WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed a major package of veterans bills Wednesday on Veterans Day — but not without confusion and controversy.
The centerpiece of the package is an effort to boost compensation for an estimated 58,000 veterans who are medically retired because of combat-related injuries. That objective has broad, bipartisan support in Congress, but lawmakers and veterans groups aren't on the same page about how to get there.
The dilemma lawmakers are trying to resolve is this: Under current law, combat-injured retirees with less than 20 years of service give up a portion of their military retirement pay when they also receive Department of Veterans Affairs disability compensation. Lawmakers from both parties are trying to change that so that those retirees get all of their injury compensation and military retirement pay.
The change would lead to an average compensation boost of about $1,450 more per month, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans brought to the floor a bill that would help pay for the income boost for those retirees by changing how the department rates tinnitus or sleep apnea. Those changes would lower disability compensation for some future veterans, though they would not affect current veterans receiving compensation for those conditions. Democrats overwhelmingly opposed that trade-off and denounced the measure as the bill was debated.
“It does not take care of veterans. It takes from them,” Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., said of the Republican bill.
Republicans had to pull the bill from consideration earlier this year because they didn’t have the votes to pass it. This time, Democratic leaders again encouraged their members to oppose the measure because they said cutting benefits for one group of veterans to fund new benefits for another is not the answer.
The House chamber was packed and noisy as lawmakers talked among themselves following an earlier vote. As is the normal course of business, the House clerk read the title of the veterans bill and then the presiding officer, Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., said the question for the House was on passage of the bill and that those in favor should say aye and those opposed should say no.
“The ayes have it,” McDowell said. “The bill is passed.”
Normally, Democrats would interject and ask for a roll call vote. But none came. And Republicans simply put the onus on Democrats, with Rep. Mike Bost, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, calling Democrats “asleep at the wheel.”
“If nobody calls for the vote, it's passed, which is a good thing," said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
“If a few of them want to go voice their objections, they can go and make it clear on the House floor why they are against our veterans on Veterans Day. But I was proud to support it,” Scalise said. “I'm glad it passed.”
Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking Democratic member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said there was no opportunity for the minority to ask for a recorded vote.
“The intention was to sneak this through,” Takano said. “Well, all I can say is, I think it's a shallow, a hollow victory because it will go nowhere in the Senate.”
Cory Geisler, the national commander-in-chief at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, blasted the voice vote in a statement.
“If congressional leaders believed this proposal was worthy of passage, they should have had the courage to let every member’s position be recorded for the country to see,” Geisler said. “Playing political games with veterans’ benefits while avoiding public accountability is cowardly and dishonorable.”
Democrats have their own bill dealing with the issue that is expected to be voted on Thursday. Supporters used a discharge petition to get around Republican leadership and force a vote on the floor. But the Democratic measure does not include offsets.
Takano said that while some Republicans have voiced concerns about the price tag of his bill they also have no problem sending soldiers to war and approving the Pentagon budgets that come with it, or in passing tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy.
“Why then do they insist on balancing the budget on the backs of our veterans?” Takano said.
If the Democratic-led bill passes, the Senate could pick the one it favors, or neither, leaving it for a Democratic-controlled Congress to take the issue on next year.
Members of the University of Houston Air Force ROTC participate in the American Heroes Parade on Veterans Day in Houston Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Matvii Yermolenko is 2, but he already knows the words for siren and air defense. This winter, his mother decided to take him out of Kyiv.
“There is sadness, but even stronger is the understanding of what I have to do — leave,” Matvii’s mother, Kateryna Tsvihun, said, adding that they will come back in spring. “I cannot live without Kyiv and Ukraine. I am rooted here, my child is Ukrainian, and my husband is fighting for this.”
Ukrainians are bracing for what many expect to be the hardest winter of the war. Last year, heating disruptions left thousands of people in freezing apartments in Kyiv. Now, officials and analysts say, the badly damaged energy system is increasingly struggling to withstand attacks, putting the country’s resilience to another test. With no end to the war in sight, many people are thinking only about getting through the coming months.
Kyiv is already under strain. Since Aug. 22, not a single day has passed in the capital without an air raid threat, often followed by drone attacks during the day and missiles at night. Some residents have moved to other parts of the country or abroad for the winter. While it's impossible to calculate how many people left the capital, changes in the rental market offer a possible clue.
“In September, we saw that the number of flats available to rent was increasing in Kyiv, whilst it was decreasing in a number of western cities," Liudmyla Kiriukhina, the head of the statistics department at LUN, a Ukrainian real estate platform, said. “This could have indicated that tenants were moving from the capital to the west of the country.”
