President Trump suspended Russia sanctions he signed into law last month and announced a diesel deal with Moscow, calling the step vital to the national interest and lower energy prices.
Late Friday night, the White House posted an Executive Order that halted the new sanctions package before it could take full effect. The order arrived just two days ahead of the law’s own implementation deadline and undid measures Trump had signed only weeks earlier.
Trump wrote Congress that the suspension served the national interest. He paired it with an agreement for Russia to supply diesel fuel, saying the volumes plus American control of key shipping lanes would help bring down global diesel prices.
The legislation, known as the Graham Act in honor of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, had directed sanctions on Russian officials, banks, and the shadow tanker fleet. It also ordered up to 100 percent tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with limited exceptions for countries already cutting those imports. Congress passed the bill with large majorities after Graham’s unexpected death in July following a trip to Ukraine.
Daily Mail reporting laid out the sequence: the Friday order, the letter to lawmakers, and the diesel volumes Trump announced.
Russia would immediately deliver more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November and another 1 million tons right after that. Calculations drawn from International Energy Agency figures put the first shipment at roughly 2.2 million barrels, less than two hours of global diesel demand. The November tranche works out to about 125,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the roughly 1 million barrels Russia once exported daily.
Trump had already pointed to the Russia-Ukraine war as the driver of diesel spikes. On September 13 at his golf resort in Ireland he told reporters, “This isn't done by the Middle East, this is done by what's happening with Russia and Ukraine.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who helped draft the bill, rejected the national-interest claim outright.
"These waivers have nothing to do with our national security, and everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin."
Blumenthal added that Trump was turning his back on “the majority of Americans, their representatives in both houses of Congress, and our European allies.”
Democratic Virginia Congressman Don Beyer said he and others had warned Trump might take exactly this step. He called on Congress to “fix this flawed law to stop Trump from capitulating to Putin and ensure that it truly supports Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky trashed the diesel agreement as a “gift to Putin.” An official told Axios that Kyiv was caught off guard.
"Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilized world. Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and treachery."
Zelensky continued, “Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”
Those reactions fit a familiar pattern of institutional pushback whenever a president exercises statutory flexibility. Similar high-stakes confrontations with Congress have played out in recent contempt votes and mapping fights, including when the House unanimously held two allies of an indicted former member in contempt.
Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline Graham, now running to keep his South Carolina seat with Trump’s endorsement, had celebrated the bill’s signing.
"I wish Lindsey were here to celebrate this historic day."
In a debate earlier this week in Columbia against Democrat Annie Andrews, she described the measure in more flexible terms. She said she had been “so proud” to help pass it and added:
"It gives the president tools that he can use if he so chooses, to end the war through economic sanctions. So that's up to him as to whether or not he wants to use it, or whether he wants to use something else, but I think the purpose of it is to bring down the gas prices and ultimately end the war. And when the war ends, gas prices will fall."
She faces voters in just over two weeks and is expected to campaign with Trump in South Carolina next week. The sanctions package had become a centerpiece of her race. That kind of congressional pressure and intra-party maneuvering has shown up elsewhere, as when Mike Rounds pulled a Trump endorsement off a campaign homepage.
The original bill sought to choke off money fueling Russia’s war more than four years after the invasion of its neighbor. Trump’s order and the diesel purchase reverse that pressure in favor of an energy-price play he says will help the wider market.
The law gave the president the very waiver authority he used. Trump exercised it two days before the automatic deadline, notified Congress in writing, and posted the decision on the White House website late in the evening. He has argued the combination of Russian diesel and U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz will ease prices for the world.
Lawmakers who wanted automatic, escalating penalties now face a different reality: the president they empowered decided the national interest pointed another way. Reform fights inside Congress continue on other fronts, from earmark self-dealing crackdowns to map battles that reach the Supreme Court, such as the push when the Missouri AG urged the Supreme Court to restore a GOP-backed congressional map.
Trump has also shown he will take institutional fights higher when he believes the record supports him, including when he took a dismissed Clinton lawsuit to the Supreme Court after an earlier sanctions dispute.
Energy costs, wartime leverage, and statutory tools all sit inside the same decision. The Friday order and the diesel volumes put those choices in plain view for voters watching prices and the long war.
Presidents are elected to weigh results against process. When the tools Congress hands over can be used or set aside in the national interest, that is exactly the call voters hired him to make.