The House voted 262-159 on Wednesday to pass the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, sending the legislation to President Trump for his signature. The bill, named for the South Carolina senator who died in July and who had spent the better part of a decade pushing for stronger measures against Russia, had cleared the Senate 86-11 last month. Its core mechanism would authorize the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on any country that ranks among the top five purchasers of Russian crude oil or natural gas. China, India, and Turkey are the countries most likely to fall within that definition. NBC News has the House vote breakdown.
Fifty-eight House Democrats voted with most Republicans. Seven Republicans voted no. The 262-159 margin in the House and the 86-11 margin in the Senate are the most bipartisan votes on any legislation connected to Russia or Ukraine since the opening weeks of the full-scale invasion in 2022, when emergency military assistance packages moved with near-unanimous support before the issue became entangled in broader debates over foreign policy spending. Al Jazeera has the bill’s full provisions.
The secondary-sanctions architecture the Graham Act uses has predecessors. The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 built a model that made Iranian oil sales politically costly for third-country buyers by targeting not just Iran but the countries and companies choosing to do business with it. The Graham Act applies that logic to Russia’s energy revenues. The idea is to make the war expensive not only for Moscow but for anyone willing to subsidize it. Whether that pressure is applied, and with what force, depends on presidential discretion. Congress has given Trump the tool. He hasn’t yet said what he’ll do with it.
Graham spent his final years in the Senate trying to close that gap, to convert discretion into mandate. He didn’t get there while he was alive. In 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment tied normal trade relations with the Soviet Union to Soviet emigration policy, specifically for Jewish citizens being denied exit visas. It stayed on the books for thirty-eight years, surviving administrations of both parties, until Congress replaced it in 2012. How long the Graham Act remains on the books, and whether any president uses it aggressively, depends on facts that haven’t unfolded yet. CNBC has the bill’s legislative history and Trump’s stated position.
Judges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague sentenced former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci to 25 years in prison on Wednesday for war crimes committed during the 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia. Thaci, who led the Kosovo Liberation Army during the conflict and later served as Kosovo’s president from 2016 to 2020, was found guilty of illegal detention, torture, cruel treatment, and murder. Three other KLA commanders were also sentenced: Jakup Krasniqi to 25 years, Kadri Veseli to 18, and Rexhep Selimi to 13. NPR has the verdict and sentencing details.
The reaction in Kosovo was immediate. Thousands gathered in central Pristina to watch the verdict broadcast on a large screen, many weeping, many chanting Thaci’s name and the initials of the KLA. Prime Minister Albin Kurti called the sentence “a great and harmful punishment.” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama called it “a shame.” By evening, protesters had gathered outside the European Union Rule of Law Mission compound on the outskirts of Pristina, throwing stones and smashing windows. Euronews has the protest coverage.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers were established specifically to handle alleged crimes committed by KLA members during and after the war, operating under Hague supervision but applying Kosovo law. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which ran from 1993 to 2017, reached convictions involving Serbian, Bosnian Serb, and Croatian commanders for crimes committed in the same conflicts of the 1990s. The principle the ICTY applied, that a legitimate cause doesn’t exempt the people fighting for it from accountability for how they fight, is the same principle the Kosovo Specialist Chambers applied Wednesday. That the verdict is being contested so fiercely in Kosovo is its own kind of measure of what it cost.
Russian forces launched a mass drone and missile attack overnight, striking Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa oblasts with 157 drones and several cruise and ballistic missiles. At least 10 people were killed and 71 injured across the three regions, according to Ukrainian military and regional officials. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 124 of the 157 drones. The Kyiv Independent has the full overnight report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Russia has launched more than 3,500 drones and nearly 190 missiles against Ukraine since September 1. That’s 16 days into the month. September isn’t over.
Today is the 239th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the document in Independence Hall, concluding four months of deliberation that had nearly collapsed on multiple occasions over disputes about representation, slavery, and the distribution of power between the states and a federal government that didn’t yet exist. The Constitution went to the states eleven days later. New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it in June 1788, meeting the nine-state threshold the document itself required. It took effect in March 1789.
The document has been amended twenty-seven times. The most recent amendment, the 27th, prohibits Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise. James Madison proposed it in 1789. It was ratified in 1992, after a University of Texas undergraduate named Gregory Watson found it in a government documents archive and began a letter-writing campaign to state legislatures. The gap between proposal and ratification: 203 years. The White House issued its annual proclamation for Constitution Week yesterday. The presidential proclamation is here.
California health officials have been warning residents since August to protect themselves from mosquito bites as West Nile virus activity hits its highest level in five years in the state. The California Department of Public Health reported 30 human cases and three deaths through mid-August, in 13 counties, running above the five-year average for cases at this point in the season. The percentage of dead birds and mosquito pool samples testing positive is also elevated above historical norms. Los Angeles County reported its first West Nile death of the year this week. CBS Los Angeles has the LA County case. Contra Costa County has statewide context.
West Nile virus arrived in the United States in 1999, first detected in New York City, and spread to all 48 contiguous states within a decade. There’s no vaccine and no specific treatment. Most people who contract it don’t know it. About one in five develop fever and flu-like symptoms. About one in 150 develop serious neurological disease. Peak transmission season in California runs through September. The mosquitoes that carry it are most active at dusk and dawn.
Something good, to end the day.
A meta-analysis published Wednesday in the European Heart Journal combined evidence from 87 randomized controlled trials involving more than 6,500 adults and found consistent and statistically significant cardiovascular benefits associated with eating four to six servings of whole grains a day. Researchers found improvements in body weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, triglycerides, and markers of inflammation. The benefits appeared across grain types: oats, barley, whole wheat, brown rice. The strongest effects showed up in people eating 60 to 100 grams of whole grains daily, roughly the equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal and a sandwich made with whole-grain bread. ScienceDaily has the findings.
Nutritional science has been pointing toward whole grains for decades. What 87 trials assembled together adds is scale: a sample large enough to identify effects that individual studies can miss, and consistency enough across grain types to suggest that the benefit isn’t specific to one variety. The finding doesn’t require a new drug or a breakthrough procedure. It requires a bowl. Something you eat at six-thirty in the morning. That’s not the kind of news that leads anyone’s broadcast. It’s the kind that works.
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Friday.
