The Senate voted 86 to 11 on Friday to pass the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. [1][2] Saturday's completed record is not that count. It is the fallout: authority for tariffs of up to 100 percent on the largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas, a presidential waiver if the White House certifies a national interest, and a House that will not vote until at least early September. [1][2] No duty has been collected. A reader who treats 86-11 as a tax already paid is reading a different statute.
The paper's July 29 standard recorded that the Senate fast-tracked the Graham Act with 100 percent tariffs aimed at India and China on an 86-12 cloture, and that cloture was not passage. Friday converted the advance into a passed bill. Saturday is the first dedicated copy on what that bill actually hands the president, and on the recess that keeps the hand from closing.
Al Jazeera, publishing Saturday, sold the package as aggressive sanctions on Russia's energy revenues and a possible path to the negotiating table. [1] Republican Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said before the vote that the bill "could finally bring Russia to the negotiating table" and would "cut off the flow of cash that powers Putin's war machine." [1] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed "real, strong American pressure and sanctions against Russia." [1] European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote, "Together, let us drain Russia's means to continue a war it cannot win." [1] Those are victory verbs. They describe a bill that has not yet cleared the House.
Fortune, also Saturday, filed the same vote as a grant of "unchecked authority" to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five importers of Russian oil and gas. [2] The list could include U.S. allies in the European Union, South Korea, and Japan, as well as China and India. [2] The president may issue waivers if he deems them "in the national interest of the United States." [2] Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., tried to strip the tariff authority and failed. [2] Paul said on the floor that the bill "will not bring peace to Ukraine, but rather will deliberately make American families poorer by increasing tariffs, which are nothing but a tax on imported goods." [2] That is the Saturday argument Al Jazeera underplayed: the squeeze, if it ever lands, lands on buyers, which means it lands on American import prices first.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., balked at the tariff power and then voted yes after a written promise from U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that tariffs would be lifted once countries are no longer deemed top buyers of Russian energy or facilitators of sanctions evasion. [2] Warnock still said the country "should not have to choose between putting a check on Putin's aggression and putting a check on this president's tariffs regime," and that if Trump "oversteps his power, we will see him in court." [2] A letter from the trade representative is not a statute. A court date is not a collected duty either.
The bill is named for Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who died on July 11 and who had pushed the sanctions. [1] The day before his death, Graham and a bipartisan group announced they had White House approval to move the measures Trump had previously blocked. [1] Darline Graham Nordone, appointed to fill his seat, said the bill "hits Putin where it hurts." [1] Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen called it "an unambiguous and bipartisan message in the only language he understands: pressure." [1] Funeral politics passed a ceiling. It did not pass a House.
House Democrats Gregory Meeks and Don Beyer called Friday's version "unacceptable" because of sweeping new tariff authorities that could be used without restraint. [1] Fortune notes that courts have already blocked Trump's earlier attempts to stretch existing trade law, including the Supreme Court's February ruling that he cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for his "Liberation Day" tariffs. [2] He pivoted to Section 122 and then Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. [2] The Russia bill, Fortune argues, would likely face fewer legal challenges because it writes open-ended tariff power into a new statute. [2] Cato Institute scholars Clark Packard and Scott Lincicome, in a July 31 Washington Post op-ed cited Saturday, wrote that the bill "is riddled with the same ambiguity the president has exploited in these other laws." [2] It does not specify what data will determine the five largest importers. Tariff exemptions are not automatic. Rates sit at the president's whim. "Trump could direct the trade representative to set the tariff rate at 100% for one buyer of Russian energy and zero for another. That unchecked authority gives Trump leverage in disputes unrelated to Ukraine." [2]
That is the institutional story. An 86-11 Ukraine bill is also a farm-exports bill, a digital-tax bill, and a China-truce bill, depending on which buyer the White House wants to squeeze on which afternoon. [2] Fortune names India as an example in unrelated trade talks. [2] Al Jazeera names China and India as among the fuel importers the measure was expected to affect, if passed. [1] "If passed" is still the governing clause. The House is out. [1]
The Russian Embassy in Washington had already called the legislation counterproductive, citing knock-on energy constraints from the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and warning that sanctioning Russia and its trading partners would be "extremely counterproductive for the United States" with midterm elections ahead. [1] An embassy complaint is not a veto. A recess is closer to one.
Sanctions X will treat Friday's tally as a collected tax on Moscow. The completed Saturday record is a Senate-passed ceiling, a Greer letter, a Cato warning about data that does not exist in the text, and a lower chamber that cannot vote until September. [1][2] The paper will not print a tariff that has not been levied. It will print the power that would levy it, and the calendar that still sits in front of the power.
-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington