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The bipartisan push for sanctions against Russia has, for several months, ebbed and flowed on waves of speculation about whether legislation would actually get a vote.
A signal or suggestion of support from President Donald Trump would often push the bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., closer to fruition, only to be swept back into churning, murky waters with no clear path on when or if the package would make its way to the president’s desk.
Now, Trump has given Graham the “greenlight” to move ahead with his long-simmering sanctions package as peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine continue to simmer in the background.
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Graham told Fox News Digital that this time around, he believed the bill would actually get a shot.
“It’s never going back on the shelf because President Trump believes he needs it,” Graham said. “I think he needs it.”
But it has been over a week since Graham announced the president backed the package, and so far, it has yet to make it to the floor in the upper chamber. Lawmakers are also out this week and are set to return to Washington, D.C., next week with the primary objective of preventing a partial government shutdown.
Still, the bipartisan duo has been tweaking the legislation over the last several months, but the core objective would be to slap eye-popping tariffs onto countries buying energy products from Moscow.
The intent is to cripple Russia’s war machine by imposing duties on oil, gas, uranium and other exports, largely purchased by China and India, which account for nearly three-quarters of Moscow’s energy business.
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The package has been on the back burner as the Trump administration works to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The latest iteration of that agreement generally included provisions that would have required Ukraine to give up territory to Russia, a non-starter for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump told Reuters during an interview published last week that it was Zelenskyy holding up negotiations toward a peace deal and contended that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “ready to make a deal,” while Ukraine was “less ready to make a deal.”
While the package hasn’t dislodged itself onto the floor in the upper chamber, a White House official confirmed to Fox News Digital that Trump supports the legislation.
But one issue that threatens to trip up the process once more is where the package actually starts in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doubled down on his position that any Russia sanctions package, despite being labored on in the Senate for several months, should start in the House, given the budgetary impact it could have.
That would require buy-in from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to either replicate Graham and Blumenthal’s proposal, or craft their own. Then it would need to hit the House floor, which could take longer than lawmakers in the upper chamber are willing to wait.
On whether Johnson said he would put it on the floor, Thune said, “He hasn’t.”
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“But my guess is that if it’s something that, you know, the White House — it’s important to them, it’s a priority, particularly dealing with Russia and Ukraine, I would assume that they would try and do that,” he said.
That’s where there’s a disconnect.
Johnson supports Russia sanctions but has said on multiple occasions that he believes a sanctions bill should originate in the Senate.
He has argued that starting the legislation in the House would drastically slow down its progress, given the numerous committees any package would have to pass through before ever hitting the floor for a vote.
Graham believed that the “sense of urgency now is the greatest it’s been” and noted that he has told Thune that he wants the legislation to start in the Senate, where it has over 80 co-sponsors.
“This is where the idea came from, get a big bipartisan vote and try to get President Trump to use these tools coming from the Congress so we can end this bloodbath,” Graham said.
“Now, in a normal world it would, but I just think the momentum is in the Senate,” he continued. “We can take a shell — It’s not that hard. I mean, I’ve been working my a– [off] on this thing for over a year, or whatever how long it’s been.”
Blumenthal told Fox News Digital that he had been speaking with his colleagues in the lower chamber and added that there’s “no reason” that the package should get bogged down or tripped up in the House.
Blumenthal and Graham view their sanctions push as providing Trump with another weapon to force Putin to the negotiating table.
He argued that “security is the linchpin here, but forcing Putin to come to the table also involves economic pressure, and ultimately, we want peace, and that will involve both economic and military security.”
“I feel very, very encouraged, because I think that a lot is coming together,” Blumenthal said.
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