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Wednesday the House and Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. As reported below, it passed the House by a vote of 262 to 159. In the Senate the bill passed by a vote of 86 to 11. It will be up to President Trump to decide whether or not to sign it.
On the surface this bill appears to honor the memory of Lindsey O. Graham, the late Senator from South Carolina who passed away on July 11th of this year. But in reality, this legislation is the vehicle of a group of neoconservative Republicans and their Democratic allies who wish to force the hand of President Trump and engage in a new war with Russia.
Most aggressive are the provisions to impose up to 100% tariffs on the five biggest importers of Russian oil and gas including China, India, Turkey, etc. All of these countries are part of the sanctions-free zone. Russian goods would be subjected to up to 500% tariffs, including oil that is already being smuggled into the country by so-called "shadow oil fleet". Further sanctions would be imposed on all Russian banks and leadership.
It was legislation that Trump had stonewalled for over a year. The bill was scheduled for a House vote by Republican leaders in July 2026, just days before Graham's death brought an end to his long career in the Senate.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), in his 14 years in the House, said he had never before voted to sanction a country and didn't intend to start here. House Democrats — perhaps most hypocritically — opposed the bill because it would grant President Trump additional means to impose tariffs on imports of his choosing.
Speaker Mike Johnson, after receiving confirmation from the White House that it would not stand in the way of House action on the bill, moved the legislation forward. Whether Trump signs it, lets it become law without his signature, or attempts a veto he knows cannot hold, the bill represents a major escalation of congressional pressure on his foreign policy.
This new legislation will likely have a very short fuse. Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive at the White House for a summit with Trump on September 24 — exactly one week from today. Beijing has already threatened to cancel that summit if Washington approves new Taiwan arms sales before the meeting. Now Congress has placed a sweeping anti-Russia, anti-China tariff package on Trump's desk in the same week.
China, India, and Turkey are the top buyers of Russian energy. A 100% tariff on Chinese goods for buying Russian oil would immediately damage any hopes for a productive Trump-Xi summit and could be the catalyst to reignite a full-scale trade war that both governments have spent months carefully defusing since the Geneva accords last spring.
Whether this is legislative incompetence, neocon sabotage of Trump's diplomatic agenda, or the congressional foreign policy establishment reasserting control over the executive is a question worth asking. What is clear is that a bipartisan coalition of war hawks just handed Trump a grenade — with a very short fuse — one week before the most consequential diplomatic meeting of his second term.
