WASHINGTON — The late Lindsey Graham spent years demanding that the United States punish Russia. The bill now bearing his name could fail in the House not because lawmakers disagree with that goal, but because Donald Trump used the legislation to reclaim tariff powers the Supreme Court had stripped from him, and Democrats are unwilling to give them back.
The House Rules Committee is scheduled to consider the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on Monday, September 14, with a full floor vote expected the following week. The Senate passed the measure 86-11 in August, a bipartisan margin that would ordinarily signal swift House passage. Ordinarily.
House Democrats who might otherwise welcome stiff new penalties against Moscow say Trump transformed the bill into something else entirely. The legislation authorizes 100% tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil and natural gas — a list that includes China and India — precisely the trading partners whose energy cooperation Trump has tried and failed to penalize through executive action that courts have repeatedly limited. For Democrats who support Ukraine, the bill has become a vehicle for something they oppose far more deeply: an expansion of presidential trade authority that bypasses Congress.
Graham, the senior South Carolina Republican who died in July after a brief illness, spent the final stretch of his Senate career pushing this legislation through the Foreign Relations Committee he had long chaired. His original framework was a Ukraine-focused sanctions regime with automatic teeth — mandatory oil embargo penalties designed to make it economically ruinous for any government to continue financing the Russian operation in Ukraine. The tariff provisions that ultimately drew Trump’s backing arrived later, added during Senate negotiations after the White House signaled opposition.
Administration officials confirmed that Trump reversed course on the bill after Republican negotiators agreed to include language authorizing the president to impose secondary tariffs by executive order, without further congressional approval. For a White House that has spent much of 2026 watching federal courts limit its unilateral trade authority, the amendment represented something more durable than a foreign policy win.
“He didn’t support this bill for Ukraine,” Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News. “He supported it because it gives him something he doesn’t have: the ability to go after China and India without going through Congress.” Meeks said he would vote against the measure in its current form. Several other senior Democrats on the committee have indicated the same.
The bill does include provisions that its Republican backers say would finally impose meaningful costs on Moscow. It would require mandatory sanctions on any country purchasing Russian crude, natural gas, or refined petroleum above the existing price cap, and would require the administration to certify progress toward a ceasefire in Ukraine as a condition for any sanctions relief. Whether that certification requirement represents genuine accountability or a diplomatic trap door — in the hands of a White House that has expressed interest in ending the Russian operation on terms closer to Moscow’s — is a question Democratic critics have pressed without satisfying answer.
Trump’s record on Russia sanctions during his second term has been thin. Several designations from his first term were allowed to lapse quietly in 2025 without renewal, and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has moved no major new package targeting Russian entities since the administration took office in January. Critics note that the president already possesses statutory authority through OFAC to sanction Russian oil buyers without new legislation — authority he has not exercised. The same week the Senate passed the Graham bill, Putin told European leaders at the BRICS summit that sending troops to Ukraine would constitute an act of war against Russia — a statement that drew no public response from the White House.
The Rules Committee vote Monday will determine what amendments, if any, can be offered on the floor. Leadership aides say the whip count is soft in both directions. Some Republicans representing districts with significant trade exposure to China and India have privately raised concerns about the tariff provisions, which industry groups have estimated could increase domestic energy costs by double digits if enforced broadly. The bill’s passage is not assured even if it reaches a floor vote.
What is clear is that the legislation has become a test of something beyond Russia policy. It reflects a pattern in Trump’s second term of using legislatively popular foreign policy instruments to absorb executive authorities his administration could not secure through the courts. The Graham bill is not the first example. On the 25th anniversary of September 11, Trump framed the Iran war in similar terms — borrowing the foreign-policy language his critics have spent years building to justify priorities of his own.
Graham was not alive to see the bill bearing his name become a bargaining chip over tariff authorities. Whether the House passes it in its current form or strips the tariff provisions to attract Democratic votes is likely to be determined before members leave Washington for the final campaign sprint ahead of November’s midterms. The clock pressing this vote is not the Russia clock. It is the midterm clock — and it does not care about Ukraine.
