President Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 into law on Friday, delivering a bipartisan rebuke of Moscow's war machine, and a final legislative tribute to the late senator who spent his last days fighting for it.
The new law sanctions Russian officials, banks, and the shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy flowing to global markets. It directs Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five countries purchasing Russian oil or natural gas, and it extends existing sanctions on Iran for another five years. The Senate had already cleared the bill 86, 11. The House followed Wednesday evening, passing it 262, 159 before sending it to the president's desk.
For Trump, the signing caps a legislative push that required careful negotiation with his own White House. Administration officials had to be assured that the president would retain sufficient flexibility on sanctions before giving the bill a green light. That flexibility, the broad tariff authority baked into the law, became the very provision that split Democrats and handed Trump a policy win his opponents did not want to give him.
The bill bears the name of Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and close ally of the president who worked on the legislation for more than a year. Graham spent the last Friday of his life in Kyiv, where he announced he had secured Trump's blessing for the sanctions package. Days later, Graham died unexpectedly of an aortic dissection at his Capitol Hill home. He was 71.
His sister, Darline Graham, was appointed to complete his Senate term. She released a statement Friday marking the signing.
Darline Graham told the Associated Press:
"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."
Graham's death lent urgency to a bill that had already been gaining bipartisan momentum before his passing. The senator had long argued that economic pressure, not half-measures, was the only language Moscow understood. The final product reflects that conviction.
The House vote revealed a Democratic caucus deeply divided over the legislation. Fifty-three Democrats joined 203 Republicans to pass the bill, while 152 Democrats and seven Republicans voted no, Fox News reported. The central objection from opponents was not the sanctions themselves but the sweeping tariff authority the law grants the president.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, framed the stakes on 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 also made the case for tariffs as a more enforceable tool than sanctions alone. "You can evade sanctions, which the Russians have done for years," he said. "But you cannot evade tariffs." That argument carried the day, and it carried enough Democrats to deliver a comfortable margin despite vocal opposition from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Jeffries laid out his case against the bill in blunt terms:
"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."
Democratic critics warned that the tariff provisions could be turned against allies, including the European Union. But the law includes a carve-out: countries that import less than 15 percent of Russia's natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports are exempt from the tariff directive. That exception was designed to protect nations already weaning themselves off Russian energy.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who co-drafted the bill with Graham, offered a tribute to his Republican counterpart after the House cleared the legislation Wednesday evening. The bipartisan partnership between the two men, one a hawkish conservative, the other a liberal Democrat, underscored the breadth of support for confronting Russia's aggression, now more than four years into the war.
"If he were here today, he would be jubilant about our bill's passage, and already thinking about the next one," Blumenthal said of Graham. He added a sharper note aimed at Moscow: "Putin is a thug who understands only force and strength, which is what we must show clearly and unequivocally."
The Senate's lopsided 86, 11 vote had already signaled that the legislation would survive any last-minute resistance. The real question was whether enough House Democrats would cross over to avoid the embarrassment of opposing a bill named after a recently deceased colleague, one designed to punish the very adversary Democrats have spent years warning about.
Enough did. And in doing so, they handed Trump expanded tariff powers that many in their caucus had fought to block.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the signing by pressing for rapid enforcement. "I thank all the senators and members of the House of Representatives who supported it," Zelensky said, as Just The News reported. "The best way to honor Lindsey's memory will be to implement the provisions of this law fully and swiftly."
The law targets multiple pillars of Russia's ability to fund its war. Beyond sanctioning officials and banks, it goes after the shadow fleet, the network of aging tankers that Russia has used to move oil under the radar of existing sanctions regimes. It also allows tariffs of up to 500 percent on direct Russian imports, according to Fox News, a provision that gives the administration significant leverage over any country still doing business with Moscow's energy sector.
The five-year extension of Iran sanctions, tucked into the same legislation, broadens the law's reach beyond Eastern Europe. The Washington Examiner noted that the formal title, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, reflects the dual focus. Reinserted provisions target Iran's weapons and energy sectors, linking two of the administration's top foreign-policy priorities in a single statute.
The bill's path to Trump's desk was not always certain. Earlier this year, House Speaker Johnson cut the House calendar short before midterms, leaving the Russia sanctions package in limbo alongside other unfinished business. Graham's death, and the political weight it carried, changed the calculus.
Lindsey Graham built his career on the argument that American strength abroad protects American security at home. He spent his last working day in a war zone, pressing for the very bill that now bears his name. The law he championed does what he always said it would: it forces countries to choose between doing business with Russia and doing business with the United States.
Washington rarely follows through on a fallen colleague's unfinished work. This time it did, and the result is a law with real teeth, not just a resolution and a moment of silence.
