The House sent the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 to President Trump's desk Wednesday with broad bipartisan support, despite opposition from the top three Democrats in the chamber.
Fifty-eight Democrats broke with their own leadership and voted for the bill, which cleared the House 262 to 159 on the final day lawmakers were in session before leaving Washington until after Election Day. Only seven Republicans voted no. The lopsided margin made the opposition from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar all the more conspicuous, and all the harder to explain to voters who want Russia held accountable for its war in Ukraine.
The bill had already passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support in August. Its arrival on the House floor followed more than a year of negotiations spearheaded by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who spent his final day pushing the legislation from Kyiv before his sudden death in July.
Graham returned from Ukraine in July and announced he had reached a deal with the White House to move forward on an updated version of the sanctions package. He died shortly afterward. The bill that now bears his name, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, targets the Russian power structure from top to bottom.
Its provisions include sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, government officials, oligarchs, and Russian banks and financial institutions. It extends sanctions on Iran's energy and weapons sectors at President Trump's request. And it gives the president authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five purchasers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries importing less than 15 percent of their natural gas from Russia and taking steps to reduce those imports.
That tariff authority is the provision that drew the most fire from Democratic leaders. It is also the provision that supporters say gives the bill real force.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican, made the case on the House floor. CBS News reported his remarks:
"As we've heard from President Zelenskyy's team, you can evade sanctions, which the Russians have done for years, but you cannot evade tariffs. Tariffs are a powerful way to amplify the impact of sanctions. That's why they are the teeth of this bill."
China and India are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think tank that tracks fossil fuel exports. Europe, historically Russia's biggest natural gas customer, has cut its imports significantly in recent years.
Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar issued a joint statement arguing that Trump "has shown no willingness to be strong on Russia" and that he "cannot be entrusted with new powers to impose tariffs that will further raise costs for American families." Their position amounted to a bet that blocking a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill was a smarter play than giving a Republican president a tool he asked for.
Most of their caucus went along. But 58 Democrats did not, a significant defection on a high-profile vote that leadership actively whipped against.
A separate group of Democratic lawmakers raised more specific objections. Reps. Gregory Meeks of New York, Don Beyer of Virginia, and Richard Neal of Massachusetts issued a joint statement last Friday warning that the bill's provisions "would raise Americans' prices while undermining support for Ukraine in the long term." They argued the president already has enough authority to expand sanctions on those fueling Russia's war effort and called on him to act without further delay.
After the vote, Meeks said he hoped Trump would prove him wrong and implement the bill as intended. But he left little doubt about his expectations:
"But, in the likely event he doesn't, I will do everything in my power to make sure Congress holds him to account, the American people do not get further crushed by his inflationary tariffs, and that Ukraine receives real support."
The tension within the Democratic caucus over tariff authority is not new. Senate Democrats voted to expand Trump's tariff power within the sanctions package and have since tried to walk that position back, a reversal that undercuts the House leadership's argument that the bill's tariff provisions were a dealbreaker all along.
The bill nearly died before it reached a final vote. GOP leaders added it to the floor schedule last Friday, and a procedural vote Tuesday came down to a narrow margin. Two moderate Democrats, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who is retiring, and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, who holds a competitive seat, crossed party lines to advance the legislation.
Golden explained his decision plainly:
"This is our last week in session until November. The stakes for Ukraine are too high to let this good bill, which already passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support, die as a result of a procedural vote."
Gluesenkamp Perez pointed to her Ukrainian constituency. "I'll always stand with my community's values," she wrote on X. Both lawmakers chose the substance of the bill over the procedural wishes of their party's leadership, a choice that says something about where the real political risk lay.
Graham's death in July gave the legislation a personal weight that transcended the usual partisan calculations. Lawmakers from both parties packed the Capitol Rotunda to honor him as a hawk who worked until his final day. The bill's passage is the most concrete expression of that tribute.
House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a different tone from the Democratic leadership, casting the vote as a signal of American resolve:
"This bill sends a powerful message of American unity and gives the administration every tool in the toolbox to help bring this war to a just end, and we are proud to send it to the president's desk."
The bill now awaits the president's signature. It includes a provision allowing Trump to waive sanctions if he certifies to Congress that doing so is in the national interests of the United States, a flexibility mechanism that undercuts the Democratic argument that the legislation hands over unchecked power.
Whether Trump signs it, and how aggressively his administration enforces the tariff and sanctions provisions, will determine whether the bill becomes a real pressure point on Moscow or a symbolic gesture. The legislation now sits on the president's desk, carrying the name of a senator who did not live to see it arrive there.
Democratic leaders chose to oppose a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill named after a dead colleague, on the last day before recess, and lost by more than a hundred votes. If that is the party's idea of a winning message on national security, they may want to count their own defectors again.
