Congress
Russia sanctions bill clears procedural House hurdle
Sweeping Russia sanctions legislation championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham cleared a procedural hurdle in the House on Monday, likely teeing up a full House vote later in the week.
The House Rules Committee voted to advance the measure, following a heated exchange between lawmakers over a provision that would give the White House more tariff authority.
“Today we have an opportunity to help end the war in Europe and project peace through strength around the globe,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during the hearing, arguing that “failure to act” on the bill would empower Moscow and encourage other adversaries like North Korea and Iran to further their aggressive actions as well.
But the legislation isn’t out of the woods yet. House GOP leaders could still face procedural obstacles on the floor during the party-line vote that sets the time for debate. House Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes or risk having the measure caught up in a procedural snag.
There’s also a time constraint: If lawmakers don’t vote on the legislation this week, it’ll get punted until after the midterms as the House is set to leave town again next week to campaign for reelection in their home districts.
Johnson suggested to reporters Monday that he could avoid that procedural mess entirely by moving the bill under a fast-track process that would require a bipartisan two-thirds majority for passage.
“I believe we’ll have the votes,” Johnson said, adding that if the procedural rule vote fails, he would shift to the expedited method, known as suspension of the rules.
Although the sanctions legislation, which has White House backing, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate in August, its progress slowed after summer recess amid flagging Republican enthusiasm and growing Democratic opposition. Many Democrats have argued against the bill, saying it would hand too much tariff authority to a White House already liberally applying tariffs against both friends and foes alike.
In addition to mandatory sanctions for Russia’s leadership and energy sector — as well as collaborators in Moscow’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet — the bill would hand President Donald Trump the power to hit top buyers of Russian oil with 100 percent tariffs.
New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the measure would get “overwhelming Democratic support” if the secondary tariffs were excised.
Meeks offered multiple amendments to the legislation, including a move to strike the tariff language, one to clarify that the EU is not a “country” for the purpose of the secondary tariffs and one to change the broad waiver language in the bill so that sanctions can only be waived if doing so was “vital to the national security of the United States.”
“It is deeply flawed, despite what its title says,” Meeks said of the bill. “It’s unlikely to result in any new sanctions on Russia. It will, however, hand the president of the United States sweeping new tariff authorities that he can abuse to raise the cost on the American people.”
The legislation is only headed to the House floor because Trump told Johnson he wanted the broad tariff authorities “immediately,” Meeks said, reiterating comments he told POLITICO last week.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who cosponsored the House version of the bill, said that he supported all of Meeks’ amendments — except for stripping the tariff language.
Instead, Hoyer offered an amendment that would identify the 10 countries that would be affected by tariffs: China, India, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Slovakia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
While the White House isn’t a fan of the amendment, Trump won’t veto the bill, Hoyer said.
“If we do not pass this bill, there will be great joy in the Kremlin and great devastation in Kyiv,” Hoyer said.
The committee ultimately rejected both Meeks’ and Hoyer’s amendments.
Despite Democratic opposition over the tariff provisions, the top Democrat on the committee Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said he thought the bill would pass “no matter what.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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