President Donald Trump on Friday signed into law a sweeping sanctions package aimed at choking off the money that fuels Russia’s war against Ukraine, a bill that bears the name and legacy of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who secured Trump’s blessing for the legislation on the last day of his life.
The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 targets Russian officials, banks, and a shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving around the globe. It directs Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five countries that import Russian oil or natural gas. And it extends existing sanctions on Iran for another five years, a provision that helped bring the White House on board.
Trump signed the bill on September 18, 2026, Just The News reported, after Congress sent it to his desk with commanding bipartisan margins: 86, 11 in the Senate and 262, 159 in the House.
The bill’s path to Trump’s desk is inseparable from the story of Lindsey Graham’s final weeks. Graham, a close ally and friend of the president, had worked on the legislation for more than a year. On July 10, 2026, he traveled to Kyiv, where he announced he had obtained Trump’s support for the sanctions package.
Graham died shortly after returning home from that trip. He was 71. The cause was an apparent aortic dissection. Given Russia’s documented history of targeted assassinations using hard-to-detect chemicals, an investigation was conducted, though preliminary findings pointed to natural causes.
His sister, Darline Graham, was appointed to complete his Senate term. On the day Trump signed the bill, she issued a statement that captured both the personal loss and the policy stakes.
“I wish Lindsey were here to celebrate this historic day. I know he would be so proud. Lindsey believed this bill, which he worked on for well over a year, would help end the war through squeezing Putin economically and forcing his customers to reevaluate their relationship with Russia.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who co-drafted the legislation with Graham, struck a similar note after the House passed the bill Wednesday evening.
“If he were here today, he would be jubilant about our bill’s passage, and already thinking about the next one.”
Blumenthal left no ambiguity about the bill’s purpose: “Putin is a thug who understands only force and strength, which is what we must show clearly and unequivocally.”
The legislation goes after Moscow on multiple fronts. It sanctions Russian officials and financial institutions. It targets the shadow fleet of tankers, aging, often uninsured vessels, that Russia has used to circumvent existing Western restrictions on its energy exports. The environmental and strategic risks posed by that fleet have already drawn international concern.
The centerpiece is the tariff authority. The bill directs Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas. An exception exists for countries that import less than 15 percent of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those purchases.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican, made the case plainly on the House floor, as Fox News reported: “This legislation does exactly that. It targets the money that fuels Russia’s war machine.” McCaul added a pointed observation about why tariffs matter in this context: “You can evade sanctions, which the Russians have done for years. But you cannot evade tariffs.”
Fox News also reported that the bill allows for tariffs of up to 500 percent on direct Russian imports, a detail that underscores the breadth of the economic tools Congress placed in Trump’s hands.
The bill’s five-year extension of existing Iran sanctions played a key role in securing the administration’s support. The White House had initially sought assurances that Trump would retain sufficient flexibility on sanctions before giving the legislation its blessing.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders signaled the administration’s position publicly before the final vote. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sanders said the White House had worked with both chambers to make necessary changes. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, Sanders stated: “We were able to work with the House and Senate, and the administration is happy with the ability to do that and make those changes that were necessary, and we support where the legislation is now.”
The Iran provisions come at a time when the administration has already moved aggressively against Tehran on other fronts, including revoking Iran oil sanctions waivers after Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
The bill passed with bipartisan margins, but the fault lines were telling. In the House, 53 Democrats joined 203 Republicans to push the legislation through 262, 159. A vocal set of Democratic lawmakers warned that the expanded tariff authority could allow Trump to impose levies on the European Union and other allies, not just on Russia’s energy customers.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out his objections on the floor:
“Why in the world would this Congress or the People’s House give this president unfettered authority to visit more tariffs on the world that will have an adverse economic impact on the American people?”
“I can’t do it,” Jeffries added.
But Jeffries’s position failed to hold his caucus together. More than a quarter of House Democrats broke ranks to support the bill, a reflection of how difficult it is to vote against sanctioning Russia while Moscow’s war in Ukraine grinds past the four-year mark.
The Senate vote was even more lopsided. Only 11 senators voted no. The Senate had sent the bill to the House after more than a year of delays, and the final tally reflected broad consensus that the time for half-measures had passed.
The bill arrives as Russia’s economy shows signs of strain under the cumulative weight of Western sanctions. Moscow has fired state economists who warned publicly that Russia was losing its economic confrontation with the West, a sign that internal dissent over the war’s costs is a sensitive subject inside the Kremlin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the signing with a statement thanking Congress. “I thank all the senators and members of the House of Representatives who supported it,” Zelensky said. “The best way to honor Lindsey’s memory will be to implement the provisions of this law fully and swiftly.”
That implementation question is the next test. The bill gives Trump significant discretion in how and when to deploy the tariff authority. The White House insisted on that flexibility as a condition of its support. Whether the administration moves quickly to designate the top five Russian energy importers, and at what tariff levels, will determine how much real economic pain Moscow feels.
The bill’s signing closes a chapter that began with Lindsey Graham’s final trip to Kyiv and ended with his name on a piece of federal law. Graham spent decades in the Senate pushing for a muscular American posture toward hostile powers. He did not live to see this particular fight won, but the vote tallies suggest his case was persuasive, even across the aisle.
Several open questions remain. The bill’s official legislative number has not been widely publicized. The specific countries that rank among the top five importers of Russian energy, and thus face potential 100 percent tariffs, have not been named. And the broader U.S. pressure campaign against Iran continues to raise its own unresolved questions about strategy and effectiveness.
What is not in question is the scale of the tool Congress just handed the president. Sanctions can be evaded. Tariffs, as McCaul noted, cannot. The bill gives Trump a lever that previous administrations lacked, and dares Moscow’s energy customers to keep writing checks to the Kremlin.
When 86 senators and 262 House members agree on something in Washington, it usually means the politics have caught up with the reality. Four years into a war that has reshaped Europe, Congress finally put teeth behind its rhetoric. Now it falls to the president to use them.
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