Dozens of House Democrats voted to hand President Trump broad new tariff authority they had spent years opposing, the price of passing the most ambitious Russia sanctions package since the war in Ukraine began.
The House passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on Wednesday by a vote of 262, 159, clearing the way for the bill to reach Trump's desk. Fifty-three Democrats crossed party lines to join 203 Republicans in backing the legislation, while 152 Democrats and seven Republicans voted no. The bill had already cleared the Senate by a lopsided 86, 11 margin, making its path to the president's signature all but certain.
The vote handed Trump a significant legislative win, and forced Democratic leaders into an uncomfortable position. The bill's tariff provisions grant the president authority to impose duties of up to 500 percent on Russian imports and up to 100 percent on goods from the top five countries purchasing Russian oil and natural gas, a list that could include China and India. For a party that fought Trump's tariff agenda at every turn, backing that kind of executive power required a bitter concession.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries led the opposition and urged his caucus to vote no. He argued the bill's language gave Trump too much discretion, and not enough obligation, to actually punish Moscow.
"The manner in which this bill has been written doesn't require the president of the United States to impose sanctions on Russia. In fact, there are so many loopholes written into the bill, I believe that it's very unlikely that the sanctions relief contemplated in the legislation will ever see the light of day."
Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, a senior Democrat, echoed that concern on the House floor. He zeroed in on what he called the bill's open-ended tariff authority, telling colleagues that "there is no guarantee in this legislation that the president could not use these tariffs against Ukraine if he decided to do so."
Neal put the party's core objection plainly: "What we're not for is giving more tariff authority to this president."
But 53 Democrats disagreed with their leadership, or at least decided the sanctions mattered more than the tariff risk. The split exposed a fault line between Democrats who prioritize supporting Ukraine and those who refuse to expand Trump's trade powers under any circumstances.
The bill nearly died before it reached a final vote. On Tuesday, a procedural rule vote, the kind of routine step that usually falls along party lines, threatened to sink the legislation on the House floor. Two Democrats rescued it: Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state broke with their caucus to advance the bill past the procedural hurdle.
A spokesman for Golden framed the decision as a matter of principle. "Congressman Golden has been a consistent supporter of America's allies in Ukraine," the spokesman said. "He didn't want to see the Russia sanctions bill die in a rule vote after passing with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate."
Jeffries had already publicly reprimanded both lawmakers earlier in the month for a similar procedural break, calling it a "breach of trust." Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez voted with Republicans anyway, twice.
That kind of defiance carries a cost inside a caucus, and both members chose to pay it. Their votes kept the bill alive when Democratic leadership wanted it dead on procedural grounds, a move that undercut Jeffries's leverage and handed the GOP a clean path to passage.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, a longtime supporter of Ukraine who led the bill through the House, cast the vote in personal terms. The legislation bears the name of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July at age 71 from an aortic dissection at his Capitol Hill home. Graham had spent the last Friday of his life in Kyiv, where he announced he had secured Trump's backing for the sanctions package, according to National Review.
McCaul quoted Graham directly from the House floor:
"This is a critical time in history, a time my friend Lindsey Graham described as a magic moment, a moment that we cannot afford to waste."
McCaul laid out the bill's mechanics in blunt terms. The legislation sanctions Russian officials and oligarchs, targets banks and financial institutions, and goes after the shadow fleet of tankers that keeps cheap Russian energy flowing to buyers worldwide. It also reinserts sanctions aimed at Iran's weapons and energy sectors, a provision that helped bring the White House on board after earlier versions of the bill stalled.
He drew a sharp distinction between sanctions and tariffs, citing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's team:
"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."
That argument, tariffs as a tool Russia cannot dodge, became the bill's central selling point and the reason its supporters accepted granting the president sweeping trade authority. McCaul framed it as a complement to existing sanctions enforcement, not a replacement.
The bill's path through the Senate was smoother. It passed 86, 11, a margin that reflected broad bipartisan agreement on punishing Russia's war economy. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visited the Capitol following Graham's funeral and personally lobbied senators to pass the legislation. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen recounted Zelenskyy's appeal: "He said, 'We need this legislation. Both the troops and the Ukrainian people need this for morale.'"
The House posed a harder challenge. Speaker Mike Johnson led a Republican majority with limited appetite for overseas entanglements, and Democratic leaders were openly hostile to the tariff provisions. The bill went through several iterations, and the White House required tweaks before granting its sign-off, though the specific changes have not been made public.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, warned colleagues about the cost of failure. "If we fail to pass this bill, there will be cheers in the Kremlin and tears in Kyiv," Hoyer said ahead of the vote.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who helped write the bill and spearheaded Democratic support for it in the Senate, offered a different answer to his party's concerns about Trump's tariff authority. He told Fox News Digital that the courts would serve as a check if Trump misused the powers the bill grants.
"If Donald Trump wants to break this law, he will be restrained by the courts, just as when he broke the law on tariffs previously."
Blumenthal's argument amounted to a concession wrapped in a warning: he acknowledged the bill hands Trump real authority, then bet that judges would rein him in if he overstepped. Whether that reassured skeptical Democrats or confirmed their fears depended on how much faith they placed in the judiciary, and how much they trusted the administration to follow court orders.
The bill now heads to Trump's desk. The New York Post reported that the president is expected to sign it into law, completing a legislative journey Graham began before his death. McCaul called the bill the best way to honor Graham's legacy: "Lindsey Graham once said this bill would be his great achievement. I can think of no better way to honor his life and his legacy than by passing these tough sanctions."
Several questions remain unanswered. The bill gives Trump flexibility to decide when to activate, and when to suspend, certain sanctions provisions. Critics have not identified the specific loopholes Jeffries alleged, and the White House has not disclosed what changes it demanded before backing the legislation. Whether the tariff authority will be used aggressively against Russia's energy customers or held in reserve as a diplomatic lever is entirely up to the president.
The bill also does not appear to explicitly prohibit tariffs on Ukraine itself, the concern Neal raised on the floor. Supporters dismiss that scenario as far-fetched. Opponents see it as a drafting gap that reveals carelessness or intent.
Democrats spent years fighting to strip Trump of tariff authority. On Wednesday, 53 of them voted to give him more of it, because the alternative was letting Russia off the hook. That trade-off tells you everything about where the leverage sits in Washington right now.