Exploiting its advantage in jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles, Russia has expanded its targets in the city to include gas stations, data centers, warehouses, big-box stores and bridges that are crucial for civilian transport in a city divided by the Dnipro River. Electricity disruptions have caused problems on the subway, Kyiv’s main transport artery, while water supply issues are increasingly common. Some residents have also criticized local authorities' winter preparations.
But leaving costs money, and many more are staying, stocking up on power banks, water containers and portable gas stoves.
Kateryna Tsvihun, 41, found last winter very difficult. She could not bear the thought of her son going through more power outages, let alone possibly losing heating as well. So she told her husband, a soldier since 2022, that she wanted to spend this winter elsewhere.
She could not find a suitable option in Ukraine, but a Facebook group for mothers who like to travel led her to one in Albania.
“The birth of a child is the ultimate game-changer,” she said. “Before, no matter how scared I was, I stayed in Kyiv and did not even think about leaving.”
Russia recently struck an area near a subway station where she and Matvii often go for walks. “It’s a bit scary to stay,” she said. “But it’s still our home, so we will come back this spring.”
She gave her portable power station, power banks and rechargeable lamps to relatives staying in the capital. For the trip, she bought a large, light-blue suitcase, packing only with practical things and a few of Matvii’s small toys.
“I see it as an opportunity to exhale, because the tiredness and pressure have been piling up over these years of war, the lonely waiting for my husband, and the attacks,” she said.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said last week that Russia had continued to attack power generation facilities and substations. “Attacks on the energy sector are not stopping,” it said in a statement.
“The situation in Kyiv is especially difficult right now: People and businesses are facing many hours of electricity and water outages,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Repeated strikes and constant air raid alerts are making repairs take much longer, he said.
“This winter could be just as hard, or even harder than the last one,” Andrii Tkachov, acting head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said. “The enemy will keep striking critical infrastructure and trying to disrupt residents’ heating and water supply.”
He said Russia's aim is to create a crisis and humanitarian and social tensions in the capital, Ukraine's most populous city and the seat of its main state institutions.
“The enemy understands that attacks on Kyiv will affect the morale of the entire country. The main goal is to break Kyiv,” Tkachov said. “But, as we say, Kyiv rests on three pillars: air defense, our utility and energy workers, and the self-organization of its residents.”
As of Nov. 1, the number of active rental listings in Kyiv had risen by 87% compared with Aug. 1, according to LUN. In September, the number of flats offered for rent during the month rose in Kyiv but fell in several western cities, including Uzhhorod, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk. According to LUN, this could point to tenants moving west from the capital, but more time was needed to study the changes.
Kateryna Tymoshenko, 39, brought her two children to an Oct. 17 rally demanding the resignation of Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko. Civic groups, activists and veterans organized the protest, accusing city authorities of poor winter preparation, a shortage of shelters, corruption and misuse of budget funds. Klitschko has called the criticism and the rally part of a campaign to discredit him.
“His direct call was to leave. … I don’t have the money to leave,” Tymoshenko said in response to the mayor’s call earlier in October.
She considered moving to central or western Ukraine, but high demand has driven up prices, and she could not find affordable housing. Her husband is also at the front, so the winter preparations fell on her shoulders.
“I expect it to be worse than it was, precisely because of the psychological state,” she said. “I hope there will at least be heating and sewage.” Otherwise, she said, even people like her ready for harsh conditions would consider leaving.
Tymoshenko has power banks, and the family has already moved to a first-floor apartment.
“Everything depends on our partners,” she said. “Despite the resilience of our people, I am ready to endure for as long as possible. But we have no money, we have no weapons, we have no Patriots (anti-missile batteries). So we are forced to explain, to beg, to plead.”
“Well, this is the life we have,” she said. “We didn’t choose it.”
A photo strip of Kateryna Tsvihun, 41, and her husband, Serhii Yermolenko, is displayed on a shelf in their apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Kateryna Tsvihun, 41, gathers children's clothes in her apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Andrii Tymoshenko, left, and Polina Tymoshenko stack wooden blocks on the floor by the light of Polina's headlamp during a blackout caused by Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Kateryna Tymoshenko, 39, with her son Andrii walk towards a Dnipro river in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Matvii Yermolenko, 2, sits in an open suitcase as his mother, Kateryna Tsvihun, 41, gathers children's clothes in their apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
