Senate Democrats are asking the Trump administration why it has issued no new sanctions in 17 months against networks that help Russia dodge existing sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.
The US Senate passed a broad sanctions bill targeting Russia's energy industry and Iran, after the measure had been stuck in Congress for months.
Since clearing its 86-12 procedural vote, the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 has been narrowed to cap tariffs at 100 percent on the top five Russian energy buyers. Twelve EU states, including Czechia, still import some Russian energy, and Democrats warn the tariff power Trump would gain never expires.
The U.S. Senate advanced a Russia and Iran sanctions bill named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham by an 86-vote margin, turning a negotiated deal into a concrete legislative step toward final passage.
The US Senate is holding an actual floor vote on a sanctions bill that could impose tariffs up to 500 percent on countries still buying Russian or Iranian oil.
A bipartisan group of US senators has agreed to push forward a bill that would let the government sanction any country or company that buys oil or gas from Russia or Iran, not just Russia and Iran themselves.
A week ago the question was whether Graham's signature Russia bill could survive without him. The answer is arriving fast: Trump and Thune have taken it up as a memorial, and a Graham will keep sitting in the Senate.
Lindsey Graham died a day after his last visit to Kyiv, leaving his "sanctions from hell" Russia bill without its author at the moment it might pass. The tributes framing his support for Ukraine, trans-Atlantic ties and Israel double as a map of what Washington's allies just lost.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, a driving force behind the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill and one of Congress's most influential voices on Ukraine, has died at 71. His death leaves the legislation's most visible champion gone just as it heads toward a vote.