATO chief Mark Rutte told allies to prepare for another world war. He said Russia would target Europe next, within approximately five years. How he comes to this number is anyone's guess, especially since it took Russia nearly four years to eke out 20 percent of Ukraine.

Rutte also talked about a NATO program called Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), which uses European allied money to funnel American Patriot missiles and other air-defense munitions to Ukraine.

Another NATO-related item in the NDAA bars "the Department of Defense from dropping the number of U.S. forces deployed or permanently stationed in Europe to under 76,000 for more than 45 days, unless the Pentagon can certify that NATO allies are consulted and the drawdown is in America's national security interest," according to reports about the bill. Now would be a good time for Congress to get on board with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-Ky.) legislation to get the U.S. out of NATO.