After Trump’s Russia waiver, a Republican who urged him to enforce the law says the lame-duck agenda is ‘dead’

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — Three days before President Trump waived most of the Russia sanctions law named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, 22 House members sent him a letter asking him not to. Now one of the Republicans who signed it says the waiver could cost the president his agenda when Congress returns after the election, including the Pentagon money the administration wants most.

“Congress has a lame-duck session. The President has an agenda: supplemental, reconciliation, Ballroom, etc… I think the agenda is dead,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who is leaving Congress, wrote after the waiver, according to Axios. “Many of us won’t fund these things knowing he is propping up a dictator’s invasion and throwing an ally under the bus.”

What the letter asked

The Oct. 15 letter, led by Rep. Jim Costa, a California Democrat, was signed by 17 Democrats and five Republicans: Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Michael McCaul of Texas, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Joe Wilson of South Carolina. McCaul, the former Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, introduced the House version of the sanctions bill with Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, according to McCaul’s office.

The letter urged “full and faithful implementation” of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act by its first deadline, Oct. 18. It asked that any waiver be “narrow, time-limited, and tied to measurable reductions in support for Russia’s war,” and that “no waiver be used to defer the law’s core provisions.” It also urged the administration to revoke General License 135, the Oct. 9 Treasury license that allows transactions in Russian diesel, including imports into the United States.

The members put five questions to the president. They asked what he would do by Oct. 18 and whether any provision would be waived; which Russian officials, banks and companies would be designated; which countries would face the law’s secondary tariffs, and on what data; what benchmarks would show the measures were working; and how the administration “reconcile[s] General License 135 with the existing statutory ban on Russian energy imports.” They asked for a briefing for the committees of jurisdiction after the deadline.

The answer came in the form of an Oct. 16 executive order that waived the law’s tariffs and most of its new sanctions, with no expiration date, as The Inquisitor reported Monday.

The reaction

Rep. French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Financial Services Committee, wrote that “we should be increasing economic pressure on Russia, not easing up” and said he had requested a classified briefing on the decision, Axios reported. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Graham’s longtime colleague, wrote: “Lindsey would be appalled.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it Trump’s “deal with the devil.”

The White House defended the move. “Enforcing the sanctions provisions now would impede ongoing U.S. efforts to negotiate a durable and comprehensive peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia,” spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to Axios. “The President retains the ability to exercise these authorities at any time if he determines that doing so would advance national interests.”

The money at stake

Bacon’s list matters because of what the administration wants from the lame-duck session. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Oct. 14 that the Pentagon will push for at least $350 billion in defense money through a party-line reconciliation bill “regardless of what happens in the midterms,” Defense Daily and Federal News Network reported. He said the bill includes about $50 billion for autonomous and robotic systems, including the new drone command. A reconciliation bill can pass the Senate by simple majority, so it does not need Democrats, but it does need nearly every Republican in a closely divided House.

That push already faced resistance before the waiver. Defense Daily reported that leading Republican appropriators have objected to funding top Pentagon priorities with mandatory rather than discretionary money, and Federal News Network reported that fiscal hawks oppose adding to the debt without offsets. The government is running on stopgap funding that expires Dec. 11.

The Senate is scheduled to return Nov. 9, according to the Senate floor schedule. Supporters of the sanctions law have not said publicly whether they will try to write the sanctions or a diesel ban into must-pass bills. Axios reported that a bipartisan effort to overturn the diesel deal was already planned for when Congress returns.

Who we asked

Photo: The west front of the U.S. Capitol. Architect of the Capitol / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.