An order signed late on Friday
President Donald Trump issued an executive order late on Friday waiving implementation of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which he signed into law in September and which was due to take effect on Sunday. The order said it was in the United States' "national interests" to withhold some of the sanctions.
The law would have imposed broad sanctions on Russia and on countries that keep buying its oil. Waiving it removes, at least for now, the penalties that Congress intended to apply.
Republicans join the criticism
The reaction was bipartisan and fast. Senior Republicans and Democrats lined up on Saturday to call the decision "irresponsible" and, in one lawmaker's words, "a deal with the devil".
Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is leaving Congress, wrote that the president's legislative agenda in the lame-duck session was effectively dead. "Many of us won't fund these things knowing he is propping up a dictator's invasion and throwing an ally under the bus," he wrote.
Six senators had already written to Trump asking him to reverse the diesel arrangement. A bipartisan group in the House has introduced a bill to block it, and lawmakers urged "full and faithful implementation" of the Graham law, calling it "decisive in forcing Putin to take peace talks seriously".
The diesel deal behind the waiver
The waiver follows Trump's announcement that he had spoken by phone with Vladimir Putin and agreed to buy Russian diesel. He said Moscow would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons to the American and global market, part of an effort to lower fuel prices before the midterm elections in November.
Congress passed a law in 2022 banning imports of Russian oil after the invasion, and Senate leaders from both parties had urged the Treasury and State departments to target the "shadow fleet" of tankers Moscow uses to move oil. Representative Lloyd Doggett, the sponsor of the House bill, said Trump was "directly violating" the law.
The White House defended the order, casting it as a way to make the diesel deal work. Critics say it hands Moscow revenue at the moment its forces are striking Ukraine's power grid. The fight will resume when Congress returns after the election, when Democrats and some Republicans plan votes to overturn the arrangement.