WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to advance a Russia sanctions package inspired by the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, hours after a funeral service for the Republican lawmaker in Washington that Ukraine's president attended.
The legislation easily cleared a procedural vote — the first of several hurdles before it can become law — with bipartisan support in an 86-12 vote. Eleven Democrats and one Republican, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, voted against the legislation.
Graham's sister Darline, who was appointed to fill his seat, is a lead sponsor of the bill, which was renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026.
"There is no greater way to honor Senator Graham’s legacy than to move forward with this bipartisan
agreement," Darline Graham and a bipartisan group of senators supporting the bill said in a joint statement before the vote.
Graham was a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia and said he'd secured President Donald Trump's backing for a version of the bill before his sudden death from an aortic tear.
The legislation provides the president with new authority to sanction Russian officials, foreign nationals and financial institutions affiliated with the country's war machine, and it compels Trump to put a 500% tariff on all Russian imports, including Moscow's oil, petroleum and natural gas. The bill also gives Trump more power to punish ships that attempt to skirt sanctions on Russian energy that have been imposed by the United States and other nations aligned with Ukraine.
"This legislation is designed to cut off Vladimir Putin's most important resource in his war against Ukraine: his money," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, a cosponsor of the bill, said on the Senate floor.
The vote on Tuesday, July 28, was largely symbolic, with the Senate about to leave town on Aug. 7 for a month. The chamber will have to vote on the legislation several more times for it to officially pass the Senate.
Then the legislation must also clear the House, which is away until Aug. 31, before it can be presented to Trump. In June, the House overrode Republican leadership to pass its own version of a sanctions and Ukraine aid package.
The Democrats who opposed the sanctions package said they were concerned about tariff provisions that would delegate too much authority to Trump.
"In effect, this would be a blanket delegation of congressional tariff authority to the executive," Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, said on the Senate floor.
The White House told USA TODAY that Trump is supporting the Senate bill, which also extends sanctions on Iran.
After a closed-door sit-down Tuesday with Trump at the White House, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went up to Capitol Hill for a bipartisan meeting with senators. He then went up to watch them cast their votes, sitting at one point in between Sen. John Barrasso, the majority whip, and Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Zelenskyy was one of three world leaders who came to the United States to attend Graham's funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.
In a "Fox & Friends" interview on July 28, Trump said Graham was militant in his support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy called him a "true friend" of the nation in a social media post that thanked the United States "for its firm support" during the country's more than four-year war to beat back Russia's invasion.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, that has shown little signs of relenting, despite diplomatic efforts by the Trump administration to broker a deal with both nations that could bring the conflict to an end. A summit Trump hosted for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, followed by a visit by Zelenskyy and European leaders to Washington, failed to yield progress last August.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senate overwhelming votes for Russia sanctions bill inspired by Graham
