US Senate passes Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill

The legislation will give President Trump the power to apply 100% tariffs on countries buying Russian oil

Published 7 Aug, 2026 19:

he US Senate has approved a bill allowing President Donald Trump to impose 100% tariffs on the largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas. The bill was the brainchild of Senator Lindsey Graham, who tried multiple times to pass it before he died last month.

The bill, titled ‘The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026’, passed the Senate by 86 votes to 11 on Friday, with Graham’s sister Darline, who was appointed to his seat, reading out the result. Trump has already said he would sign the legislation, meaning it will become law if it passes the House of Representatives next week.

Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against the bill. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and nine progressive Democrats, including former presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, also voted against it.

The legislation empowers Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas,a list that includes China and India. An earlier version of the bill would have increased these tariffs to 500% and applied them with or without Trump’s authorization.

Trump reportedly agreed to thefinal bill on the condition that he decide whether or not to impose the tariffs.

The bill was passed less than a month after Graham’s sudden death from heart disease. At a funeral service in Washington last week, Ukrainian leader VladimirZelensky met with more than 60 Senators and lobbied for the bill’s passage, urging them to hold a vote – and press Trump to send weapons to Kiev– “as quickly as possible, without unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Graham met with Zelensky ten times since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and at the time of his death had just returned from touring weapons factories in Kiev.Graham repeatedly lobbied for maximum US military aid to Ukraine, suggested that the US shoot down Russian jets over Ukraine, and in March 2022, called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Today, President Zelensky is watching from Ukraine, and Putin is watching from Moscow,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, who co-sponsored the bill, said after the vote. “I would like to think Lindsey Graham is watching too,” he added.

The bill also applies sanctions to Putin, senior Kremlin officials, Russian banks and business figures, and the Iranian energy and arms sectors. The sanctions are mostly symbolic, as almost all of Moscow and Tehran’s elites have already been sanctioned by the US.

https://www.rt.com/news/644003-lindsey-graham-sanctions-bill-senate/

Musk’s DOGE savings claims unverifiable – government watchdog

The US efficiency agency lied about terminating leases and published unverified grant cuts, the Government Accountability Office has found

Published 7 Aug, 2026 18:38 |

The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), suggested and initially spearheaded by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, credited itself with billions of dollars in federal budget savings that could not be independently verified, a government watchdog said Thursday.

US President Donald Trump launched the now-defunct initiative shortly after he took office last January, tapping Musk as his government efficiency czar. The agency was billed as a sweeping effort to cut waste and bureaucracy across the federal government and its sprawling $7 trillion annual budget.

DOGE claims to have saved around $215 billion – just over 3% of the federal budget – through contract and lease cancellations, grant cuts, workforce reductions, regulatory changes and other actions.

However, billions of the roughly $110 billion in savings published on DOGE’s ‘Wall of Receipts’ were either “incorrect or lacked supporting evidence,” the US Government Accountability Office found.

DOGE provided insufficient information to verify 96% of the $49.2 billion it claimed to have saved from terminating nearly 16,000 grants, the watchdog reported.

Auditors also found that more than a third of the lease terminations credited to DOGE, worth around $15.3 million, were already being phased out before the initiative was established.

In one case, DOGE claimed $1.7 billion in savings from a Defense Health Agency IT contract covering more than 700 military treatment facilities. The contract, however, was never terminated or reduced, GAO wrote. “Thus, no savings were achieved,” it said.

DOGE officially shut down in July, following months of rumors that the initiative was quietly being dismantled and its functions absorbed elsewhere in the federal government.

Its final tally fell far short of Musk’s early promises. Before the start of Trump’s second term, the tech mogul claimed that DOGE could slash as much as $2 trillion from federal spending, later scaling back that target.

The aggressive campaign quickly became a political flashpoint as tens of thousands of federal workers lost their jobs and government programs were targeted for cuts. Musk also clashed with several senior officials in Trump’s cabinet before publicly feuding with the president over the Big Beautiful Bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” and accusing it of exacerbating the ballooning US budget deficit.

https://www.rt.com/news/643999-musks-doge-savings-claims-unverifiable/